Abandon

Maybe it was the alcohol, but he imagined his lips tingled from their contact with Miss Hartman. He replayed the kiss. Why had he waited so long? ’Cause of your pride, man. Your f**king pride.

The horses lifted their heads and neighed. They backed away from the spring and stomped their hooves. Bart grabbed up the reins.

“What is it, girls?” His first thought was they’d sensed a slide. He peered up, listening for the rumble of snow raging down through the darkness above him, heard only the horses nervous ly clicking their teeth on the steel bits. He took a final swig of brandy, stuffed the flask into his coat, and had just lifted the reins to put his team into motion when one of the horses snorted.

Bart cocked his head, strained to listen. He heard the whoosh of animals struggling through deep snow. Two riders appeared twenty feet up the trail, their horses buried to their stomachs. It occurred to Bart that they resembled phantoms in the snow.

He blinked, half-expecting them to have vanished when his eyes opened, but they were still there, and close enough that he could see the clouds of vapor pluming from their horses’ nostrils.

“Evening!” Bart called out. There was no answer, and he thought maybe they hadn’t heard him, so he yelled, “Merry Christmas!” The rider on the left said something to his companion, and Bart heard the click of tongues. The riders came up on either side of the sleigh. They wore wide-brimmed hats topped with several inches of snow, had draped themselves in blankets and wrapped their faces in pieces of a torn muslin shirt, so that Bart could only see their eyes. Those belonging to the rider on his left exuded a cold focus. The other pair of eyes were wide and twitching with fear and nerves.

“Merry Christmas,” Bart said, more cheer in his voice than he felt, and wondered if he was facing a couple of road agents. “Hell of a storm. Ain’t on the prod. Just trying to get my ass to a fire—”

“I’d appreciate you shuttin that f**kin hole in your face.” The rider on the left had spoken, his voice low, metallic.

Bart said, “Sir, I’m sorry, I don’t understand what the problem—” The business end of a double-barreled scattergun peeked out from under the rider’s blanket. “You shoot that gun, sir, you’re liable to bring a slide down on us all.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Bart looked at the rider on his right. He was smaller than his partner, much younger, barely a man, if that. But what struck Bart was his accent. Pure Tennessee.

“I don’t understand,” Bart said. “You work for me, son.”

The boy’s eyes darted to his companion, then back to Bart.

“N-n-n-n-not no more I don’t, Mr. Packer.” Bart saw the six-shot Colt patent revolver trembling in the boy’s hand, a huge sidearm, de cades old, a relic from before the war.

“Easy son,” Bart said, and though his intoxication had faded fast, he was far from clearheaded. He thought for a half second that maybe he’d been caught in a slide and was lying packed in snow, suffocating, hallucinating this nightmare. “What in holy hell are you doing? I don’t under—” The other man put his horse forward and rammed the barrel of the shotgun into Bart’s face. Blood poured through his mustache, between his teeth, down his chin.

Bart pulled off a glove and cupped his hand over his nose.

“Goddamn you, it’s broke!”

“Now go on and drive the sled up to your mansion. We gonna follow behind. Don’t know if you got a shoulder scabbard, but I wouldn’t advise reachin into your coat for any reason. Rest assured I’ll err on the side a blowin your goddamn head off. Savvy?”

“What do you want? I’m a rich—”

“You remember what happened last time you opened that mouth? Now go on.” Bart lifted the reins and urged his team up the trail, his nose burning, tears running down his bloodied face. The riders followed close behind, and they hadn’t gone fifty feet when one of them retched into the snow.

The other muttered, “Christ Almighty.” Bart didn’t dare look back, but he figured it was the boy, wondered if he’d gotten sick because he was going to kill his first man tonight.

ELEVEN

It was almost ten o’clock, and Joss figured she’d seen all the customers she was going to see for the evening. But in no hurry to return to her cold jail cell, she didn’t disturb the deputy, who still snoozed comfortably beside the stove.

Lana had gone home for the night, and Joss hated to own up, but she missed the piano, sick as she was of the endless rotation of Christmas carols. Noise drowned out the hush of loneliness, though even loneliness was preferable to listening to that deputy blather on about what big shit he used to be down in Ouray. Joss had given serious consideration to cutting the young man’s throat while he slept—one deep swipe with the bowie she kept under the bar. She could picture his eyes popping open, him reaching for the revolver that she’d already slipped out of its holster, the puddle of blood expanding on the floorboards, sizzling where it touched the base of the stove. But that would just f**k everything up. Besides, where would she go, with Abandon as snowbound as she’d ever seen it? What was another twelve hours?

Joss smiled at the thought of Lana. On her way out, she’d actually bowed her head and mouthed “Merry Christmas”—by far the most verbose that pretty mute had ever been.

The front door swung open and the preacher walked inside and dusted the snow off his frock coat. Stephen Cole glanced around the dead saloon, then walked up and rested his forearms on the pine bar.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Evenin, Preach. Finally come to bend a elbow?”

Stephen smiled. Apparently, he’d left home without a hat, because his hair was wet with melting snow.

“Could I buy you a drink, Miss Maddox?”

“It’s Joss, and yes, always. You off your feed?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“You’re all gant up, just about the palest thing I ever saw.” She placed a new bottle on the bar, withdrew the cork, and set up two tumblers. “Pinch a cocaine with your whiskey?”

“No thank you.”

“Don’t reckon I ever got booze-blind with a man a God. Here’s to you—is it Reverend or Preacher or—”

“Stephen is fine, actually. Just Stephen.”

They clinked and drained their glasses, Stephen wincing.

Joss went to pour again, but Stephen waved her off. “No more of that snakehead for me, but you go right ahead.”