A.J. viewed his handiwork. He had no idea what the next step was. He thought it odd that he felt very little remorse about killing the men. His only regret was that he had not arrived soon enough to save the young woman from suffering such trauma. He looked over at his trembling female companion.
“I think she’s in shock,” A.J. said. “It could kill her. We need to get her into town.” He leaned close to her ear. “Can you hear me?” She made no sound and continued to stare at the horizon. He looked over at Eugene. “I don’t think she’s going to be walking out anytime soon.”
“We’ll carry her,” Eugene said. “We don’t need any more bodies up here. They’re going to have to haul them out in a truck as it is.” He reached down and pulled the K-Bar knife from the sheath in one of the dead men’s boots and looked at the razor sharp blade. “These guys had all the toys,” he said. Then he chuckled softly. “Man, don’t you know they would be pissed if they knew they got wiped out by a guy with a baseball bat?” A.J. glared at him, and Eugene took the hint. “I’ll go cut some poles,” he said. “We’ll make a stretcher out of the tent.” He headed from the camp to find some suitable material. While Eugene was gone, A.J. dug around in the tent and came up with a shirt. The woman stiffened when he gently removed the remnants of her original.
“Easy, now,” he said. “You’ve had a bad day, but I’m not going to hurt you. Those people won’t bother you anymore. We just need to get you covered up.” She remained stiff but did not otherwise resist. It was like dressing a large doll. When he finished, he wrapped her back up in the blanket. “That’s much better. Just hang in there a little while longer. We’re going to get you out of here and take you to town.” She continued to sit motionless.
Eugene came back dragging two long saplings. He stripped them of branches and fashioned a workable conveyance using the tent plus the dead men’s bootlaces. When he finished, he viewed his creation and nodded in satisfaction.
“Are we ready?” he asked. A.J. looked at him for a long moment.
“How much prison time do you suppose I’ll get?” he asked, gesturing in the direction of the deceased.
“It was self-defense. You won’t get anything.”
“He wasn’t self-defense,” A.J. said, pointing at the man he had shot. “I looked him in the eye and murdered him.”
“No, see, that’s where you’re wrong. He was about to blow you away, but you got him first.”
“That’s not what happened. You know it, and I know it.”
“Yeah, and nobody else knows it. So, if you’ll keep your mouth shut about that ‘looking him in the eye’ shit, everything will be just fine.” Eugene spoke in an exasperated tone. “I knew you were going to make a big deal out of this. I just knew it.”
“Well, damn, it is a big deal,” A.J. noted, gesturing at the carnage. “We won’t be dealing with Slim on this. There will be big boys involved. I better just tell the truth and hope they take the circumstances into account.” Eugene sighed.
“The only thing I hate worse than a hero is a stupid hero. If you hadn’t killed them, I would have. Now, quit worrying. And for Christ’s sake, let me do the talking when we get to town.” He squatted down in front of the woman. “Lady,” he said loudly, as if she were deaf, “we’re going to put you on this stretcher and carry you out of here. Nothing bad is going to happen.” He spread the makeshift palanquin next to her. She blinked, looked at Eugene, and screamed.
He was caught off guard and jumped back, tripping over his own feet and falling in the process. It would have been a comic display if the situation had not been so bleak. “Lady, please don’t do that again,” he said. She was sobbing quietly. A.J. put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her.
“Let’s get her out of here,” he said to Eugene. He stood and stepped behind her. He reached gently under her arms while Eugene got her feet, and they carefully positioned her on the litter. Without comment they raised their burden and began the long journey to less lethal climes. When they reached the top of the ridge, Eugene told A.J. to stop a moment, and he placed his end of the stretcher on the ground.
“I forgot my gun,” he said.
“Leave it,” A.J. replied, but it was too late. He watched in irritation as Eugene ran back to the campsite. He turned his attention to his remaining companion while waiting for Eugene’s return. He hoped she was going to be all right. For that matter, he held similar aspirations for himself. There were serious explanations due regarding the mountain man he had shot, and even if he could avoid too much trouble with the law on that score, there was still Maggie to deal with. She did not condone killing in any form, save a selection of flowering plants twice a year, and he was going to be hard pressed to explain the pile of victims, particularly the one he had diced with the automatic rifle.
Eugene came hustling back up the hillside, panting. “Got it,” he said. They resumed their journey to the land of the relatively sane, walking in silence for a while. Then Eugene spoke again.
“That was wild,” he said from his position on the rear. “I thought you were a bad son of a bitch that night in Sand Valley, but that was nothing. I am going to have to keep a closer eye on you. We don’t want this John Wayne shit to get out of hand.” It was one of Eugene’s most annoying habits to talk about subjects best left alone. He could home right in on the last thing in the world a person wanted to discuss and linger there indefinitely. It was a knack.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” A.J. replied.
“Took out three armed men with a ball bat,” Eugene continued with an admiring tone in his voice, oblivious to A.J.’s wishes. “Went through those boys like Sherman went through Georgia. That last one would have had you if I hadn’t distracted him.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” A.J. repeated, wishing he had gone to Atlanta for participative water sports. A question occurred to him. “And what took you so long getting down there? Did you stop for a smoke? Maybe take a leak?” These were ungracious questions, but the niceties were temporarily beyond him.
“Everybody’s a damn critic,” Eugene responded. “What do you mean, what took me so long? I had to run down the back of the ridge, get the gun, run back up the ridge, and then come down to where the action was. You were supposed to wait. You almost got killed.”
“I couldn’t wait,” A.J. said.
“Yeah, I know you couldn’t wait,” Eugene replied. “But you should have waited anyway.”
“Quit talking,” A.J. said. They walked on in silence while he mulled what he intended to tell Slim. He was mentally reviewing and rehearsing, editing the story to its most explainable form. He was from the old school and deemed it important to present multiple murders in the best possible light.
“Bad son of a bitch,” Eugene muttered every so often, mostly to himself, replaying in his mind the charge of the bat brigade.
Upon reaching their vehicles, they decided to split forces; one would take their ward straight to Doc Miller while the other went to fetch Slim.
“Take her to Doc,” Eugene said. “I’ll go get Slim and meet you there.” It didn’t matter to A.J. A cloud of doom had engulfed him during the trip home. Any way he cut it, he knew he was screwed. He would go to jail, where he would have to kill some big, lonely felon named Sonny or Lukey in defense of his honor in the showers, and then he would never get out. He would lose his wife. She would divorce him and in her shame marry an insurance agent or an accountant, a city boy with soft hands and pale, bony legs who would move her to Atlanta and frown at her in rebuke if she ever exceeded her grocery budget.