Kenton was shaken awake at dawn. He sat up stiffly, confused.
Joe Rush’s expression was serious and maybe a little afraid.
“I made a terrible mistake, Mr. Kenton. Lord forgive me, but I fell asleep at watch. And now Mr. Jones is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes. I don’t understand it. His pallet is empty.”
Kenton got up quickly. “I understand it,” he said. “Quickly…there’s no time to waste!”
“Where’s he gone?”
“Out to face that third ambusher, alone.”
“Why?”
“Because that ambusher is Colonel J.B. Ottinger, a man who has hated Pernell Jones ever since the war, when Pernell disfigured his face with a shotgun blast. I knew it was him when you told me your son had seen a man with scars over half his face.”
“Why in the devil is Jones facing him alone, though?”
“He feels it’s the only way. Ottinger has tormented and chased him for years, hired would-be assassins, all that sort of thing. I think he’s ready to bring it to an end.”
They dressed and armed themselves quickly. Joe Rush sent Bart out to the stable to saddle and prepare two horses for his and Kenton’s use.
Oliver had spent the night in the trading post with the rest of them, rather than in his cabin, and readied himself to go as well, but Joe stopped him. “Pap, we’ll need you here, to guard this place in case he shows up while we’re gone.”
“I can handle myself as good as either one of you!”
“I know. You proved that yesterday. But I want you to stay here, and keep watch. It’s important, Pap.”
The old man nodded, reluctantly, but obediently positioned himself by the window on a stool.
“A brave man, your father,” Kenton said as he and Jones loaded weapons and made their final checks.
“I’m proud of him,” Rush said. “He was bitterly ashamed at having been made to dance like he was, but after yesterday, I don’t think he has a thing left he needs to prove to anyone. That was some piece of fighting he did.”
They left the house and headed to the stables. When they got there, they found that Bart had saddled no horses for them. Bart, in fact, was not to be found.
“Where the devil is that boy?” Joe Rush said. “Bart! Show yourself—and you’d best have a good explanation as to why you ain’t…”
Rush trailed off into silence as, from behind a big feed bin, Colonel J.B. Ottinger stepped, with Bart before him, standing with a tear-stained face and a shotgun thrust against his spine.
Ottinger grinned a very ugly grin at Kenton. “Well, hello, Mr. ‘Houser.’ Fancy seeing you here!”
“Let the boy go, Ottinger,” Kenton said.
“I’ll let this shotgun go, that’s what I’ll do,” Ottinger replied. “Can you imagine how big a hole it would blow through this lad? Both of you, toss your weapons into that feed bin.”
“You won’t kill the boy. The moment you do, you’re a dead man, and you know it.”
“Yes…but he’d also be a dead boy. Can you live with that?”
Kenton and Rush glanced at one another, in silent communication. Ottinger had them. With great resentment and reluctance, they disarmed themselves and tossed the weapons into the grain-filled bin.
“All right,” Ottinger said. “That’s how I want it. And now, Kenton, you take some of that rope yonder and tie up your partner there, good and tight. Then come tie this boy.”
Kenton despised cooperating with a man he was sure would murder them all, cooperation notwithstanding, but he had no option. He obeyed.
“Now,” Ottinger said, “you’re going to go fetch me Pernell Jones back in the trading post. And you’re going to carry him out, and all of us will go off to a private area and have ourselves a score-settling party.”
“A bit of a problem there,” Kenton said. “Jones is gone.”
“He’s not gone. The man was wounded. He’s inside and you know it.”
“He’s gone, I tell you! Why do you think we were getting ready to ride out? We were going to look for him.”
“Going for a doctor, that’s what you were doing. Or maybe for a territorial marshal.”
“Both of us? Not likely. We were going to look for Jones, and that’s no lie.”
Ottinger was clearly debating whether to believe this. “It’s true,” the trussed-up Joe Rush said. “We kept watch last night in case you were still around. I fell asleep before dawn, and he slipped out. He wasn’t hurt as bad as you might think.”
“Running from me!” Ottinger declared.
“More likely coming out to find you,” Kenton said. “He was talking about doing that. He didn’t want to bring danger down on other people. It’s the same reason he disbanded his people at Confederate Ridge before you could overrun them with your soldiers…and no doubt find an excuse to massacre them.”
“You sing the same songs forevermore, eh, Kenton? Any I’ve ‘massacred,’ as you choose to put it, have been killed because they merited the fate. War is ugly, Kenton. You clearly didn’t have the stomach for what war sometimes requires.”
