Chapter 23
We came down off the ridge in the last of the light, and Bonney sat below us in its lot with the floodlights already on.
The whole place looked like a postcard somebody had drawn from memory: the marquee, the neon Billy, the fake-front buildings along the back of the arena.
A new structure sat in the yard past the gift shop where the overflow parking used to be, raw pine in the floodlight, and even from a quarter mile out I knew the shape of it.
It was a gallows. Six feet of drop, by the look, and it was a real one, not the stunt rig they used inside the arena. Hell of a man, Rex, putting that kind of effort into a weekday.
Winston was on it, hands behind his back, rope around his neck, feet on the trap.
I sucked in a slow breath through my teeth. The breath caught on something high in my chest and stayed there.
Galahad nosed the back of my neck and snapped at the air.
I pushed him away. "Yeah, I know. I'm working on it." Then I turned to Fenix and said, "Hold the wash."
Fenix nodded. He turned and rode his white mare into the cut without a word. Linc went with him. They dropped down out of the floodlight glow into the dark and out of sight. The horses would be there when we came back for them. If we didn't come back, Fenix would walk them home.
That was the deal.
Coyote rode up beside me. His eyes went to the sign over the Bonney gate, Bonney Ranch in painted letters under a longhorn skull, and from there to the water tower past the gift shop with BONNEY across the tank in white.
"I'll take the tower," he said and slid down to hand me the reins. He walked off, disappearing into the scrub.
I gave the paint's reins to Mateo.
"Hold them till I'm at the back fence," I said. "Then come up on the south corner of the gift shop. Linc will work the north. You're shooting roof first. Anybody on a roof, anybody on the gallows platform, anybody you can put down before they get a shot off at the yard."
Mateo nodded. "Got it."
I looked over my shoulder at him. "You good with this?"
His jaw clenched, and he nodded once. "I'm with you, boss."
"Even after what Rafe said?"
A short silence before he let out a breath. "He'll come around. Pae Saco is your home, Ransom. He knows that. I know it. That hasn't changed."
"We'll see about that."
I rode Galahad down the cut to the back fence behind the stock pens, where I tied him off in the deep brush where the floodlight didn't reach. I put my hand on his neck, and he leaned into it like a dog.
"I'm coming back," I said, low enough only he heard it. "Don't you dare break my heart, you hear me?"
He blew out and chewed his bit.
I climbed over the fence.
The yard was the parking lot, or it had been. Someone had hauled the tables and chairs out from inside. They sat in a half-circle facing the gallows, checkered cloths on. Pitchers of water were set out on each one.
A row of folding chairs sat empty in the front. Tonight's audience was twelve men in tactical vests with carbines and a man in a white suit standing on the dirt at the foot of the gallows with a lavalier mic clipped to his collar.
Rex was waiting for me.
I came around the back of the gift shop with my pistol drawn and stopped at the edge of the floodlight.
Two on the gift shop roof. Two flanked the gallows platform on the dirt.
Two stood at the doors of the main building behind.
One on each side of the gate. Four spread along the perimeter of the yard between the chairs.
The man with the rope sat on the platform behind Winston.
Rex on the dirt. Twelve, plus Rex, plus the man on the platform.
Winston's hands were behind his back. From this angle his hands worked, small, slow, where Rex couldn't see.
Good boy. The new break in his nose had gone purple already.
Blood had dried under his chin, and a fresh line of it ran down from the corner of his mouth into his collar where his lip had split open.
I'm gonna kill every man in this yard, I thought, and then I'm gonna kiss you so hard you forget your name.
His eyes slid across the yard and found me where I stood at the gift shop corner.
I looked away because if I held it any longer I was going to put the first round through Rex's teeth and get Winston dropped through the trap before Coyote was in position.
I stepped out of the dark.
"Lanza!"
Rex's voice came over the speakers. I hated the sound of him.
"Well, I'll be. Look at this." He spread his arms. "Come on in, son. Come on. We've been waiting."
