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I SENT ONE BOY to the gaschamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didnt have to go but I did. I sure didnt want to.Hed killed a fourteen year old girl and I tell yht now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I do. The papers said it was a crime of passion aold me there wasnt no passion to it. Hed been datin this girl, young as she was. He was een. Aold me that he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out hed do it again. Said he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I dont know what to make of that. I surely dont. I thought Id never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind. I watched them strap him into the seat and shut the door. He might of looked a bit nervous about it but that was about all. I really believe that he knew he was goin to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that. And Ive thought about that a lot. He was not hard to talk to.
Called me Sheriff. But I didnt know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? Ive thought about it a good deal. But he wasnt nothin pared to what was in down the pike.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I dont know what them eyes was the windows to and I guess Id as soon not know. But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and thats where this is goin. It has done brought me to a pla my life I would not of thought Id of e to. Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destru and I dont want to front him. I know hes real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I t say that its even what you are willin to do. Because I always khat you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothin but you do. If you aint theyll know it. Theyll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to bee. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. I think now that maybe I never would.
THE DEPUTY LEFT CHIGURH standing in the er of the office with his hands cuffed behind him while he sat in the swivelchair and took off his hat and put his feet up and called Lamar on the mobile.
Just walked in the door. Sheriff he had some sort of thing on him like one of them oxygen tanks for emphysema or whatever. Then he had a hose that run down the inside of his sleeve ao one of them stunguns like they use at the slaughterhouse.
Yessir. Well thats what it looks like. You see it when you get in. Yessir. I got it covered. Yessir.
Wheood up out of the chair he swung the keys off his belt and opehe locked desk drawer to get the keys to the jail. He was slightly bent over when Chigurh squatted and scooted his manacled hands beh him to the back of his knees. In the same motio and rocked backward and passed the under his feet and then stood instantly and effortlessly. If it looked like a thing hed practiced many times it was. He dropped his cuffed hands over the deputys head and leaped into the air and slammed both knees against the back of the deputys ned hauled ba the .
They went to the floor. The deputy was trying to get his hands ihe but he could not. Chigurh lay there pulling ba the bracelets with his knees between his arms and his face averted. The deputy was flailing wildly and hed begun to walk sideways over the floor in a circle, kig over the wastebasket, kig the chair across the room. He kicked shut the door and he ed the thr in a wad about them. He was gurgling and bleeding from the mouth. He was strangling on his own blood. Chigurh only hauled the harder. The nickelplated cuffs bit to the bohe deputys right carotid artery burst and a jet of blood shot across the room and hit the wall and ran down it. The deputys legs９9liｂ? slowed and then stopped. He lay jerking. Theopped moving altogether. Chigurh lay breathing quietly, holding him. Whe up he took the keys from the deputys belt and released himself and put the deputys revolver in the waistband of his trousers a into the bathroom.
He ran cold water over his wrists until they stopped bleeding aore strips from a handtowel with his teeth and ed his wrists a bato the office. He sat on the desk and fastehe toweling with tape from a dispenser, studying the dead man gaping up from the floor. When he was do the deputys wallet out of his pocket and took the money and put it in the pocket of his shirt and dropped the wallet to the floor. Then he picked up his air-tank and the stungun and walked out the door and got into the deputys car and started the engine and backed around and pulled out and headed up the road.
Oerstate he picked out a late model Ford sedan with a single driver and turned on the lights and hit the siren briefly. The car pulled onto the shoulder. Chigurh pulled in behind him and shut off the engine and slung the tank across his shoulder and stepped out. The man was watg him in the rearview mirror as he walked up.
Whats the problem, officer? he said.
Sir would you mind stepping out of the vehicle?
The man opehe door and stepped out. Whats this about? he said.
Would you step away from the vehicle please.
The man stepped away from the vehicle. Chigurh could see the doubt e into his eyes at this bloodstained figure before him but it came too late. He placed his hand on the mans head like a faith healer. The pic hiss and click of the plunger sounded like a door closing. The man slid soundlessly to the ground, a round hole in his forehead from which the blood bubbled and ran down into his eyes carrying with it his slowly uncoupling world visible to see. Chigurh wiped his hand with his handkerchief. I just didnt want you to get blood on the car, he said.
