That next week it took a lot of doin' to talk Clete out of going after the bastard who'd shot him. Once he was well enough to ride, we went up to where the bushwhacker'd laid out in ambush. I told Clete the direction the man took off in, north by east, though there was no trail left at all by that time.
Clete remembered the lie I told him that day I sprung him from Doc's–that I didn't know which way that backshooter went. He got over it quick enough, but still, he was mad as the devil at first. Truth is, I was catching hell all around. Mary thought it was my fault that Clete wasn't resting any more than he was, and Doc bawled me out a couple of times for not seeing to it that his star patient wasn't living out at Nell's like he oughta be.
I had just collected me the latest of Doc's tongue-lashings on that subject one evening when I spied the lamp lit in the office.
My hand wasn'teven off of the knob before I started ordering him around. "C'mon, get your things together. I'm taking you out to Nell's. I've heard enough bitching from both your intended and old man Plummer to last me. Whatcha doing here, anyhow?"
"Just going through the posters again," he said, sounding weary. "Seems like there should be something here on him." He wiped his eyes and stretched his arms, but then he went back to leafing through them. I seen the dark color was almost gone from the lines beneath his eyes, but he had recently stopped wearing the bandage by his ear. The gash there looked just terrible, all red and raw. You could still see the string marks where Doc'd sewed him back together, too.
"Now I mean it, damnit," I told him, taking the posters out of his hands and putting them away. "I'm delivering you to Nell's if I have to tie you up to do it. Weak as you are, I don't think you'd be no trouble."
He smiled and stood up then. "Well, all right, but my guess is she's asleep by now."
"Don't matter," I told him. "Won't be the first time we woke her up and probly not the last."
I had a drink at Clooney's while he gathered up his things from upstairs, and before very long we was on the way out to her place.
The man in the high-peaked hat lay where he had lain before and watched the old womans house through his glass. He saw when she lit her lamp and he saw when a man rode up on a dark horse and took his animal into the bam. The woman didn't come outside. A minute later, the rider led his unsaddled horse into the corral, took the bit from its mouth, and turned it loose. When the old womans caller went inside without knocking, the scraggly man on the hill smiled a thin-lipped, flinty smile. Half an hour later, the lamp went out and half an hour after that, the bony man picked up a satchel and a can and walked silently down the long hill toward the house.
We didn't talk much, I remember, but it was a real nice night to be out. The moon full as a pumpkin and it'd got warm enough to be comfortable riding after dark.
Clete seen the glow in the sky before I did. As we topped one of them big hills south of Nell's, he said something I didn't catch and then pointed. The sky to the east was lit up like someone'd lifted the lid off of hell. Clete kicked that big black of his hard enough to make him grunt and I took off after him. Most times I can outride him, but that night I couldn't keep up. I think he'd figured out what that glow in the sky meant long before we crested the rise where you can see down on Nell's ranch good. My God, her whole place was a sheet of flames, licking out most of the windows and even coming through the roof close to the back door. I'd stopped for a second, so surprised I was, but Clete was going flat-out down the last few yards by then. He was off his horse and kicking in a front window before I was even there.
By the time I got up on the porch, he was handing Nell out the window to me wrapped up in something. I hate to admit it, but the smell of burned flesh and hair nearly made me vomit right there. We got her out in the dooryard a ways and I went a few rods off so I could throw up by myself. I come back soon as I could and I seen she was burned as bad as I was afraid she was. By the light of the flames that was eating away her house, I seen that her hair was mostly all gone except for a little patch in front and I didn't even want to think about her legs and feet.
She coughed real weak, and Clete sat her up a little so's she could breathe better, but she winced at the least touch.
Nell said something, but we had to lean close to catch it. After a minute, we figured out what she was saying. "Jesse?" she was asking.
"No, it's me, Clete," he said, kind of surprised she didn't know him.
"Clete?" she ask. "Clete?"
"Yes, it's me," he said. "You just take it easy and you'll be all right."
"Where's Jesse?" she ask. " Did Jesse get out safe?"
"Who?" Clete ask.
"Jesse! Jesse McLeod! He was in there with me." She turned her head a little and looked at her home as the fire burst out the window we had just dragged her through. Already it was catching the overhang of the roof in front. "Oh, God, if Jesse's still in there, he's dead." She cried real quiet after she said that, and then she started coughing again.
"Jesse McLeod? Mary's father?" Clete asked. He was as taken back as I was. I figured she was maybe hit on the head or something.
"Yes, Jesse McLeod. We …" That old gal just stopped talking and watched her home bum down.
