Through Darkest America-Extended Version (19 page)

Howie went for him. He'd been waiting, watching the man's hands. When the tension went out of his fingers and the fists uncurled, he kicked out hard between Pardo's legs.

Pardo hardly moved. He took the blow off his thigh and deftly whipped a big boot under Howie's guard. Howie doubled up and fought to keep his senses. He was sure he'd felt a rib go.

"You better hug dirt some," Pardo told him wearily. "You done about all the
movin
' around you can likely handle."

"You
killed
'
em
!" Howie yelled. "Cory and Jess and … and
ever'one
!" The tears came again and he didn't even try to stop them. "Why, Pardo? Why'd you have to do that for?
Ever'one
!"

"
Naw
, now," Pardo looked pained. "Not
ever'one
, damn it." He sighed deeply, and rolled his eyes to the heavens. "Boy, listen . . .” He squatted down close to Howie. "What you got to understand is I didn't have
nothin"
gainst
any of them fellers. They just wasn't part of the business. Now, can't everyone be, can they?"

"They didn't do
nothin
' to you," Howie said fiercely. He pulled himself painfully up on one arm. "You didn't have no call for that Pardo. I
liked
him. I liked him a lot!"

"Just shut up, now!" Pardo roared. He grabbed Howie's hair and pulled him straight, so close Howie could see the bright flecks of anger in the man's eyes. "Howie," his voice was deadly calm, now, "you got a lot of
learnin
' to do yet, and the first thing you better get through that head of yours is that a man ain't got no friends but himself. And the only reason someone
don't
do
somethin
' to you is he ain't thought of it yet or he don't see no profit in the doing."

"Cory . . .”

"Cory wasn't no different than anyone else. A might
slower'n
some, maybe. Give him half a chance and he'd—"

Howie pulled away from him. "Pardo, you better do whatever you figure on
doin
' to me. 'Cause I swear I'm
goin
' to kill you. Any time I figure I can get the better of you."

Pardo gave him a curious look, then a broad grin spread his whiskered features. "Why, God damn, I believe you will at that!"

"I mean it. I sure as hell do."

"I know you do. I don't reckon I'll let it come between us . . . it's a natural thing, one feller
wantin
' to cut up another. 'Course, it ain't real smart
telling
a man what you figure on doing to him. Not that I haven't known what
you
was think- in' since it come to you. Which weren't today, by the way."

He looked hard at Howie. "A man, now, he wouldn't let me see that, Howie. But a boy hasn't got enough smarts to know what's good for him. 'Stead of fighting, he talks about what's right and what ain't… an 'bout
poor
old Cory,
layin
' out there cold somewhere in the bushes—"

Howie struck out wildly and Pardo easily slapped him away.

"You're the dirtiest son of a bitch there ever was, Pardo!" His whole body shook, and he couldn't make it stop. "There ain't no man worse than you anywhere! Not
even
—not even
Colonel Jacob!
"

Pardo shook his head sadly. "See what I'm saying? There you go with that
child
-talk again." He pulled himself to his feet and looked down at Howie. "Boy, you just cry 'bout poor old Cory and Jess and whoever all day if you got a mind to. 'Cause I'll tell you one thing . . ." He cocked a shaggy brow and pointed a long finger at Howie. "Come this time tomorrow morning you're going to be so
Godamn
glad it's him dead out there 'stead of you, you won't hardly be able to pee straight."

"That ain't so," yelled Howie. "I'm not ever going to think like that!"

"Sure." Pardo spat solemnly on the ground.
 
"Not 'til tomorrow you ain't." He turned and walked back toward the clearing without looking back.

Howie sat where he was until the ache in his side went away and watched the riders move down the draw toward the herd.
 
The smell of heat and dust and horses was heavy on the air, and as the morning breeze picked up, the stink of live meat wafted up to the clearing.

While he sat there, a strange and terrible thing happened to him. Something cried out for help deep inside him, something that was—and wasn't—a part of him anymore. Howie tried desperately to answer. He knew what was happening, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. The thing inside him faded quietly away and was no more.

A great shame flooded in to replace the awful emptiness, but that didn't help the hurt. There wasn't anything that could make it better. It was gone and it took part of the old Howie with it. And it could never quite come back again.

It was a peculiar thing, Howie thought.
Everytime
someone took something from him, they gave something-back. It wasn't always something bad, he realized. Jacob and Pardo had given him terrible needs, things he didn't want at all, but Aimie had given him something deep and wonderful that he wanted very much. It seemed like what people did taught you what to do back to them.

There wasn't any question anymore about going south or running away or anything else. He would stay. He would stay until he was man enough to face Pardo, and kill him. It wasn't a good thing, but it was something that had to be. And of course Pardo would know that, too.

Chapter 20

T
he town of Roundtree clustered about the far
bend
of a dry river. Time, and hot winds from the Kansas prairie, had warped the plank buildings and turned them dusty gray. They leaned slightly westward, now, like thirsty old men waiting for water to bubble up out of the parched ground.

Fifty or so people had lived in Roundtree before
Lathan
burst out of Colorado to swallow
Danefield
, Caravel Keep, and a clear road to the flat country. Now, the rebels breathed down Loyalist necks in Dodge and threatened to cut supply lines all the way to Arkansas Territory. Still, there was a relative quiet in the north and the big fighting to the south had made
Roundtree's
fortune. Near enough to Dodge, but close to rebel ground as well, it was useful to both sides without really belonging to either. The fifty citizens had swelled to five-thousand and new buildings rose out of the prairie as fast as men could stand raw timber on end.

It was a place where arms of all kinds could be bought, sold, or traded. Black powder and fresh water brought nearly the same price until a fair well was drilled close to town. Good raw metal was worth a quarter of its weight in silver. And a fine horse might be bought in Roundtree one week and sold there twice the next—its interim owners mysteriously missing.

