Chapter Nineteen

As has already been discussed, the nameless desert to the north of Carter's Refuge was not much to look at.

The really good deserts - the Sahara, for example - have a certain desolate majesty, like the surface of an alien world. Majestic, this desert wasn't. It was... well, let's not mince words. It was fairly ugly.

To compensate, perhaps out of a sense of fair play, the creator had given it perhaps the best sunsets to be found anywhere.

One was in full swing now, and the recent changes in the sun's coloration and apparent size conspired to make it an especially awe-inspiring one. It stained the sky in fantastic shades of maroon and purple and orange; it drew out undreamed-of highlights in the wispy threads of cloud that dotted the horizon. The shadows of distant mountains stood against it in sharp contrast, framing the spectacle. The whole thing was impossibly scenic, like something out of a deranged watercolorist's fever dream.

If it was to be the Earth's last sunset, then it seemed determined to be a good one.

Evans hadn't noticed it; he was too preoccupied with glaring at the back of Polk Buckhorn's head.

Neither of them had said a word since they'd left Carter's Refuge. It wasn't that Evans had nothing to say, but deciding where to start was proving to be a challenge. He was right on the verge of collecting his thoughts when Buck's voice came from the shadows ahead of him.

"You gonna keep giving me the stink-eye all night," Buck grumbled, "or are you gonna speak your mind?"

For once, Evans was not to be cowed.

"I guess you're pretty proud of yourself, hm?" he sneered.

In the darkness ahead, he could barely make out a shrug from Buck's silhouette.

"Not like I had much of a choice," Buck grumbled. "She was trying to kill me, in case you hadn't noticed."

"I sort of wish she had," Evans retorted hotly.

Sparky slowed to a stop, and Evans eased his own horse to a stop a few yards behind. A moment passed in silence.

"You mean it?" Buck mumbled pathetically.

"If what she said was true?" Evans barked. "About her father? Then yes, I think that you probably deserve to die. And she probably deserved to kill you."

Buck glared.

"Maybe you didn't notice," he said, "but the girl wasn't exactly a saint herself. Doubt I deserve to die any more than she did."

"And whose fault is that?" Evan screeched. "You're the one who made her that way, aren't you?"

Buck didn't reply, and Evans found his temper rising further.

"How could you?" he howled. "I mean, honestly. What kind of man kills a little girl's father right in front of her?"

Buck slouched ever-so-slightly in his saddle.

"Didn't have much of a choice in that either," he muttered.

"Is that right?" Evans sneered, his voice thick with sarcasm.

"As a matter of fact, it is," Buck growled. "Look, I've done some bad things, okay? That don't mean I'm..."

Buck's voice almost cracked; when he spoke again, there was iron in his tone.

"Man was drunker than I was," he growled. "I was just supposed to scare him, you see? But he goes and decides he's got something to prove. Gets up in my face, hollering and carrying on."

Buck turned in his saddle; in the darkness, Evans couldn't quite make out the look on his companion's face.

"He drew first, you understand?" Buck muttered. "Only I was faster."

"Like you were with Melody," Evans snarled.

"Oh, give it a rest."

Evans' temper had died down, but only slightly.

"You could have told her," he sulked.

Buck chuckled mirthlessly.

"You think it would've mattered?" he asked.

"It couldn't have hurt."

"What, telling her that her pa brought it on himself? Yeah, actually, I'm pretty sure it could've."

Evans scoffed.

"So instead you tell her you're not sorry for what happened? Very nice."

Buck sighed, and then lit a cigarette; Evans hadn't been aware that the man smoked. The glow from the ember cast an eerie light upon the deep lines of his face, as if he'd captured the light of the sunset. Buck took a deep drag, and then grunted a brief comment.

"I'm not," he said.

Evans shook his head.

"Not what?"

"Sorry."

Buck stared off into the distance.

"Wasn't my fault," he explained.

A moment passed as Evans absorbed this, and then he began to explain - in detail - exactly what he thought of this. Very little of what he had to say was especially coherent, and none of it would be worth printing. After a few minutes, he finally started to run out of energy; at last, he fell silent.

"You about done?" Buck grumbled.