A big black scorched place on her cheek and neck was oozing clear stuff down onto the checkered tablecloth that Clete'd wrapped her in, probably to smother out the flames that'd been on her. Pain grabbed at her then and she screwed up her face worse than I could stand to watch. When I looked back, I thought for a while she had died, but after a minute her breathing told me that wasn't so.
"We got to get her in a wagon and over to Doc Plummer's fast as we can," I told Clete.
He looked at her while she was sleeping there or whatever a good long minute. Then he shook his head slow and turned them wolfish eyes on me. "She'd never make it, Willie," he said. That was the closest to crying I ever seen him.
"Yes," Nell whispered. "I'd never last the trip."
Well, if Clete Shannon wasn't the sorriest looking man I ever saw then, I don't know what. "I didn't mean-Nell, I-"
"'Tell the truth and shame the Devil,' my Elmer always said." She gripped Clete's hand real tight and said something that was hard to hear. " … figure it. I just … "
"What's that, Nell?" Clete asked after a while.
"What started it?" she said, louder than before. "What started that fire! The stove was banked off good, and it was practically new, no trouble with it at all!" Her eyes looked crazy at him, and I was glad it wasn't me she was looking to for answers.
The roof fell in about that time, and a million sparks flew up into that moonlit sky. I walked over and lay my hand on the side of the bam. It was hot, all right, but it was in no danger of catching fire, so I figured the animals in there was better off than they'd be outside. I went in and looked around and then checked the corral. Sure enough, there stood Jesse McLeod's big old chestnut standing right by the door. I penned him in the bam and then went back out and walked around the burning house, looking to see whatever I could. Well, I didn't see nothing worth talking about, but around back, where the smoke was going, I smelled it. I saw my buckskin out at the edge of the firelight and he let me catch him easy enough, though Clete's horse was still jumpy as hell.
After I tied them both in the bam beside Jesse's, I come around front to where Clete was still bent over Nell. I sat down close to them, for I couldn't see what else to do. I could of used a drink.
Nell stirred some and squeezed Clete's hand. I could hear most of what she was saying if I listened real close. "There's something you can do, if you're able to, son. Find out who did this to Jesse and me. And when you do, string him up from the highest tree you can find. Somebody must have set it, fire around both doors like that. Somebody must have set that fire, there's no other way. Poor Jesse … Tell Mary … "Her voice faded and I saw her go limp against Clete. He held her up while the walls fell in and after some time the fire burned lower and lower. Nell's breathing got real coarse and unregular and finally so faint that we wasn't sure exactly when it was she slipped away from us.
It's peculiar how a man can both know something and yet not know that same thing at the same time. I seen it before, of course, but that night it was as clear to me as the moon and just as natural. We sat there with Nell propped up and the fire in the house dying away to embers all night long. We knowed she was dead, both Clete and me, though neither one of us said so. And at the same time, it was like if we didn't say it, she wasn't entirely gone either. And that's how we were 'til first light.
When daylight comes on, Clete stood up and brushed off his pants. "She's dead, Willie."
"I know."
It was pitiful to see the look on his face then. "First time I laid eyes on Nell, she was pointing her old Winchester at my heart," he said, his voice full of catches and burrs from sitting there all night and not saying anything, I guess. "I slept the night in her bam, uninvited. After we talked that morning, she fed me and then threw Wilson's men off my trail. I still owe her for that."
"Some gal, was Nell," I said. "I'll miss her."
"So will I, and I'm going to pay her back by getting the bastard who did this to her. You smell the coal oil?" he ask me.
"Yes, I did. Around back."
"It smelled strong inside where I found her," he said. "You see any tracks?"
"No, it was too dark to look, but we can look now."
We walked around the north side and there was the boot tracks coming in and going back out, right up toward that notch in the hills that looks like a rifle sight. About a hundred yards out was a five gallon can on its side.
After Clete smelled it he nodded his head. "Coal oil. I'm going now."
"Where?" I ask him.
He spun around on me so fast I thought he was going to poke me. "Where!? Why, after that sonofabitch, is where, and don't you try and stop me!"
"You can't do that,"I told him. "Not now."
"What in hell do you mean, I can't? You heard what that woman asked me to do, almost with her dying breath. You think I'll walk away from that?"
I took a minute before I answered him, hoping he would cool off some, but it was plain he wasn't going to.
"Clete, I want the same thing you do. We got to catch that murdering bushwhacker." Then I just waited.
"No, I'm going alone, and I'm leaving right now." He strided off toward the bam and I followed him.
"Will you just stop a minute and listen to me?" I asked. He was trying to get Buckshot's reins untied and was having a time with them, it still being pretty dark in the barn.
"No!" he yelled back over his shoulder.
