Her eyes opened, closed lazily again . . . but before they did he saw something glimmer in them, the reflection of a memory, the uncanny gift that seemed to see into him as if his eyes were window glass. “You remember now . . .” she murmured, “. . . don’t you. . . .”
Jake looked down again, startled. “. . . what?”
“The woman.”
Jake raised his eyes, staring off into the distance as his mind showed him all the puzzle pieces he had gathered: Alice’s picture, the cabin, his gang, the gold . . . Alice, holding him in her arms as she said, “You’re a good man. . . .” But they were only a part of a greater puzzle, and still he could barely guess what it looked like.
“Did you love her?” Ella whispered.
He kept his eyes on the horizon, as the void inside him refused to let him know even that much.
“You can tell me. . . .”
But he couldn’t . . . he didn’t know what was true. . . . He’d betrayed his gang over gold, and told himself he did it for love of her: Had that been nothing but a lie? He could still see the look on her face, when he showed her the gold. And in the end—had he really abandoned her to demons . . . ?
He looked down at Ella again, the emptiness inside him aching. “I guess I must’ve . . .” he said at last. He knew she’d loved him. He knew he’d needed her . . . but was that the same thing? He looked away into the distance again. “It’s just . . . hard to see. . . .” He shook his head as sweat stung his eyes. “All I know is . . . I owe it to her to find her.” One way or the other, he owed her that—
He stumbled as his boot caught in a tangle of ankle-high scrub; he kicked free of it and kept walking. There was actually some plant life—grass and shrubs—growing around him now, in red dirt, not just sand. Almost there; almost to the canyon mouth—
He sensed more than saw Ella open her eyes again . . . seeing everything, he was sure: Seeing him fading . . . how his beaten body kept trying to drag him down; how heat and thirst and exhaustion were trying to make his mind stray into even stranger dreams. Maybe she could even see the truth that would make her despise him. . . .
“. . . It’s not far . . .” he insisted, his voice scraping like sand in his throat, “. . . you hang in there . . . hang . . . in. . . . We’re gonna be fine. . . .”
DOLARHYDE, NAT, DOC and Emmett—the last four members from the group of seven who had set out this morning—rode on along the stony floor of a canyon, between cliffs the color of bleached bones.
They kept their horses at a walk, preserving their animals’ strength, although by this time Doc had no idea why they bothered. They had survived the pursuing outlaws and the demon raid, but they rode silently, as if they were heading to a funeral, every one of them far too aware of how much they had all lost.
Charlie Lyle, Ella, Jake . . . and Jake’s weapon, their only real hope for defeating the demons on their own infernal terms—were all gone, which meant they had also lost any chance of rescuing their loved ones, and all the others who had been taken.
Dolarhyde had claimed he’d seen Ella taken by a flyer, and seen Jake follow it toward this canyon. But they’d been riding for hours, watching the shadow of the canyon’s wall elongate as the sun dropped westward.
The shade hadn’t brought them much relief, because the stone walls and canyon floor still radiated the heat of noon. The canyon seemed never-ending, and they still hadn’t seen a trace of the demons’ flyer, or any sign of Jake and Ella. He wondered how long they were going to keep pretending they might actually find them.
Doc raised his head, finally, from staring at his horse’s dusty mane, the stony ground, for too long—trying to see Maria’s face inside his mind . . . trying not to, because every time he did it only reminded him that he’d never see her again.
He glanced over at Nat Colorado, riding beside him. Nat’s eyes were habitually scanning the ridge-line above them, and the sky; but Doc wasn’t sure he was really seeing anything anymore, either.
“This plan wasn’t very well thought out, was it?” Doc said, at last.
Nat lowered his eyes, but he looked straight ahead, to where Dolarhyde rode alone, trailed by Emmett. He didn’t say anything.
“We lost?” Doc asked, because they seemed to be heading nowhere, without any reason or destination, now.
“We’ll be all right,” Nat said, with a slight twitch of his shoulders.
“How can you be so calm in all this?” Doc demanded. “I nearly messed my britches.”