The town was thick with rebel and Loyalist soldiers, though neither appeared in uniform, and none would admit to any interest in the war. Most were disguised as merchants, raiders, or thieves; and in truth, there were few among them who couldn't rise to such roles. In Roundtree they spied honestly on one another, plied each other with whiskey and women, and traded mounts for their respective armies—always pocketing a fair piece of change for their troubles. It was common enough here to buy back your own stolen mounts and more than once a soldier had found himself bidding for arms against a brother officer.

It was in Roundtree that Pardo had made his deal with Loyalist leaders to join the big meat herd and see it safely through Tennessee and Arkansas Territory. And it was here that he had promptly doubled his money and then some by selling the deal back to
Lathan's
men.

No one was foolish enough to think the raid was any accident—certainly no one in Roundtree. And it was common talk that Colonel Monroe in Dodge had put a price on Pardo's head for it. Double-dealing was one thing—that was part of the game—but the loss of such an enormous quantity of meat had hurt the government badly, and they weren't likely to forget it.

Pardo laughed it off in good humor and said, where everyone could hear, that Monroe was more worried about losing a star on his shirt than any meat herd and that's what was truly getting his back up. To copper his bet, though, Howie knew, he'd secretly sent word to Monroe that he hadn't had anything to do with the rebels stealing his meat, that he was out the rest of his own money on the deal, and had been lucky to get away with his hide. He even offered to hire out at almost nothing to take soldiers into eastern Colorado to steal the herd back from the rebels. Monroe didn't answer and Pardo didn't expect him to.

Meanwhile, Pardo had his hands full getting an arms shipment ready for Jeb Hacker,
Lathan's
top trader in Roundtree and the man who'd closed the meat deal. Guns were getting scarcer than ever and Hacker had offered a high premium for every weapon Pardo could furnish. Which gave Pardo the idea it'd be plain foolish to deal solely with the rebels; if Monroe wanted to play the fool, why, there were other government officers who'd be glad enough to get in on the bidding. Especially, he figured, if it appeared like the guns were coming from someone who didn't have anything to do with him directly. That'd work just fine and a little healthy competition wouldn't hurt the price any . . .
 

If that kind of business didn't get Pardo's head on a stick, nothing would, Howie thought sourly. It seemed like the man was stretching his luck as far as it'd go, just to see if he could—like he didn't have enough trouble and had to stir up some more.

At the moment, his mind wasn't on Pardo at all, or the cartload of nothing he was supposed to be watching.
Harlie
and Ketch hauled the small wagon, with the top tied down real careful, while Howie or someone else who could handle a gun kept an eye out for trouble. There wasn't much thinking to a job like that, but someone had to do it. It seemed plain crazy to worry about raiders hitting one little cart right in the middle of Roundtree with the streets full of people—but it happened, sometimes. It wouldn't if Pardo and the other dealers who had something going would keep all their business in one place instead of putting one piece together here, and another somewhere else. Only that was plain
asking
for trouble. The man who put his whole operation under one roof would likely be out of business before the day was out. It had happened more than twice in Roundtree.

If you were in the arms and ammunition trade, you knew better than to bring all your craftsmen together, or to let a man who worked for you know who got the parts after him. That was the quickest way in the world to get a knife in your ribs.

So there were carts covered to look like whatever they weren't passing through Roundtree at all hours of the day; some full of valuable metals or sacks of springs and bores, and some full of nothing at all going places where nobody was. The decoys didn't do much good, because there were enough idlers in Roundtree willing to follow most anything for a copper.

The truth was, as Howie and most everyone else knew, the really important goods went from place to place in a man's pocket or under a woman's skirt. It was less trouble than the business with the carts. On the other hand, the more people you used, the greater the chance they also worked for someone else.

In Roundtree, there were guards guarding guards and watchers watching watchers. There was work for everybody. And for the few, like Pardo, who had the cunning and patience to keep an eye on everything in town at once, there was a great deal of money to be made. If you could only keep alive long enough to spend it.

It was enough to make a man's head hurt, Howie thought irritably. When the cart reached Center Street, he left
Harlie
and Ketch to play out the rest of the game and disappeared quickly into the noonday crowd. Instead of going directly back to the Keep, he circled through the middle of town, past the crowded clapboard shops and narrow stalls that stretched the length of
Roundtree's
main avenue of commerce. It was a noisy, sprawling street; merchants large and small vied for every copper that lined a passing pocket. They were intense, quick-eyed men, hungry for trade at ever- climbing prices. No one knew how long the war might last. Why, God forbid, it could end tomorrow!

There were vegetable sellers, feed mash merchants, and whiskey dealers by the dozen. A man could buy steel blades, wheat flour, hemp rope, cotton cloth, bone tools, clay kettles, horse blankets, real and false gemstones, and pretty girls no more than fourteen summers old. ("And you'll be the first to touch her, sir, I promise you that!")

Howie passed the butcher shop where a small boy tried vainly to keep clouds of black flies from hanging cuts of meat. Next door, a whole carcass dripped grease over sizzling coals, while the butcher's other offspring kept it turning. It was prime young mare, fat and full of juices. Howie hadn't eaten since sunup and the rich smells assailed his empty stomach. He gave the boy coppers for a meaty rib half as long as his forearm and gnawed it happily through the crowd.

He'd gone no more than a block before he was certain someone else was in his tracks—and more than one, at that. He'd felt vaguely uneasy since morning, when they'd loaded the cart on
Dryside
past the Keep. The usual watchers were about; Howie knew the regulars well enough. But there was someone else, too. He could have easily dismissed the whole business, but if they were still with him after he'd left the cart behind, that was a different brand of trouble altogether.