MOSS SAT WITH THE HEELS of his boots dug into the volic gravel of the ridge and glassed the desert below him with a pair of twelve perman binoculars. His hat pushed ba his head. Elbows propped on his khe rifle strapped over his shoulder with a harness-leather sling was a heavybarreled .270 on a 98 Mauser a with a lamioaple and walnut. It carried a Ul telescopic sight of the same power as the binoculars. The antelope were a little under a mile away. The sun less than an hour and the shadow of the ridge and the datilla and the rocks fell far out across the floodplain below him. Somewhere out there was the shadow of Moss himself. He lowered the binoculars and sat studying the land. Far to the south the raw mountains of Mexico. The breaks of the river. To the west the baked terracotta terrain of the running borderlands. He spat dryly and wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his cotton workshirt.
The rifle would shoot half minute of angle groups. Five inch groups at ohousand yards. The spot hed picked to shoot from lay just below a long talus of lava scree and it would put him well within that distance. Except that it would take the better part of an hour to get there and the antelope were grazing away from him. The best he could say about any of it was that there was no wind.
Whe to the foot of the talus he raised himself slowly and looked for the antelope.
Theyd not moved far from where he last saw them but the shot was still a good seven hundred yards. He studied the animals through the binoculars. In the pressed air motes a distortion. A low haze of shimmering dust and pollen. There was no other cover and there wasnt going to be any other shot.
He wallowed down in the scree and pulled off one boot and laid it over the rocks and lowered the forearm of the rifle down into the leather and pushed off the safety with his thumb and sighted through the scope.
They stood with their heads up, all of them, looking at him.
Damn, he whispered. The sun was behind him so they couldnt very well have seen light reflect off the glass of the scope. They had just flat seen him.
The rifle had a jar trigger set to nine ounces and he pulled the rifle and the boot toward him with great care and sighted again and jacked the crosshairs slightly up the back of the animal standing most broadly to him. He khe exact drop of the bullet in hundred yard is. It was the distahat was uain. He laid his finger in the curve of the trigger. The boars tooth he wore on a gold spooled onto the rocks inside his elbow.
Even with the heavy barrel and the muzzlebrake the rifle bucked up off the rest. When he pulled the animals bato the scope he could see them all standing as before. It took the 150 grain bullet the better part of a sed to get there but it took the sound twice that. They were standing looking at the plume of dust where the bullet had hit.
Then they bolted. Running almost immediately at top speed out upon the barrial with the long whaang of the rifleshot rolling after them and ing off the rocks and yawing back across the open try in the early m solitude.
He stood and watched them go. He raised the glasses. One of the animals had dropped bad ag one leg ahought that the round had probably skipped off the pan and caught him in the left hindquarters. He leaned and spat. Damn, he said.
He watched them out of sight beyond the rocky headlands to the south. The pale e dust that hung in the windless m light grew faint and then it too was gohe barrial stood silent ay in the sun. As if nothing had occurred there at all. He sat and pulled on his boot and picked up the rifle aed the spent g and put it in his shirtpocket and closed the bolt. Then he slung the rifle over his shoulder a out.
It took him some forty mio cross the barrial. From there he made his a long volic slope and followed the crest of the ridge southeast to an overlook above the try into which the animals had vanished. He glassed the terrain slowly.
Crossing that ground was a large tailless dog, bla color. He watched it. It had a huge head and cropped ears and it was limping badly. It paused and stood. It looked behind it. Then it went on. He lowered the glasses and stood watg it go.
He hiked on along the ridge with his thumb hooked in the shoulderstrap of the rifle, his hat pushed ba his head. The back of his shirt was already wet with sweat. The rocks there were etched with pictographs perhaps a thousand years old. The men who drew them hunters like himself. Of them there was no other trace.
At the end of the ridge was a rockslide, a rough trail leading down. delilla and scrub catclaw. He sat in the rocks and steadied his elbows on his knees and sed the try with the binoculars. A mile away on the floodplain sat three vehicles.
He lowered the binoculars and looked over the try at large. Then he raised them again. There looked to be men lying on the ground. He jacked his boots into the rocks and adjusted the focus. The vehicles were four wheel drive trucks or Broncos with big all-terrain tires and winches and racks of rooflights. The men appeared to be dead. He lowered the glasses. Then he raised them again. Then he lowered them and just sat there.
Nothing moved. He sat there for a long time.
When he approached the trucks he had the rifle unslung and cradled at his waist with the safety off. He stopped. He studied the try and theudied the trucks. They were all shot up. Some of the tracks of holes that ran across the sheetmetal were spaced and linear and he kheyd been put there with automatic ons. Most of the glass was shot out and the tires flat. He stood there. Listening.
In the first vehicle there was a man slumped dead over the wheel. Beyowo more bodies lying in the gaunt yellow grass. Dried blood bla the ground. He stopped and listened. Nothing. The drone of flies. He walked around the end of the truck. There was a large dead dog there of the kind hed seen crossing the floodplain.