Nat glanced over at him finally, but without the expression Doc had been expecting. “You were good back there,” he said. “Held your own with the gang. Rode hard just now.” A faint smile formed on his lips, but his eyes were completely serious. “We survived a battle together. Look at you, you’re a warrior now. Your wife won’t even recognize you when you see her.”
Doc’s surprise fell back, dragged down by his memory. “If I see her. . . .”
Nat looked him directly in the eyes for the first time, as he said, “In Apache, there is no word for goodbye.”
Doc let the words register, letting them seep into the cracked mirror of his faith, giving him back a glimpse of hope. He nodded to Nat, oddly comforted.
UP AHEAD, DOLARHYDE slowed his horse’s pace just slightly, so that he dropped back alongside Emmett. His glance took in the boy’s reddened eyes and runny nose. The boy had been crying for some time; he’d heard the sound of it, even though Emmett had been trying his best to hide the fact.
“What’re you all bunched up about?” Dolarhyde asked.
Surprised and embarrassed, Emmett wiped his nose on his sleeve. “. . . I miss my grandpa,” he said in a small voice.
And Charlie, and Meacham, and the dog, he might as well have added. Everyone, everything, that’d been a comfort to him. Dolarhyde remembered the last thing he’d said to the boy, about that damn dog, as they left the riverboat early this morning.
He regretted it now, just a little, as he studied the boy’s face. For a moment his eyes looked through and beyond him, as if he was searching for some elusive solution to a question of battlefield strategy.
“I wasn’t much older than you, back when this territory was Mexico,” he said, at last. “Word come, Apaches were headed for a settlement outside Arivaca. My father wanted me to be a man, so he made me ride out with the garrison, banging on a drum.” In those days the border hadn’t mattered, when it came to fighting Apaches; the Mexicans hated them as much as the U.S. Army did.
His expression turned wry at the memory of himself, nothing but a wet-behind-the-ears kid. “Boy, was I scared—” He let his grin widen, so that Emmett saw it.
Emmett looked over at him in surprise, and then Dolarhyde saw a kind of relief settle over the boy, his face easing, his shoulders losing their tightness. Dolarhyde couldn’t remember ever admitting to anyone, even his own son—especially his own son—that he’d once been a terrified child.
He didn’t let himself wonder about it, only let his memory go on unwinding to its end. “So when we got to Arivaca—found the whole place burned to the ground. Then I saw a settler crawling from a cabin that caught fire . . . he was burnt bad—knew he was dyin’. All he could manage were two words—” Dolarhyde glanced down, into the eyes of the past. “‘Kill me.’”
Emmett stared at him. “. . . what’d you do?” he asked faintly.
Dolarhyde reached over and pulled the knife he’d given Emmett from the boy’s belt. “I took this very knife . . . and I slit his throat.” He flipped the knife, caught it by the point, and held it out for Emmett to take back.
Emmett took the knife from him. For a long moment the boy stared at the knife, and then up at him, jarred by the history of the perfectly honed blade he’d been carrying like it was newly bought, untainted by any act of bloody violence, or even bloody mercy. . . . He put it back into its sheath, with the respect its history deserved.
Still acting on some deep impulse, no longer letting himself question anything he did, Dol
arhyde put out his hand and let it rest reassuringly on the boy’s shoulder. He said softly, “Now be a man.”
Emmett looked up at his face, and Dolarhyde saw what he’d needed to see in the boy’s eyes: Not that the fear had vanished from them, but that a sense of his own strength, the confidence to make his own choices in life, shone through it, until the fear no longer had the power to control him.
“Boss, look!” Nat’s voice broke the spell that had held him, and Dolarhyde looked ahead again, squinting as a form began to emerge from the brightness. His eyes widened as he made out what Nat had seen: Shimmering like a mirage, Jake Lonergan was walking toward them, carrying Ella . . . stumbling out of the land’s fever dream, back into their own reality.