Evans turned his back by way of an answer. Buck laughed again; it sounded as if laughter was something he'd only heard about secondhand, and he'd only just now decided to give it a try.

"Alright, then," he muttered. "You've had your say. So. Let me tell you a story."

He took another drag, taking no apparent satisfaction from the act.

"That's your job, right? Professor?" he mused. "Listening to people's stories? Well, I've got a doozie for you."

Buck stared for a moment at the pathetic dregs of his cigarette and then flicked the remains aside, his face falling once again into darkness as he did so.

"Drinking runs in the family," he stated flatly. "And believe me, I'm a sweetheart compared to my old man. So when I was a kid, I got good at finding places to hide. The loft up in the barn - that was my favorite. Last place he would've thought to look for me, y'see. Knew I hated it up there."

There was a long pause, and then Buck falteringly continued.

"This'll probably surprise you, a big tough guy like me... but I hated spiders when I was a kid. Couldn't stand 'em. And there were all kinds of them up in the rafters of the barn, you see? Big ugly ones, scared the life out of me. Guess I figured a little scare was better than a black eye or a broken nose, though."

Evans crossed his arms; Buck cleared his throat.

"I remember one summer... I was probably seven or eight, and old Pa Buckhorn'd been hitting the bottle. So I go climbing up the ladder to the loft, right? Only it's breeding season for the little bastards, and their webs are all full of those little balls of eggs. I tell you what, I about flipped. Just the thought of God-knows-how-many little baby spiders crawling all over the barn made my skin crawl, believe me. So here I am, about ready to smash 'em with the first thing I can lay my hands on."

Buck trailed off momentarily, and then rallied.

"So just when I've found something - a broom, I think - I hear my dad yelling from inside the house. And something stops me, right? Like... I don't know. I guess it seemed like it wouldn't have been sporting, you know? Killing 'em all before they even got a chance to live? Hell, I don't know. Point is, something stopped me. Couldn't rightly tell you what."

"So a couple of weeks later they all hatch. Little baby spiders everywhere, right? Only somehow it don't seem so bad, what with them being so tiny. And it's like... I don't know. Not like they was my pets, or whatever. But there was something, like... because I let them live, it was kind of like they belonged to me."

Evans' brow furrowed slightly. At some point his professional instincts had kicked in, and he'd gotten caught up in the narrative despite himself. Buck seemed momentarily lost in thought.

"There was more to it than that, I think," he muttered. "The fact that I let 'em live... well, it felt good. Like I'd done something noble, I guess. So. Picture little Polk Buckhorn tiptoeing around the barn, making sure not to step on any spiders."

Buck snorted derisively; when he continued, his voice had a chilly edge.

"You know what they eat?" he asked suddenly.

Evans started.

"Um," he mumbled. "Insects, don't they?"

Buck nodded.

"Sure," he agreed, "once they get big enough. When they're just hatched, though? Most bugs are too big for 'em to catch when they're that little. But they gotta get by, right? So how do they do it?"

Buck paused again, as if waiting for a response; when none came, he finished his thought.

"They eat each other," he said flatly. "Their own little brothers and sisters. Wrap each other up and suck each others' guts out."

Evans' skin crawled. Buck turned away.

"Something I realized a long time ago," Buck grumbled. "The world's an ugly place, you know that? I figure you can either eat, or you can be eaten."

The two men sat in silence for a few minutes as Evans stared at the back of Buck's head, trying to construct a response. At last, one dawned on him.

"You have a number of very, very serious problems," Evans said coldly,"for which you should very seriously consider seeking professional help. Do you know that?"

Buck muttered something under his breath, and then spoke up.

"Think that's gonna have to wait," he grumbled.

"I mean it," Evans insisted.

"Yeah, so do I," Buck said, his voice rising. "Look, I might be crazy -"

"That's the point that I was trying to make, yes."

"But I think I might've just found your friend," Buck finished.

Buck pointed a finger towards the shadows - just at the edge of vision - where an old man was waiting patiently for the conversation to wrap itself up. Evans' jaw dropped, and the old man gave a half-hearted wave.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Dancing Bird apologized. "Hello, Michael. It's been a while."

