Cold Wind

26

“Now, run,” Nate Romanowski said to Johnny Cook and Drennen O’Melia.

“Man,” Drennen said, “you can’t make us do this. It’s cruel.”

“You can’t,” Johnny echoed.

Nate arched his eyebrows and said low and breathy, “I can’t?”

He’d silently marched them a mile east from Gasbag Jim’s place, in the direction of the Wind River Range, with the informant, Lisa, the dark-haired girl who’d learned their names and made the identification, in tow. She was coffee-and-cream color with dark eyes and high cheekbones. Her large breasts swelled against her white tank top. Short, muscular but shapely legs powered her through the sagebrush. She dangled a pair of strappy high heels from her finger because they hurt to walk in.

Nate guided Johnny and Drennen’s progress by gesturing at them with the muzzle of the.500 Wyoming Express the way a trainer instructs bird dogs with hand signals. The sun was behind them at eye level, minutes before dusk, and the four of them cast long shadows across the sagebrush and dried cheat grass. Johnny Cook was still in his underwear and boots.

“What do you mean, run?” Drennen asked. “You gonna shoot us in the back?”

Nate shrugged. He said, “I’m giving you more of a chance than you deserve. It’s an old Indian trick. You ever heard of Colter’s Run?”

“Colter’s what?” Johnny said.

“I have,” Lisa offered. “Blackfeet, right?”

“Right,” Nate said to her over his shoulder. Then he turned his attention back to the two men. “Eighteen-oh-eight, at the site of the present day Three Forks, Montana. The Blackfeet captured John Colter, the first white man to discover Yellowstone Park. They didn’t know what to do with him: kill him like they’d just done to his partner John Potts, or strip him naked and let him run. They decided on the old Indian trick, and gave him a few feet head start before they chased him down. What they didn’t know was that Colter was fast. He managed to outrun all the warriors except one. As he got close to the river, the Blackfoot who kept up threw his spear at Colter but missed, and Colter snatched it up and used it on the poor guy, killing him.

“Then Colter jumped into a river,” Nate said, “and over the next few days managed to elude the entire band by hiding in driftwood snarls along the banks while the Blackfeet searched for him. Eventually, Colter got away and worked his way back east over the next few years. In the end, he married a woman named Sallie.

“So,” Nate said, “a happy ending for John Colter.”

“Nice story,” Drennen said. “But this is stupid. I ain’t running nowhere.”

Nate grinned at him and said nothing.

“Oh, shit,” Johnny lamented, reading the malevolence in Nate’s cruel smile. He glanced up in the dusk sky that was deep powder blue except for the fiery puffball clouds lit by the evening sun. “I knew when I saw that damned bird. ”

Nate said, “Not my bird. But it worked out kind of nice, didn’t it?”

“I thought that was your bird,” Lisa said. “Like it was your spirit or something. We believe in stuff like that, you know.” There was a particular musical lilt to her voice that reminded Nate of why he was there. As if he needed reminding.

Nate smiled at her. “You go on believing that if you want.”

“Yeah,” Drennen said, balling his fists and taking a step toward her. “Believe what you want, you snitch. You snitch whore.”

Nate raised the revolver and Drennen looked up to see the massive O of the muzzle. He stopped cold.

“You know her as Lisa Rich,” Nate said softly. “I know her as Lisa Whiteplume. My woman’s stepsister from the res. My woman was named Alisha. You two killed her.”

Identified, Lisa thrust her chin in the air and put her hands on her hips defiantly. Proudly. Drennen stepped back.

Nate said to Lisa, “See what I told you about his type. He doesn’t really like you. Even when you’re in there thrashing around doing what makes him happy, he despises you for it. The more you please him, the more contemptuous he is of you, which is a pretty good indicator of what he thinks of himself deep down. Will you learn from that?”

She sighed, but she wouldn’t meet Nate’s eyes. “I guess.”

“Oh, shit,” Johnny repeated with even more emphasis than before. “Drennen, you need to shut up now.”

“But, man,” Drennen said to Johnny, “he can’t prove anything. He says we did something to his girlfriend, but he can’t prove it was us.”

“You don’t understand,” Nate said. “I don’t need to prove anything. It doesn’t work like that with me.”

Johnny asked, “Then how can you be sure it was us? What if it was somebody else?”

“Putting you two down is a net plus either way,” Nate said. “Honestly, I’m insulted anyone would send a couple of mouth-breathers like you after me, and angry you got so close. And for the record, you left fingerprints and DNA at the scene. I got the beer bottle you left checked out by some friends in law enforcement. The name ‘Drennen O’Melia’ came back. And it didn’t take long to find out he hangs with a loser named Johnny Cook.”

Johnny turned on Drennen, accusatory, as if now remembering the beer bottle they left on the trail.

Then, squinting at Nate, said, “You’re that guy, aren’t you? How’d you get away?”

“I wasn’t in the cave,” Nate said. “But somebody I cared about was.”

To Drennen, Nate said, “Looks like you got a faceful of that rocket launcher, pard.”

