These Violent Times Read online

  Then snapped them open.

  Something was moving, crackling leaves under foot. The rig responded, almost before his body did, as he sat up, looking into the trees; the blue-black of the thick woods, broken only by the vague light of clouded stars.

  He moved again, the rig swinging around, his shoulders tightening, the barrels aiming toward the sound of something approaching in the dark, half-hidden by the branches. Men, keeping low, with weapons drawn, stepping quickly, then stopping and taking position. They were silhouettes against the woods. Darker patches of dark. Moving, with their guns outlined by bits of light from the sky.

  Bishop rolled away from the saddle and came up shooting. Taking down one, then turning, still hunched to his knees, at the one charging him, firing a pistol. Gun-flames showed up the place like flashes of lightning, slashes of hot light, as Bishop took a slug in his left arm, still bringing the barrel up, almost to the killer’s chin. The trigger chains pulled, and the killer’s face disintegrated, the body spinning off its feet and dropping as dead weight.

  Bishop sprung to his feet, pain tearing his one arm but still loading the rig, snapping the weapon shut, and turning to kill two more. The blasts took them both off their feet and back onto the soft grass, where they landed side by side, their blood spreading, even as they still moved, and screamed.

  Bishop threw himself awake.

  Sat up next to a low fire he’d built, hearing the movement through the trees. Leaves crunching. Something breaking a branch in half. Turning, to see the flash of the white tail. A slash of color, darting among the cottonwoods, and ducking beneath the branches, and then stopping.

  He relaxed. The smile came next, easy and natural.

  The doe fixed on Bishop, and he could see her white and brown against the dark outline of the trees. She was tall at the shoulder, with a long, white neck and wide head, all showing her to be full grown. She stared at Bishop with perfectly polished eyes, the orange from the fire reflected there, and her ears twitching back with curiosity.

  A beautiful kill.

  Bishop was nowadays hungry, but he wasn’t going to shoot. His stomach wasn’t going to stop gnawing, but he knew all she wanted was to go home, just as he did. Lost creature to lost creature, he would let that happen. Resting against his right arm, the trigger lines slacked and the rig shifted, aiming down and away.

  The doe bolted with effortless beauty, and Bishop shut his eyes, now seeing the deer behind his lids instead, as if she were standing guard over his peace, batting back the nightmares. A damn silly thought. But it helped, and he let it stay, as he tried again for some sleep.

  * * *

  “Too close, the wheels will sink into the ground.”

  Exasperated, Smith got down from the driver’s seat, insisting to Weiber-Krauss, “I can lift it out.”

  Weiber-Krauss indicated for him to go ahead. The driver unlocked the back of the hearse, the door swinging open, then moving the iron plates aside, as if breaking into a tomb. He pulled the body of the youngest man out by his belt, tossing him over his shoulders like a mail sack, one of his dead arms falling loose.

  “My dear Smith—watch your methods,” Weiber-Krauss said. “I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

  “You always act like I’m not strong enough.”

  Weiber-Krauss’s tone was of a parent reminding a child about undone chores: “No, it isn’t strength, it’s strategy. Bishop’s victim must be placed so that it’s discovered, and serves its purpose, by whatever is left inside seeping out.”

  “Ja, I’ve done it before,” he said. Then added, “And you mean, what you put inside seeping out too.”

  “It’s all of a piece,” the German replied.

  Weiber-Krauss followed Smith to the edge of the river, where he put the dead man into the wet grass, his body tilting over, as he cut the twine lacing his arms together and pulled away the rags of the bloody sheet. Weiber-Krauss pulled at the raincoat, and Smith yanked it free; the young man’s body lurched over, the shotgun wounds now fully exposed. Weiber-Krauss held the boy’s head back, getting close to his chest, and the wound, then nodded. Smith shouldered the corpse up and over, into the water. That would be enough to refresh the blood, cause it to run.

  They stood, sun now breaking, watching the body turn with the currents; the river washed over the wounds, blood from the chest showing renewed life and stringing out as dangling red ribbons, then dissolving. Weiber-Krauss nodded his approval as the rigidly dead head and shoulders sank, then put a hand on one of Smith’s shoulders for congratulations.