Chapter Eighteen

To Evans, it seemed as if hours had passed as Buck and Melody had stood staring at one another. The town was silent except for the howling of the wind; a playful zephyr teased a tumbleweed across the road, mostly to spite Buck. At last, Melody spoke.

"Been waiting a long time for this," she stated flatly.

Buck sniffed, not letting his guard down.

"Yeah, about that," he grunted. "Like to tell me what all this is about?"

Melody snorted derisively.

"You care?" she spat.

Buck contemplated this momentarily, his eyes still glued to hers.

"Not especially," he admitted. "But you'd like to tell me anyway, wouldn't you?"

Melody gave a dismissive shrug, but the tone of her reply confirmed Buck's suspicions.

"I don't suppose that you remember much of June of 1870?" she called.

"Not really," conceded Buck.

Melody chuckled sourly.

"Doesn't surprise me," she murmured. "You spent most of the summer working for a railroad tycoon, scaring farmers off their land. Ring any bells?"

Buck shrugged noncommittally, and Melody pressed on.

"One of those farmers was a man named George Chamberlain," she continued. "You paid him a visit on the seventh of June. Told him things would get ugly if he didn't clear out."

Buck shrugged again.

"And?" he demanded.

"And things got ugly," she hissed. "You killed him. Gunned him down right in front of his seven-year-old daughter."

Buck slumped slightly, to Melody's great surprise.

"Oh," he muttered.

Melody's eyes widened, and then a savage grin spread across her face.

"So you do remember," she cooed.

Evans' eyes boggled.

"You did what?" he screeched.

Melody risked taking her eyes off of Buck's just long enough to shoot a glare in Evans' direction.

"You stay out of this," she hissed.

Evans gaped at Buck, his mouth working soundlessly. During the brief moment when Melody's eyes were averted, Evans could swear that he'd seen a flicker of something - possibly sorrow - sneaking its way across the gunman's visage. By the time Melody had turned her attention back to him, Buck's face had contorted into a vicious sneer.

"Gonna be straight with you," Buck growled. "A man like me - using a gun's the only thing he's good at. You're good at something, there's gonna be people such as want to pay you to do it. Guess that makes me a killer; got no illusions about that, and I don't make no apologies for it."

Buck sniffed, and then continued in what might have been a placating tone.

"That don't make me responsible for what happened to your pa," he murmured. "Me, I just pull the trigger; if I hadn't taken the job, somebody else would've, and your pappy'd be dead just the same. Now, the guy willing to pay to have another man killed - that's the real bad guy, if you ask me. You got a problem with what happened, maybe you oughta take it up with him."

Melody scoffed.

"Oh, I have," she snarled, her voice dripping with venom. "I took it up with his friends, his family, everyone who ever so much as shook his hand. Then I took it up with him."

She grinned again, with shocking intensity.

"Been saving you for last," she finished.

A dreadful silence once again settled between the two. This time it was Buck who broke it.

"This might surprise you," he snarled, "but you're not the first person that ever came after me looking for revenge. Gonna tell you the same thing I tell 'em all."

Buck sniffed contemptuously, and then continued.

"If you're looking for an apology, then sister, you're in for a big disappointment. I knew what it was gonna mean when I chose this life, and I'd be lying if I told you I was sorry. But if it makes it any better... well, you should know it was nothing personal."

Melody stared for a moment, and then gave a short, derisive laugh.

"That's supposed to make it better?" she demanded. "You killed my father in cold blood; just a business transaction, right?"

Melody shook her head.

"I used to hate you for that," she grunted. "The fact that killing him didn't even mean anything to you."

Buck's glare wavered slightly.

"Used to, did you?" he ventured.

Melody chuckled again.

"Don't get me wrong," she sneered. "You're not exactly my favorite person. It's just that... well. To tell you the truth, you're just so damn pathetic that hating you seems like a waste of time. No, I pity you."

If Melody felt anything resembling pity, it was nowhere to be found in her expression; her eyes burned into Buck's, shaming him despite himself.

"I used to think this was about setting things right," she laughed. "Can you imagine? As if your life could ever be worth half of what my father's was."