The dog was gutshot. Beyond that was a third body lying face down. He looked through the window at the man iruck. He was shot through the head. Blood everywhere.
He walked on to the sed vehicle but it was empty. He walked out to where the third body lay. There was a shotgun in the grass. The shotgun had a short barrel and it was fitted with a pistol stod a twenty round drum magazine. He he mans boot with his toe and studied the low surrounding hills.
The third vehicle was a Bronco with a lifted suspension and dark smoked windows. He reached up and opehe driver side door. There was a man sitting in the seat looking at him.
Moss stumbled back, leveling the rifle. The mans face was bloody. He moved his lips dryly. Agua, cuate, he said. Agua, por dios.
He had a shortbarreled H&K maepistol with a blaylon shoulderstrap lying in his lap and Moss reached and got it and stepped back. Agua, the man said. Por dios.
I aint got no water.
Agua.
Moss left the door open and slung the H&K over his shoulder and stepped away. The man followed him with his eyes. Moss walked around the front of the trud opehe door oher side. He lifted the latd folded the seat forward. The cargo spa the rear was covered with a metallic silver tarp. He pulled it back. A load of bricksized parcels each ed in plastic. He kept one eye on the man and got out his knife and cut a slit in one of the parcels. A loose brown powder dribbled out. He wet his forefinger and dipped it in the powder and smelled it. Then he wiped his finger on his jeans and pulled the tarp back over the parcels and stepped bad looked over the try again. Nothing. He walked away from the trud stood and glassed the low hills. The lava ridge. The flat try to the south. He got out his handkerchief and walked bad wiped everythiouched. The doorhandle and the seatlatch and the tarp and the plastic package. He crossed around to the other side of the trud wiped everything dowoo. He tried to think what else he might have touched. He went back to the first trud opehe door with his kerchief and looked in. He opehe glovebox and closed it agaiudied the dead man at the wheel. He left the door open and walked around to the driver side. The door was full of bulletholbbr>..</abbr>es.
The windshield. Small caliber. Six millimeter. Maybe number four buckshot. The pattern of them. He opehe door and pushed the windowbutton but the ignition was not on. He shut the door and stood there, studying the low hills.
He squatted and unslung the rifle from off his shoulder and laid it in the grass and took the H&K and pushed back the follower with the heel of his hand. There was a live round in the chamber but the magazine held only two more rounds. He s the muzzle of the piece. He ejected the clip and slung the rifle over one shoulder and the maepistol over the other and walked back to the Brond held the clip up for the man to see. Otra, he said. Otra.
The man nodded. En mi bolsa.
You speak english?
He didnt answer. He was trying to gesture with his . Moss could see two clips stig out of the vas pocket of the jacket he was wearing. He reached into the cab and got them and stepped back. Smell of blood and fecal matter. He put one of the full clips into the maepistol and the other two in his pocket. Agua, cuate, the man said.
Moss sed the surrounding try. I told you, he said. I aint got no water.
La puerta, the man said.
Moss looked at him.
La puerta. Hay lobos.
There aint no lobos.
Si, si. Lobos. Leones.
Moss shut the door with his elbow.
He went back to the first trud stood looking at the open door on the passenger side.
There were no bulletholes in the door but there was blood on the seat. The key was still in the ignition and he reached in and tur and then pushed the windowbutton. The glass ratcheted slowly up out of the el. There were two bulletholes in it and a fine spray of dried blood on the inside of the glass. He stood there thinking about that. He looked at the ground. Stains of blood in the clay. Blood in the grass. He looked out dowrack south across the caldera back the way the truck had e. There had to be a last man standing. And it wasnt the cuate in the Bronco begging for water.
He walked out on the floodplain and cut a wi<cite>?</cite>de circle to see where the track of the tires ihin grass would show in the su fn a hundred feet to the south. He picked up the mans trail and followed it until he came to blood in the grass. Then more blood.
You aint goin far, he said. You may think you are. But you aint.
He quit the track altogether and walked out to the highest ground visible holding the H&K under his arm with the safety off. He glassed the try to the south. Nothing.
He stood fingering the boars tusk at the front of his shirt. About now, he said, youre shaded up somewheres wat your backtrack. And the e seein you fore you see me are about as close to nothin as you get without fallin in.
He squatted and steadied his elbows on his knees and with the binoculars swept the rocks at the head of the valley. He sat and crossed his legs a over the terrain more slowly and then lowered the glasses and just sat. Do not, he said, get your dumb ass shot out here. Do not do that.