  “Very well done. This river feeds wells for a hundred miles along the banks, the water then traveling, spreading out.” Weiber-Krauss reached for his words, “Like the disease it now carries. And the shotgun wound? This is so evidently Bishop’s killing. His fault, so there’s the perfection in the planning. You should be proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

  “You always make the speech, the folderol.”

  Weiber-Krauss shook his head. “You hear so much but understand so little,” he said with an edge of contempt.

  Smith ignored the rebuke, distracted as Avery moaned from the hearse. He was crammed between two corpses, trying to move. His neck was freshly bandaged, and hands tied with a scrap of leather from his own stable. At the wrist, so as not to reopen the self-inflicted wound.

  “The fat one,” Smith said. “I understand that we have to act.”

  “There’s much to do to prepare him, and the others are strictly for chum—kumpel—but we’ll find use for them,” Weiber-Krauss said. “Now then. Let’s get you fed, get you paid.”

  Smith coiled his bullwhip. “Do it the other way around.”

  Weiber-Krauss closed his eyes in assent. Smith wasn’t learned but unlike the avaricious Avery, he wasn’t entirely stupid.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In Dark Memory

  Summer midnight, and Bishop could tell when he’d crossed from that last piece of open grazing land to his own place. The heavy grass was painted with dabs of yellow wildflowers, creating a welcome-way that could be seen in the moon’s scatters. Stalks of flowers marked the natural path to the blooming apple tree and the tombstone beneath it.

  Bishop rode deliberately, eyes down, but following the path from the falling-down rubble of his old well, to where the smokehouse used to be, and then, the tree he’d planted on his first anniversary. The tall bay was already eating an apple from the ground before Bishop had climbed down and stood before his wife’s carved name. He let his arm drop, touched the familiar lines and curves. A name, more permanent than flesh. Memories, ephemeral, also more enduring than the person who made them. How did the world make any sense? A man could not know everything, but Bishop wished he had read more philosophy, literature, understood psychology like some men he had met.

  The stone was white marble that he’d promised to turn into an outdoor table, but in six months had only beveled the edges, which Amaryllis claimed to love but wondered if it would be ready for her birthday. The cutter had done a good job finishing, carving her name and their son’s like her own handwriting, even the date of their deaths.

  Bishop took in what he needed to see: the stone, the trees, and the charred ruins of their house. An empty door frame to a destroyed bedroom. Chimney and fireplace, with an iron kettle still hanging. Deader than his brother to him.

  He started from his reverie as a finger of hot orange whipped past him, followed by another. There was no sound, just flecks of fire.

  Additional sparks blew over his shoulder from behind; Bishop turned, locking the rig on a rider approaching on a scrub pony. He was a dark figure, sporting a flat-brimmed lawman’s hat and holding a torch before him, spitting cinders. Bishop rolled his shoulders, setting the trigger lines.

  The rider got closer, smiled without showing any teeth, and said, “First time that special’s ever been pointed at me,” then took off his hat.

  Bishop did not change his stance.

  “It ain’t a good feeli
ng, I’ll tell ya,” the rider said. “If you don’t recall me, maybe you’ll recall my hip. You built half of it.”

  Bishop lowered the rig. “Miles Duffin.”

  “Doctor Bishop,” Duffin said, swinging from his pony, holding the torch, wind beating its flame.

  He shook Bishop’s left hand. “It’s been a fair few years since Paradise, and I don’t recall properly thanking you for making sure I could walk out of there.”

  “You were the law,” Bishop said. “Good law. You earned it.”

  “Not that anybody knew it.”

  “You did me a hell of a favor,” Bishop said in earnest. “That’s thanks enough for any doctoring.”

  Duffin was closer now, and his pumpkin face, with dimples and forever-mussed hair, reminded Bishop that he’d always looked like a ten-year-old who’d strapped on Daddy’s gun belt to play sheriff.

  Duffin shook the round head as though he couldn’t believe life himself. “A shavetail and near-cripple, but I overcame, and am now, if you can believe it, a marshal. Working out of Fort Collins.”

  “Not a social call,” Bishop said knowingly. He eyed the restraint cuffs dangling from the marshal’s wide belt.

