Savage Country Read online

  They crossed a dry periodic creek and paused to let the horses graze.

  Charlie was so much in her mind. She thought how he’d never had a proper bringing up or at most the wrong kind. He was a boy, innocent and natural. She wondered if there’d ever be a future for boys like him born into such a violent world. Her eyes began to sting with tears. What rights did she have when she let this boy slip through her fingers?

  They traveled on in the broad light where they could see for miles. She rode beside him, her limbs aching with tiredness.

  While the horses took a bite of grass, he again picked out the foremost rider and shot him and it was the death of another man. The pattern repeated again and again and she became angry with them, they were so stupid to go against his rifle. The belts were more than full enough to get them home and to the center of care.

  The day turned hot and unpleasant and the journey took its toll on the horses. The wind was dry and withering and blew stiff and strong in their faces.

  “Is there immediate danger?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, letting his hand to pet Sabi.

  “Where?” she said, and then, “I see them.”

  They emerged from a fold and onto a swell and she could see them again, their dark figures through clouds of dust. Wheeling Starbuck about, he saw them too. They were coming over the edge of the world, but this time he did not dismount.

  “Is there not danger this time?” she said.

  “Everywhere,” he said, smiling grimly.

  “I am not overwhelmed,” she said.

  “Soon it will be done,” he said.

  “Maybe someday we will return,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “If you’d like.”

  “Maybe. Probably not,” she said, and they both laughed.

  On the landscape ahead a whirl of dust arose and blew south. He placed his right hand at his breast pocket to feel for his matches, but his pocket had filled with blood when he killed Kershaw and the matches were soaked and dried and now the pocket was as hard and stiff as tree bark.

  “Is there tobacco and matches in there?” he said, indicating his saddlebag.

  She reached back and opened the flap where she found his tobacco and papers and matches. He spoke to Starbuck and the horse steadied. Swaying in the saddle, the reins in the crook of his left arm, he rolled a cigarette. He struck a match and lit his cigarette. The red dog came in, sat back on his haunches, watched him intently. In thought, Michael held the match and then he dropped its flame in the tinder field of grass. It was a waterless place and the grass tongued with pale yellow and soon there were little waves and spurting streaks of fire running south before the wind. The red dog barked and danced. In every moment the blaze increased as it made its destroying way.

  “This is how it will end,” he said.

  Elizabeth watched the fire. She understood and soon the yellow was papering the sky and crackling and rising and spreading its way south as fast as a horse could run and east and west and the lighting and the smoke cloud were beautiful and fairylike to her eyes.

  He made a curse and it was then he dropped from the saddle to the ground. He inspected his girth and pulled the big rifle from its boot and this time he stood erect and held the Sharps in his hands, the butt plate tucked into his shoulder.

  At considerable distance, he knew the horse, the rider, his peculiar slouching seat, the bedroll behind his saddle, the black runner. They were crossing a beautiful sparkling and delusive lake. There were cattails and nodding bulrushes. Above the rider and the black runner rode their superior image in the sky. The runner’s legs appeared twenty feet long and the rider was as if another twenty feet over that. Elizabeth saw it too and tipped back her head to take in the sight. There was an anger burning inside him and this was the man he wanted to kill.

  As the flames began to roar he took two steps forward into the ashy cradle of the fire and one step back. He let down the rifle and waited as if for some sign of relenting, but it did not come. There was no reason to think anymore. There was no reason to wait. He brought the rifle around in front, adjusted for elevation, steadied his eye and opened his mouth. All things hovered and he pulled the trigger and they changed. A fume of blood spewed from the man’s head and he fell to the ground as the horse ran out from under him.

  Michael reached for the bridle reins and mounted Starbuck. He secured Sabi in his lap and whistled up the red dog. He adjusted their direction a few degrees north-­northeast.

  “Is it over?” she said.

  “That’s the story,” he said, and made a nicking sound. Starbuck stepped off and then Khyber and they dropped into an easy canter and they moved on. A great conflagration was building in their wake, fueling and racing on the pinions of the wind that came against them and was a terrific roar and already a quarter mile long and twelve feet high. Behind them were the currents of fierce heat, the suffocating smoke, the sky red with burning flags.

  The fire burned everything in its path. It burned the earth and the air and the water. It burned memory and history and experience. It burned everything that came before and she wished on the flames roaring with all they consumed and what remained.

  In this way, they rode out of a past forever gone and it was as if they’d never been and none of what happened ever took place. Behind them the land glowed with red teeth and a wall of smoke filled the sky. She looked back once as if searching for something she left behind. It would be dark soon and they still had a long way to go.

  ROBERT OLMSTEAD is the author of eight books. The Coldest Night was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2012, a Kirkus Reviews Top 25 Fiction Book of 2012, and an Amazon Best Book of 2012. Coal Black Horse was the winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the Ohioana Award and was a #1 Book Sense pick. Far Bright Star was the winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award. Olmstead is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA grant and is a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University.

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  © 2017 by Robert Olmstead.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  eISBN 978-1-61620-765-6