Now Doc was crying, his shoulders shaking. Ryan reached out and took the crumpled note from his fingers.
Jak stood and walked to the door, following Dean. “Didn’t want this to happen,” he said. “Course I forgive him. But that’s too late.”
Ryan looked down at the neat, angular handwriting.
” ‘I have the feeling that you’ll read this yourself, Ryan. I never met a man I respected more than you. You taught me a load of things and you saved my life again and again. But one thing I learned was that I wasn’t a winner like you. And like the Trader you talk about. Fact is, I reckon I’m a bit of a loser. And losers come second, don’t they? Specially in the dark hole of Deathlands. Yesterday I stood by and hid while the black hats slaughtered two good people. I couldn’t help that. I really couldn’t. Said that before in this letter, haven’t I? But tomorrow I might do the same thing and be the cause of you, Krysty, Dean and the others getting to buy the farm. I know how you all rely on one another to the point of death. Well, you couldn’t rely on me in the same way, Ryan. Now it’ll never be a problem.’ ”
Krysty was watching him closely. “Anything wrong, lover?” she asked.
“No. Nearly done.”
Rather than sorrow or pity, Ryan was feeling only a helpless anger. The deaths of Jak’s wife and daughter had been unavoidable and nobody thought Michael could have done anything. Except get himself chilled. Now the boy had taken his own life, dying alone and miserable, because of his own false sense of failure. It was such a waste.
Krysty reached across and slowly took the note from Ryan’s fingers, reading the last part of it out loud to Mildred, Doc and J.B.
” ‘It seems a pity, but I don’t think that I can write any more. Truth is I’m crying while I try to finish. See the wrinkled bits on the page where my tears are falling? But you mustn’t cry for me, any of you. I think that this is probably one of the best things I ever did. And it’ll take me, I believe, to a far, far better place than I’ve ever known. So long, all of you. And try to be real careful out there.’ It’s just signed ‘Your friend from the past, Michael Brother.’ ”
IT JUST SORT OF HAPPENED that everyone of the surviving friends found themselves out in the sunshine, several of them troubled with bits of grit in their eyes.
Krysty and Mildred had gone in and washed the young man’s body, dressing him in a shirt and jeans that had belonged to Christina. Jak had offered his own clothes, but he’d been six inches shorter than Michael and thirty pounds lighter.
Dean had finally stopped crying and was wandering around, red-eyed, picking up pebbles and throwing them at the fence posts. Doc sat on the swing seat, eyes closed, locked into his own thoughts. Jak was walking around the spread with Ryan and J.B.
“Won’t get anyone help here,” he said. “Chill animals won’t survive. Let others go. Might wander safe. Go chase General and chill him and men. Then come back. Mebbe.”
“Sooner we get off and moving, the better.” J.B. was thinking out loud. “They got wags and we’ll be on horseback. If it doesn’t rain, then their tracks’ll be easy to follow. Catch up with them in the end.” He paused. “Get trail provisions and then go.”
“No,” Ryan said. “One thing to do first.”
“What?” the Armorer asked.
Jak answered the question. “Dig three graves.”
Chapter Twelve
There was a battered rig in the smallest of the outbuildings. After an hour’s intensive work on it, the flatbed wagon was in good enough condition to transport the three bodies up into the foothills to the isolated canyon, beneath the Anasazi ruins, where they were to be buried.
A couple of the older pack animals were harnessed to it with a makeshift arrangement of straps and rope. Jak drove the rig, perched on a upturned packing case, while the others walked slowly along behind.
It was a couple of hours before noon, another wonderful day, a bright sun smiling down from the unspoiled azure sky. Birds sang, and a light southerly breeze blew up from Mexico.
It was the sort of day when it felt good to be alive.
Each of the bodies had been carefully wrapped in a double layer of blankets, the shrouds tied around with lengths of whipcord. There wasn’t time to think of building proper coffins for the three corpses. Jak had considered having Christina and Jenny buried together in the same grave, then decided that it wouldn’t have been right.
“Long as they’re side by side,” he said.
Ryan had taken the albino teenager aside before they left, checking that he didn’t mind having Michael interred with the other two.
“Don’t mind at all, Ryan. Would say if I did. No, it’s real good. Specially after the letter.”
There were three shovels laid in the bed of the wagon, a couple of pickaxes and the three beechwood markers, the lettering burned into them by Doc and Dean, the old and the young working patiently together after breakfast.
Jak had rummaged in a Victorian mahogany bureau until he excavated an antique mother-of-pearl prayer book, handing it to Doc, like it was a holy relic. “Belonged to Christina’s great-grandmother,” he said. “She kept hid. Father would’ve burned if found.”
The teenager drove the rig as far up the steepening trail as he could, stopping when Ryan called out to him that the bodies were beginning to slip off the wagon.
They all helped to bear the corpses the few yards to the shaded place that Jak had picked, close to the dazzling spike of a tall yucca. Between the steep walls of the canyon, the air was much cooler, carrying the scent of sagebrush from lower down the narrow trail.
The earth was soft, easy to dig.
DOC HELD THE BOOK TIGHTLY, as though it were supporting him. His voice was steady and powerful, the old phrases echoing through the sandstone vault.
“‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He or she that believeth in me, though they were dead, they shall live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.'”
Everyone stood with closed eyes, except for Jak, who watched every detail of the ceremony.
” ‘For a thousand years in thy sight are’ ”
The albino clapped his hands together, startling the others. “Cut that, Doc.”
“But the respect should”
“Fuck that. Revenge comes first. Get to ‘man born of woman’ stuff.”
The old man looked to Ryan for backup, but the one-eyed man merely shook his head.
“Very well. ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower. He fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death.’ ”
Dean stepped forward first, holding out a double fistful of the dry, sandy soil, allowing it to fall gently on each of the three blanketed bodies.
“‘We therefore commit their bodies to the ground, earth to earth.’ ”
Mildred came next, whispering a prayer under her breath as she scattered the earth.
” ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ ”
J.B., dropping the dust, brushed his hands clean when he’d done.
” ‘In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through Our Lord, Jesus Christ.’ ”
Krysty, her lips shaping an invocation to Gaia, spirit of the earth, stood for a few moments over each grave.
Doc resumed the prayers, looking worriedly at Jak, who was shuffling his feet with impatience.
” ‘Who shall change our vile bodies that they may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.’ ”
Ryan stooped and ran his fingers through the soft, cool dirt, gathering a handful of it. He stepped first to Christina’s grave, letting some of the sandy earth trickle onto the figure at the bottom of the grave, then to the baby, the bundle so tiny, finally to the last resting place of Michael Brother.
“So long,” Ryan said.
“Lord, have mercy on us.” Doc paused and looked around at the others. “You all have to say ‘Christ have mercy on us’ when I say that. I’ll do it again. Ready?” Everyone nodded. “Lord have mercy on us.”
A ragged chorus, led by Mildred Wyeth, repeated, “Christ have mercy on us.”
Doc glanced at Jak, who hadn’t moved. “Do you wish to scatter some earth in the graves, Jak?”
“Not really. But will.” He bent and grabbed some dirt. Against the total pallor of his skin, it looked bright and fiery. He stepped to Christina first. “So long, love. Thanks for good times.” Then to Jenny. “Goodbye,” he whispered. “Really miss little one.” Finally to Michael, standing on the brink of the rough rectangle of darkness, staring intently down into it. He brushed the last of the red dirt from his long fingers, hesitated then half turned away. Jak was struck by a second thought and turned back again. “Forgive you, Michael,” he said. “Hear me? Forgive you.”