Part 40 (1/2)

The saddle was bigger, broader than an English one, and the stirrups were set far too high for Oscar's long legs. But the horse was moving in a fluid gallop as it raced down the wide muddy Leadville street, powerful muscles smoothly bunching and unbunching; and Oscar, right hand holding the reins, left hand clutching at the saddle horn, had no trouble staying on.

Earlier this evening, when he had arrived in Leadville, he had thought it the ugliest city he had ever seen, as dreary and desolate as the Tenth Circle of h.e.l.l. The hills around it for barren miles had been stripped of their trees, black stubble sticking up every where through the gray slush. The slush was gray because the air was gray, thick with the smoke that belched day and night from the smelters and the refineries. And from the smoke that belched day and night from the stacks of the ore trains-thousands of them, it seemed-that crisscrossed the bleak, denuded land and ferried countless tons of rock ripped and blasted from the earth.

The city itself was a drab black sprawl of soot-sown wooden shacks and shanties, each huddled up pathetically against the next. In a way, it was more depressing than Denver's Shanty town. In Shanty town, one felt that the inhabitants had never been given a choice: that they had been swept there by the unforgiving tides of fate. Here, one understood that the inhabitants, seeking their fortunes in the silver fields, had made a deliberate decision. They had elected to live here, amid the smoke and the sad, sinister squalor. The monochromatic ugliness of the place, its gross deformity, was the consequence of human greed, and the monument to it.

Now, racing down those black mean streets atop an unfamiliar horse, Oscar thought of none of this. He barely saw the tawdry, tatty huts and hovels as they slipped past.

He could not get his breath. At ten thousand feet the air was too thin; there was not enough of it. Earlier, when he had first climbed up the stairs to his hotel room, he had nearly collapsed. Now his ribs were clawing at his lungs; his heart was flailing against his sternum as though it might burst.

He rounded a corner and saw the Palace, asprawl across the top of a broad, low, moonlit hill. He thumped his heels against the horse's sides and willed himself to keep breathing, willed himself to arrive on time.

A carriage was parked at the entrance to the castle. Oscar hurled himself to the ground, stumbled, pulled the gun from his waistband.

His heart pounding madly, his chest heaving, a whine shrilling in his ears, he stalked into the portcullis. The ground squished and squirmed under his feet, like a jelly, and water gushed over the sides of his boots into his socks, stinging cold.

In the moonlight the crystal walls of the palace seemed to glow from within, a ghastly, unearthly radiance.

The place was huge, enormous-how would he find her in time?

He heard-from up ahead, off to the left-a scream. He ran.

A courtyard. An opening to the left. Another scream. From inside there.

He flew across the expanse of slush, plunged through the opening in the wall of ice. Saw Elizabeth lying on a pile of rubble, her hands behind her back, her coat and dress torn open, her naked body splashed bright white by the moon. Saw a smear of something back and s.h.i.+ny across her pale face.

Saw the black form leaning toward her, an object in its hand.

The figure whirled to face him.

Oscar gasped. ”You!”

NAILED SLIGHTLY ASLANT to the wall above the old upright piano was a handwritten sign that read: ”Please don't shoot the piano player, he's doing his best.”

His best was clearly not very good. The tune he was torturing at the moment had perhaps been, when it was written, a light, bouncy, frivolous piece. It sounded now, its notes warped, its tempo wavering, like a prolonged wail of pain.

No one in the crowded saloon appeared to mind. The women, most of them grossly overweight, bulging from the tight red bodices of their dresses like sacks of flour from shop shelves, laughed raucously as they danced and drank and flirted with the miners, the cowboys, the shopkeepers. The miners and the cowboys and the shopkeepers laughed raucously back. The place was a bedlam, noise and smoke and the bright bilious blare of gaslight. It seemed impossible to Oscar that only a few hours before, less than a mile away, an utter horror had taken place.

Dr. Holliday asked him, ”How's Mrs. Doe?”

”She seems all right,” said Oscar glumly. ”He hit her in the head and she bled rather a lot-well, you saw. But the doctor believes that it's nothing serious.” Lying on her hotel room bed, pallid and beautiful, she had asked Oscar to telegraph Tabor in Manitou Springs and request that he come as soon as possible. Even after Oscar had saved her life, she still preferred that horrid little man to him. He had sent the telegram anyway, one of Love's brave martyrs.

”Would've been a lot worse,” Holliday said, ”if you hadn't gotten there in time.”

”Umm,” said Oscar.

”Have another drink,” said Holliday, and poured from the bottle into Oscar's gla.s.s.”

”You don't suppose,” he said, ”that they've any tea here, do you?”

Holliday smiled his ghost of a smile and shook his head.

”Umm,” said Oscar. Dispirited, feeling drained and infinitely weary, he sipped at the whiskey.

”If you hadn't shown up,” Holliday said, ”he would've killed her.”

Oscar slowly shook his head. ”I still can't credit it, you know. That it was he who killed those women. I never for a moment would've thought it possible.”

Holliday moved his shoulders faintly in a shrug. ”Sometimes you can't figure people.”

Oscar shook his head again. ”But him.”

Holliday drank some bourbon, looked up over Oscar's shoulder, and nodded. ”Bob.”

”Doc. Wilde.” Grigsby's face was ashen and he moved his big body slowly, like someone recuperationg from a long illness. Oscar noticed, as the man sat down, that his hands were trembling. Perhaps sensing Oscar's scrutiny, he folded his arms over his chest, hiding the hands.

”Just finished with the chief of police,” he told Oscar. ”He's gonna keep the thing quiet. No need for the newspapers to hear about all this. Reckoned you ought to know.”

”Umm,” said Oscar. That was, yes, probably for the best. The news that someone in his entourage had brutally killed five women might-as Vail had tonight suggested-”really punch up ticket sales.” But it would turn the tour into even more of a circus than it had been so far. And besides, Oscar wanted no reminders of what had happened tonight. Probably, he would never need any. ”Thank you,” he said.

”I'll send some telegrams out, tomorrow mornin',” Grigsby said. ”To the towns where the others got killed off. Let 'em know the thing is over.”

”Umm,” said Oscar.

For a few moments no one spoke. Holliday's empty black eyes were watching Grigsby, who sat with his head and his large, silly hat tipped forward, staring down at the tabletop.

It was Grigsby who broke the silence. He turned to Oscar and said, ”I f.u.c.ked up.”

”Well, now, Marshal ...” Oscar began.

”I f.u.c.ked up. I got stinkin' drunk when the most important thing I shoulda been doin' was keepin' a clear head. Shoot, I'm still drunk. Swallowed near enough a gallon of black coffee and I'm still drunk. I let you people down, you and Mrs. Doe. Let myself down. And I wanted you to know that I'm right sorry about that.”

”Well, Marshal,” said Oscar, embarra.s.sed and-surprisingly, reluctantly-touched. ”Really, you know, if you hadn't told me that all the women he killed had red hair, I should never have rushed off as I did. I should never have reached Mrs. Doe on time.”

”That don't count for much, my tellin' you,” Grigsby said. ”But you did good, Wilde. You did real good.”

Oscar shook his head. ”If only it could have ended some other way.”

Grigsby said, ”Probably best it ended the way it did. Cleaner.”

Cleaner? All that blood splas.h.i.+ng on the snow?

Again, for a few moments, no one spoke. Again, when someone did, it was Grisgsby.

”Where'd you learn to ride like that? You handled that mare like a rodeo champ.”

”In Ireland. I've been riding since I was a child.” Oscar shrugged modestly. ”I should have done better if I'd had a proper saddle.”

”You did just fine.”

”Thank you for saying so, Marshal.”