He turned and looked at the sun. It was about eleven oclock. We dont even know that all of this went down last night. It could of been two nights ago. It might even could of been three.
Or it could of been last night.
A light wind had e up. He pushed back his hat and wiped his forehead with his bandanna and put the bandanna ba the hip pocket of his jeans. He looked across the caldera toward the le of ro the eastern perimeter.
Nothin wounded goes uphill, he said. It just dont happen.
It was a good hard climb to the top of the ridge and it was close to noon by the time he got there. Far off to the north he could see the shape of a tractor-trailer moving across the shimmering landscape. Ten miles. Maybe fifteen. Highway 90. He sat and swept the new try with the glasses. Theopped.
At the foot of a rockslide on the edge of the bajada was a small piece of something blue.
He watched it for a long time through the binoculars. Nothing moved. He studied the try about. Theched it some more. It was the better part of an hour before he rose and started down.
The dead man was lying against a rock with a nickelplated gover .45 automatic lying cocked in the grass between his legs. Hed been sitting up and had slid over sideways. His eyes were open. He looked like he was studying something small in the grass. There was blood on the ground and blood on the rock behind him. The blood was still a dark red but then it was still shaded from the sun. Moss picked up the pistol and pressed the grip safety with his thumb and lowered the hammer. He squatted and tried to wipe the blood off the grips on the leg of the mans trousers but the blood was too well gealed. He stood and stuck the gun in his belt at the small of his bad pushed back his hat and blotted the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve. He turned and stood studying the tryside. There was a heavy leather dot case standing upright alongside the dead mans knee and Moss absolutely knew what was in the case and he was scared in a way that he didnt even uand.
When he finally picked it up he just walked out a little ways and sat down in the grass and slid the rifle off his shoulder and laid it aside. He sat with his legs spaced and the H&K in his lap and the case standiween his khen he reached and unbuckled the two straps and unshe brass latd lifted the flap and folded it back.
It was level full of hundred dollar bankhey were in packets fastened with banktape stamped each with the denomination $10,000. He didnt know what it added up to but he had a pretty good idea. He sat there looking at it and then he closed the flap and sat with his head down. His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel.
He raised his head and looked out across the bajada. A light wind from the north. Cool.
Sunny. One oclo the afternoon. He looked at the man lying dead in the grass. His good crocodile boots that were filled with blood and turning black. The end of his life.
Here in this place. The distant mountains to the south. The wind in the grass. The quiet.
He latched the case and fastehe straps and buckled them and rose and shouldered the rifle and then picked up the case and the maepistol and took his bearings by his shadow a out.
He thought he knew how to get to his trud he also thought about wandering through the desert in the dark. There were Mojave rattlesnakes in that try and if he got bit out here at night he would in all likelihood be joining the other members of the party and the dot case and its tents would then pass on to some other owner.
Weighed against these siderations was the problem of crossing open ground in broad daylight on foot with a fully automatic on slung across one shoulder and carrying a satchel taining several million dollars. Beyond all this was the dead certainty that someone was going to e looking for the money. Maybe several someones.
He thought about going bad getting the shotgun with the drum magazine. He was a strong believer in the shotgun. He even thought about leaving the maepistol behind.
It eiary offeo own one.
He didnt leave anything behind and he didnt go back to the trucks. He set out across try, cutting through the gaps in the volic ridges and crossing the flat or rolling try between. Until late in the day he reached the ranch road hed e down that m in the dark so long ago. Then in about a mile he came to the truck.
He opehe door and stood the rifle in the floor. He went around and opehe driver door and pushed the lever and slid the seat forward ahe case and the mae-pistol behind it. He laid the .45 and the binoculars in the seat and climbed in and pushed the seat back as far as it would go and put the key in the ignition. Theook off his hat and leaned bad just rested his head against the cold glass behind him and closed his eyes.
Whe to the highway he slowed and rattled over the bars of the cattleguard and then pulled out onto the blacktop and turned on the headlights. He drove west toward Sanderson and he kept to the speed limit every mile of the way. He stopped at the gas station on the east end of town farettes and a long drink of water and then drove on to the Desert Aire and pulled up in front of the trailer and shut off the motor. The lights were on inside. You live to be a hundred, he said, and there wont be another day like this one. As soon as he said it he was sorry.
He got his flashlight from the glovebox and climbed out and took the maepistol and the case from behind the seat and crawled up uhe trailer. He lay there in the dirt looking up at the underside of it. Cheap plastic pipe and plywood. Bits of insulation. He wedged the H&K up into a er and pulled the insulation dow and lay there thinking. Then he crawled back out with the case and dusted himself off and climbed the steps a in.