“There are crimes, even in wartime. And the war is long over now, Colonel. If you’d killed any at Confederate Ridge, you would have been killing citizens of a territory of your own nation, not at war against you.”
“As I understand it, Jones and his people didn’t consider themselves citizens, and for them, the war was still on.”
“They wanted only to be left alone. And whatever they considered themselves, citizens they were, and are.”
“It doesn’t matter now. I care only about Jones…and you. You should have never assassinated me in your journal, Kenton. The words you wrote, the lies, have hurt me through the years almost as much as this!” He pointed spastically at his ruined face. “I intend to see you pay for what you did to me, just like Jones!”
A shadow moved somewhere behind Ottinger; a rear door opened and sunlight spilled in.
Pernell Jones, outlined against the light, stepped inside. “Hello, Colonel,” he said. “I should have realized you’d not have gone far away. It would have saved me some searching this morning.”
“Jones! Come around here where I can see you, out of that light!”
Pernell Jones walked slowly into the shadows, where his features became visible. He moved somewhat gingerly because of his wound, and pain was in his eyes, but the brighter light in them was that of hatred for Ottinger. When Jones was beside Kenton, he stopped.
Ottinger stared at him, face-to-face. “You have a weapon hidden on you anywhere?”
Jones lifted his arms, then lowered them, slipped off his coat with much stiffness and wincing, and did a slow turn so that Ottinger could see he bore no weapon. “I dropped my rifle outside,” he said.
“You’re a damned fool, then. You could have shot me from behind and been done with it.”
“I thought about it. But I feared I’d injure one of these others. Besides, that’s not how I settle my scores. If you want to settle our longstanding differences, Ottinger, do it in a manful way. You and I will go off, together. Fight this thing out however you want it. Knives, pistols, bare fists. But leave these people alone.”
“You’ll not set the terms for my actions, Jones. But you and I will go off together, indeed. And when you die, you’ll die in the kind of suffering you’ve caused me all these years. Do you know what it is to be mangled? To have children stare at you, and women turn their heads?”
“I wasn’t trying to mangle your face when I shot you,” Jones said. “I was trying to blow your head completely off—due retaliation for the massacre you led. My aim was just a bit off.”
“Too bad,” Kenton muttered.
“Yes, it is too bad,” Jones said. “My life would have been much different through all the years afterward if I hadn’t had to spend so much of it dodging your hired assassins, Ottinger. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Do you not have the courage to fight your own fights? Do you hire out every dirty job, afraid to take it on yourself? When I shot out your eye, did I blow off your manhood, too?”
“Damn you!” Ottinger hissed. “Damn you, Jones, I’ll not hear that from you! We’ll end this right now, right here!”
He shoved the boy with the muzzle of the shotgun, pushing him down. Raising the shotgun, he aimed first at Kenton, and fired.
Kenton, though, ducked just before the blast went off, and felt only the sting of a couple of pellets barely grazing the top of his head, scraping off a little hair and flesh, but doing no real damage.
Jones, despite his prior wound, dove through a stall door beside him and out of sight. Ottinger could have easily shot him right through the wall of the stall, but he couldn’t see exactly where he was, and dared not risk expending the second barrel and leaving his shotgun empty.
Ottinger stepped forward to look into the stall. Kenton rose and lunged toward him, but the shotgun swung toward him and he was forced to stop.
“You…scar-face!”
Kenton looked up to see old Oliver Rush coming in the same rear door that had admitted Jones. The old man had his shotgun raised, aimed at Ottinger.
Ottinger swore and raised his own shotgun…
But not in time. Oliver Rush fired.
Most of the pellets missed Ottinger, but enough of them caught him on the left side of his face to blow out his only good eye and shred his flesh. He screamed and fell back, dropping his shotgun. Blind, he lay on his back, blood gushing, then pulled himself upright, feeling his ruined face.
The noises he made were terrible, and Kenton found himself, to his surprise, actually feeling a burst of pity for the terrible man. Then he reminded himself that many of those Ottinger had massacred had no doubt been just as pathetic in their last moments, and he had shown them no mercy at all. And what mercy had Callon seen? Or Milo Buckner?
Ottinger pushed himself to his knees. Bleeding and unseeing, he waved his arms around in the air, like a child playing blindman’s buff. Then he bent over, hands on the strawy floor, groping until he found the shotgun he’d dropped. Kenton feared for a moment that Ottinger was going to fire it blindly in whatever direction he thought it would do the most damage, but almost instantly it became evident that this was not his intention.
