CHAPTER 9
A TRIUMPHANT RETURN
The midday sun was punishing Bitter Creek with a merciless bluntness when the sound began to carry from far off.
Graaaaate… graaaaate… graaaaate… It was the shrill, rhythmic grinding of the cast-iron wheels of the black coffin knocking against the gravel of the road.
Behind warped plank walls, curtains moved.
Little by little the townspeople began coming out onto the wooden boardwalks, shading their eyes against the dull glare of the desert.
On the line of the horizon, warped by the heat waves rising off the ground, the three renegades appeared.
Nero came at the front, on foot, leading his black stallion by the reins and dragging the heavy oak box.
In the animal’s saddle, holding on to the pommel with both hands, rode Sarah Cross, in a borrowed coat and barefoot.
Elena rode at the flank with a vaquera’s straight carriage, and Gideon brought up the rear, the repeating rifle resting across his saddle.
As they came near the middle of town, the people closed around them in a tense silence, mixed with awe and reverence. Nobody dared step in too close.
“Listen, all of you,” Nero’s voice carried, measured and cutting.
“Up at the Cross Ranch there are more than thirty bodies laid out in the yard. Most of them are probably men wanted by the law. Anyone who wants money, go up there and collect the heads and the bounties. Whatever has value on that ranch now belongs to this town.” The crowd murmured, their eyes shining with the sudden promise of gold.
Nero, however, raised a gloved hand, his glacial blue eyes fixing on them.
“But take shovels. I want the rest of those bodies buried.” There was one second of silence, followed by a collective shout of euphoria. What came next was a wild stampede.
Men young and old ran for the liveries, hitched wagons, mounted horses, and set off at a gallop toward the north, raising an immense curtain of yellow dust. In under ten minutes Bitter Creek was empty.
Doors banged in the wind, leaving the main avenue entirely deserted.
Only they were left. And three other figures watching the scene from the saloon porch: the Reverend, with his Bible under his arm; Do?a Clara, drawing on her corn-husk cigarette; and Sheriff Weaver, who now kept his hands well away from his holster, swallowing hard in front of the hunter.
Gideon came down from his horse, took off his grease-fouled goggles, and looked at the owner of the bar with a broad grin.
“Do?a Clara… I hope you have plenty of liquor stocked in there. Because it’s going to be a long night.”
Nero walked over to Sheriff Weaver. The man who had once driven Elena off with a kick now looked like a worm shrinking in on itself. Nero looked down at him.
“Send for funds from the territorial government, Weaver,” Nero said, his voice low and threatening.
“Because you’re going to have to pay out on a great many heads tomorrow.
And there’s one more thing. That land up there was never the Colonel’s.
You’re going to open the register book and put the Cross Ranch back in the name of whoever is left of the Cross family.
Today, in your own hand and with your own signature. ”
The sheriff, realizing that the elimination of Vance’s gang would rid him of a problem and would also fill the public coffers of Bitter Creek with bounty fees, spread a greedy and submissive smile.
“With pleasure, my friend. With the greatest pleasure.”
Elena had not said a word up to that point.
She came down out of the saddle slowly, crossed the packed dirt street, and stopped in front of the porch of the sheriff’s office, in the exact place where the mud had broken the fall of a sixteen-year-old girl six years earlier.
Weaver drew back half a step and smiled the way cowards smile.
“Miss…”
“You haven’t the faintest idea who I am,” Elena said.
The sheriff opened his mouth and shut it again. He searched his memory for that face and did not find it, because he had never once looked at it properly.
“I came up those steps with my feet raw and told you they had killed my father and taken my sister,” the vaquera went on, her voice low, almost gentle, which was very much worse. “You took another swallow of your coffee. Then you kicked me down the stairs.”
The colour drained out of Weaver’s face. Elena did not draw the Derringer; she did not need to. Nero’s gloved hand was resting a hand’s breadth from his holster, and everyone on the saloon porch understood exactly what that meant.
“His name was Santiago Ríos,” she said. “Repeat it.”
“Santiago… Ríos.”
“You’re going to send to Fort Worth for a headstone and you’re going to pay for it out of your own pocket. And every time you pass that grave, you’re going to take off your hat.” Elena turned her back before he could answer. “This isn’t justice. It’s only the beginning of what you owe.”
Do?a Clara put out her corn-husk cigarette on the wood of the railing and came down the steps toward Sarah, who was still clinging to the saddle pommel, not knowing what to do with her hands.
“Come down from there, girl,” said the owner of the saloon, holding out her arm. “There’s a clean room, hot water and hot food, and nobody in this county is going to charge you a cent for any of it. The Reverend will send for whatever is left of your things in the morning.”
By evening the dust on the north road was rising again. The population was coming back.
Nero was stretched out in a rocking chair in front of the saloon, his hat tipped down over his eyes, watching the grim and festive spectacle of the return.
Some men came on foot, carrying heavy, dripping burlap sacks on their backs — the blood tithe Weaver would have to process.
Others came leading cattle they had confiscated from the Colonel’s stables.
In the middle of the procession, a heavy wagon loaded to the top with thick logs pulled up in the centre of the town square.
Nero stayed where he was, only watching.
The townspeople began unloading the timber briskly, stacking the logs into an immense structure.
Little by little the pile of wood took on the shape of a monumental bonfire.
Soon after, the women of the town appeared carrying rough wooden tables, tin basins full of water, and bowls of heavy seasoning.
Others brought camphene lanterns and hung them on the posting posts, lighting the boardwalks.
Night came down all at once over Texas, and the pyre was lit.
The flames licked the dark sky, bursting into golden sheets of fire that lit Bitter Creek from end to end, driving off the darkness that had always haunted that place.
Four men brought in a whole beef carcass, fully cleaned and skinned, and set it over the rough brazier to roast. The smell of toasting fat and seasoned meat soon took over the air, mixing with the sound of out-of-tune guitars beginning to rise from the porches.
Nero, watching the celebration of those people finally breathing without the weight of Vance’s boots on them, let a discreet smile show at the corner of his mouth.
It was an almost imperceptible movement.
A shadow stopped beside him, cutting off the heat of the fire.
Elena was there. She had bathed; her dark hair was still damp, thrown back over her shoulders, and she wore clean clothes, though plain ones.
The smell of rough soap had replaced the odour of powder that had surrounded her since the small hours.
She reached out and touched the hunter’s shoulder lightly.
“Go take a bath, you stinking thing,” she said, her tone firm but with a gentleness Nero had not heard in her before. “I got you a room upstairs with hot water.”
Nero did not move at once. Under the brim of his hat he looked at the fire, then set his glacial blue eyes on the woman. He rose slowly, settling the long coat over the holsters of the Colts.
“No woman gives me orders, Elena,” Nero answered, his voice rough and unhurried.
He took a step toward the saloon door, stopping for a second beside her.
“I’m going because I want to.”
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