She rawled across the sofa watg TV and drinking a Coke. She didnt even look up. Three oclock, she said.
I e back later.
She looked at him over the back of the sofa and looked at the television again. What have you got in that satchel?
Its full of money.
Yeah. Thatll be the day.
He went into the kit and got a beer out of the refrigerator.
I have the keys? she said.
Where you goin.
Get some cigarettes.
Cigarettes.
Yes, Llewelyn. Cigarettes. I beein here all day.
What about ide? How are we fixed for that?
Just let me have the keys. Ill set out in the damn yard and smoke.
He took a sip of the beer a on bato the bedroom and dropped to one knee and shoved the case uhe bed. Then he came back. I got you some cigarettes, he said. Let me get em.
He left the beer on the ter a out and got the two packs of cigarettes and the binoculars and the pistol and slung the .270 over his shoulder and shut the truck door and came ba. He handed her the cigarettes a on back to the bedroom.
Whered you get that pistol? she called.
At the gettin place.
Did you buy that thing?
No. I found it.
She sat up on the sofa. Llewelyn?
He came ba. What? he said. Quit hollerin.
What did you give for that thing?
You doo khing.
How much.
I told you. I found it.
No you never done no such a thing.
He sat on the sofa and put his legs up on the coffeetable and sipped the beer. It dont belong to me, he said. I didnt buy no pistol.
You better not of.
She opened one of the packs of cigarettes and took o and lit it with a lighter.
Where have you been all day?
Went to get you some cigarettes.
I dont even want to know. I dont even want to know what all you been up to.
He sipped the beer and hatll work, he said.
I think its better just to not even know even.
You keep runnin that mouth and Im goin to take you back there and screw you.
Big talk.
Just keep it up.
Thats what she said.
Just let me finish this beer. Well see what she said and what she didnt say.
When he woke it was 1:06 by the digital clo the bedside table. He lay there looking at the ceiling, the raw glare of the vaporlamp outside bathing the bedroom in a cold and bluish light. Like a winter moon. Or some other kind of moon. Something stellar and alien in its light that hed e to feel fortable with. Anything but sleep in the dark.
He swung his feet from uhe covers and sat up. He looked at her naked back. Her hair on the pillow. He reached and pulled the bla up over her shoulder and got up a into the kit.
He took the jar of water from the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap and stood there drinking in the light of the open refrigerator door. Then he just stood there holding the jar with the water beading cold on the glass, looking out the window and down the highway toward the lights. He stood there for a long time.
When he went back to the bedroom he got his shorts off the floor and put them on and went into the bathroom and shut the door. Then he went through into the sed bedroom and pulled the case from uhe bed and ope.
He sat in the floor with the case between his legs and delved down into the bills and dredged them up. The packets were twenty deep. He shoved them back down into the case and jostled the case on the floor to level the moimes twelve. He could do the math in his head. Two point four million. All used bills. He sat looking at it. You have to take this seriously, he said. You t treat it like luck.
He closed the bag and redid the fasteners and shoved it uhe bed and rose and stood looking out the window at the stars over the rocky escarpment to the north of the town.
Dead quiet. Not even a dog. But it wasnt the mohat he woke up about. Are you dead out there? he said. Hell no, you aint dead.
She woke while he was getting dressed and turned in the bed to watch him.
Llewelyn?
Yeah.
What are you doin?
Gettin dressed.
Where are you goin?
Out.
Where are you goin, baby?
Somethin I fot to do. Ill be back.
What are you goin to do?
He opehe drawer and took the .45 out aed the clip and checked it and put it bad put the pistol in his belt. He turned and looked at her.
Im fixin to go do somethin dumbern hell but Im goin anyways. If I dont e back tell Mother I love her.
Your mothers dead Llewelyn.
Well Ill tell her myself then.
She sat up in the bed. Youre s the hell out of me, Llewelyn. Are you in some kind of trouble?
No. Go to sleep.
Go to sleep?
Ill be ba a bit.
Damn you, Llewelyn.
He stepped bato the doorway and looked at her. What if I was to not e back? Is them your last words?
She followed him down the hallway to the kit pulling on her robe. He took ay gallon jug from uhe sink and stood filling it at the tap.
Do you know what time it is? she said.
Yeah. I know what time it is.
Baby I dont want you to go. Where are you goin? I dont want you to go.
Well darlin were eye to eye on that cause I dont want to go her. Ill be back. Dont wait up on me.
He pulled in at the filling station uhe lights and shut off the motor and got the survey map from the glovebox and unfolded it across the seat and sat there studying it.
