FRANK, CROCKETT, AND A small crowd of miners stood around the object sticking up out of the creek shallows. A length of iron gas pipe two feet long and six inches wide, with hexagonal caps screwed onto either end and a plunger sticking out the top. It had landed upside down in the soft bed of Crooked Creek, right between a pair of women washing out bloody dressings to reuse on men wounded at the front. Just stuck there in the mud, undetonated.
A bomb.
Dusk was coming down, the shadows seeping longer from the trees. The creek water eddied and spun around the strange object. The eyes of the men were wide, as if they looked upon some crude sword set in stone.
Who would dare to pull it?
Frank looked at Crockett. The big Devil Dog was still worked up after his duel with the biplane. Apple-cheeked, panting through open jaws. He’d only gotten off a quick burst as the flying machine roared over the spur, but he seemed changed. The bombing had done something to him. A madness was in him now. A fury. Not the deep and hidden coals, smoldering, which Frank had known for so long. No, Crock’s fury was bright and wild; he was on fire, ready to burn down the world.
“Y’all git back,” he said, stepping down into the creek.
Frank snatched his arm. “Step off it, Crock. No reason to go down there.”
Crockett’s nostrils flared. His gaze moved slowly to Frank’s hand on his arm. Wormy blue veins were crawling out of the man’s temples; red-burst capillaries blazed beneath his eyes. His language seemed stranger and older, said singsong: “I’d ask ye kindly to unhand me.”
They had to be the two strongest men on the mountain.
“Or what, Crock?”
“I won’t ask ye again.”
A cruel little blade appeared in the man’s hand, hooked like an eagle’s beak. Drawn from some secret pocket on his person, kept near to hand for such occasions. Frank felt the sudden softness of his belly, his jellied insides and dark skin—said to be equal under God and law but too often trespassed with the blades and bullets of paler men.
Still, his grip remained. “Drop my guts if you want, Crock. But it won’t put them bombs back in the air, nor leave enough of me to help you shoot your way to the other side of the mountain, now will it?” He nodded toward Blair.
Crockett’s eyes went to the bomb sticking up out of the creek. His voice dropped. “The boys is liable to call it quits after this. To run on home.”
Frank shook his head. “I got no home, Crock. My wife’s dead, the company took my house. My granny knows I ain’t coming back. I do, I got nothing but a noose waiting on me, prison cell if I’m lucky. How ’bout you?”
Crockett twitched his nose. “Naught for me, neither.”
“Then you and me, Crock, we ain’t going home, no matter what the rest of these boys do.” He held out his hand. “Are we?”
The bearded man breathed. The olden script on his chest relaxed slightly. He took Frank’s hand. “Never go home.”
“Never go home,” said Frank.
Crockett looked back to the bomb. “What about that? Cain’t just leave it there for some poor son-bitch to stub his toe on it.”
He’d hardly said it when a small, square-jawed man came leaping down the far embankment in a rumpled coat and tie. Bill Blizzard. Without a word to any of them, he took off his boots, peeled off his socks, rolled up his trouser legs, and hiked out into the creek. All around, the miners who’d crept close to witness the confrontation between the pair of big miners were scurrying back, climbing up out of the creek and crouching behind trees and boulders, near as they dared, ready to duck and cover.
Frank and Crock hustled behind a boulder and peeked around the side. Blizzard didn’t seem to notice. He looked at the iron pipe bomb from one angle, then another, rolling up the sleeves of his coat, muttering to himself. “Wee buns. Nothing to it. Go on, then.”
As they watched, the small man grabbed the iron plunger with both hands and heaved the bomb right out of the muck, staggering backward slightly with the effort. He held it there mud-chunked and dripping like a fish he’d caught, a prize catfish noodled out of some deep hole in the bank. “Would ye look at that, boys.”
Crockett cupped his hands to his mouth, hollering for all to hear. “Let’s give it back to Don Chafin arseways!”
The men at Crooked Creek roared.