Another Man's Moccasins

I carefully reached in and pulled the Winchester through the window, threw the lever a couple of times to empty it, and then shuttled it and the loose rounds onto the floorboard of the Suburban. I locked the truck and watched James, who hadn’t moved except to drink from the flask. “You find her?”

He took a breath to give himself time to think and then shook his head. “No, no, no...” He stared at the dash as we listened to the soft tick of the big-block cooling on my vehicle. He extended the flask toward me, and I could smell the trademark brandy. “Care for some?”

“No thanks.” I shook my head. “James, have you seen anybody else around here? ”

He brought the flask back to his lips and took a swallow, then brought a finger up and touched the shift knob on the old truck. “You know, most people don’t believe the things I tell ’em. . . .” He turned his head and looked at me. “So I just stop tellin’ ’em.” His eyes wavered a little, and I noticed he was looking past me and to the right—I turned and followed his gaze, but there was no one there. “Do you know you’re bein’ followed?”

I turned and looked again but still couldn’t see anyone. “Now?”

“All the time.” He took another sip from the flask, and his eyes returned to the dash. “They’re with you all the time, or all the times I’ve ever seen you.” I continued to study him, but he didn’t move. “... Met a giant.”

It took me a second to respond. “You did?”

“Yep, real big Indian fella.”

“And where was that?”

He leaned forward and peered through the top of the windshield. I followed his gaze past the graveyard and above the rock shelf at the end of town. “Up there.”

I pushed off with the Colt still camouflaged beside my leg. “Thanks, James.”

“That big Indian, he brought me back down here, took my keys, and told me to stay in my truck.” His look trailed up toward the union hall. “I offered him my saddle-gun, but he said he liked to work quiet.” I nodded and turned to continue up the street, where the edge of the moon was just beginning to clear the cliffs. They looked black, the way blood does in moonlight. “Hey, Walt?”

I stopped and looked back at him through the reflection of the vent window. “Yep?”

“Is that big Indian a friend of yours?”

I thought about it. “Yes. He is.”

He cast a glance up the street and then back to me. “Is he...?”

I waited, but the drunken man who saw things that nobody else saw just continued studying me. “Is he what?”

He took another slug of the brandy and then turned to look back up the hill. “Is he dead, too? ”

“I sure hope not.” I started to grin, but it wouldn’t take. “Stay in the truck, James.”

He nodded. “I will.”

I walked up the street with those feathers of anxiety scouring the insides of my lungs as I checked each dilapidated building. I still saw no sign of Virgil, Tuyen, or the girl. A ghost town and, except for James and me, deserted.

It was like the place was swallowing souls.

I saw a glimmer of something beside the collapsed wall of the saloon and eased myself down the wooden boardwalk far enough to see the nose of my truck. I took a breath and raised my Colt. Staying next to the crumbling wall, I slipped in behind the Bullet and saw that the doors were locked and the keys were gone.

I pulled the two-way from my belt and gave it another try. “Unit one, anybody copy?”

Static.

I looked up past the cemetery to the union hall, at the castellated cornices and second-story outcropping that gave it the appearance of a fortress standing on the hill. The still listless moon was at a full quarter, and I could see that the sicklelike point had just cleared the cliffs.

I started the climb, keeping the .45 in front of me. I was unconcerned about the rattlesnakes since the evening was cool and they’d likely be sleeping in the crevices of the stone outcroppings off to the right, attempting to glean the last bit of the day’s warmth that was still held by the rocks.

I paused at the cemetery and laid a hand on the steel railing, looked up at the dark windows, and then peered up at the path. In the darkness it would be difficult to see if anyone had passed. The steps appeared the same but, as I tipped my hat back for a better view, I could see the door to the union hall was open. I knew that I had closed it.

The sweat at the middle of my back had adhered my uniform shirt to my spine, and I shivered in the cooling breeze.

It was a steep climb, and I took a few deep inhales to steady my breathing. I stood at the doorway and looked down the shotgun hall, past what used to be offices and into the gloom of the back rooms. I could see the size 13 swirls my rubber-soled ropers had left in the heavy dust from my previous visit, and there was an obvious trail where I’d gone farther into the building and then doubled back to go up the stairs to the dance hall.

Barely visible inside my boot prints were a set of well-defined, high-arched, tiny footprints exactly tracing my tracks.