  “Your name came up in a dispatch, and I asked to be the one to find you. And here we are.”

  “Simple as that. Hunting me down?”

  Duffin smiled like an embarrassed schoolboy. “No, no. I was hoping for a true reunion, maybe a meal someplace.”

  “Oh, a meal,” Bishop snorted. “Not chow, not grub—”

  “You’re a famous fellow, Doc,” Duffin said with a crooked grin. “You earned a good steak. At the fort, they can’t believe you operated on my hip.” He added as an afterthought, “I don’t have a warrant or anything.”

  “I suppose you got a reason though?”

  Duffin nodded.

  The double-barrel was down by Bishop’s side again, the trigger lines slack, but he didn’t like where the conversation was going. This could be about what happened in Avery’s place, but the sheriff-mayor had already cleared him. Even the commanding officer at the fort would have reached the same conclusion. Bishop could feel the muscles in his back, and down his neck, tighten, the rig shifting, as if the mechanics were reacting to his instincts before he could.

  “I apologize for doing this on your wife’s birthday, but that’s how come I knew you’d be here,” Duffin said, shifting from foot to foot, favoring the leg Bishop had not operated on. “I read you always made this trip on this day, and I surely understand.”

  Bishop, who hadn’t taken a step from the tombstone, said, “Cold as hell out here, Miles. I’m cold and you’re dancing.”

  “Yeah, let’s finish up here.” Duffin held out the torch. “You mind?”

  Bishop took the torch in his left, as Duffin pulled a rolled document from his saddlebag, unfurled, and presented it to catch the firelight. Dog-eared with torn edges, it was covered with purple-inked drawings, diagrams, and specifications.

  “Doctor, this drawing yours? I’d hate to be in error.”

  Bishop looked it over. “You’re not.”

  Duffin shook his head. “Well, I can’t make it out, not a bit. What’s all this for?”

  “It describes a kind of mask and outfit to wear in areas that’ve been mass-infected,” Bishop told him. “Yellow fever, any kind of pox.”

  “Well, I guess a doctor’s no good if he’s sicker than the patient,” Duffin said, still boyish. “It looks like some kind of diver’s suit. Ever build one?” “Presented the plans to my commanding officer; he rejected them without looking,” Bishop said. “When I settled in practice, I played with the idea, but that’s all. Where did you get these, Miles? It’s been years.”

  Duffin rolled the plans. “If I saw that riding toward me, I don’t know if I’d believe my eyes. If I was a kid, I’d be scared to death. Probably soil my britches.”

  “I’m still confused,” Bishop said after a moment. “You accusing me of something?”

  Duffin took a stance before Bishop, now favoring his rebuilt hip, his attitude changed in the torchlight, speaking and holding himself like a veteran lawman, not to be challenged. He regarded Bishop for a moment, with eyes that seemed to have suddenly aged, suddenly seen more.

  “I’m doing my job,” he said, “and seeking your professional opinion, if you choose to give it.”

  Bishop nodded.

  The rig stayed angled downward, but Duffin glanced over his shoulder at the double-barrel before flipping open a saddlebag, with, “I have this here.”

  Duffin reached in and held up what looked like the small globe to an oil lamp, with a fluted neck curving into a bulb-shaped base. The base was shattered, and a tag declaring the globe OFFICIAL PROPERTY OF MARSHAL DUFFIN hung from its side.

  “Looks like a grenade, but made out of a special glass,” Duffin said. “Our doc at the fort, he’s not as good as you, melted some of it down, said it had wax mixed in.”

  Bishop planted the torch in the ground beside the gravestone, took the tube, examined it in the firelight. “There are traces along the bottom.”

  “That’s maybe so it wouldn’t break until it was thrown,” Duffin said. “I mean, if you had a bunch in a sack or something you wouldn’t want them knocking around and cracking.”

  Bishop held out the broken globe. “Looks like a Harden Fire Extinguish grenade.”

  “Almost, but something different inside. Smash it against a tree, shoot at it, open it up. That one was cleaned out real well, but there was blood in the bulb, and our doc said it was crawling with smallpox.”

  Bishop had a feeling it was something like that. “And?”