13
Jake stumbled again on the stones of the canyon floor, somehow managing to stay on his feet, his
lips cracked and bloody, his mouth too parched for words. He had to force himself to take in every painful breath of burning air, had to listen to a moan every time he let it out again . . . concentrating on the next breath, the next step. He couldn’t let his heart, his lungs, his feet betray him, couldn’t afford to fall, had to keep moving, for Ella’s sake. As long as he wasn’t dead, he could keep moving. . . .
But suddenly his barely functioning senses stopped him in his tracks, as his ears seemed to catch the sound of a human voice in the wind. No . . . couldn’t be. . . .
His eyes were almost swollen shut, but he forced them open just enough to see search the way ahead. Wavering in the fluid, distorted distance, he thought he could make out four riders on horseback. . . . Had to be a mirage . . . couldn’t be . . .
But the four were moving, riding toward him out of the zone of superheated air, until he could see them clearly—Dolarhyde, Doc, Nat and Emmett.
He bit his lip, filling his mouth with blood, and swallowed it. “H-he-here . . . we—we made it—” he told Ella. His legs collapsed as he let himself fall to his knees, still holding Ella protectively above the stony ground.
They’d done it. The others gathered around him; he could see amazement and urgent concern on their faces.
“Give her to me,” Doc said, reaching out. He let Doc take Ella from his arms; his arms dropped strengthless to his sides. He sat back on the rocky ground, not registering the pain or heat, only relief.
Dolarhyde glanced up at the cliffs one more time, then kneeled beside him, offering his canteen.
“Her f-first—” Jake mumbled, trying to push it away. But Doc was already seeing to Ella, and Dolarhyde caught him by the jaw, raising his head to force a trickle of water into his mouth. Jake swallowed convulsively, and felt more water pour onto his tongue. He swallowed willingly this time; his hand groped for the canteen. Dolarhyde pushed his hand away, realizing what Jake couldn’t, now; that too much water was as bad as none for a man in his state. Dolarhyde continued to feed him more, a sip at a time.
“Ella—?” Jake finally managed to ask, his arm shaking as he tried to reach out.
JAKE’S EYES WERE too sunblind to register the look that Doc gave to Dolarhyde then, filled with unspeakable grief and loss: the look that said, Ella was gone.
Dolarhyde turned away from Jake, as he took the full impact of the look, and ghosts stirred the dust of emotions that he hadn’t known existed before that terrible day at Antietam . . . that he’d only known one other time, when his wife had died. He had buried them all, along with his wife, and sworn he would never let himself feel that kind of pain again.
But these two: Jake Lonergan—that defiant, treacherous son of a bitch, the first man Dolarhyde had actually hated in a long, long time; and Ella, a woman who could make his flesh creep just with her stare . . . seeing them like this. . . . Why did seeing the two of them like this bring it all back—?
Jake had taken down a demon flyer for the second time; he had to have done it again, or he wouldn’t be here. But had he done it just to save Ella—?
Dolarhyde looked back at Jake, at the dazed anguish on Jake’s face pleading with someone to give him an answer, the one he needed to hear, that would give him the strength to go on living. Not the Scourge of the Territories anymore. . . .
Right now Jake Lonergan was only a man in need, like too many Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde of the United States Army had seen for too many years: a wounded soldier who’d spent the last of his strength to pull a comrade from the battlefield, only to learn his friend had already died. . . . A soldier in a war that Dolarhyde hadn’t even acknowledged they’d been fighting, together, until now.
He put out his hands to support Jake, trying to get him to stand, to get him up off the burning ground, onto his own two feet again. They’d been in this canyon far too long; he’d let all of this go on for far too long. If the Apaches had. . . .
“—how is she?” Jake whispered, his swollen eyes searching, trying to find her face among the others around him, all of them gazing back at him with expressions he couldn’t understand.
“She’s gone,” Dolarhyde said quietly.
Jake’s body went rigid in his grip. “She’s not gone.” Jake shook his head. “Lemme see her—”
Dolarhyde looked hard into Jake’s eyes, forcing him to see, hear, accept reality. “Jake . . .” he said, insistent this time, “she’s gone.”
“Boss—” Nat said suddenly, urgently.
