An American Outlaw (34 page)
Whicher re-cocks the hammer. He runs forward.
James has stopped moving. He's lying in the wind-whipped dust.
The marshal reaches him, he squats on his heels, pulls off the headscarf.
A face stares back at him—fighting for air. Blue eyes, panicked, as the dust curls about him. His blond hair is dull against the dirt.
Michael Tyler.
Whicher stares at him, helpless as he starts to writhe. He takes his shoulder, turns him on his side, coughing, gagging—limbs starting to thrash in the dust.
Michael Tyler. Marine Corps vet.
Choking to death, blood filling up his lungs.
In a dirt gray desert.
Under no star.
Michael had the keys, no gun—he was moving the truck—if it
was
a shot, it couldn't have been him.
My breath caught in my throat. I turned back, ran towards the outline of the house.
He couldn't hold a gun, he could move a truck.
I left him to do it—headed out to sweep the ground, clear it; make sure.
I ran, choking, to the house, on past the end wall.
I could just see—the green pick-up, its headlights on.
Michael laying on the ground.
I ran as fast as I could.
The scarf was gone from around his head, his blond hair caught in the truck lights.
I reached him, knelt to him, stared in his face. Saw the blood in his mouth.
I put a hand to his neck, to the artery. No beating pulse.
A bullet wound.
The middle of his chest. A single blood-stained hole.
Shock held me rigid. Flashes, snapping inside. A desert war rushing in my head.
I turned to stare at the house—smoke of dust curling, like buildings in my memory.
I crouched low, SIG in my clenched fist. Ran at the rough-framed empty doorway.
In there somewhere, he must be—
Leon
; a dead man.
I strained to listen. The house was silent. Just the wind. Open door rattling against the wall.
I moved through the outer room, ripping off the wound rebozo scarf. Adrenaline tight in me. Light flickering from the kitchen.
I stepped in—no one was in there. The rope-backed chair was empty. The far side of the kitchen dresser, a door opened into a darkened hallway.
Wind was racing through the house—a rising wail. The candle flame on the table snuffed out.
I pitched forward in the dark, into the hallway, running down it. A door was open at the end. I rushed it, stepping out into a yard—choking on dust, fighting to see.
Across the yard there's a stone barn—black opening beneath an iron lintel. I ran to it, sand flaying my skin—almost tripping through the opening in the wall.
A dark interior. I could just make out a truck. Red and black, Tennille's F350.
She was in the barn, leaning in the cab, trying to start the engine. The motor caught, the noise of it booming off the stone walls.
She turned, saw me. Gripped the Marlin rifle. Maria already climbing in through the passenger door.
“
He's here
,” I shouted.
She swung the barrel of the Marlin up.
“Go,” I told her.
She stared back at me.
“Just get out. Go
...”
She held my look a split second. Then ran to the far end of the barn—to a set of wide double-doors.
She loosed the bolt, tried to open up, the wind pushing back against her.
I ran forward, grabbed the first door. Dragged it open—lashing it back on a rope stay.
She stepped closer.
For a moment, something showed in her eye.
I grabbed the second door, banged the butt of the SIG against the bolt to get it free. Unlatched it. Hauled it back. “Get as far as you can...”
She turned. Ran for the truck.
I watched her climb inside.
Let her go.
I'd finish it. Find Leon, wherever he was.
No after; nothing in my mind.
I'd get Michael, get him in the pick-up, cross the border. I rammed the door back against the wall of the barn.
Tennille snaps on the headlights.
Whicher.
Twenty yards from the barn's open doors.
Whicher. Standing out in the dark. Wide-legged. Dust whipping at him.
He held his gun arm out in the wind. A strip of fabric, Michael's headscarf, trailing from his left hand. It curled around the leg of his suit.
I felt the air rush from my lungs.
I raised both arms in front of me. Iron-sights of the pistol centered with the middle of his body.
Not high, not fast.
Whicher. Not Leon.
He was standing just off the headlight beam—blocking in the 350 truck.
I made myself walk slow. Towards him. One foot in front of the other. Jaw tight. Thinking of the snap from the gun—double-action into single, the recoil, the way it would feel, the sudden noise.
Michael
.
Last thing he saw was that bastard's eyes.
A wave rising up inside, heart blood. Sweep of heat.
I stared at him. Walked—on my last breath. To shoot him, let him shoot me, to never leave that sea of dust.
I thought of four kids. Nate and Michael. Eight years old. Orla. A schoolyard in Lafayette; ablaze in light.
I stopped.
From nowhere, I could see Maria, Tennille's girl, in my mind.
Fear in her face.
Watching two men. Flat out kill each other.
I lowered the gun.
I stared in the marshal's eyes. He held my look.
For a second, he broke off—to stare at the truck still inside the barn.
I put a thumb down on the hammer-drop. Released it. Tossed the SIG in the dirt.
