Abandon

Ezekiel struck out with the preacher and the doctor, the sheriff astride a moon-eyed bay gelding he’d purchased in Silverton that fall. They rode through Abandon and up-canyon toward the Godsend, the horses sinking to their knees, the riders’ heads bowed, hat brims shielding them from the heavy slanting snow.

At the turnoff to Emerald Lake, they picked up the only tracks they’d seen—a ten-burro head-and-tail string led by two horses.

“Can you think of a reason somebody’d be quick-freightin up to the Godsend on Christmas when the mine’s shut down?” Russell asked.

“Sure can’t. And from the look of it, these poor animals are carryin some load. Probably sinkin past their stomachs.”

They rode on, the sides of the canyon closing in, the blizzard diminishing their world until they could see only the tracks they followed. Another mile through deepening powder and Packer’s twenty-stamp operation appeared in the distance, a multilevel mill built into the back of the canyon, flanked by the mine office, lower boarding house, and a blacksmith shop.

“Strange not to hear those stamps,” Stephen said.

They stopped twenty yards from the mill, Ezekiel, already cold, beginning to shiver. “That’s a concern,” he said, pointing to where the tracks continued on, not toward the mine, as he’d anticipated, but up the south slope of the canyon.

“You don’t reckon Oatha and Billy were foolish enough to drive that pack train up to the Sawblade?” Russell said.

“Well, unfortunately it looks that way, don’t it?”

“That’s desperate behavior. I don’t like taking the dugway to the Sawblade in July, when the snow’s gone.”

“The hell they got to lose? They murdered five people last night.”

“I’m fair tired of this snow, and I don’t relish the chore it’ll be getting our horses up there.”

“Well, Doc, I don’t, either. I’d rather be back with Glori at the cabin, sittin by the fire, sippin whiskey, but that don’t appear to be in my immediate future.” A great wedge of snow slid off the mill’s sloped roof. The horses startled.

The preacher said, “Y’all think that slope could slide on us?”

“Yeah,” Russell said. “I think it’s entirely possible.”

The three riders followed the tracks away from the mill. At the canyon’s end, they paused, gazed up the smooth white slope, Ezekiel counting five switchbacks before the burro trail vanished into the roiling snow-swollen clouds.

“Two thousand feet up. Madness, Zeke. Pure madness.”

“I know it, Doc, and you’re slick-heeled. Hope that cremello a yours is clear-footed.”

“Don’t worry. She may be light in the timber, but she’s lady-broke and she’s got bottom.”

Ezekiel spurred his horse on and the riders began to climb.

THIRTY

They followed the burro trail up the slope, snow clinging to their slickers and greatcoats and hats and the horses and rigs and rifle butt plates and every other conceivable surface, until they resembled a trio of ghosts conjured up out of the snow.

Ezekiel rode point, holding his saddle horn, head lowered to the storm. The other men didn’t see it, but he smiled, even more immersed in the moment than when he’d emerged onto the roof of Emerald House several hours prior and witnessed the slaughter that had occurred there.

This last year, he’d existed in a state of numbness so complete, it felt like living death. In bed with Gloria, it would often be well past midnight, occasionally dawn, before he drifted into sleep, so intense were the memories of those exuberant, passionate, bloody Leadville years, his mind blazing back at full bore, trying to unblur the faces, invoke the familiar voices, and tears coming when he did, because they brought with them the fleeting sensation of freedom and his old swagger and the limitless potential every morning had once afforded him. He’d never lain in bed in Leadville, obsessing on the past. It had all been vivid rushing present. Fuck even the future.

One night, he’d recall a week spent specking with the boys near Crested Butte. Another, the rowdy drunken revelry of a Fourth of July celebration. Then he’d imagine himself sitting at a corner table in some bucket of blood, three in the morning, brimming with whiskey as the calico queens hung on his shoulders, watching the paling demeanors of his opponents on the final hand, when he pushed forward his pair of nickel-plated Smith & Wesson revolvers with their mother-of-pearl grips, upping the pot for the flush he held.

Sometimes, he’d just lie there retrieving faces—whores he’d felt tender toward, men he’d fought, men he’d loved, killed, buried—savoring them all, every face, repressed scent, lost sound, with a sweet and piercing nostalgia.

Gus, especially Gus, kept him up nights, Ezekiel’s lips moving in the dark as he spoke for them both—father-son conversations of God and love, guns and horses. Once Gloria had woken, asked, “Who you talking to, baby?” And he’d lied, told her he must’ve been whispering in his sleep. He loved his wife beyond words, but Gus, only Gus, had filled that vacancy, destroyed the angry, restless boredom left in the wake of his outlaw days.

But this Christmas, with his head bowed as the sky hemorrhaged snow, his mind blissfully attended to the present, to keeping his horse on the mountain, to listening for slides over the sounds of wind and snow pelting the leather of his hat, and how his feet had grown cold in the calfskin-lined cowhide boots, and what it would feel like to draw a bead on Oatha and Billy, see what they’d stolen from Bart.

Ezekiel was as happy as he’d been in years.

He felt like the true translation of himself again.

An hour into the climb, they stopped to let the horses blow.

“How close you reckon we are?” Russell asked.

Ezekiel shook his head. He had no way of knowing for certain, since after thirty yards in either direction, the trail disappeared into mist. They pushed on again, the horses panting and snorting, pausing every few steps.

Then the slope began to level out. Ezekiel found that he didn’t have to lean forward as much and the horses quickened their gait.

He finally halted his gelding, and the others came up beside him on his left, the Doc and the preacher still engrossed in the discussion they’d been having for the last four hundred vertical feet.

“I’m not saying you sull around, but you do strike me as a melancholic these days,” Russell said. “Are you daunsy?”

“I’d not deny it.”