I walked across the dirt toward him, pistol ready.
Rex smiled at the gun in my hand.
"Rafe send you alone?" he said. "Hell of a thing. I'd have brought a band."
I came up to about fifteen feet from him and stopped. The gallows was past him, twenty feet behind his shoulder, Winston up on the platform looking down at us both.
"Lanza." Rex's voice softened to a stage croon. "I know we got off on the wrong foot."
"That's one way to put it."
"I'm a reasonable man. I am. Ask anybody.
We can come to terms here tonight. The Ranger up there.
" He tipped his head back toward the gallows without turning.
"He stuck his nose where it didn't belong, and that's a thing that has consequences in this country, but he's a fixable problem.
Hospitals fix all kinds of things. Cassidy could call one right now.
We sit down at one of these nice tables and we have a conversation and your man up there gets a doctor and a ride home. "
The man on the platform behind Winston shifted his weight.
"Or," Rex said, and his smile widened, "we proceed. Your call, son. I'm offering."
I met Winston's eyes and held them. Trust me on this, Ranger. Just this once.
"Hang him, then."
Winston didn't flinch. Christ, I loved him.
Rex's smile flickered for the first time.
"Now, Lanza."
"You wanted me to watch. Get on with it."
Rex's eyes hardened. He kept the smile on his face for the speakers and the men around the chairs, but the eyes went cold.
"Boy," he said, "you don't mean that."
"Try me."
His hand drifted toward the pearl-handled pistol on his hip.
I raised my pistol at him.
That was when Nimue came down off the water tower.
She landed across his shoulders all at once, head out, tail still falling.
Rex screamed.
The scream blew through six speakers, and the feedback howled and broke, and the world ripped open. Carbines came up around the yard. Doors swung wide on the main building.
Coyote hit the dirt behind Nimue and rolled. When he came up, his knife was already bloody.
Nimue was a gopher snake, and Rex didn't know it. Coyote had taught me that in the second week I'd known him: a man who got hit by a snake didn't ask the snake's species. The body decided it had been killed, and the rest came along behind. Rex had already decided. He screamed bloody murder.
I drew on the closest man near the gallows and put one round through his chest. He fell forward off the platform into the front row of chairs and took the row down with him. One.
Then everything happened at once.
Mateo's rifle cracked from the gift shop corner.
The first man on the roof folded. The second turned, and Mateo took him too.
He went backwards into the AC unit with a clang that punched through the feedback.
Attaboy, Mateo. Linc opened up from the north and one of the gate boys spun and dropped.
The other got his weapon halfway up before Linc dropped him too. Good boy, Linc.
Coyote took the second flanker on the gallows in two steps. He came up under the man's guard, knife in low, out clean, in again at the throat.
Rex was still screaming and flailing, trying to get Nimue off him. He grabbed her once to throw her, and she struck him twice in quick succession before crawling under his collar. That'll teach you to grab a lady, Rex.
The man on the platform behind Winston went for the cleat where the rope was tied off.
He was going to drop Winston.
Like hell he was.
I shot him in the head. He fell sideways off the platform, and Winston had his wrists free in the same breath, rope off, noose off, and then Winston jumped.
Goddamn it, Winston.
He came down wrong. The right leg went out from under him on the landing, and he hit the dirt on his side and rolled, and for one bad second I thought he'd taken a round on the way down. Then he pushed up onto his good knee, and I remembered to breathe.
He scooped a pistol off one of Rex's fallen men and came up with it like he'd been born holding it. Then he was up on the bad leg, limping, and he was shouting something at me. "Go!"
I turned back to the yard.
Rex had thrown Nimue. I caught the motion in the corner of my eye, an arc against the floodlight.
She landed in the dirt, righted herself, and stayed there with her head up.
Sorry, sweetheart. Rex was on his hands and knees, hat off, white hair plastered to his skull, breathing in raw heaves. His pearl pistol was still on his hip.
He looked up at me.