Ottinger put the muzzle of the shotgun beneath his chin, propped the butt on the stable floor, and simultaneously with giving out a terrible cry, pushed the trigger.
Kenton stared at Ottinger, too stunned to move right away. Then he broke out of it, stepped forward, reached down, and took the shotgun from the man.
Ottinger’s voice was gurgly, blood coming out of his mouth. “What happened? Why did it not fire?” he asked.
“The shotgun malfunctioned,” Kenton said. “The shell didn’t go off.”
Ottinger moaned, for a long time, making the kind of noise that surely must rise out of hell. “Kill me!” he blubbered. “I can’t live like this! Just like before…just like before…”
“Just like before, but with one difference,” Kenton said, gently. “This time I don’t think you’re going to survive, Colonel.”
The truth of this was obvious. Ottinger was losing blood rapidly.
“I’m blind…all my face is ruined now…all of it…”
“That’s of no importance now,” Kenton said. “I suggest, sir, that you take these final moments to make your peace with God.”
Ottinger, though, did nothing but keep up his moaning. But it grew weaker; he slumped to the side.
Pernell Jones walked up slowly to him, looking down in horror at the man who had been his bane for years. It was hardly like looking at a man at all now.
Jones knelt, right in the spreading pool of blood. “Ottinger…you’re dying.”
“Jones? Jones…damn you, Jones…damn you…”
“Don’t talk so, Colonel. Not at this time. Make your peace; you’re a dying man.”
Ottinger groped about him, searching for a weapon. “I’ll kill you, Jones…I’ll kill you, and Kenton too…”
Jones shook his head, stunned at the persistence of this man’s hatred. He pulled away, stood, and stepped back.
Ottinger continued to moan and threaten, his voice growing weaker by the moment. Finally his strength was gone, and he lay on the barn floor, dying faster now, his voice gone.
Kenton watched Ottinger’s chest heave spastically, drawing in its final breaths now, until finally it stopped moving.
“The depths of the man’s hatred were incredible,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the like of it.”
Jones, looking solemn, nodded, turned away, and would look at Ottinger no more.
It took a long time to settle down the women.
They had not been a part of all the violence that had erupted around them, and did not for some time understand what had happened. When finally they did, they urged that someone go find a territorial lawman—a suggestion not popular with any of the men.
Joe Rush said, “We have nothing to gain by involving the law in this. No one was here to witness any of this. And I don’t want my father dragged into a bunch of trouble with the law. Not at his age. Everyone who was killed here, with the exception of Milo Buckner, was killed with perfect justification. I don’t need my father hauled off into some courtroom, in his dotage, to suffer through some kind of legal nonsense just to reach the same conclusion we already know.” He turned to Kenton. “And I don’t want to see this little adventure recounted in the pages of Gunnison’s Illustrated American, either, with all due respect.”
Kenton nodded. “Some stories can’t be told. This is one of them.” It was a hard statement for him to make, for this was a grand story indeed, from the firefall on Gomorrah through the final, ironic death of the most wicked military man Kenton had ever known. Yet to tell the tale would be to compromise the safety and reputations of good people.
“What about Ottinger?” Jones asked. “Obviously there will be some sort of attempt to track down what happened to him. A high-ranking officer disappears from his command, then never returns…it will stir a lot of questions.”
“If we bury him deeply enough and keep our mouths closed, those questions will simply remain unanswered,” Kenton said. “As for those ambushers who died, I doubt any search for them will ever be made. They were probably just lone wolves, no family, no real connections. I’ve seen plenty of the type.”
“And good riddance to them two,” Joe Rush said.
Kenton turned to Jones. “But what about Milo? I hate for his end to be in some anonymous grave.”
“We’re all anonymous in the grave, Kenton. I’ll make sure that those who need to know what happened to him, will.”
“The Confederate Ridge folks?”
“Yes. That was the only family Milo had left.”
“But they’re dispersed now to Lord only knows where.”
“Not forever. They all know about my brother. They all know where to establish communication with me. We’ll come together again, if there is anything I can do about it.”
“Ottinger is gone, and so is his threat…unless his report blaming you for the destruction of Gomorrah comes back to haunt you.”
“If he ever filed that report at all. That report, I figure, was probably a pretext he would use to justify overrunning us. When we escaped before he could do that, he may not have cared anymore about blaming that fire on us. But who can know? We’ll deal with that situation as it comes.”
“So mum’s the word on all that happened here,” Kenton said. “Is that our agreement?”
“It is,” Joe Rush said. “Now, let’s round up some shovels. We’ve got some gravedigging to do.”