He finally marked where he thought the trucks should be and theraced a route cross try back to Harkles cattle-gate. He had a good set of all-terrain tires orud two spares in the bed but this was some hard try. He sat looking at the line hed drawn. Then he bent and studied the terrain and drew another ohen he just sat there looking at the map. Whearted the engine and pulled out onto the highway it was two-fifteen in the m, the road deserted, the truck radio in this outland try dead even of stati one end of the band to the other.
He parked at the gate and got out and ope and drove through and got out and closed it again and stood listening to the silehe ba the trud drove south on the ranch road.
He kept the tru two wheel drive and drove in sed gear. The light of the unrisen moon before him spread out along the dark placard hills like scrimlights in a theatre.
Turning below where hed parked that m onto what may have been an old wagonroad that bore eastward across Harkles land. When the moon did rise it sat swollen and pale and ill formed among the hills to light up all the land about aurned off the headlights of the truck.
A half hour on he parked and walked out along the crest of a rise and stood looking over the try to the east and to the south. The moon up. A blue world. Visible shadows of clouds crossing the floodplain. Hurrying on the slopes. He sat in the scabrock with his boots crossed before him. No coyotes. Nothing. For a Mexi dopedealer. Yeah. Well.
Everbody is somethin.
Whe back to the truck he left the trad steered by the moon. He crossed under a volic headland at the upper end of the valley and turned south again. He had a good memory for try. He was crossing terrain hed scouted from the ridge earlier that day aopped again and got out to listen. When he came back to the truck he pried the plastic cover from the domelight and took the bulb out and put it in the ashtray.
He sat with the flashlight and studied the map again. Whe he stopped he just shut off the engine and sat with the window dow there for a long time.
He parked the truck a half mile above the upper end of the caldera and got the plastic jug of water out of the floor and put the flashlight in his hip pocket. Theook the .45 off the seat and shut the door quietly with his thumb ochbutton and turned a off toward the trucks.
They were as hed left them, hunkered down on their shot-out tires. He approached with the .45 cocked in his hand. Dead quiet. Could be because of the moon. His own shadow was more pany than he would have liked. Ugly feeling out here. A trespasser.
Among the dead. Do weird on me, he said. You aint one of em. Not yet.
The door of the Bronco en. When he saw that he dropped to one knee. He set the waterjug on the ground. You dumb-ass, he said. Here you are. Too dumb to live.
He turned slowly, skylighting the try. The only thing he could hear was his heart.
He made his way to the trud crouched by the open door. The man had fallen sideways over the sole. Still trussed in the shoulderbelt. Fresh blood everywhere.
Moss took the flashlight from h<dfn></dfn>is pocket and shrouded the lens in his fist and tur on. Hed been shot through the head. No lobos. No leones. He shohe hooded light into the cargo space behind the seats. Everything gone. He switched off the light and stood. He walked out slowly to where the other bodies lay. The shotgun was gohe moon was already a quarter ways up. All but day bright. He felt like something in a jar.
He was half way back up the caldera to his truck when something made him stop. He crouched, holding the cocked pistol across his knee. He could see the tru the moonlight at the top of the rise. He looked off to one side of it to see it the better. There was someoanding beside it. Then they were gohere is no description of a fool, he said, that you fail to satisfy. Now yoin to die.
He shoved the .45 into the back of his belt a off at a trot for the lava ridge. In the distance he heard a truck start. Lights came on at the top of the rise. He began to run.
By the time he got to the rocks the truck was halfway down the caldera, the lights bobbing over the bad ground. He looked for something to hide behind. No time. He lay face down with his head between his forearms in the grass and waited. Either theyd seen him or they hadnt. He waited. The truck went by. When it was gone he rose and began to clamber up the slope.
Half he stopped and stood sug air and trying to listen. The lights were somewhere below him. He couldhem. He climbed on. After a while he could see the dark shapes of the vehicles down there. Theruck came back up the caldera with the lights off.
He lay flattened against the rocks. A spotlight went skittering over the lava and back again. The truck slowed. He could hear the engine idling. The slow lope of the cam. Big blogihe spotlight swept over the rocks again. Its all right, he said. You o be put out of your misery. Be the best thing for everbody.
The engine revved slightly and idled down again. Deep guttural too the exhaust.
Cam and headers and God knows what else. After a while it moved on in the dark.
Whe to the crest of the ridge he crouched and took the .45 out of his belt and uncocked it and put it back again and looked out to the north and to the east. No sign of the truck.