Melody's eyes clouded slightly, and her voice grew distant.

"I'm like you, Polk Buckhorn; got you to thank for that. Just like you, I got no illusions. The world ain't fair, and killing you won't make it so."

She seemed to collect her thoughts in an instant, and her eyes hardened once again.

"Killing you won't bring him back; I know that. Nope, I buried my pa a long time ago. I'm just looking for a little bit of closure; just tying up a loose end."

Her smile had returned, again with a little too much exposed tooth.

"I will admit to a little bit of conceit," she chuckled. "I'd like to think that the world will be a better place without you in it, if only by a little bit."

Buck's face, which had grown increasingly rigid throughout the last few moments, now seemed to be made of stone. His hand rested on the butt of his revolver with a deceptively casual indifference.

"You about done?" growled Buck.

"Not quite," Melody grinned.

Two guns flew from their holsters. Only one shot was fired.

Chapter Seventeen

In an uncharacteristic display of emotion, the Pale Man was grinning. He was nothing if not methodical, and he loved nothing more than when a plan came together.

The four horsemen had ridden hard throughout the night, accompanied at last by the Beast. The thing had shaken off its apparent listlessness the moment that the Pale Man had spoken its true name; now it was coiled and eager, drunk with a sense of purpose. The Pale Man glanced towards the creature, and his grin widened as he took in the looks on the thing's motley collection of faces.

Each member of the dark assembly wore a similar expression: grim satisfaction, with a side of dreadful anticipation. They'd been waiting a long time for this, the lot of them.

They'd taken a vote the night before, and had settled on Manhattan as their first destination; it was a long way to travel, but they'd made good time so far. In actual fact, they rode no faster than any other four horsemen might; nevertheless, the miles melted away in a blur, as if the land itself were in a hurry to get out of their way.

The Pale Man's grin widened as the travelers skidded to a stop, having finally reached their destination: the heart of the new world's culture, and of its pride.

He had a look at his surroundings, and his smile disappeared instantly. The Burly Man began swearing passionately; someone else let out a low whistle.

"Um," the Sickly Man muttered.

"Wow," agreed the Thin Man.

Whatever calamity had struck this place, it had been thorough; no two bricks seemed to have been left atop one another. There were no signs of life apart from a handful of ravens picking amongst the ruins, their calls ringing over-loud against the quiet rustling of a dry wind. The sun loomed - red and angry - behind a thick veil of ash.

The city appeared to have been quite utterly leveled.

"It would appear," the Thin Man said slowly, "that somebody went and started the party without us."

The Pale Man stared about himself furiously, provoking a nervous cough from the Sickly Man.

"Well, this just cuts it," the Pale Man grumbled.

A terrible howling noise broke out against the silence - a sound the likes of which had previously existed only in nightmares. It was like nails on a chalkboard to the power of screeching clarinets, and even the Pale Man felt a shiver running down the length of his spine as he searched for the source of it.

As it turned out, it was the sound of the Beast weeping.

At he same moment - hundreds of miles away - Polk Buckhorn flinched involuntarily.

For poetry's sake, it would've been nice if he'd somehow sensed that something somewhere was terribly wrong; the truth, however - as it usually is - was quite a bit more mundane. The awful tingling sensation in the back of his neck was the same one that he always got when someone was pointing a gun at his back.

"You're gonna want to turn around real slowly," Melody suggested.

Time seemed to slow down as Buck took in his surroundings, really registering them for the first time as they suddenly seemed to take on a layer of awful significance. He'd spent the night back in the town of Carter's Refuge: the same small town where he'd both stolen Sparky and earned the price on his head. In the month since he'd been here last, it had gone from a typical Western settlement to an even more typical ghost town.

Now he found himself standing - with his hands above his head - at one end of the world's most typical Western main street. At the other end, he now knew, stood the woman who was apparently his nemesis. Two things occurred to him at this point: that he was wearing black, and that high noon appeared to be approaching.

Buck sighed, and then turned around slowly, his hands above his head.

Melody stood, grinning expansively, with her revolver pressed to Evans' temple. Buck started, and then gave a half-hearted wave.

