Роберт Паркер - Robert B. Parker's Revelation

“Fear not,” he said quietly as he walked on. “I am the first and the last. I am the one that lives. I was dead but behold I am alive for evermore. And I hold the keys of hell and death. I saw heaven open and I behold a white horse and he who sat upon him was called faithful and true. And in righteousness he doth judge and make war. This is the second death. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan which deceived the world was cast down to earth. Behold I come quickly, my reward is with me to give every man according to his deed. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”

Back in the room, Driggs drank some whiskey and smoked cigarettes as he thought about the evening, about Margie, about the princess, about what he needed to do, and about Allie. He liked her, the way she moved, the way she smelled. Once everything was said and done he figured he’d take good care of her, like he knew she needed, wanted... but currently he had those more significant thoughts that were occupying his head.

Around three in the morning he crawled into bed, and when he did the princess stirred and for the next few hours he toiled and procured before his mind eased and he eventually drifted off to sleep.

Locky was caked in dried blood and new blood and very badly wounded. It was obvious by his appearance that he was suffering from injuries caused by an explosion. His shirt and trousers were ripped and he was bleeding from cuts and scrapes along one entire side of his body.

Virgil, Cotton, and I quickly gathered up the young Indian tracker and carried him back toward the mine’s portal.

“Snap to, fellas,” Cotton called out across the stack of rubble to the men outside. “I need four of you, now. We have a badly injured man in here.”

Cotton looked back to us then called out again, “Let’s everyone be alert here, might be more to come. Get our medical supplies ready, everything, no telling what we might need.”

Within moments, there were four miners including Jeff crawling over the rocks to get to us.

Locky was weak and seemed close to death but kept talking as if he desperately needed to be heard. His garbled words were a mixture of Spanish and Kiowa. He kept trying to point to the opposite end of the shaft as we laid him down near the mine entrance.

“Can you understand anything that he is saying, Everett?”

Locky held my arm tight. His eyes were wide as he stared at me, speaking intently. His words were jumbled and it was difficult to make out the language combinations.

“No,” I said. “Not really...”

Then Locky spoke clearly.

“Querido Dios el único...” he said through his clenched teeth as he was fighting off pain. “Diablo escapado.”

“Escaped?” Virgil said. “That much I got.”

I nodded.

Then Locky said, “Sorprendido de explosión... mucho sorprendido.”

“Surprised by explosion,” I said.

The miners wasted no time getting to us.

“Get him out,” Cotton said. “Do what you can to keep him alive.”

Locky squeezed my arm and with eyes wide he mumbled a string of Kiowa then ended with, “Esperó Diablo... para nosotros... todos... todos.”

I looked to Virgil.

“The Devil waited for them...”

The four men lifted Locky and started making their way out. Virgil, Cotton, and I moved on to the opposite end of the tunnel. We could hear Locky mumbling as we moved away. After a moment the only sound we could hear was the sound of our own footsteps.

Judging by the sight of Locky, I was not feeling good about what we might find at the opposite end of the shaft. We walked past where we found Locky and the smell of death intensified with each step.

Then Cotton stopped.

“It’s closed off on the east end for certain,” Cotton said. “There is usually a breeze. Didn’t say nothing before about that, wasn’t real sure. I thought the air was just stacking and not coming through because there is such a small opening at the portal but there should be, would be, moving air through here... And the dead smell I was talking about? Well, this is not that, not what I was talking about, this is something much worse.”

We walked on a ways, then we came across loose rock scattered about the shaft floor. As we continued walking there was more and more rubble and the smell got stronger and stronger.

“That is where the opening was,” Cotton said. “He closed off both ends.”

Then Cotton stopped, raised his lantern some, and pointed.

“My God,” Cotton said.

Lodged in a crevasse of the rock wall was the bloody chunk of a posse member’s head. There was bone, hair, beard, and a single ear visible.

Virgil looked to me and shook his head.

“He got them to this opening, then somehow blew them up,” Virgil said.

We walked on a ways, and as we did we began to see more and more blood and pieces of the dead men. Two bodies we came across were badly mangled but still intact. They’d been blown back and wedged, upright, one man atop the other between a pillar and the wall. Virgil, Cotton, and I moved closer to the rubble with our lanterns raised. When we got next to the blockage at the tunnel’s end there was an arm sticking out of the rocks still clutching a pistol.

“My God,” Cotton said again.

The portal on this east end of the shaft was lower but wider than the opening on the west. It was at least twenty feet across. Virgil moved off to his left and I went toward the right. Within a moment I spotted something that put a lump in my throat.

“Virgil,” I said.

He looked to me as I leaned down, picked up Sheriff Stringer’s badge, and held it up for Virgil to see.

Locky was the only survivor from the blast that closed off the east end of forty-two and killed Sheriff Stringer and three of his deputies. The Kiowa tracker was taken down to the village of Bridgewater in the buckboard and taken into the care of Cotton’s wife and daughters. It was hard to understand just how he could have come out of that blast in one piece, but he did. According to Cotton’s wife, who was the resident self-made town doctor with a background of medicine and helping miners, Locky would survive.

Virgil and I took a short rest, got some food, then rode out of Bridgewater for the east side of forty-two. We rode south on the road and just as the sun was coming up we found the pass over the mountain; the trail switchbacked going up on the west side, as well as traversing down on the east side.

Once we arrived at the eastern portal there was no one in sight and no immediate evidence that provided us any details as to the direction of Ed Degraw.

There was a spectacular view of the valley below from where we sat our horses for a long moment.

“Unless the sonofabitch found a burro on the other side that we don’t know about,” I said, “he had to walk away from here.”

We both looked down at the ground and moved our horses away from one another to see if we might find any evidence of track. There was a flat piece of land around the portal and we moved a little bit at a time around the perimeter.

“Nothing over here,” I said. “Nothing obvious, anyway.”

Virgil shook his head.

“Here neither.”

We rode back toward one another and stopped directly in front of the portal entrance.

“One thing is,” Virgil said. “He more than likely figures there’s no one left to be on his ass.”

“No,” I said. “He shouldn’t.”

“Which way would you go?” Virgil said.

I turned my horse around and faced the same way Virgil was facing, again looking out at the open vista below. I looked around for a moment and pointed the direction that looked like the natural fall and the easiest walking.