Gabriel's Story (17 page)

“That's right. I damn near killed him. He's lucky I didn't put a bullet through his head, acting the fool the way he was. If I'd've known I could get it back, I'd've shot him dead. No use wasting a bullet when you don't have to.” Marshall waved his gun at them in disgust. “What are you all staring like a bunch of monkeys for? The whole lot of you—” He cut himself off and snapped back to the man who'd spoken. “We got a problem, you and I?”

The man hesitated, looked from Marshall to the others, and held out just long enough to look like he'd given it some thought. “I ain't knowed the fella from Adam. Ain't none of my kin to worry about.”

Marshall nodded at the wisdom of this, a grin again pushing up his cheeks. “Yeah. We should look out for our kin, shouldn't we? That boy ain't my kin neither, but he's a good one. Got gumption, ain't he?” He glanced over at Gabriel, squinted, and studied him like something newly discovered. When he spoke, it was with the last vestiges of sobriety. “Take that thing off your head, boy. You look like an idjit.” He turned and holstered his gun and walked unsteadily over to Caleb, who had to reach out and steady him at the last minute. They walked arm in arm back to the saloon, leaving the crowd in an uneasy silence.

Gabriel nodded his head and let the board fall. He hissed at James, who ran to untie him. He did so with nervous hands and eyes darting out to study the men. “You think that's how he got that first scar?” James asked. Gabriel didn't answer, and neither did he speak when the two boys circumnavigated the unconscious man and walked fast toward the saloon.

GABRIEL AND JAMES HUNG TO THE WALL OF THE SALOON that evening, turning down offers of alcohol and watching both the men and the door anxiously. Marshall seemed intent on pounding down whiskey with ever increasing vigor, with no concern whatever for the man who lay unconscious outside. Every so often, James crept out and checked on the man's status. Each time he returned shaking his head: “Man's out cold.”

Both Rollins and Dallas did their best to keep pace with Marshall, but the alcohol took hold of them more quickly. Rollins slurred his speech and grew argumentative, his large body seeming ever more apelike. Dallas, in contrast, felt more sublime with each mouthful, finding some music within his head and moving to it, rocking slightly and moving more and more into a world of his own. Dunlop declined the drink for an hour or so but finally gave in, turning to the boys and shrugging and throwing down a glass of whiskey like a man born to it. Caleb sat straight in his chair, his red eyes filmed over and glassy. While there was no demonstrative joy on the man's dark face, the alcohol did soften something within him. Once or twice he even smiled at some remark of Marshall's, a strange action for his sharp features, as if his lips meant to turn down but in their drunkenness got the motion backward.

McKutcheon stood with arms crossed and face stern, his assistant trying his best to hold the same posture with authority. Before long, some of the men who'd watched Gabriel being tied up and shot at entered the bar. They were shy at first, walking in with heads down and moving quickly to the counter. But when they saw Marshall's mood and realized that all was forgotten, they joined in the revelry. A pack of cards appeared and then another, and the men fell to more serious play.

Gabriel was just wondering if it would be safe to go out and find someplace to sleep when Marshall remembered him and ordered, “Come here, boy, have a drink with your savior.” He stood and motioned the boy to an empty table in the corner. He settled himself there with a bottle and two glasses. Gabriel joined him, leaving James to the work of holding up the wall.

“How's it feel to be alive? That man'd probably have shot you dead if I hadn't walloped him. You ever seen a bigger idiot? Makes me ashamed to be a white man. Have a drink.” Marshall pushed a half-full glass toward him. “I once saw a man jump out a second-story window on a dare. These two fools got in an argument over something or other. One told the other he had a mind to break his legs; other said he wouldn't give him the pleasure, said if he knew it would come down to that he'd just as soon jump out the window and do himself in. Other one dared him, and that was that.” Marshall kicked back another glass and shook his head at the foolishness of people.

“What happened?” Gabriel asked.

Marshall seemed surprised by the question. “Man jumped. Broke both legs and did something to his spine to boot. That was Alabama, though. No accounting for what them folks'll do on a dare.” He waved his empty shot glass beneath his nose, inhaling the scent with flaring nostrils. “The elixir of life right here. It'll kill you one day, but until then you're loving the very notion of it. Ain't that the truth?”

