?I?ve already been there.?
?Say again??
?I looked into the eyes of a man just like you. He carried a burp gun that was made in China or Russia. He was a cruel man. I suspect his cruelty masked his innate cowardice. I never met a cruel man or a bully who wasn?t a coward.?
Preacher waved his hand at the air. ?Be quiet.?
At first Hackberry thought his words had reached inside Preacher?s defense system, then realized the vanity of his perception. Preacher had risen from his chair, his attention fixed on the road, the Thompson slanted downward. He moved to the window. ?She?s not the brightest bulb in the box, is she??
?Who??
?Your deputy, the one who killed Liam. She just turned on her interior light to write in her log.?
?She patrols this road when she has the night shift. She?s not part of this, Collins.?
?Oh, yes, she is, my friend.?
?You sonofabitch, you motherfucker.?
?What did you call me??
?I?m the guy who came after you, Collins. Not my deputy. She takes orders. She?s not a player.?
?You insult my mother, but you ask immunity for your female friend? Her fate is on your conscience. Think back: the unlocked doors, pursu ing me outside your jurisdiction, the killing of Liam Eriksson. You engineered this, Sheriff. Look into my face. Look inside me. You see yourself.?
Preacher had leaned down to speak, his breath sour, a tiny web of saliva at the corner of his mouth. Hackberry grabbed Preacher?s shirt with one hand and knotted the cloth in his fist and pulled Preacher toward him. He spat full in his face, then gathered his spittle a second time and spat on him again and again, until his mouth was empty of moisture.
Preacher jerked away from him and drove the butt of the Thompson into the bridge of Hackberry?s nose, using both hands. He hit him again, this time in the head, splitting the scalp, raking the steel butt plate down Hackberry?s ear.
Preacher picked up his hat from the dresser an
d walked toward the side door. ?I?ll be back to deal with you later. I?ll be the last thing you ever see. And you?ll beg to take back every word you said about my mother.?
Blood leaked out of Hackberry?s hair into his eyes. He watched impotently as Preacher went out the door into the yard, the Thompson tilted downward in his silhouette like a black exclamation point against the glow of the cruiser?s headlights.
Hackberry strained against the manacle on his left wrist, forming his fingers into a cone, trying to pull the back of his hand through the steel?s circumference, blood running in strings down his thumb, braiding off his nails. He got to his feet and, with both arms outstretched, jerked against the chain, which was locked by the other manacle around a thick dowel on the bedstead. Through the window, he could see Preacher far down the driveway, approaching Pam Tibbs?s cruiser, the rain swirling like spun glass around him, thunder rippling across the sky.
Hackberry saw Pam reach up and turn off the dome light. Then, for a reason he didn?t understand, the light went back on. Hackberry yelled at the top of his voice just as the bedstead splintered apart. Preacher fitted the Thompson to his shoulder, his right elbow pointed outward like a chicken?s wing, and aimed through the iron sights.
The eruption of fire from the barrel was like the jagged and erratic contortions of an electrical arc. The .45-caliber rounds blew the glass out of the back and side windows and stitched across the doors, ripping stuffing out of the seats, exploding a side mirror, tattering the hood, flattening a tire in under a second.
Hackberry tore the handcuffs loose from the destroyed bedstead and found his holstered revolver on the floor where Preacher had placed it. He ran barefoot into the side yard just as Preacher let off another burst, this time holding the Thompson against his hip, spraying the cruiser from one end to the other. A flame glowed under the hood, then seemed to drip from the engine onto the asphalt and race backward toward the gasoline tank. There was no transition between the moment of ignition and the explosion that followed. A fireball exploded from the car?s frame, filling the windows, roasting the interior, rising into the darkness in a dirty red-black scorch that gave off a smell like an incinerator behind a rendering plant. Hackberry felt the whoosh of heat float across the lawn and touch his face.
?Collins!? he shouted. He saw Preacher turn, framed against the burning car. Hackberry raised his revolver and aimed with both hands and fired once, the report deafening, the recoil like the kick of a jackhammer. He steadied the front sight and fired two more shots, but he was too far away from his target, and he heard the rounds strike stone or the top of a rise and whine into the darkness with a sound like the tremolo of a broken banjo string.
He saw Preacher move out of the light and head for the north pasture, unhurried, holding the Thompson by the pistol grip, the barrel pointed at the sky, glancing back at Hackberry only once.
The rain steamed on the smoldering remains of the cruiser, the flames in the grass burning outward in a ring, the mesquite starting to catch and flare like fireflies. There was no movement anywhere near the cruiser. The airbags in the front seat had inflated and exploded in the heat and were now draped on the steering wheel and blackened seats and dashboard like curtains of ash. Hackberry could feel his eyes brimming with water. He followed Preacher into the pasture, the rain blowing in his face, his two geldings terrified. Inside the flash of lightning in the clouds, he thought he saw Preacher climbing through the rails of the north fence. He fired once, or was it twice, with no effect.
He stepped on a fence clip and felt the aluminum tip slice through the ball of his foot. Then Preacher was out in the pasture, out of the shadows, past the stump fire. Hackberry paused at the fence and fired again. This time he saw Preacher?s coat jump, as though a gust of wind had caught it and flapped it loose from his side. Hackberry climbed through the fence and went deeper into the Johnson grass, toward a thicket behind which a compact car was parked.
Preacher opened the compact?s door. Almost as an afterthought, he turned and faced Hackberry, his Thompson lowered. He smiled at the corner of his mouth. ?You?re a persistent man, Holland.?
Hackberry raised his revolver with both hands, cocked back the hammer, and sighted on Preacher?s face. ?Send me a postcard and tell me how you like hell,? he said. He squeezed the trigger. But the hammer snapped on a spent cartridge.
?You lose, bub,? Preacher said.
?Be done with it.?