The man looking at me from the dirt was the same man who'd burned my barn down this afternoon and built a gallows for my man this evening. The body might be giving out. The man wasn't done.
Rex scrambled to his feet and ran.
He went straight for the side door off the main building and was through it before I'd cleared the chairs. Fucker was fast for a man his age.
A round screamed past my ear from one of the perimeter men I hadn't accounted for. I dropped behind a table. Mateo shot him from the gift shop corner. Thank you, Mateo. Two more rounds came from the door on the far side of the yard. Linc opened up. The door went quiet.
Coyote collected Nimue and crossed the yard at a low run. He stopped at Winston's bad leg and went down on his haunches and looked up.
Winston shook him off without looking down. "I'm fine. Go on." Then, to me, with blood in his teeth: "Your man went that way."
"My man."
"Rex." He pushed me to the side door with the heel of his hand. "Go. Try not to enjoy it without me."
I ran.
I knew the hallway from the recon. It smelled of mouse, sawdust, and rot under fresh paint.
The Legends Wall was on my right. I ran past it, but Castillo's face caught me anyway out the corner of my eye, the date stamp under it from the night he died. He'd been in this hallway. Now I was in it for him.
And for Winston.
And for Pae Saco.
Rex's boots hit somewhere ahead. A door slammed.
I came to the corner with the pistol up. The hall was empty. Two doors stood on the left, and I cleared each one in two beats, and they were empty too.
The next corner opened onto the gift shop. I came through low and fast.
Rex was halfway across the carpet, going for the front doors and the parking lot. He had a hand on the back of his suit jacket where the bottom of his ribs would be, like he'd taken a hit somewhere in the run.
Where you off to in such a hurry, Rex?
I fired.
The round hit him right in the ass and red bloomed across the white pants. He cursed and crashed face-first into the postcard carousel. The carousel came off its base and rolled. He hit the carpet with a wheeze, postcards fluttering through the air around him.
I crossed the carpet to him and took my time about it.
He dragged himself toward the front doors, leaving a smear of blood behind him. His entire right side was soaked red from the hip down now, and he'd lost his white hat.
I paused to collect it on the way.
"Where you think you're goin', Rex?" I caught up to him and kicked him over so he was face up.
"Please. Son, please. Wait." His chin trembled. "Lanza, you ain't a killer. Look at me. I'm a man on the floor. You ain't gonna do this."
There it was. The croon back in his voice. The son. The performance.
"Naw," I said. "I ain't gonna kill you."
He lowered his hands slightly. "You ain't?"
"Naw." I lowered my gun a few more inches and fired.
His kneecap exploded. He screamed loud enough to make Winston blush, and the dark stain spread across the front of his suit pants.
"I got plans for you, Rex," I said and leaned down to disarm him.
"Now wait. Wait! Wait a goddamn minute! Listen. Water rights. You want 'em? Take 'em. Take the case, take the property line, take the goddamn aquifer. I'll close Bonney down by Friday and leave town by Sunday and you won't never hear from me again, Lanza. I swear it."
"Whatever happened to the show must go on?" I sneered.
His eyes widened.
"Now, Lanza, be reasonable. I can give you whatever you want."
I leaned in close. "What I want is you in a shallow grave." I pointed the pistol right between his eyes and pulled back the hammer.
The familiar sound of Winston's boots came around the corner. He stopped just inside the gift shop and took in the postcards drifting around Rex on the carpet.
"Christ on a cracker. Postcard rack do something to offend you, darlin'?"
"Don't try to stop me, Ranger. Rex needs to die, and I got to be the one who does it."
"Wouldn't dream of it." He crossed the room and put a hand on my arm, stepping into view on my right side.
The hand was warm, and the grip was steady, and a man who'd been on a gallows half an hour ago had no business with a steady hand.
"I'm not askin' you to spare him. Trust me when I say I'm all for putting Rattlesnake Rex Rawlins in the ground. But first, I've got a better idea."