"Hey there," Buck offered.

"Hi," Evans grumbled resentfully back.

Melody's grin widened, and she shoved Evans away from herself; he fell away without resistance, collapsing in the dirt at the edge of the street.

"I'd threaten to shoot him," she explained, "except that I doubt you'd care."

Buck shrugged.

"Well, he does owe me money," Buck muttered.

Melody chuckled, and then holstered her pistol; her hand remained upon the grip of the revolver, her fingers twitching eagerly. She nodded encouragingly at Buck; he sighed, and then reached slowly towards his own hip.

"Let's get this over with," he grumbled.

Chapter Sixteen

Michael Evans awoke to the smell of bacon.

The campsite that he'd chosen had little to recommend it aside from the fact that it had been the smoothest patch of ground in a landscape that seemed otherwise to be entirely composed of jagged little mounds of yellow stone. The morning sun was already bearing down with cruel intensity, and the thin cloth of his bedroll did nothing to make the earth beneath his back any more comfortable. Still, with that smell in his nose, it was almost possible to imagine that he'd somehow found his way home.

Since leaving Tombstone more than three weeks before, he'd had almost nothing to eat aside from stale trail rations; he'd finally begun almost to take them for granted, and only now did he realize how dearly he'd missed the comforts of civilization. For a moment, he actually considered thanking Buck for the gesture; after a moment, the fundamental inconsistency in this train of thought finally forced itself upon his still-groggy mind.

Evans sprang bolt-upright, cursing vehemently.

The sudden motion on his part shocked Melody Chamberlain, and she very nearly dropped her skillet into the fire as her hand jerked instinctively towards her hip; after a moment, she relaxed again.

"Didn't realize you'd woken up," she chuckled. "You really shouldn't startle me like that."

Evans boggled.

"What are you doing here?" he blurted.

Melody shrugged.

"You and your friend seem to have split up," she replied.

She shrugged, and then poked at the bacon.

"It would appear," she mused dryly, "that I have been following the wrong set of tracks."

Despite himself, Evans found that he was staring at the contents of the skillet. There appeared to be eggs and potatoes in there, as well. After a moment, a bizarre idea dawned on him.

"Are you making me breakfast?" he demanded incredulously.

Melody grinned.

"I'm making myself breakfast," she announced. "But I do have enough for two, as it happens."

Evans nearly asked Melody why she was feeling so generous, but - in an uncharacteristic moment of clarity - realized that it was probably a better idea not to rock the boat. A few minutes passed in silence; Melody devoted her attention to cooking, and Evans to watching her cook.

He jumped involuntarily as Melody came to attention with a start, as if struck by some sudden realization.

"It occurs to me," she announced, "that we have yet to be formally introduced."

She stuck a hand in Evans' direction; he hesitated for a moment before taking it, as if he was being offered an angry rattlesnake.

"Melody Chamberlain," the girl beamed.

"Doctor Michael Evans, of Maryland," Evans replied uncertainly.

The girl stared dumbly for a moment, and then she collapsed into fits of laughter.

"A doctor? Really?" she gasped. "You're a doctor?"

Evans found himself blushing.

"Is that so hard to believe?" he grumbled sullenly.

She waved a hand, fighting to regain her composure.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she chuckled.

Her chuckling died down, and she wiped a few stray tears from the corners of her eyes.

"I didn't mean to offend you," she explained. "It's just that... well. You keep strange company, Doctor Michael Evans of Maryland."

Evans stared for a moment, and then let out a dry laugh of his own.

"I suppose that I do, at that," he admitted.

The girl stared into his eyes, and he found himself nearly blushing for an entirely different set of reasons.

"So," she murmured. "how exactly does a man like you end up traveling with a man like Polk Buckhorn?"

Evans considered this for a moment, and found himself at a loss for any satisfactory answer.

"Mostly bad luck, I think," he said.

Melody lowered her eyes and smiled warmly, and Evans found himself grinning as well. Something had occurred to him at some point during this exchange, which was that he couldn't imagine why he would have assumed that anyone who might want to kill Polk Buckhorn would necessarily have to be a bad person. He was still considering this thought when Melody handed him a plate covered in a heaping pile of breakfast. It looked delicious.