"And I suppose you're just going to let her lie out there for the vultures and coyotes?" That was a low thing to say to him, I know.
He run over to me and I thought for the second time that morning he was going to take me apart. But he didn't. Instead, he calmed way down. "Take Nell's body into town, to Biezmier's. And then get word to her family. After that, take-"
"You can stop giving orders any time now," I told him, "'cause I just quit working for dumbest goddamn sheriff north of Sweet-water!"
He was so surprised he didn't know what to say.
I had plenty more to say. "I was willing to help you with Wilson's bunch because I owed that to you. But I don't owe you this, lettin' you get yourself killed." I got myself settled some before I said any more. "Seems to me, the last thing Nell asked of you was to tell Mary. Have you thought about that?"
He was still lost for words.
"You're going at this all wrong," I told him plain. "Just listen to me for a minute." I sat down on the barrel there and after a time Clete leaned against a stall. "Let me start after him," I said. "I'll go slow and easy 'cause there's no way in hell I can shoot him myself. You take Nell into town, and maybe whatever you can find of Jesse, and then go out and tell Mary. You know, you might lose her if you don't."
He was quiet for a minute before he spoke. "I might at that," he said.
"Maybe you can see about Nell's being buried. Might be able to get it done by this afternoon or tomorrow morning at the latest-probly tomorrow would be better anyway. That way you could get yourself some sleep and us some supplies and a pack animal. And I need a better horse. That buckskin of mine's too old for much hard riding. Take the money for it-a good one, now, don't matter how much it costs-take it out of my pack at the Dakota House and bring my trail things. Speak to someone about keeping an eye on the town 'til we get back, too, maybe John Tate. I'll leave a track broad enough for a blind man to follow, and we might have him in a couple days. What do you say?"
Clete stood up straight. "Maybe we could catch him a couple of miles from here if we left right now," he said.
"You think he slept around here last night?" I asked him. "Just burned down a ranch with two people inside and then took his rest? Would you have, if you was him?"
Clete took a deep breath, but he didn't have to think on it very long. "No, I wouldn't. And I'd still be riding now, and probably this time tomorrow, too."
"Well, come along up the trail with me a few miles so we can both be sure I'm not dead wrong and then come back and do like I said, all right?" I didn't know for sure if he would.
"I thought the deputy was supposed to stay and take care of the town when the sheriff was out chasing killers?" he asked, and I saw his eyes soften under the brim of his hat.
"Maybe so," I answered real smart. "But I ain't the deputy of Two Scalp no more, remember?"
"You are if you're riding after that sonofabitch. Otherwise, you're just a damn vigilante, and I don't ride with vigilantes."
I had to laugh at that one. "Well, all right, have it your own way," I said. "But I'm getting on his trail now and you'll catch up to me in two or three days, right?"
"Willie, damn you," he said, but he wasn't mad no more.
We tied Nell's body in a heavy piece of canvas and put her in the wagon she kept in the bam. Clete give me his jacket and for my bedding I took a big piece of canvas from the same roll we had used for Nell.
I knowed where the trail would start, up close to where I'd found them shells before. Clete rode more than a couple miles with me, and then he saw how it was. Our man had lit out, and he was traveling light and fast-without even a pack horse.
We got to the top of a little rise and he reined Buckshot in. We sat and watched the smoke from Nell's place curl up into the blue sky.
"Willie, are you up to this?" he ask.
"Wasn't me that got shot a couple weeks ago," I told him.
"No, I meant following his trail and living rough for a while. Risking your life in this business, I guess I mean to say."
"Shoot, I'm not new to this game," I said. "Fact is, I earned my daily bread doing this very thing for a time. Not so awful long ago, either."
He looked at me real curious after I said that. "Is that so? Where'd you do that?"
"Down in Texas and the Indian Territory. Tracked into Missouri once, too."
Well, he waited for me to tell the tale, but I didn't feel in no storytelling mood just then, but after a minute I seen he felt he needed to know. I ain't real proud of it, but I worked for Pinkerton's awhile. Don't you fret over me. I know what I'm doin'-well enough, anyway, long as I don't get in a shooting match with this boy."
He took off his hat and scratched his head. "I never knew you were a Pinkerton," he said.
"Lots you don't know about me, young son," I told him.
Clete pulled his Henry from the boot and handed it to me. "Here. You may need this before I see you again."
"Yeah, maybe I can club him with it, if I get close enough" I said. "Bring me one of them scatterguns from the office when you come back."
"All right, rn do that," he said, and then turned his black around. "Watch out for yourself, old timer!" he yelled back, ridin' down that hill fast enough to break his neck. For a minute I wished he would.