“What you did, Pargeter . . .” he said.
Chess’s face contorted, sneer and snarl at once. Spraying blood down his chin, he spat.
“Dih’nt . . . do ih . . . f’you,” he replied.
And then, the light went out. Chess’s head relaxed, horribly slowly, to one side. His limbs spasmed, insectile, locked in death’s final jitter.
“CHESS!”
Yancey twisted again, finally spotting Morrow where he lunged against a dozen Bewelcome men’s strong arms; struggled and bucked, to get only a punch in the gut for his pains. Another man struck him on the back of the head, open-palmed, yelling: “Let him rot, the little bastard! You know who that is, stranger?”
“Better than any of you ever will, motherfucker!” Morrow shouted back, thrashing. It got him another slug, this time ’cross the face.
Sophy Love, her initial shock gone, ignored it all, continually tracing her husband’s face, as if unable to keep from touching him. “Seemed—forever, an eternity. Like I was dreaming, save I couldn’t wake. What’s happened, Mesach?”
Love held her by both shoulders, smile boyish-wide. “You’ve been restored, girl; He saw you through, like I said He would. You were always so strong in your faith, Sophy—stronger than me, by far, and that’s what saved you. Saved all of us, to be together again at last.”
“Sheriff Love?”
Perhaps it was the almost toneless diffidence of the question that disarmed him; Yancey would never know if Love might’ve reacted more warily to anything louder. Simply that as he turned to face her, on sheerest reflex, she lifted one of Chess’s Colts—and put a shot neatly through his bare chest, just below the breastbone.
Yet again, Love plunged to fetch up on one knee, supplicant; Sophy shrieked, dragging a wail of fright from her babe along with howls of shock and fury from the watching crowd, all of which slid over Yancey like water off tarred canvas. Without haste, she walked to where he knelt, and placed the other gun against his forehead.
“Draw,” she said. Knowing full well he had nothing left to do so with.
Love gasped, paralyzed as his followers seemed to be, utterly aghast by the situation’s impossibility. Then the shock in his eyes gave way, like seasons turning over: Yancey saw fury, then memory, guilt, regret. Eventually, at the last, a bitterly sad acceptance.
“’S fair,” he managed. “Wasn’t . . . the True Lord at all, who aided me. I knew that. But since . . . I got what I wanted, I’ll . . . pay the price . . . gladly.”
“Glad or sorry, I don’t much care.” The coldness inside her had eaten everything, leaving this one last task to complete. “Goodbye, Sheriff.”
She pulled the trigger.
Yancey’s final bullet went in at an angle, came out the same way—took half of Love’s nice new skull along with it, from what Chess could glimpse. He’d’ve liked far more to see it done closer up, and taken his time enjoying the view. But he felt his spirits lifted just a tad by the shot’s echo, that oh-so-familiar refrain.
Little Missus Kloves served out her apprenticeship and joined the fraternity of shoot-to-kills, blooded herself in anger, leaving the table well-set for a nice long dinner of revenge served cold. Not too shabby, for some chocolate-box flit in skirts probably never expected to get ten miles out from that dust heap we found her in.
As though Chess hadn’t been just as much the death of that damn place, in far more direct fashion than even Sheriff Love himself. But it didn’t much matter now, he reckoned; enough that he knew the truth, and owned it. Wouldn’t be long, either way.
Oh, and everything really was going now, eaten ’round the edges like a rag on fire—fast, fast. So Goddamn unremitting.
It amazed Chess how he’d really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he’d miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool.
Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk—on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy’s face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook’s voice preaching, or Yancey’s, singing. Ed’s heartbeat under his cheek.
Old Kees Hosteen ribbing him ’round the campfire, taking slaps just to stay close, and never faulting him for it. Just the way you are, and we all know that, Chess. God damn, you’re a mean little man.
Friends.
More than one by the end of it, yeah, and not all of ’em paid for in blood, or favours. Whoever would’ve seen that comin’, back in his San Fran gutter days?
Ed’s face again, a-swim in the gathering darkness, struggling against his captors—was that raw pain on it for Chess, or because of him? He hadn’t ever looked to see anybody mourn over him, dead or alive. Hadn’t ever looked to care if they did, or didn’t.
Yancey’d been snatched up too, now—pinned at the wrist by one man, the waist by another, grimly wrestling with a third over her firearm. Love’s woman swayed, mouth an open black wound in a pink-and-white mask, while that brat of hers screamed on. Between them, the long-limbed collapse of Sheriff Love had finally resolved itself into a heap of fresh meat, his zealot’s eyes gone blank and cooling, rolled to the sky. No one seemed to be paying all that great a mind to it anymore, co
nsidering; far more intent on Yancey, who they looked like they were fixing to rip apart, for having connived his doom.
Which maybe explained why none of ’em paid any mind to the greasy blackness Chess saw—felt?—boil off Love’s flesh, seeping out through his gaping mouth, his nose, his ears, the very pores of his skin. The Enemy, shucking its busted-up cat’s-paw like a popped butterfly-bag and eddying Chess’s way once more, wrapping itself ’round him coil by loving coil ’til it was close enough to whisper through his skull, like it was a broken bone flute.