"Eat up," she insisted.

Evans did exactly that, and was not disappointed. He'd devoured half of what was on his plate before realizing that he'd been attacking his food with an embarrassing and uncivilized degree of fervor. Meaning to apologize, he looked up at Melody. It only took one glance to put any thought of eating out of his mind entirely.

The girl hadn't touched her own food; instead, she'd been staring at him. The look in her eyes reminded Evans of the first time that he'd seen her, and he very nearly returned his breakfast.

Evans had met his first wife back when he'd lived in New York City. At once point early in their engagement, she'd invited him to a private after-hours tour of the Central Park Zoo, where her brother had been an employee of some sort. The experience had been one of the most memorable throughout his relationship with the woman in question, and he found himself suddenly and inexplicably reminded of it now.

The animals on display had been ragged, pitiful things - taken from their native environments, broken, tamed. He'd found himself drawing unpleasant parallels to his own field of study, and by the end of the night had been in a morose and torpid mood.

For all of their efforts, however, the people who ran the place had failed to domesticate one of the beasts in particular. He'd felt its presence before he'd even seen it, as if its power had been something tangible.

He'd never seen an African lion before, and it had never occurred to him that the descriptions that he'd heard might not have done them justice. Instantly, he'd known why the lion was called the "king of the beasts." Man had long since established his dominion over nature, but this monster clearly hadn't gotten the message. Its attitude had plainly suggested that it owned everything that its eyes touched, and he wouldn't have cared to debate the issue.

The mere physical presence of the creature had been intimidating on a level that Evans had never thought possible. He'd watched it for he wasn't sure how long as it had paced about its pen, staring back at him just as relentlessly. There had been a fundamental difference between its attitude and that of the other beasts, and it had only taken Evans a moment to realize where the difference lay. The being had known full well that it was a captive, and its restlessness had suggested that it'd had a clear opinion on the point.

When the lion had looked into his eyes, Evans had been left with no doubt as to what his fate would have been, had the bars separating them been removed for but a moment.

He experienced a similar revelation when his eyes met Melody Chamberlain's.

Melody's face quickly shifted into her best impression of a vapid smile, but the doctor's horrified expression told her at once that she'd acted too late. She chuckled sourly, and the sound seemed to curdle Evans' blood.

"Enjoying our breakfast?" she inquired, her voice thick with mock sweetness.

Evans swallowed hard.

"What's the point of all this?" he whispered.

Melody shrugged.

"I've dealt with your type before," she coolly explained. "You damned spineless know-it-all types who think you know about the world because you've read about it in the Times."

She spat contemptuously, and Evans shriveled somewhat despite himself.

"Don't worry," she cooed. "You're weak, and I know it. I lean too hard on a man like you, you just go to pieces. No way do I get anything out of you that way."

Evans choked down a lump in his throat, and then ventured what seemed like the obvious question.

"And what are you hoping to get, exactly?" he squeaked.

"Don't be cute," she snapped. "I want Buckhorn, and you're going to give him to me."

Realization finally dawned on Evans. The girl thought that he knew where Buck had gone; that was the only reason that he was still alive, he suspected. The realization that his life depended on allowing Melody to continue believing this was not far behind.

For her part, Melody seemed to have spent the majority of her venom, and she once again attempted a pleasant tone.

"Look, I'm well aware of the sort of life you've led," she soothed. "I'm sure that you've never been in a situation like this before, so I'll tell you exactly how things are going to be."

She grinned, and the smile was deceptively genuine.

"I'll let you live," she drawled, "if you tell me what I want to know."

Evans, much to his own surprise, had stumbled upon a plan. It was crazy; it was risky. It was far too audacious to have any chance of success, as far as he was concerned. And yet - as far as he could tell - it was the only option that he had at his disposal.

"A friend of mine lives not far from here," Evans answered evenly, "maybe two days to the north."

He swallowed hard, and then delivered the punchline.

"Buck was going to meet me there," he finished.

Melody grinned.

"What are you waiting for?" she sneered. "Get your things packed, and lets get going."