SEABORN APPLETON was a happy man. Delighted, in fact.
Business was booming. He had experienced an unprecedented run of prosperity ever since Micah Shughrue had fallen off his scent.
That situation could not have resolved itself any more pleasantly. Shughrue was dead, or assumedly so. The English assassin and the woman had been cut out of the picture, too. He owed not a nickel for their services. Saints be praised!
Of course, he had felt some concern upon discovering they had escaped before the US Marshals had arrived in Mogollon. But those who witnessed their flight claimed that the trio was bedraggled, bloody, and without supplies—and on horseback, the idiots. They could not have lasted long in the unforgiving wilds. Their bones were surely yellowing inside a wolf den by now. Savages, the three of them. Appleton found no joy in his dealings with such individuals. He was a businessman. He preferred not to traffic with unsavories, other than the ones buying his merchandise.
His VW was parked in a field skirting the mining town of Chloride, New Mexico. This place had fallen upon hard times. Its citizenry was primed for the sort of succor Appleton could provide. It had gotten so that he could see the dread and anxiety hanging in a pall above such burgs. It resembled a thick gray cowl. It was an exquisite sight. It looked like money.
His men were sleeping in a car fifty yards off, in the shelter of the willows. The night was still, only the chirruping of crickets. Appleton poured a stiff belt of rum and reflected on how good things happened to good people—to enterprising people such as himself.
A sound carried across the wind-scrubbed earth, from the direction of the willow trees. A strangled scream that became a hissing whistle . . . the sound a man might make as his throat was cut. It was joined by a rising adagio of pain and bewilderment that ended abruptly, replaced by a wet hiccuping sound. That went on awhile, too, before being ushered into the softer notes of night.
Appleton adjusted the flame on his oil lamp, washing the VW’s interior with its shifting light. The sliding door was open. He could barely discern the flat fall of the earth, the rich soil dark as grave dirt—
“Eugene?” he called. “Danny?”
The imbeciles. They drank without measure. They played childish games and hooted laughter well into the night, only to act petulant the following morning, their heads rotten with the ache. He really should find new men, ones whose wits challenged his own.
He held the lantern out, squinting against its greasy glow. A figure coalesced from the darkness. It was joined by another.
“You dolts,” said Appleton. “If you’re looking for liquor, I have none for you. Go back to the goddamn car.”
A third figure joined. Appleton’s breath came out in a sharp hiss.
“Mr. Appleton.”
The voice seemed to come from a great distance away, deep within the guts of the earth . . . and yet it was close, too, so terribly close, nestled right up to his ear.
“I have come home to roost,” Micah Shughrue said.
Hearing his voice, Seaborn Appleton began to scream.