They trotted up the incline, the narrow path twisting and turning. Loose scree slid and grated under their shoes, threatening to spill them. Two or three minutes into the climb, Ralph began to hear the clatter and bounce of rocks somewhere higher up. Hoskins was indeed coming to meet them.
They rounded an outcropping, Ralph with his Glock leveled, Holly behind him and on his right. The next stretch of the path ran straight for fifty feet or so. The sound of Hoskins’s descent was louder now, but the maze of rocks made it impossible to tell just how close he was.
“Where’s the goddam spur path that goes to the back entrance?” Ralph asked. “He’s getting closer. This is too much like playing chicken in that James Dean movie.”
“Yes, Rebel Without a Cause. I don’t know, but it can’t be far.”
“If we run into him before we get off Main Street here, there’s going to be shooting. And ricochets. The minute you see him, I want you to drop—”
She thumped him on the back. “If we beat him to the path, there won’t be any shooting and I won’t have to. Go!”
Ralph ran up the straight stretch, telling himself he’d caught his second wind. It wasn’t true, but it was good to stay positive. Holly was behind him and whapping him on the shoulder, either to hurry him along or to assure him that she was still there. They reached the next turning in the path. Ralph peered around it, expecting to look into the muzzle of Hoskins’s rifle. He didn’t see that, but he did see a wooden sign with Chief Ahiga’s fading portrait on it.
“Come on,” he said. “Fast.”
They ran for the sign, and now Ralph could hear the oncoming shooter gasping for breath. Almost sobbing for it. There was a rattle of stones and a cry of pain. It sounded like Hoskins had fallen down.
Good! Stay down!
But then the clattery, slip-sliding footsteps resumed. Very near. Closing in. Ralph grabbed Holly and pushed her onto the Ahiga path. Her small pale face was running with sweat. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her hands were buried in the pockets of her suit coat, which was now powdered with rock dust and splattered with blood.
Ralph raised a finger to his lips. She nodded. He stepped behind the sign. The dry Texas heat had caused the boards to shrink a bit, and he was able to peer through one of the cracks. He saw Hoskins as he staggered into view. His first thought was that Yune had gotten lucky and put a bullet in him after all, but that didn’t explain Hoskins’s split pants and grotesquely swollen right leg. No wonder he fell, Ralph thought. It was amazing that he’d gotten this far down the steep path on that leg. He still had the rifle he’d used to kill Gold and Pelley, but was using it as a cane, and his fingers were nowhere near the trigger. Ralph didn’t know if he would be able to hit anything anyway, even at close range. Not the way his hands were trembling. His bloodshot eyes were deep in their sockets. Rock dust had turned his face into a kabuki mask, but where perspiration had cut trails through it, the skin was red, as if with a terrible rash.
Ralph stepped out from behind the sign, Glock held in both hands. “Stop right there, Jack, and let go of the rifle.”
Jack skidded and stumbled to a halt thirty feet away, but he continued to hold the rifle by the barrel. That wasn’t okay, but Ralph could live with it. If Hoskins started to raise it, however, his life was going to end.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jack said. “Like my old granddad used to say, was you born dumb or did you just grow that way?”
“I have no appetite for your bullshit. You killed two men and wounded another one. Shot them from ambush.”
“They never should have come here,” Jack said, “but since they did, they got what they deserved for messing in with what didn’t concern them.”
“And what would that be, Mr. Hoskins?” Holly asked.
Hoskins’s lips cracked and oozed tiny beads of blood when he smiled. “Tat-Man. As I think you know. Meddling bitch.”
“Okay, now that you’ve got that out of your system,” Ralph said, “put the rifle down. You’ve done enough damage with it. Just drop it. If you bend over, you’ll fall on your face. Was it a snake that got you?”
“The snake was just a little extra. You need to leave, Ralph. Both of you need to leave. Or else he’ll poison you like he poisoned me. A word to the wise.”
Holly took a step closer to Jack. “How did he poison you?” Ralph put a warning hand on her arm.
“Just touched me. Back of the neck. That was all it took.” He shook his head in tired wonder. “Out at that barn in Canning Township.” His voice rose, trembling with outrage. “Where you sent me!”
Ralph shook his head. “It must have been the chief, Jack. I didn’t know anything about it. I’m not going to tell you again to put the gun down. You’re done with this.”
Jack considered . . . or seemed to. Then he lifted the rifle very slowly, going hand over hand down the barrel toward the trigger housing. “I’m not going the way my mother did. Nosir, I am not. I’ll shoot your friend there first, Ralph, then you. Unless you stop me.”
“Jack, don’t. Last warning.”
“Stick your warning up your—”
He was trying to point the gun at Holly. She didn’t move. Ralph stepped in front of her and fired three times, the reports deafening in the tight space. One for Howie, one for Alec, one for Yune. The distance was a trifle long for a pistol, but the Glock was a good gun and he’d never had any trouble qualifying on the range. Jack Hoskins went down, and to Ralph, the expression on his dying face looked like relief.
17
Ralph sat down on a jutting lip of rock across from the sign, breathing hard. Holly went to Hoskins, knelt, and rolled him over. She had a look, then came back. “He was bitten more than once.”
“Must have been a rattler, and a big one.”
“Something else poisoned him first. Something worse than any snake. He called it Tat-Man, we call it the outsider. El Cuco. We need to finish this.”
Ralph thought of Howie and Alec, lying dead on the other side of this godforsaken chunk of rock. They had families. And Yune—still alive but wounded, suffering, probably in shock by now—also had a family.
“I suppose you’re right. Want this pistol? I can take his rifle, if you do.”
Holly shook her head.
“All right. Let’s do this.”
18
Past the first turning, the Ahiga path widened and began to descend. There were pictographs on both sides. Some of the ancient images had been embellished or entirely covered with spraypaint tags.
“He’ll know we’re coming,” Holly said.
“I know. We should have brought one of those flashes.”
She reached into one of her voluminous side pockets—the one that had been sagging—and pulled out one of the stubby Home Depot UV flashlights.
“You’re sort of amazing,” Ralph said. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a couple of hardhats in there, do you?”
“No offense, but your sense of humor is a little weak, Ralph. You should work on that.”
Around the next turning of the path, they came to a natural hollow in the rock about four feet off the ground. Above it, fading letters in black paint read WE WILL NEVER FORGET. Inside the niche was a dusty vase with thin branches jutting from it like skeletal fingers. The petals that had once adorned those branches were long gone, but something else remained. Scattered around the bottom of the vase were half a dozen toy versions of Chief Ahiga, like the one that had been left behind when the Jamieson twins had crawled into the bowels of the earth, never to be found. The toys were yellow with age, and the sun had cracked the plastic.
“People have been here,” Holly said. “Kids I’d say, based on the spraypaint tags. But they never vandalized this.”
“Never even touched it, from the look,” Ralph said. “Come on. Yune’s on the other side with a bullet wound and a busted elbow.”
“Yes, and I’m sure he’s in great pain. But we need to be careful. That means moving slowly.”
Ralph took her by the elbow. “If this guy gets both of us, that leaves Yune on his own. Maybe you should go back.”