Rudolph Wurlitzer - The Drop Edge of Yonder

A voice rose up behind them: "Mad. All mad. The Warden and his merry band of lunatics."

Stebbins crawled out from underneath a wagon and collapsed at Delilah's feet, coughing up clots of blood.

"They thought the woman was you and they rode in shooting. I told them… I told them… they had it wrong, but they shot her anyway. Then someone shot me."

Delilah held Stebbins in her arms until his breath left him. Then she laid him on the ground, walked over to the dead girl, took the doll from her hands, and wandered off into the bunchgrass.

Zebulon and Hatchet Jack found her sitting on the ground, rocking the doll in her arms. As she started to sing, dark clouds moved slowly above them like a lonely funeral procession:

After they buried Stebbins and the pilgrims, they rode for a few miles until dusk, when they made a small fire. No one spoke or ate. That night they all slept together, Hatchet Jack and Zebulon on either side of Delilah, Large Marge curled up next to the Mexican fruit farmer.

t dawn they pushed on, encouraged by a warm breeze that,carried a hint of the sea. When they reached Goose Lake, an expanse of ice-blue water as calm and flat as glass, they stripped off their clothes and waded into the cold water, splashing and waving their arms like children.

That evening they stayed compulsively busy, as if they were protecting themselves from unknown dangers.

Large Marge prepared a meal of biscuits and horse meat while Delilah led the horses to the lake, rubbing them down with handfuls of wet grass. The Mexican fruit farmer sat on a rock, fishing with a crude hook fashioned from the prong of his belt buckle. Further away, Zebulon stood on the shore, watching a blue heron with a damaged wing try to launch itself over the water. Over and over the heron flapped its wings, only to fall back and try again.

A shot rang out, a bullet blowing the heron's head off.

Hatchet Jack walked up to Zebulon.

"A bird can't fly with one wing," he said, shoving the Colt inside his belt. "Never has, never will."

"Are you sayin' I can't fly with one wing?" Zebulon asked.

"I'm sayin' one of us will fly and the other one won't."

"Won't what?"

Hatchet Jack shrugged, not having thought that far ahead.

He walked towards a canoe half-hidden in a copse of tall reeds and water lilies. When he climbed in and started to paddle the canoe into the lake, Zebulon waded into the water and held it back by the stern.

Hatchet Jack lifted the paddle over his head, neither of them moving as each waited for the other to make a decision.

"Are you comin' or goin'?" Hatchet Jack asked, putting down the paddle. "Maybe you're spooked, hein' in water? Tell you one thing. If you drown, they won't have to hang you."

Zebulon climbed into the canoe and sat in the stern while Hatchet Jack paddled into the lake. Finally he let the canoe drift.

"How long we been knowin' each other?" he asked.

"Long enough," Zebulon answered.

"Except when you tried to kill me, or me you, we managed to get along. I pushed you onto your first whore, pulled you out of a beaver trap, fixed your busted leg, and kept you from gettin' scalped more'n once."

"You also pushed my head underwater a few times," Zebulon said.

"All right," Hatchet Jack said. "And you slammed me out more'n once. That makes us even."

"Is that what Plaxico told you to say?"

"He told me I had to make it up to you, and Elijah and Annie May.

"What business is it of his?"

"Otherwise, he said — Do you want to know or not?"

Zebulon didn't answer, but Hatchet Jack told him anyway. "It was Plaxico that lost me in that poker game to your Pa. He tracked me down to tell me. Ever since, he's been tryin' to get straight with me, teachin' me things. Otherwise he says it won't sit right with him and he'll have a bad ride into the misty beyond. He says he ain't got much time left on this earth. Him bein' a lnw]o, who's to say he don't?"

They sat watching the setting sun slide behind the mountains. When the light was gone from the lake, Hatchet Jack removed the Colt from inside his belt, shifting it from one hand to the other. "You think it was me that drilled you back in that saloon?"

"Well, was it?"

"What do you think?"

"I think it was."

"Well, it weren't."

"Maybe you wish it was," Zebulon said.

"That's different."

Hatchet Jack lowered the Colt. "You left her and I never did. That's why she favors me more'n you."

He handed the Colt to Zebulon. "Go ahead and smoke me. I'm tired of chasin' and bein' chased. Tired of not knowin' what's a dream and what ain't. Tired of you, tired of what Plaxico is layin' on me, tired of poochin' or not poochin' your witch, and tired of ridin' down lost trails to the middle of nowhere."

Zebulon raised the Colt, more out of frustration than anger, and then handed it back to Hatchet Jack, who shoved it in his belt.

"We're fixed on the wrong target," Hatchet Jack said. "It's Delilah. No matter what Plaxico says, one of us should blow her away. Plaxico knows things we don't, but he don't know how bad she's been twistin' our tails. But we won't do that, will we?"

"No," Zebulon agreed.

"And I won't blow you away."

"True enough."

"So maybe we ought to let her decide who she favors?"

"She ain't capable," Zebulon said. "That's clear. Not when her belly's ready to spring loose and not knowin' who the Pa is. It could be you' Could be me. Or maybe the Count, or someone else. We didn't ask for it and neither did she, and that's just the way it is."

They beached the canoe and were walking along the shore towards the camp when Zebulon stopped.

Without warning he slugged Hatchet Jack on the jaw, then hit him in the stomach and pushed him backward into the lake.

"That was for bringin' up all that stuff, and for makin' it worse with Delilah. Bein' pushed into the lake was just for old time's sake."

Hatchet Jack waded out of the water, pointing the Colt at Zebulon's head.

Zebulon smiled, spreading out his arms. "Go ahead. Find out if the Colt fires when it's wet. Smoke one into me. You'll be doin' me a favor, somethin' you ain't never done before."

When Hatchet Jack pulled the trigger, the gun didn't fire.

He dropped the Colt, then brought Zebulon to his knees with a furious punch to the side of his head.

They stood toe to toe, slugging back and forth, neither of them giving in until Hatchet Jack pulled Zebulon into the lake and held his head under the water with both hands.

Zebulon knew that somehow it would end this way, his head underwater, the way Hatchet had tried to finish him off when they were kids — which was, of course, what he had tried to do to Hatchet in other ways, more than once.

Then his head was yanked to the surface and Hatchet Jack left him to make it to the shore by himself.