Gabriel nodded and sat listening as the man held forth in a rambling flow of words. Marshall's thoughts connected with little transition, little order, creating a web of theories and conjectures that he draped across the boy piece by piece. He spoke of topics as varied as the value of a human life, the debt owed to great thinkers, the sins committed in the name of God, and the nature of the retribution that might follow. He asked the boy what he made of all this, and when the boy answered that he didn't rightly know, Marshall nodded and moved in closer to him and looked him long and steadily in the eye.

“You ever hate somebody so much as to want to kill em?” he asked.

Again the boy answered that he didn't know, and once more Marshall nodded and seemed satisfied with the answer.

“I've hated three people in my life. First one's already dead. I didn't have anything to do with it, but that wasn't cause I didn't think about it. See, I used to be afraid of my own shadow, afraid of living and, worse yet, afraid of dying. It was that man, that first one I hated, that made me that way. You wouldn't want to know how he done that to me, but he sure enough did.”

Marshall paused and concentrated on pouring himself another whiskey. He only half filled the glass, spilling some on the table. Gabriel tried to avoid his eyes, focusing instead on the grain of the wood table. When Marshall spoke again, he leaned in close enough for the boy to smell his breath.

“Then one day I watched him die. I was right beside his bed, watching him breathe his last breaths, his body full of knife wounds from a bunch of fool Mexicans. He closed his eyes and lay there like a log, and I would've sworn he'd've passed on already, but then he opened his eyes and set them on me and said one last thing. You know what he said? He said, ‘This ain't the end of it.' He said, ‘Get you to hell, boy, and don't worry, I'll be waiting for ya.” Marshall stared hard at Gabriel, his eyes wavering in the effort, bloodshot but inescapable. “I didn't mourn for the man, not for one minute. But it did get me thinking. If a bunch of poor-as-dirt ignorant Mexicans could do that to my father . . . then what kind of world is it we're living in? What's the reason in it? And if you can't find no reason, then what? How do you make your way in the world? You hear what I'm asking?” Marshall motioned with his hand, as if he would hold the answers between his fingers. He studied the shape of his fingers and the empty air clasped between them. Gabriel watched him for a long moment, wondering what the man saw there and fearing that if he looked long enough, he might see it too.

Marshall roused himself and flicked away the invisible object. He made to rise, but faltered in the effort and found one last thought to share.

“I told you once before that this here world is a white man's world, but that's a lie and I know it. It ain't a white man's world. It ain't a Christian world. It's none of our world. And that's a troubling thing to think on. That's a real troubling thought.” With that, he turned and rejoined the others.

GABRIEL AWOKE WITH A HEAVY GLOVED HAND across his mouth, to the scent of leather and sweat, and to a shadowy face pressed close to his own. He reached out and pushed against the shape below the face, finding it hard and warm and entirely too real to the touch. He tried to call out, but the hand cinched down further.

“Shhh,” the face hissed close to his ear, in a voice he immediately recognized. “Goddamn, boy! Hold your tongue.” Gabriel held still, but Marshall was slow to release him. There was just enough light in the abandoned barn to make out the man's features. They were drawn with jagged, sleepless lines, somehow numb and tired and fated all at once. The hand lifted off his mouth. “Get up, boy. We're going for a ride. Looks like that scrawny-assed idiot I walloped has gone and died on us. Must've been soft in the head.”

It took Gabriel a moment to process the man's words. He tried to speak but found it hard to move his lips. As his mind cleared, it focused on one word and tried to make sense of it.

“He . . . he died?”

“Don't act so goddamn surprised. Remember, the poor fool died for you. I traded a white soul for a black one, and don't you forget it. Now get up. Meet us out by the horses, and bring the other boy with ya.” With that he was gone.