Dolarhyde looked up again at the cliffs, and saw his worst fear since they’d headed into this canyon, now realized: The Apaches who’d been scouting them this morning were back . . . and this time they’d brought friends. Apache warriors lined both sides of the canyon, rifles and drawn bows aimed downward.
The Apaches must have been trailing them, at a distance, all day. Even if they hadn’t seen everything, they’d seen enough to know that the small group of people from town weren’t bait for a trap, just easy targets.
Jake slumped back to the ground as Dolarhyde let him go and raised his hands along with the rest.
THE SUN HAD finally gone down on what had been the longest day of their lives for most of the survivors, by the time they reached the Apache camp. Doc knew they wouldn’t have lived that long if Nat hadn’t still been fluent enough in his native tongue to keep the warriors from killing them on the spot in the canyon.
Their unexpected arrival as prisoners of the war band turned the camp of about fifty or so Apache men, women, and children into what seemed to him like a subdued bedlam of barking dogs and murmured surprise.
Doc had no idea what the people around him were saying, but from the tone of their voices, they weren’t happy to have visitors—at least not his kind. He kneeled on the ground beside Dolarhyde and Nat as they all had been forced to do, in the center of the camp by a large bonfire, where everybody could get a good look at them.
Jake had been dropped in the dirt beside him, barely conscious and mumbling in delirium. Doc clenched his bound hands—wanting to be allowed to treat him, knowing the shock of Ella’s death had been the final blow to a man who had nearly sacrificed his own life to save hers. He told himself they were all as good as dead, anyway; maybe Jake was the lucky one.
Emmett had been dragged away from them when they first arrived, kicking and cursing. Doc could still see him, held back by the women and older boys, still struggling to break free, but with more desperation than defiance on his face now.
Nat had murmured to him that the tribe would adopt the boy. Doc had hoped as much. He knew that adoption of captive children was a long tradition with the Apaches. Growing up, he had heard a lot about Apaches, but unlike most people he’d actually listened to all of it, and not just to the horror stories.
The Apaches had adapted to life in this Land of Plenty of Nothing a long time ago, accepting what it gave them, and paying the price it demanded, unquestioningly. Adoption must be even more vital to them now, since their numbers had been decimated in wars with both the Mexican and U.S. armies, as well as endless hostile encounters with miners and settlers.
The United States and Mexico h
ad fought each other often enough over this same territory, even while they both fought the Apaches. It struck him that his people and Maria’s had had no more business claiming it than the Apaches would have had to try and claim the United States.
But that was the damn trouble with people . . . enough was never enough. He had told Meacham he couldn’t enter a church in good faith anymore, because “Manifest Destiny” sounded too much like God telling the Hebrews to move into the land of the Canaanites, just because He said it was theirs now. Ever since the beginning of time, humans had used the name of God as a justification for their sins so easily, so often—as nothing more than an excuse to commit ungodly acts against each other. History seemed to him to repeat itself over and over, ever since Old Testament days. . . .
Meacham had understood, the way he’d understood so many things Doc had never expected a preacher would even have a clue about. . . . Maria might not have known exactly how he felt, but she understood him, and that was enough. If God didn’t understand by now, it was too damn late. Demons would inherit the earth.
He missed Meacham . . . he missed Maria, more than he was going to miss his own life. He wondered why the Apaches didn’t have a word for “goodbye.” Maybe because they never got enough chances to say it to each other. . . .
Doc sighed, tired of kneeling, bending his head before God or a bunch of Apaches. He looked up to see the warriors who had collected their weapons handing them to Black Knife, the leader Nat had called a nantan—a chief.
In this case, Nat said Black Knife was also a kind of sachem, a word Doc had heard back east—one of the most highly regarded chiefs, even among other nantans, of the scattered bands of “wild” Apaches still surviving off a reservation.
Black Knife was probably in his mid-forties, Doc figured. His eyes were keen and intelligent, and he carried himself with the confidence of a natural leader. Nothing else made him stand out in the gathering of warriors, except that his shirt was dyed red. All of the Apache men wore odd combinations of worn-looking traditional clothing and garments taken—one way or another—from their enemies.