‘Thanks,’ rasped the half-breed. ‘A lot.’
And brought the stock of the Winchester round in a vicious arc that ended against the Mexican’s jaw. The man’s head swung back, his yellow eyes opening wide for a moment as his teeth were smashed together over his protruding tongue. A thick spurt of blood spread over the bar and his eyes closed as the contusion of the blow spread the bursting blood vessels in a wide, red mark along the side of his face. He slithered backwards across the counter, one arm spilling a row of cups in shattering confusion behind him. Then he slumped clear, disappearing behind the rim of the bar.
Azul went over to the stairs.
They were narrow and dark, the upper level of the cantina shaded by the blinds covering the few windows.
At the head there was a white shape.
Man-sized. With something cold and dark in its hand.
‘Felipe?’
The shape came closer.
‘¿Qué pasar?’
‘Nada,’ said Azul.
And squeezed the trigger of the Winchester as he saw the gun in the Mexican’s hand lower towards him.
The Mexican was holding a Colt. The long-barreled Cavalry model. It exploded simultaneously with the Winchester. But the half-breed’s aim was straighter and truer.
He felt the .45 slug rustle air beside his right temple. Lost the landing under the detonation of the carbine so that he never saw Felipe lift up from behind the bar and catch the bullet in his right eye, the socket exploding inwards to fragment the brain before it tore out through the barkeep’s skull and broke a bottle of good whiskey on the shelf behind the corpse.
What he did see was the man in front of him – the bodyguard called Manuel – go back with a .44-40 Winchester slug ploughing through his belly.
The angle of the stairs was such that the bullet entered under Manuel’s ribcage. Went upwards through his stomach, ripping through the muscle to pierce the softer sac behind. Manuel was lifted off his feet, pain and hydrostatic shock opening his bowels so that a spreading patch of foul-smelling liquid erupted from both sides of his cotton pants.
The bullet continued its awful passage, nicking a lung before it lodged against the right shoulder blade. The Mexican’s mouth opened, emitting a thick spurt of blood that splashed over his tunic, covering the stain of his earlier flooding.
Azul levered the Winchester, firing three more times as he climbed the stairs.
He hit Manuel’s face, the bullet shattering teeth from the gaping mouth in bloody fragments before tearing out through the rear of the neck. Then one slug, fired close, punctured the heart. It burst the ventricle, so that an enormous spurt of blood erupted from the Mexican’s chest, spraying upwards as the man crashed back against the door that opened inwards. The third took the man in the groin, overturning him as the force of it blew his feet away, swinging him round and down as it exited from his waist on a foul-smelling spray of blood and feces.
His feet hit the door and jammed it open while his body bled crimson liquid over the planks.
Azul charged in, turning the Winchester on the figure seated at the table.
And stopped.
‘Don’t you recognize me?’ asked Nolan. ‘You should. You made me like this.’
Azul gaped.
It was like watching a ghost.
He stood silent and still, hands frozen on the Winchester. Feeling almost sorry for the caricature of humanity before him.
Nolan had drawn back the shutters so that the room was lit up by the sun. His seat was placed where the rays would illuminate his face. And it was like a skull: a skull emptied of flesh; burned; contorted; scorched. It was a parody of life: a death-mask lit only by the madly burning eyes and the ugly teeth. The skin was black. Reddish-black, like charred bones. His face was a tombstone picture of Hell; inconceivably ugly.
He sat hunched in the chair, his body bent. The legs wrapped together as if they could no longer move of their own accord. Twisted around one another in a final cessation of mobility.
‘I thought you were dead,’ said the half-breed. ‘In the fire.’
‘I thought you were dead.’ Nolan laughed; and it was like the obscene chuckling of a corpse. ‘I paid Fritz Baum enough.’
‘He wasn’t good enough,’ said Azul. ‘I killed him.’
‘So you win,’ said Nolan. ‘All you need do is pull that trigger. End it.’
Azul’s finger tensed on the trigger of the Winchester.
‘Go on,’ said Nolan. ‘I killed your father an’ your mother. I hired Baum to kill you: do it.’ It sounded almost as though he welcomed death. Sought it.
The barrel of the Winchester pointed on the ghastly face. Azul’s hand got tight on the mechanism. He thought about his parents. Remembered the hairless skulls. The ravaged bodies. Remembered the long months of hunting the scalpers.
And shook his head.
‘No.’
‘You got me cold,’ Nolan rasped. ‘Why not kill me?’
Azul smiled, but there was no humor in his face. Just a contortion of the muscles that rendered his bleakly handsome features ugly with hatred, his blue eyes cold and curiously detached.
He stared hard at Nolan, taking in the withered, useless limbs; the hideous, barely-human mask from which the eyes alternately glowered and pleaded. Like those of a wolf caught, broken-backed, in a trap. And slowly, savoring the moment, he shook his head.
He could not tell, in that instant of decision, which side of his nature prompted him to let the man live. Whether it was the white half, thinking ahead, calculating; or the Chiricahua part, planning a more awful revenge than death – killing the man – could offer him. Either way he knew in the cold incandescence of his hate that he could do nothing worse to this effigy of a human being. To squeeze the trigger of the Winchester would be too easy; would end Nolan’s suffering too swiftly. To torture the man would not afford him any more pain than he already suffered through the very act of living. To leave Nolan alive was to condemn him to a living death. To know that he suffered with each breath he took.