How would you like to be out there in your old pickup tryin to outrun that thing? he said.
Then he realized that he would never see his truck again. Well, he said. Theres lots of things you aint goin to see again.
The spotlight came on again at the head of the caldera and moved across the ridge.
Moss lay on his stomach watg. It came back again.
If you khere was somebody out here afoot that had two million dollars of your money, at oint would you quit lookin for em?
Thats right. There aint no such a point.
He lay listening. He couldhe truck. After a while he rose and made his way down the far side of the ridge. Studying the try. The floodplain out there broad and quiet in the moonlight. No way to cross it and nowhere else to go. Well Bubba, what are your plans now?
Its four oclo the mornin. Do you know where your darlin boy is at?
Ill tell you what. Why dont you just get in your trud go on out there and take the son of a bitch a drink of water?
The moon was high and small. He kept his eye on the plain below as he climbed along the slope. How motivated are you? he said.
Pretty damn motivated.
You better be.
He could hear the truck. It came around the foreland head of the ridge with the lights off and started down the edge of the floodplain in the moonlight. He flattened himself in the rocks. In addition to the other bad news his thoughts ran to scorpions and rattlesnakes.
The spotlight kept rowing bad forth across the face of the ridge. Methodically.
Bright shuttle, dark loom. He didnt move.
The truck crossed to the other side and came back. Tooling along in sed gear, stopping, the motor loping. He pushed himself forward to where he could see it better.
Blood kept running into his eye from a cut in his forehead. He didnt even know where hed gotten it. He wiped his eye with the heel of his hand and wiped his hand on his jeans.<s>藏书网</s> He took out his kerchief and pressed it to his head.
You could head south to the river.
Yeah. You could.
Less open ground.
Less aint none.
He turned, still holding the handkerchief to his forehead. No cloud cover in sight.
You o be somewhere e daylight.
Home in bed would be good.
He studied the blue floodplain out there in the silence. A vast and breathless amphitheatre. Waiting. Hed had this feeling before. In another try. He hought hed have it again.
He waited a long time. The truck didnt e back. He made his way south along the ridge. He stood and listened. Not a coyote, nothing.
By the time hed desded onto the river plain the sky to the east carried the first faint wash of light. It was the darkest this night was going to get. The plain ran to the breaks of the river and he listened one last time and the out at a trot.
It was a long trek and he was still some two hundred yards from the river when he heard the truck. A raw gray light was breaking over the hills. When he looked back he could see the dust against the new skyliill the better part of a mile away. In the dawn quiet the sound of it no more sihan a boat on a lake. Then he heard it downshift.
He pulled the .45 from his belt so that he wouldnt lose it a out at a dead run.
When he looked back again it had closed a good part of the distance. He was still a hundred yards from the river and he didnt know what hed find whe there. A sheer rock ge. The first long panes of light were standing through a gap in the mountains to the east and fanning over the try before him. The truck was ablaze with lights, roof rad bumper spots. The engi rag away into a howl where the wheels left the ground.
They wont shoot you, he said. They t afford to do that.
The long crack of a rifle went ing out over the pan. What hed heard whisper overhead he realized was the round passing and vanishing toward the river. He looked bad there was a man standing up out of the sunroof, one hand on top of the cab, the other cradling a rifle upright.
Where he reached the river it made a broad sweep out of a yon and carried down past great stands of carrizo e. Dow washed up against a rock bluff and then bore away to the south. Darkness deep in the yon. The water dark. He dropped into the cut and fell and rolled and rose and began to make his way down a long sandy ridge toward the river. He hadnt gowenty feet before he realized that he had no time to do that. He glanced bace at the rim and then squatted and shoved himself off down the side of the slope, holding the .45 before him in both hands.
He rolled and slid a good ways, his eyes almost shut against the dust and sand he lowing up, the pistol clutched to his chest. Then all that stopped and he was simply falling. He opened his eyes. The fresh world of m above him, turning slowly.
He slammed into a gravel bank and gave out a groan. Then he was rolling through some sort h grass. He came to a stop and lay there on his stomach gasping for air.
The pistol was gone. He crawled back through the flattened grass until he found it and he picked it up and turo s the rim of the river breaks above him, whag the pistolbarrel across his forearm to shake out the dirt. His mouth was full of sand. His eyes. He saw two men appear against the sky and he cocked the pistol and fired at them and they went away again.