  “It’s being used to attack the tribes.”

  Bishop crushed the tube. “Go to hell. You really believe I’d have something to do with this?”

  “Oh I’m sure not,” Duffin said. “But you’re not the only one who invents whatchamacallits. There’s a lot more of these things, Doc, and you know the man that made ’em.”

  * * *

  White Fox didn’t hold back her painted mare as it ran full-out along the cut trail, to the mountain’s base. The pine trees were a constant, steady wall on either side, and she angled her body below branches, ducking and holding tight, as the painted galloped . . . tight to the trees, hooves barely touching ground. Muscled speed.

  Even as the sun had dropped, she kept the painted moving. Staying low to its back and neck, her legs braced around its middle, racing through the dark.

  The painted leaped a small ravine, landed hard but kept running, without breaking stride. White Fox, battle shield across her shoulders, made sure that Bishop’s medical kit was still lashed behind her saddle. The kit slipped in its ropes, and she could hear the rattle of empty medicine bottles and scalpels jangling inside, blades colliding with amber and cobalt glass.

  White Fox slowed the painted as the ground dropped off toward the edge of a muddy stream. They followed the dipping hill to the water, the field kit tilting to one side and its lid hanging open. Scalpels scattered to the ground.

  The painted drank and cooled down, as White Fox pulled the battle clubs from her saddlebags and hung them on her belt, careful with the gun-metal blades, before pulling the knotted ropes tight around the medical kit, securing it.

  As the horse rested a moment, White Fox’s delicate finger traced Bishop’s name and army medical seal painted on the lid. Gold flake chipped off at her touch, small pieces falling away. The flake stayed on White Fox’s fingertips, the lettering on the insignia now all but gone, leaving only a smudge of lines and slashes where John Bishop’s name and rank had been.

  She thought back, the memory vivid—

  “So, do you think John Bishop’s ’Hávêsévemâh-ta’sóoma ’?”

  It was the week before when Miles Duffin had asked White Fox the question, impressing her with his pronunciation. He’d crouched beside her in the tepee, warmed by the low fire, as White Fox and a Cheyenne widow, who called herself Wooden Leg, tended
to the little girl, who was now lying on the only bed, wrapped in the only blanket.

  Duffin pressed, but with his always-smile. “Do you think so?”

  “What about your thinking?” White Fox said. “You must believe this, or you wouldn’t be here. I have not seen you in—”

  Duffin picked up, “Three summers?”

  “Don’t say it that way, you sound like a fool,” White Fox said, not even looking at Duffin. “I was going to say three years, by your calendar.”

  Rebuked to momentary silence, Duffin watched as the child’s fever compresses were changed. Wooden Leg peeled off the dried, stained pieces of cloth from the girl’s body, dropping them into bowls of water that were thin-cracked along the sides and repaired with painted mud. The rest of the tepee was also damaged. Support poles snapped, the bison hide covering the slit like an open throat. Battle shields and clubs were torn from the walls, and in a heap under smashed medicine jars and shredded poultice sacks. Littered scraps. The ruins of a life, though the lives refused to be ruined.

  White Fox soaked some cleaner linen strips, then laid them across the girl’s head and upper arms, to absorb the fever-heat.

  Duffin said, “Three years, that’s how long you’ve been here, working your medicine?”

  “That is how you see it?”

  “I don’t understand—?”

  “Do you know anything?” White Fox interrupted. “I haven’t been here three years because they keep moving us. Men like you. Or worse,” White Fox said. “There was a constable here.”

  “Firecrow,” Duffin said. “I know him. Angry. That’s why I figured you’d want to deal with me.”

  “We don’t ’deal’ with anyone,” White Fox said. “Policies and those who execute them change like the seasons. All that matters to me in the world right now is this child.”

  “I understand,” Duffin said, hoping she believed him. He meant it. The marshal put a hand under the girl’s jaw, feeling her temperature. “What’s her name?”

  White Fox did not answer, not immediately. Wooden Leg, face an ageless mask, and framed by black and steel-gray braids to her waist, finally spoke, using sign language. She brought her hands together, fingers forming a bird’s wings and tail, before making a swooping motion.