CHAPTER 3 #3
Two were left. Kurt and one last foreman.
The surviving foreman tried to turn and run for the swinging doors, but a dry crack echoed from the corner of the room.
Elena, steady on both feet, fired her little Derringer.
The short-range shot caught the fugitive in the leg, sending him limping and then sprawling on the floor by the entrance. Kurt found himself alone.
The powder smoke was so thick it stung the eyes.
He looked around, his teeth bared in terror, the empty gun shaking in his hand.
Nero’s steps were finally audible. The slow, rhythmic ring of spurs coming toward the light of the fire line on the floor.
He put the left-hand Paterson back in its holster.
The right one stayed levelled at Kurt’s head.
The sabre on his back was dripping fresh blood onto the boards.
“Where is the Cross Ranch?” Nero asked.
There was no hurry in the voice, but it carried the promise of hell. Kurt swallowed hard, looking at the bodies of his men scattered across wood fouled with whiskey and blood. He knew Colonel Vance would kill him if he talked, but the man in front of him would kill him that very second.
“Ten miles north… follow the dry riverbed,” Kurt stammered, dropping the empty revolver on the floor.
“But you won’t get there alive, stranger.
The Colonel has thirty men watching that house.
They already know about the girl.” Nero took a step forward.
The cold barrel of the Colt Paterson touched Kurt’s sweating forehead.
“Then tell him to gather up all thirty,” Nero whispered. “It’ll save me the trouble of hunting them.” POW. The last shot of midnight ended the fight.
Kurt collapsed at the hunter’s feet. Silence came back to The Broken Spur, broken only by the crackle of the small fire Elena had started, which was beginning now to lick at the legs of a table.
Nero holstered his last gun and wiped the sabre blade on Kurt’s coat before returning it to his back.
He looked toward the corner where Elena stood.
She was still holding the empty Derringer, her breathing quick, her dark eyes fixed on him.
“You shoot well for a saloon woman,” Nero said, adjusting the brim of his hat.
Elena took a step forward, setting the gun aside.
“And you kill very well for a man who says he has nothing to protect,” she answered, watching the fire climb. “Bitter Creek is finished for me after tonight. I’m going north with you. I know the Cross Ranch from the inside.”
Nero studied her for a second. His blue eyes weighed the resolve in the woman’s face. He turned his back and walked toward the door.
“It’s a long road,” he said, pushing through the swinging doors. “And there’ll be more blood before daylight.”
The Pastor’s Workshop
Before taking any road toward the north of the territory, Nero had one last and crucial stop to make inside the limits of Bitter Creek.
The town owed him something of extreme value that it had been keeping in secret for a long time.
They went along the dark, muddy back lanes of the village, deliberately avoiding the lights of the main avenue.
Elena followed the hunter’s firm steps in absolute silence, deeply puzzled that he was not heading for the livery to fetch his horse and run.
Nero broke off his march in front of an isolated, gloomy building at the far edge of town, joined to a small church whose pine boards had warped and gone crooked with weather and damp.
On the dark fa?ade an iron sign swung discreetly in the faint moonlight, bearing the words: Undertaker and Carpentry.
The smell coming through the gaps in the walls was a dense mixture of freshly cut pine, linseed oil, and the sharp chemical touch of formaldehyde.
Nero did not hesitate. He raised a heavy fist and struck three violent blows against the solid wooden door.
The brutal sound echoed through the stillness of the small hours like the final hammer strokes over a fresh grave.
It took long, tense minutes before a weak line of yellow light appeared beneath the boards of the door.
The inside iron bolt slid back with a high, grating screech.
The door opened just enough to reveal an old man with untidy white hair and a wild beard, wearing a worn cotton nightshirt and holding a camphene lamp in one visibly trembling hand.
He had a pastor’s clerical collar hanging carelessly around his neck, as though he stood ready to administer last rites to any soul at any hour of the night.
The old gravedigger blinked tired eyes against the darkness of the street, raising the lamp to light the faces before him.
The moment the weak glow reached the cloth of the long coat and, above all, found the glacial blue eyes of the man in front of him, the reverend lost his breath entirely.
The lamp flame wavered violently with the sudden shaking of his fingers.
“You…” the pastor whispered, his voice failing in his throat.
“I heard the shooting from the sheriff’s office and from the saloon.
In my heart, I knew there was only one man on this earth who could make that kind of noise on this frontier.
” Nero took one firm step forward, easing the door open with the pressure of a broad shoulder.
The reverend gave way without resistance, letting them both into the cold, shadowed workshop, where three unfinished wooden coffins lay resting on carpenter’s trestles.
Nero took off his felt hat with his left hand, revealing his hard features in full, marked by time and entirely unmoved.
He fixed his gaze straight on the old clergyman’s eyes.
“The last time I set foot in this workshop, five years ago, I left a burden in your keeping. Do you still remember it, Reverend?”
The clergyman shut his eyes for a full second, letting out a heavy sigh that seemed to carry years of unspeakable secrets piled up in his soul. He glanced sideways at Elena, who was watching everything in silence, and turned back to the blue immensity of the hunter’s stare.