“Please,” Drennen said, pleading with his hands outstretched toward Nate and Lisa, “I didn’t pull the trigger. It wasn’t me.”

Johnny listened with his face twisted in anger and betrayal. He thought of the gophers. He said, “It wasn’t our idea. We were under the influence of alcohol and this lady we met in Saddlestring put us up to it. It was her idea. She hired us, and she drove us out there, gave us that rocket launcher, and paid us for the job. We were like”-he paused, thinking for the right word-“her puppets.”

“Puppets,” Nate repeated in a whisper. Then: “Was she tall, good-looking, mid-thirties? Chicago accent?” He reached up with his free hand and drew a line across his forehead with his left index finger just above his eyebrows. “Black bangs like so?”

“That was her,” Drennen said quickly. “Told us her name was Patsy.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, obviously still angry with Drennen but putting a priority on a possible new way to stay alive. “Patsy.”

Nate said, “Like Patsy Cline?”

“Yeah!” Drennen said. “Like that. Whoever she is.”

“Idiots,” Nate grumbled. To Lisa, he said, “Her name is Laurie Talich. I had an altercation with her husband a couple of years back. I’d heard she wanted to close the circle, so I’ve sort of expected to hear from her one way or other. But I still can’t figure out how she knew where I was, or how to get to us.”

“We don’t know, either!” Drennen shouted, trying to bond with Nate and share his concern. “She never told us. She just drove us out there and said, ‘Here’s the rocket launcher, boys. The cave’s down there on the trail. Get to it!’”

Nate shifted the weapon toward Johnny. “How much did she pay you?”

“Not a whole hell of a lot, as it turns out,” Johnny said. “Barely enough for a week at Gasbag Jim’s.”

“How much?”

“Only fifteen grand,” Drennen said, as if the lightness of the number somehow shifted the blame away from them to cheap Laurie Talich.

Nate took a deep breath and shut his eyes momentarily. He spoke so gently both Drennen and Johnny strained forward to hear.

“You killed my Alisha for only fifteen thousand dollars.”

“We didn’t know she was even there. ” Drennen began to plead. “That Patsy told us you were some kind of badass dude-that the cops were after you but they didn’t know where you were hiding out. She said you murdered her husband, and offing you was like doing something good for society, you know?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” Nate said again.

“Look,” Drennen said, “we can help you find her. We don’t owe her nothing anymore. She obviously lied to us. Anybody can see you’re a good guy. We’ll even cut you in on our new business venture. Man, like Johnny said, we were just her puppets.”

Nate let it just hang there. The shadows were longer now, almost grotesque in their length. The sun was directly behind him, and both Drennen and Johnny had to keep shading their eyes to see him.

“It’s interesting how such small men cast such big shadows,” Nate said. “I’ve heard enough. Now run.”

“Oh, man. ” Drennen said, his shoulders slumping.

“Run.”

“We’ll do anything,” Drennen said. “I’ll do anything. ”

“Run.”

Drennen was still moaning when Johnny Cook suddenly wheeled and took off. He was fast, and he put a quick ten yards between himself and Drennen. Drennen did a double take, glancing at Johnny then back to Nate, then started to backpedal. After five yards facing Nate, Drennen spun and ran away as hard as he could.

Nate watched them go. They kicked up little puffs of beige dust that lit up with the last brilliant moments of the sun. He could hear their footfalls thumping on the dry ground and the panicked wheezing of breath.

Drennen veered slightly to the left of Johnny’s path, but was still twenty yards behind him. Nate could hear Drennen shout, “Wait up, Johnny. wait up!”

But Johnny didn’t slow down.

After a minute, Lisa tugged on Nate’s arm. “Aren’t you going to chase them? You’re going to let them go?”

The two figures were becoming smaller and darker as they receded; the sunlit Wind Rivers loomed over them.

Nate said, “Johnny’s fast, but not Colter fast.”

“What?”

He stepped quickly across her a few paces to the left. The two runners in the distance still had space between them. He walked a few more long strides to the left, until Drennen and Johnny closed into one form in the distance, despite the gap between them as Johnny continued to pull away.

Nate raised his weapon and cupped his left hand beneath his right, where he held the revolver. He looked down the scope with both eyes open, and thumbed the hammer back.

One shot. Two exit-wound balloons of red mist.

Both bodies tumbled down as if kicked by mules and lay still, more dust rising up around them from their fall. The fat clouds of pink hung in the light evening air.

Lisa stood there openmouthed and wide-eyed.

Nate peered through the scope to confirm there was no reason to walk out there. He said, “Like puppets with their strings clipped.”

Nate spun the cylinder and caught the empty brass and dropped it in his pocket and fed a fresh sausage-sized cartridge into the empty chamber. He slid the.500 into his shoulder holster under his left arm.

“These shells cost three bucks each,” he said to Lisa. “No need to waste more than one of ’em on men worth nothing at all.”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

He said, “I’m going to go get a shovel and then I’m gone. I can drop you back home on my way to Chicago.”

She started to argue, but when she saw the look on his face, she decided it wasn’t a good idea.