‘‘Then we go it alone, John,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘We stay alive and bring about a reckoning in Rest and Be Thankful.’’
A freight wagon drawn by four oxen and a lead pair of longhorn steers creaked past and McBride watched it stop outside the Tunstall Store. A bearded and solemn farmer and his thin wife rode past, both of them on the bare back of a huge gray Percheron. The couple ignored the two armed riders standing outside the post office and kept their eyes fixed on the road ahead. The Lincoln County War had not yet receded into memory, and people were still suspicious of hard-bitten men who carried revolvers.
McBride was completely unaware of it, but he had changed much since fleeing New York. He’d grown leaner, stronger, every ounce of fat burned off by harsh weather and long, arduous trails. His gaze was never still, reaching out around him, seeing everything, missing nothing. His face had planed down to hard angles and his mahogany skin stretched tight to the bone. Although he was a man who smiled often and took a childlike joy in many things, past events had made his capacity for sudden violence grow and at such times his rage was terrible to see. As he and Remorse walked their horses along the street, past the White Elephant Saloon to the Wortley Hotel, they looked exactly like what they were: lean, dangerous lobo wolves on the prowl.
The hotel clerk directed the two riders to put up their horses in the barn out back where there was a good supply of hay and oats. McBride and Remorse were the only guests and the steak and potatoes the clerk prepared for them were a rough and ready meal but tasty enough.
After they’d eaten, the clerk, impressed by Remorse’s clerical collar, sat at their table and soon engaged the reverend in a discussion on whether there is a conflict between faith and reason and demanded to know if faith without proof is mere superstition.
Remorse eagerly picked up the philosophical gauntlet and the two men went at it, arguing back and forth, their index fingers poking holes in the air. McBride listened for more than an hour, contributed nothing, then, bored into semiconsciousness, staggered to his room.
He dreamed of Bear Miller again.
McBride was standing in the middle of a vast, open prairie under a sky the color of tin. Old Bear sat his horse, a blanket roll behind his saddle. Behind him moved an immense herd of buffalo, flowing over the grass like a muddy brown river.
‘‘I got to be going, John,’’ Bear said. ‘‘I’m following the buffalo. Going to find me a new range for a spell.’’
A warm wind tugged at McBride, and the air smelled musky, of the buffalo herd.
‘‘You were right about the woman, Bear,’’ McBride said. ‘‘She tried to kill me. I thought I was gut-shot.’’
The old man smiled. ‘‘There’s just no accounting for female folks, is there, John?’’
McBride looked around him, his eyes reaching into the endless land. ‘‘I wanted you to meet someone. His name is Saul Remorse. He’s a reverend, but I don’t know where he is.’’
‘‘Don’t matter, John, I know him anyhow. He’s followed the buffalo, rode after them a long ways, eating their dust.’’
‘‘He’s a sorrowing man. His wife died, you know. She was Chinese and she hung herself from a pear tree.’’
‘‘I know,’’ Bear said. ‘‘But his suffering will not last forever. It had a beginning, and it will have an end.’’
McBride took a step closer to the old man. ‘‘Where will you go, Bear?’’
Bear made a chopping motion with his bladed hand. ‘‘That way, south. I have no way of knowing where the trail will end.’’
‘‘Will you come back?’’
‘‘I don’t know that either. Maybe where I’m going there’s no coming back.’’ The old man touched his hat. ‘‘I hope to see you around, John McBride.’’ He swung his horse away, then, grinning, yelled to McBride, ‘‘Here, John, catch!’’
A green apple soared through the air and McBride caught it with both hands. He watched as Bear rode into the buffalo herd, then vanished into dust, distance and wakefulness.
McBride opened his eyes to gray dawn light and loud pounding on his room’s door. It was Remorse, telling him that breakfast was on the table.
‘‘Don’t you ever sleep?’’ McBride asked, opening his door an inch.
Remorse stood there freshly shaved, bright-eyed and anxious to meet the day. ‘‘No, John, I seldom sleep. I sat up all night arguing with Bartholomew. That’s the clerk’s name, you know. He’s a bright enough lad, but much given to certain doctrines of popery that I cannot abide.’’
‘‘He didn’t think it strange, a reverend armed with Remingtons?’’
‘‘If he did, he didn’t say. Bartholomew is a very polite young man.’’
McBride scratched his chest and yawned. ‘‘All right, I’ll be there in a few minutes.’’
Remorse smiled. ‘‘Good. I’ll try to save you some bacon.’’ He hesitated. ‘‘Oh, here, this is for you.’’ He handed McBride a green apple.
‘‘Where did you get this?’’ McBride asked, shocked.
‘‘I found it in the kitchen. It’s good for a man to eat a green apple in the morning. I always do before I ride a long trail.’’
Both men wore slickers as they rode out of Lincoln under a broken sky that threatened rain. The morning was murky, night shadows still clinging to the ravines between the hills. The air was heavy and damp and hard to breathe.
After a mile of silence passed between them, Remorse smiled and asked, ‘‘John, you’re not still sore about the bacon, huh?’’
McBride shook his head. ‘‘No, the eggs were just fine.’’
‘‘Then why has the cat got your tongue?’’
‘‘I’m thinking. No, not really that. Maybe wondering is a better word.’’
‘‘Wondering about what?’’
‘‘Where we go from here. We ride into Rest and Be Thankful and then—’’
‘‘And then the trouble comes to us,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘You don’t need to worry about what happens next. Jared Josephine will dictate those terms.’’
‘‘And when he does?’’
‘‘Then we deal with whatever he throws at us.’’ Remorse nodded, more to himself than McBride. ‘‘No, we won’t have to force it. The war will come right at us like a cannonball express.’’
‘‘If the telegram does no good, can we win it? The war, I mean.’’
‘‘John, if only half, a quarter, of the outlaws in town side with Jared we’re done for. There’s only two of us and we can’t win that battle.’’
‘‘Then why are we riding toward a lost battle as though we couldn’t help it?’’
‘‘Because the outlaws are an ‘if.’ The telegram is an ‘if.’ And then there’s pride. We’re both named men and if—there’s that ‘if’ again—we turn tail and run, the news of our rank cowardice will spread far and wide. I can’t afford to let that happen. Can you?’’
McBride shook his head, thinking that turning tail had one big advantage—while all those people were talking about his rank cowardice he’d still be alive. But aloud he said, ‘‘I guess I’ll stick. Besides, I owe Thad Harlan for putting a bullet in me. I can’t just light a shuck and forget it happened.’’