Lone Creek

56

I drove with headlights out again to the shed where Balcomb had shot and butchered the horses. His cool started to evaporate as he realized where we were going. As it came into sight, a dense dark rectangle against the night sky, he swiveled around in his seat toward Reuben.

"Look, this has gone far enough. You've made your point. You want all the diamonds? Take them. What else?"

I stopped and cut the truck's engine. We hadn't rehearsed or even talked about what came next. It just happened.

"Kirk wasn't a particularly good kid," Reuben said. "But he wasn't a bad one, either. Kind of weak, kind of dumb, but he was muddling through all right. Then some snake like you comes along."

"Now, Reuben, all I did was offer him-"

Madbird leaned forward and gripped Balcomb's larynx between his thumb and forefinger.

"Lot of things we never could figure out about white people," he said. "Why you want to shit in the lodge, or carry your snot around in little rags. It don't bother us any-it's just weird."

He tightened his hand grip. Balcomb made a choking sound and clutched at Madbird's wrist.

"But killing a animal the way you did them horses, scaring them half crazy and tearing them all up," Madbird said. "That pisses us off."

He released his grip contemptuously. Balcomb glared, massaging his throat, but didn't speak this time.

It was my turn. I understood real well my personal anger at him. But the feeling cut much deeper, and all through the past days, an undercurrent had been running through my mind as to why. There were millions of facets, but they came down to one.

"The reason people like you get ahead, Balcomb, is because you don't carry the same loads the rest of us do-no fairness, no generosity, no sense of obligation. Maybe you've got superior genes for survival. I don't care. It makes me sick knowing you're on this planet."

We all got out. I opened up the doors of the shed. Reuben gave Balcomb a shove with the shotgun barrel toward the interior. He must have believed that we were just out to scare him-we were two-bit rednecks who wouldn't dare to really harm him, and his revenge would start as soon as he was safe again. He stalked forward, shaking his head in scorn.

But when he got to the doors, he hesitated. He took a step in, but immediately backed up. He stayed there maybe fifteen seconds, staring into the darkness inside.

"This has gone far enough," he said again, but this time he muttered it.

He turned around, looking distracted and furtive. Then he made an abrupt lunge, trying to scurry past Reuben.

Reuben brought the shotgun barrel up sharply and clipped him across the head.

Balcomb reeled away into the shed, spinning and clutching at air. Reuben followed and belted him again, this time with a full home run swing. I'd never heard anything quite like the sound it made.

In the stark silence that followed, Reuben said, "Got into some hand-to-hand on the Yalu. Too thick for a bayonet to do much good. Best deal was to take your rifle like that and swing it."

Balcomb was sprawled on the ground, where he'd come to rest after crashing against a stall. Reuben dragged him by the shirt to a scattering of dung that the Cat's blade had pushed against a wall. He turned Balcomb facedown into it, then put a boot on the back of his head and gave it his weight.

I'd once read a rumor about Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu's successor, whose arrogance and harsh treatment of the common people had greatly stoked the fire that would become the French Revolution. In his last years, he'd suffered increasingly from an unknown disease, possibly syphilis. The hapless pseudo physicians of the day tried every remedy in their repertoire, to no avail. As he lay dying in agony, an old peasant woman appeared at his palace with a wondrous poultice, which she claimed would save him if it was applied inside his throat. Never mind that this smacked of witchcraft, and Mazarin had enthusiastically condoned the torture and burning alive of women accused of it-in desperation, he agreed. The old crone faded quietly away and was never seen again.

The poultice turned out to be manure mashed up with cheap white wine. Thus, with his mouth packed full of horseshit, the world's most powerful man went to meet the God he had professed to serve.

Wesley Balcomb, the poor boy who had craved to be among the elite, had achieved a bond with one of the biggest names in history.