His eyes shone. He lowered his revolver; staring at me a long moment.
He de-cocked the gun, held it loose.
And then he turned.
And walked away.
A ghost in the dust.
EPILOGUE
The Old Cemetery, Terlingua, TX.
The wind rakes the old stones and broken down crosses. Graveyard weeds push up through the scoured earth. By a small headstone of granite, a red plastic rose buffets on a weathered length of twine.
Whicher steps along a path lined with ocotillo and mariposa. Past piled up stones, twisted wooden grave-markers, so many crooked; fallen. The wind has had its way.
He walks to the cemetery gate, two drystone pillars; squared off. Ornamental crosses are set at their tops. He stares at the scrolling black iron, against the sky. Stops. And puts some money in the little glass jar.
His eyes drift to the horizon, a ridge of hills, the Chisos mountains. An emptiness is all he feels.
No trace, no sign. And in his heart, he hopes there never will be.
He walks to the Chevy Silverado—the door replaced, and the windshield. He takes off his tan Resistol hat.
Nobody was there. Nobody ever would be. Everybody lost, in the end.
He climbs back into the truck cab, out of the wind.
Too late.
That was what he told them. Sergeant Baker. Alpine police. His own boss, Division Marshal Scruggs.
They'd been at the homestead—Casa Piedra, but they'd run, before he could stop them.
He'd found Michael Tyler. Shot him, resisting arrest.
Whoever else had been there, they'd fled as the dust storm raged, no chance stopping them. They'd likely made for the border.
Sergeant Baker's testimony confirmed it—he'd been occupied detaining Leon Varela. And couldn't assist.
Varela was charged. Two counts relating to his former wife, a third count, attempted murder of a US Marshal. Awaiting trial, the county jail, in Alpine.
ATF left the file open on the suicide of Nathaniel Childress. No record could be found of the whereabouts of Orla Childress. Somewhere, she'd taken her young family. Whicher stopped looking. Told Cornell, in so many words—let it slide.
He thinks of Lori. His wife, Leanne. The borderline.
Somehow, Terlingua drew him—he could find an excuse to check the Labrea ranch. The adobe house. Find it shut up, like the last time. The land at Joe Tree's place, deserted. Nobody knowing when he'd be back. Or if.
He thinks of Gilman James—lowering his outstretched arms. A black gun between his hands. The moment.
Looking in that barn. Maria. About the age of his own girl.
But maybe there'd never be an answer.
In his mind he can see it all. The 350 truck, rear door open, James climbing in.
Seconds later, they were gone.
On the seat of the Silverado is an open briefcase; preliminary report, almost finished. Whicher reaches over. He picks it out, opens it, eyes skimming the lines written; bare sentences.
US Marshals Service Criminal Investigation
...concludes that Gilman Francis James, of Lafayette, Louisiana remains the sole suspect still at large in connection with the serial armed robberies of Lafayette Regional Airport, attempted armed robbery of the Farmers Bank at Alpine TX, and armed robbery of the Home Valley Bank at Rocksprings, TX – all other known perpetrators and associates being now deceased.
He turns the stapled pages. The wind rocks against the truck side.
…
subsequent investigation into armed robbery of the Exxon Service Station at Interstate 10, in Reeves County, and the Jackson Fork Livestock Auction, near San Angelo, remains ongoing...
...Tennille Maria Labrea, and Maria Lucita Varela, of Terlingua, TX, remain missing—it is the opinion of this officer that Labrea and her daughter are now in Mexico, where the suspect is known to have family...
Whicher's eyes search the horizon, once again. He closes the report, places it back on the seat. Through the truck's open door, the wind catches at its edges, lifting the pages, to flutter like wings.
He thinks of the teacher, Jed Reynolds. Maria's teacher, in Lajitas.
'If she ends up losing her mother, whatever chance she had gets snuffed out pretty early...'
Above the cemetery, three buzzards wheel in the towering sky. Weightless. Through an unending circle.
Michael Tyler saved a doomed patrol. Gilman James tried to keep everybody alive.
What man, so much the product of his life and times, could be entirely condemned? Except by his own hand. And by the hand of God.
He stares at the cover of the printed pages.
John Joseph Whicher,
US Deputy Marshal, Western Division
* * *
We crossed on a summer rock slide. In an unnamed ravine. Truck wheels in the shallow water. The storm blinding.
But Joe had shown her, he'd made her learn it by heart.
If anyone tried to stop us—at the last—we never knew.
Where we are now, I won't say. Nor do I know how things will be.
The mountain is high. Wild burro graze in the shadow of a canyon. Stones mark the old ejido land.
Maria sits and talks with me now. White-tailed deer come in the mornings. They drink from a water hole, with their young.
I had a better chance than some. Better than Jesse.
Each generation has something. We hardly see it, and time won't wait.
Tennille watches the twisted trail from the village.
Sometimes she places her hand on mine.
I don't move it away.
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