They rode out fifteen minutes later, Gabriel behind Dunlop and James behind Rollins. They forded the Red River, and Gabriel came out shivering and wide awake. They kept a steady pace through the early morning, riding for two hours in darkness, then on through the semidarkness and into the light. They lunched at a creek and watered the horses and rode on again till nightfall, when they camped in a mesquite grove beside a watering hole.

The men didn't drink that night. The evening passed, slow and solemn. Somewhere out on the plains a cow lowed, long and mournful and insistent. Rollins threatened to hunt her down and shoot her dead, but he seemed reluctant to leave the fireside, as did the others. Dunlop broke a long silence when he said that it seemed like things were going from bad to worse with each passing day. He asked Marshall just what he had in mind. He wondered aloud if maybe this wasn't the best idea, running away like this. Maybe things could be explained back at McKutcheon's, smoothed over and made right.

“It just seems different now, my head being clear and that,” he said. “Are you sure the man died?”

Marshall spoke plainly when he answered, casually, as if the sobering influence of the day's riding had put him in a better mood. “He's dead all right.” He said he'd felt it all along, and that he would've known it was so even if he hadn't heard it reported with his own ears.

“Whatcha mean, you felt it?” Dallas asked. “You mean him dying and all, like his spirit moving on? My granma used to say—”

But Marshall answered that that was not what he'd meant at all. “I meant I could feel the man's skull give when I whacked him. I knew I'd gotten through to the soft stuff.” His lips crinkled in a gesture that wasn't exactly a smile but was hard to interpret as anything else. The men watched him in silence, questions still alive, unspoken but held on anxious lips. Marshall rose and scratched his chin and looked around the group as if enticing something out of them. Still none spoke, and at this Marshall smiled. “Well, let me go shoot that cow.” He walked off chuckling, rifle in hand, and was a long time in returning.

THE SECOND DAY PASSED IN MUCH THE SAME WAY. They moved steadily to the southwest, spelling the horses only when they had to, shifting the boys from mount to mount throughout the day and never once, within Gabriel's hearing, discussing the destination to which they rode with such haste. Gabriel told himself this was simply flight, simply the passage of mile after mile between themselves and a man's death. He told himself that this was the way of the West. This was life and death by a code much admired in the minds of men, written of in books and newspapers. And these were men who would prosper still, for how could a man like Marshall not prosper when he seemed to hold the fate of other men so completely in his grasp? So he thought as he rode, as he lay waiting for sleep, and so the days passed into a third, a fourth, and onward.

On the fifth day Caleb roused the men in the dead of night. Gabriel heard a low whisper of sound while still deep within his dreams, but he woke only at the touch of the man's fingers against his shoulder. He was instantly alert, heart beating, blood alive in his veins, and ears pricked. Caleb's dark shadow, barely visible in the dim starlight but unmistakable in its stealth, moved off to the next man.

The sky was a heavy, velvety black. A moist wind blew into their faces from the west, and they rode into it for several hours. As their shapes began to emerge into the yellow shadows and highlights of dawn, Caleb left the group, riding silently off to the south. Gabriel watched him go. He turned to James and saw that he too followed the man with his eyes, but neither boy spoke his questions aloud.

They rode on for another fifteen minutes, then dismounted and led the horses forward for another ten, until the blocky silhouettes of a few ranch buildings came into view. Gabriel stood with the rest and studied them. The men stared long and spoke little, watching the threadlike smoke that drifted up from the chimney of one of the buildings and danced off with the prodding of the wind.

“What do you reckon?” Marshall asked.

Rollins didn't hesitate to answer. “That's last night's fire.”

“I figure the same,” Marshall said. “They're in there dreaming the dreams of angels, no doubt.”

“How many you figure there are in the bunkhouse?” Dallas asked. “You say they got a dog?”

“It don't matter. Caleb'll see to that.”

Rollins guffawed. “I bet he will. What about the nigger boys?”

Marshall looked at Gabriel and James. “You boys ain't asked me word one, have you?” He watched them a moment, but when James prepared to speak, he continued. “That's smart. It don't pay to ask too many questions. What'll happen will happen. Let's stake the horses. Dunlop and . . . James, you two watch them. Rest of us, let's get to walking. Caleb's probably finished by now.”