BURN IN HADES (38 page)

Ignatius boomed in laughter and yanked the chain. The shackle twisted Cross’s wrist and jerked him to his knees. Cross spotted his Peacemaker resting in the giant’s holster. All he had to do was get his hands on it.

The doors to all the boxcars slid open. Charon invited souls aboard.

The two of them climbed into a boxcar. It was filled to capacity, just like it had been the first time he rode the train. Men, women, and children lined the soot-covered walls. They shivered and peered around suspiciously, wearing lost and confused expressions. They had found themselves on a train with no food, water, or sanitation and were being ushered through the underworld to the respective realm of their belief system. Some of the souls’ memories remained intact for now. But soon they’d be drinking from the River Lethe and wouldn’t remember anything, unlike him: The Man Who Remembers. They were lucky. He remembered every confusing detail of how he ended up riding the Charon for the first time.

Twenty-three years after Kate was shot, Charles had read the final page of
Harriet, the Moses of her People
. The story inspired him and placed Kate back into the forefront of his thoughts. She had survived the vicious gunshot but didn’t escape without a nasty disfigurement to her back.

Every single day of the years that went by, he blamed himself for everything that happened to her, and how she had turned out since the shooting. After the incident, he fled the Carson ranch, at a time when she needed him most, when he needed her, when they needed each other. Their split from each other sent both their lives spiraling downward.

Circumstances had befallen Kate that caused her reputation to become soiled, just as Vivian predicted that fateful night after the party. She ran with all the wrong kinds of men: gamblers, bunko artists, and big bugs, the same type of questionable crowd Charles ran with ever since he left the Carson ranch. But he was just glad her occupation was that of a respectable saloon girl and not one of the shady ladies in the brothel. Her life could have easily taken that route.

He and Kate were always so much alike in personality, their lifestyles were the only thing that used to separate them, but now their paths were almost identical. She had lost everything, like him. The family he made without Kate was now gone. She also had no father, like him. She had no mother, like him. The only constant between them was that they always had each other, no one else but each other. And even that dangled from a brittle clothesline over the past few years.

In the past, Kate had always saved him, even suffered a permanent disfigurement to her back as a testament to her devotion. All he did was run away from it. Now it was time for him to return the many favors she had given him. Since their coming of age, she had become enslaved to society, and he planned to free her like Harriet had done the slaves. Of course it wasn’t nearly the same situation, but that story served as his inspiration and spurred him into risking his neck to save her as she had always done for him. God willing, he could restore both their lives.

He closed the book and rode into town, along with a friend for his protection, and they stepped inside the saloon where Kate worked as a saloon girl. Billiard balls cracked against each other, beer mugs clinked on the bar, cards shuffled at a table.

Charles greeted a few patrons and refused a glass of whiskey, “Wait ‘til I come back,” he told his friend. “I want to go to the water closet.”

His friend nodded, and Charles passed through the partition door in the back. He found Kate’s room and knocked on the door.

“Who’s there?” said her voice from inside the room.

“Charlie,” he said.

“Go away!”

“Don’t be like that, Kitty.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said. “That’s what
they
call me. You shouldn’t be here.”

He laid his palm on the cold wooden door. “I came back for you. Just open up.”

The spot on the door where his hand rested warmed up as if her hand was placed in the same area.

“You’re a known outlaw,” said Kate. “They’ll hang you.”

“Then maybe you should let me in before I get spotted.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because, well, I’m engaged.”

“No, you’re not.”

The door went cold again.

“I am,” she said.

“Since when?”

“Since—it doesn’t matter. You need to leave.”

He rested his forehead against the door. “Kate, I’m not leaving without you. Let’s talk. Open up now.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t want to see you.”

“I know I hurt you. I came to apologize. Honestly, I wish I could explain it, but I’m still trying to figure out what happened myself. All I can tell you is—”

A thud pounded inside the room as if someone had jumped on the squeaky bed.

“Is someone in there with you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Please. Don’t do this.”

“I’m not gonna do nothing. I only wanna talk. Honest. Whoever’s in there with you, I promise I don’t have no problems with the fella. I don’t want no trouble. I just want to talk. That’s it.”

The door creaked opened slowly. He stepped inside. A man stood to Kate’s left. He was dressed in a suit, but Kate was in her nightgown even though it was only a few minutes past one o’clock in the afternoon.

Charles introduced himself to the man, but the man said nothing. Charles held out his hand to shake the man’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr.—”

The man lunged at Charles, grappled with him, and clasped his hands around Charles’s neck.

Charles punched the mysterious man off him and gasped for air. “What the Hell?” he said, after finally catching his breath.

Kate stood on the bed aiming her father’s Peacemaker at Charles. Her hands shook so badly, she could have dropped the pistol. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. But I won’t let them have you.”

His last living memory ended there. He never heard the shot, only an odd noise between a low hum and a high-pitched whistle. Nor did he feel the heat of a bullet pierce through his flesh. There was no physical pain at all, only the free feeling of flying through blackness.

There was much more pain in the aftermath due to his bewilderment of why Kate had decided to take his life in the first place. It made no sense.

