There were a lot of sirens on Saturday morning after they found the sheriff, so the Wrath kept their distance, using the day to gather up more of the nitro, case the area, deal with the defections. In spite of the blood oaths they’d taken, most of the Crusadeers who had joined them had split overnight, including Jesse Colt. Said they came to avenge their buddy Littleface, did that, they’re moving on. They don’t know dynamite and armageddons. So the Wrath is smaller, only a dozen or so, but it’s hardcore. Nat’s disappointed about Jesse. Dug his name, his style, thought of him as another Face. But he wasn’t. When they’re done here, they’ll hunt those deserters down, take retribution. After the sheriff’s car was hauled away, the mine hill was unoccupied for a time, so Nat, Juice, and Cubano took the occasion to roll in the back way and pick up the boxes buried under the tipple, but they discovered that the dog’s grave had been cleaned out and refilled with dirt. Just a single putrefied leg bone in there, like they were being taunted. Which meant someone was onto them, at least partly. After sundown, they withdrew into this state park. Stored their assets. Laid plans.
Then today, once they’d made sure the Brunists were all over on the mine hill, they slipped into the camp quickly the back way they’d come before. There was a barbed-wire fence up, but they’d passed by and seen that and were ready with bolt cutters. Nat wanted them in and out of there in ten minutes. He led them to the place near the tagged tree where they buried the stuff, but it wasn’t there. Didn’t look like anything ever had been. Had he got the right place? Had the tag been moved? It was dark when they buried it; maybe things looked different. While he was puzzling this out, the old man turned up. Back in the woods some ways, half behind a tree. Cradling a rifle. “Over here, boys,” he said. “You’re looking for that nitro.” The Wrath’s guns were out, but Nat said, “Don’t shoot!” “That’s right. It ain’t my aim to shoot nobody less I have to,” the old man said. “I wanta make a deal. I don’t figure this is all of it, nor not alla you neither, so I don’t reckon I can stop whatever meanness you’re up to. All I want, Nat Baxter, is for you to promise not to come back here to the camp again and not to bother the people here.” “I can do that, old man.” No problem. Nat doesn’t want the camp. He wants the town. The world. “Awright. You’re a mean young hellion, Nat Baxter, but I trust you when you give your word. It’s back over here. I’ll show you, but no funny business. Don’t need your whole passel, just you and a coupla others. Maybe that one there in the fancy red boots and that older feller in the braid who looks sensible enough not to start up no trouble.” Nat started forward with Juice and Paulie, who always jumped into everything, wanted or not, Deacon’s pal Toad Rivers and old Buckwheat joining in as protection or just out of curiosity, but Houndawg hesitating, maybe because he’d been singled out, then Nat, too. “Wait a minute,” he said, feeling one of his headaches coming on. Like somebody saying no. Something was wrong. What was it? He was squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden pain needling his head like black lightning and it was like Littleface was there with a lock on him — he reached for Paulie’s shirt—“No, stop!” he shouted, and Houndawg’s gun came up, aimed at the old man, and just as he fired, the whole world seemed to heave up and hit him in the face.
He couldn’t hear anything for a moment, couldn’t see, couldn’t even breathe. Thought he might be dead. But then he saw Houndawg, his leg half blown away, limp over to where the old man was. He’d set his gun down, was praying. Houndawg was carrying the high-powered rifle they’d appropriated from the sheriff and he pumped bullets from it into the old man’s head until he ran out, the head bouncing off the ground with each shot like a puppet. He started to load up again, but Deacon said, “C’mon, Dawg, you can’t kill him more’n you already killed him. We gotta tear ass, man!” Nat had a headache still, but it was a different kind. In fact he hurt all over, like he’d just had a forty-foot fall. He was bleeding, he knew, just like those warriors in the comicbooks, but he was on his feet, ready for whatever. Buckwheat, Juice, and Paulie were just a splatter of torn-up meat lying there in the cratered earth and Deacon’s tough old pal Toad was in bad shape, too, a big gaping hole in his middle parts. “I ain’t gonna make it,” he grunted. Blood was splashing out of him like from a broken hydrant. “Somebody fucken shoot me!” “He’s your bud, Deac, whaddaya think?” Baptiste said. Deacon looked over at Hacker and the doc shook his head and Deacon shot him. “Grab up the guns!” he said. There wasn’t much of Paulie left below the head; Houndawg sliced off whatever was dangling from it and took it with him. 666 wanted Juice’s red boots and Deacon, who’d been rifling Toad’s pockets, said, “You’ll have to take them with the feet still in, Sick. Hear them whoops out on the highway? Here comes the man!” And then they were running. When they reached the bikes, Deacon pushed him toward Toad’s new silver-and-blue-pearl ironhead with ape-hangers, like those on Houndawg’s bike, shoved keys in his hands, and said, “Time for a new sled, kid. Your burnt-out old warhorse is ready for the boneyard. This one’s bigger, faster, and it’s legal.” He only had a half-second to think. Glanced at Houndawg who was holding Paulie’s head and dangling bits by the hair. Houndawg nodded. “I’ll give ’em sumthin to chase,” Baptiste said and he snapped off his silencer and went roaring off, hammer down, in the opposite direction from where they were headed. “You got any ident, kid, leave it with your bike,” Deacon said, heaving his bulk into the saddle. “Toad is giving you his.”
Goateed Hacker, his head capped by his goggles, comes by with some painkillers, stuff they lifted in a drugstore robbery a couple of states over. Nat waves him away. The wounds have been sterilized, bandaged, that’s enough. He hurts, but he doesn’t mind the hurt. Wants it while he thinks about what comes next. They’ve got some serious avenging to do. He refuses the whiskey getting passed around, too. Doesn’t like it, never will. Houndawg does likewise, but takes the painkillers and also some penicillin. His leg is torn up pretty badly. Hacker says it probably ought to come off, but he doesn’t know how to do that and won’t do it, and Houndawg says that’s just as well because he’d shoot him if he tried. Hacker’s not a real doctor, but he has picked up skills on the road, needing them from time to time since mostly when you get in trouble, you can’t use hospitals. Things like applying tourniquets, digging bullets out, stealing the right medicines. One thing he does is give Nat injections against his migraines. They help but can leave him feeling wasted until they wear off. Drinking the blood of sacrificed animals works better. Not much Hacker could do today about the wounded except clean and bandage a few cuts and hand out painkillers. Brainerd had been holding the front door of the old man’s farm shack when it blew off and it broke some fingers, and Hacker, peering closely through his thick lenses, virtually touching the fingers with his nose, fitted the bones together and rigged a splint with whittled sticks and tape, Brainerd grinding a jawful of chaw and cursing softly all the while; that was Hacker’s big job of the day. Luckily it’s Brainerd’s right hand, not the one he shoots with.