—slip from the saddle at last, graceful as sin, to stand there reloading, unhurriedly, with the sun behind him dimming his face to a merest silhouette: Pleasant, well-spoken Fred Willicks simply all at once gone, his wif
e’s joy and his young son’s pride extinguished, with nothing left behind but a ruthless, calculating liar, thief, and murderer—candle-snuffed as though he’d never existed, though Jenkins could only assume he had, at least up ‘til this son-of-a-bitch had played much the same trick on him.
“That does sound like him,” the man who’d taken Willicks’ place at some point admitted, chambering a fresh bullet, before spinning the replenished cylinder with a showman’s flair. “For Sartain’s a gentleman first and foremost, you see, immured through long tradition with the idea of striking honour’s pose under even the severest sort of duress—to stand fast and take your medicine, setting an example for the rest, no matter how fools around you rage and squall, or let their stupidity-aiding hatred present you with opportunities of escape. Not like me, sad to say.”
Jenkins coughed up blood, then almost strangled on it going back down. “No,” he agreed, finally, once he’d retched his air-pipe clear again. “Not like you at all, from what I heard . . . Bartram Haugh.”
At this, Haugh really did shrug. Pointing out: “And I agree. Yet, you might well notice—’tween the two’ve us, chivalrous Mister Reese and me, I’m the only one that’s still alive.”
“So you . . . do believe he’s the revenant I . . . painted him, at least.”
“Oh, stranger things’ve happened, I suppose. Hell, who would have ever thought I’d find some nonentity such as Fred Willicks’ ridiculous little life a fair enough fit to shape myself to? Then again, it was Phyllida who did the trick on that one, really, turning up on the next stage after like she did, all fresh and ready for love; had stars in her eyes the moment she heard his name come out my mouth, so who was I to disappoint?”
“U’huh,” Jenkins managed, unintentionally imitating verbally-truncated storekeep Mister Mahershah-whatsit. “‘N . . . then, there’s hers and your . . . son, too . . . ”
“Simon, yes—he’s mine sure enough, poor mite, no matter his last name. May he never have need to discover his own in-born capacities, in future.”
Haugh put just enough resonant tone of emotion into this last that Jenkins could almost think he meant it, ‘til he remembered who he was talking to.
“Truth to tell, I thought you knew already,” he continued, conversationally. “That this quest of yours was some ruse, a protracted wild goose chase, calculated to get me out where you could pull a gun and collect the Union’s money. But it took a bare half-day’s ride with you for me to see how lamentably honest a fellow you really are, Sheriff, and that’s when I decided to let our trip here play itself to the full—further away you took me, after all, the less likely anybody’d be to prevent me covering your corpse over, once our business was done.”
“Always meant t’ . . . kill me, then . . . is what you’re sayin’.”
“Well, yes. You’d’ve wrecked what I’ve built, otherwise, and I can’t have that.”
Jenkins coughed yet once more, and murmured something wetly in on top of it—
Haugh leant in, waiting for him to repeat it.
“I . . . pity you,” Jenkins said, finally, drawing a snort. He rolled his eyes far enough to glimpse something both sudden and surprising, though horribly familiar. And closer by far to boot than he would’ve ever expected, given the softness of its approach—
Haugh, however, noticed none of the above, continuing to muse aloud:
“Well, that’s your choice, little good as it’ll do you, or me . . . for you see, Sheriff, I’m no firm believer in God at all, let alone his mercy, or his judgment either. Christ knows what it was you thought you saw, back there in—Esther, was it?—but Sartain Reese had about as little to do with it as grace has with error.I shot him down, saw the front of his heart pop out from under his breast-bone in a spray, and I’ve killed more than enough men in my time to know the way they fall. Reese could tell you the same, if he was here.”
To this, and with gross effort, Jenkins could conjure only a dull creaking noise—something he himself was surprised to recognize, eventually, as laughter.
“Hysteria, eh? That’s one way to salve the sting. But we’ve chatted long enough, for my money, so . . . damn, what are you lookin’ at, anyhow?”
Said a voice from behind, preternaturally calm: “Always did please you to think me a fool, Bart, just as it pleased me to let you. But that’s over with, now.”
(Much like all else.)
These few words—or just the sound of ‘em, Jenkins didn’t wonder—were enough to turn outlaw Bart Haugh, a man with more sins on his soul than Judas good and three thousand-odd dollars on his head, sheet-white. He turned towards their speaker, slow as river weed current-caught, perhaps unaware he was even doing so; blanched yet further when he saw who stood there, making all the tiny, charm-crinkled lines on his face stand out like scars.
For: yes, it was the man himself, of course—though “man” might no longer be the most accurate term, Jenkins thought, given. “One-Shot” Reese, in whatever he used for flesh, corporeal enough to touch yet inhumanly mutable under pressure; Sartain Stannard Reese, his sandy locks slicked down with the same phantom blood still sticky-coating him from head to toe, skull topped in a buzzing black crown of flies. He cocked his head, regarding Haugh narrowly through almost yellow eyes, and watched that anything-but-gentleman go suddenly all a-tremble, shook juiceless, same as some storm-withered leaf.
“Been quite the spell, Bart,” Reese told him, unhurriedly, like they were chatting over supper. “Yes, I did have myself some rare difficulty finding you. But then, you always did know how to make us both scarce, when it suited your plans best.”
Haugh gulped, straining for even the smallest measure of his usual sanguine humour. “Sartain—” he began, only to find himself cut off when Reese waved him silent.
“The sheriff here has a fair idea how long I’ve been at it,” he continued, indicating Jenkins, “not to mention the cost of my quest, to me, and others. Oh, but I walked so far and found so very little, ‘sides from a grinding sameness! Delivering judgment on others, yet finding no respite of my own . . . it was enough, frankly, to drive me to despair. Until, just the other day, I received possible word of my imminent respite, and from the most unlikely of sources—that still, small voice above I catch just a whisper of, I only strain hard enough, letting slip how after all this time, you were finally comin’ to meet me.”
Haugh shook his head frantically, shoulders hiked like he wanted to back away but couldn’t gather the necessary steam. Instead he stayed fear-rooted while Reese stepped closer, stained boot-soles leaving reddish clumps of print on the street beneath; looked back Jenkins’ way as he did so, watching him spit up a pint or so more of his own blood to keep his airways open, and sighed at the sight.
“Should’ve kept to your own place, Sheriff, ‘specially after I worked so hard to clear it out for you—but I guess you know that, already. Who’d you leave in charge?”
“Good men,” Jenkins half-retched, in reply. “Not . . . too many left t’make . . . trouble for ‘em, after you was . . . done with us.”