He may have disappointed her, but it was nothing she would kill him over. None of their disputes where that bad. For the most part, they were always on good terms. They were always able to talk about things.

He loved her enough to trust that she had to have some justifiable reason for killing him. He wanted to believe it was for some greater good. Judging by her final words to him, it seemed that way. Someone was after him. He didn’t know who or why, but she must’ve felt that killing him was the only way to save him. It didn’t seem very logical to him, but she had to have her reasons.

If he could ever find out the whole story, he would. Had his life ever flashed before his eyes like Mr. Beckwourth used to say it would when people died, then he could have gained some kind of clue as to why Kate cut him down.

But his death was as mysterious as it was abrupt. He never saw a bright light or tunnel. He traveled between the stars in one instant, from the saloon where he died to one of Charon’s filthy boxcars where he began his afterlife.

Cross lay beside Ignatius pretending to sleep, waiting for any opportunity to make his escape. He was praying to the Great Goddess to help him find a way out when salty air began to swirl about the boxcar and splashing noises smacked the walls outside. An idea of their current location occurred to him, and if he was right about where they were, now would be his last opportunity to act before the red giant dropped him into the pit of Hell where he belonged.

He cracked an eye open and discovered all the souls were peacefully sleeping much more comfortably than they should have been, including Ignatius, whose deep slumber would make for an easier getaway. The giant was turned on his side like an over-grown baby. The Peacemaker sank into his massive holster like a toy.

Slowly, Cross reached for his Colt. His eyes volleyed back and forth from the giant and onto the revolver as he eased closer and closer. His fingertip touched the holster, and then two fingertips grazed the handle of the gun.

“You think it’s going to be that easy?” said Ignatius, without turning over.

“I’m getting nauseous,” Cross lied. “I think it’s that sea illness. We’ve been rocking back and forth for hours cooped up in this tin can. I need some air.”

Ignatius flipped over to face Cross, who feigned a heave. “It’s coming up.” He clasped a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t get it on me.” Ignatius yanked Cross to his feet by the chain. The pain sliced through his shoulder sharply ending in a tingle. He wiggled his fingers to make sure he could still use them.

Ignatius dragged Cross to the door and slid it open. Wind plunged in carrying water droplets, and they were met with the vast black sea, Oceanus, just as Cross had suspected. Waves splashed at his knees and at Ignatius’s bulky ankles. The locomotive sailed across the stormy sea like a ship, chugging up and down the waves.

“The wind is blowing your direction,” said Cross. “If you don’t want to wear my stinking vomit on your face, I suggest you turn your head. But you don’t have to listen to me. It’s your choice.”

Ignatius squinted his apple-sized eye. Cross gagged and gulped as if on the verge of spewing last night’s barbot all over the giant. Ignatius pivoted sideways. Cross reached for one of the giant’s tiny wings and snapped it off. The giant roared in pain.

Cross thrust all his weight into the giant and shoved as hard as he could out of the boxcar. They both plunged into the rough sea. Charon sailed over the crest of a wave that could have swallowed the Carson’s mansion.

“Are you crazy?” said Ignatius, treading the dark water in a panic. “You know what evil lurks in these waters?”

Cross gouged the giant’s apple eye with his entire hand and swam around to Ignatius’s back. He wrapped the chain around the giant’s neck and pulled it taught.

Ignatius thrashed the waves. His remaining itty bitty wing batted Cross in the face. Waves crashed down on their heads. The giant gulped for air and gagged on water.

Cross braced his knees on the giant’s shoulders and tightened the chain until it was at its tightest. The flailing stopped, and the giant body went limp. Ignatius sank and pulled Cross into the depths like an anchor.

He searched desperately through Ignatius’s pockets for the keys to the shackles. The front and rear pants pockets were empty, as were the outside jacket pockets. He found the key ring on the inside jacket pocket, but there were six keys on the ring and he was sinking fast.

The first three keys failed to unlock the shackles. As he tried the fourth key, decayed fish bombarded him, swimming frantically. Their protruding bones scraped him as they collided into his chest and arms. It was as if they were blind or were fleeing danger.

He swung the keys at the fish. He smacked a few out of his way, but dropped the key ring. It sank. He grabbed for it and accidentally wrapped his fingers around a sallow fish. Its bones sliced his palm.

He ignored the pain and reached for the key ring again. He stretched the length of the chain. The keys disappeared into the abyss with the dead fish, who left behind chunks of chum swirling around.

Ignatius pulled him down further into the hum of the ocean, and it seemed the giant would get his revenge on Cross, even in second death.

A faint blue glow pulsed on and off through the murky waters. Cross removed the Peacemaker from Ignatius’s holster and aimed to shoot the chain that linked them. He pulled the trigger. The bullet merely nicked the chain and caused no damage.

He shot again. Nothing. He fired five more rounds in rapid succession. The water slowed the bullets down each time.

The blue glow brightened. Cross pulled and yanked, trying to squeeze his wrist through the iron bracelet. He twisted Ignatius’s arm in an attempt to rip it out of its socket, but it was like trying to uproot a tree. A pain ripped through his lungs. His chest ached for a breath.