He knew he didnt have time to crawl to the river and he just rose and made a run for it, splashing across the braided gravel flats and down a long sandbar until he came to the main el. He got out his keys and his billfold and buttohem into his shirtpocket. The cold wind blowing off the water smelled of iron. He could taste it. He threw away the flashlight and lowered the hammer on the .45 and shoved it into the crotch of his jeans. Then he shucked off his boots and pulled them inside his belt upside down at either side and tightehe belt as far as he could pull it and turned and dove into the river.
The cold took his breath. He turned and looked back toward the rim, blowing and backpedaling through the slate-blue water. Nothing there. He turned and swam.
The current carried him down into the bend of the river and hard up against the rocks.
He pushed himself off. The bluff above him rose dark and deeply cupped and the water in the shadows was blad choppy. When he finally spilled out into the tailwater and looked back he could see the truck parked at the top of the bluff but he couldnt see anyone. He checked to see that he still had his boots and the gun and then turned and began to stroke for the far shore.
By the time he dragged himself shivering out of the river he was the better part of a mile from where hed gone in. His socks were gone a out at a jog barefoot toward the standing e. Round cups in the shelving rock where the as had ground their meal. When he looked back agairuck was gowo merotting along the high bluff silhouetted against the sky. He was almost to the e when it rattled all about him and there was a heavy whump and then the echo of it from across the river.
He was hit in the upper arm by a buckshot and it stung like a hor. He put his hand over it and dove into the e, the lead ball half buried in the back of his arm. His left leg kept wanting to give out beh him and he was having trouble breathing.
Deep in the brake he dropped to his knees and khere sug air. He undid his belt ahe boots drop into the sand and reached down and got the .45 and laid it to one side ahe back of his arm. The buckshot was gone. He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off and pulled his arm around to see the wound. It was just the shape of the buckshot, bleeding slightly, pieces of shirtfiber packed into it. The whole back of his arm was already being an ugly purple bruise. He wrung the water out of his shirt and put it on again and butto and pulled on the boots and stood and buckled his belt. He picked up the pistol and took the clip out of it aed the round from the chamber and then shook the gun and blew through the barrel and reassembled it. He didnt know if it would fire or not but he thought it probably would.
When he came out of the e on the far side he stopped to look back but the e was thirty feet high and he couldnt see anything. Downriver was a broad bench of land and a stand of cottonwoods. By the time he got there his feet were already beginning to blister from walking barefoot i boots. His arm was swollen and throbbing but the bleeding seemed to have stopped and he walked out into the sun on a gravel bar and sat there and pulled off the boots and looked at the raw red sores on his heels. As soon as he sat down his leg began tain.
He unshe small leather holster at his belt and got out his knife and then stood up and took off his shirt agai off the sleeves at the elbow and sat and ed his feet in them and pulled on the boots. He put the knife ba the holster and faste and picked up the pistol and stood and listened. A redwing blackbird.
Nothing.
As he turo go he heard the truck very faintly on the far side of the river. He looked for it but he could. He thought that by now probably the two men had crossed the river and were somewhere behind him.
He went on through the trees. The trunks silted up from the high water and the roots tangled among the rocks. He took off his boots again to try to cross the gravel without leaving any tracks and he climbed a long and rocky rin toward the south rim of the river yon carrying the boots and the ings and the pistol and keeping an eye on the terrain below. The sun was in the yon and the rocks hed crossed would dry in minutes. At a benear the rim he stopped and lay on his belly with his boots in the grass beside him. It was only aen mio the top but he didnt think he had ten minutes. On the far side of the river a hawk set forth from the cliffs whistling thinly.
He waited. After a while a man came out of the e upriver and paused and stood. He was carrying a maegun. A sean emerged below him. They gla one another and then came on.
They passed below him ached them out of sight down the river. He wasnt really even thinking about them. He was thinking about his truck. When the courthouse ope nine oonday m someone was going to be calling in the vehicle number aing his name and address. This was some twenty-four hours away. By then they would know who he was and they would op looking for him. Never, as in never.
He had a brother in California he was supposed to tell what? Arthur theres some old boys on their way dowo see you who propose to lower your balls between the jaws of a six-inch maists vise and ence kin on the handle a quarter turn at a time whether you know where Im at or not. You might want to think about movin to a.
He sat up and ed his feet and pulled the boots on and stood and started up the last stretch of yon to the rim. Where he crested out the try lay dead flat, stretg away to the south and to the east. Red dirt and creosote. Mountains in the far and middle distanothing out there. Heatshimmer. He stuck the pistol in his belt and looked down at the river one more time and the out east. Langtry Texas was thirty miles as the crow flies. Maybe less. Ten hours. Twelve. His feet were already hurting. His leg hurt. His chest. His arm. The river dropped away behind him. He hadnt even taken a drink.
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