“I didn’t do it,” the man on the ground said. The white bone of his broken leg shone in the midday sun.
“The hell you didn’t, Louie. I haven’t tracked you all over the southwest and back here to listen to you lie.” Nia looked at the peak of Black Bear Mountain, then let her gaze drop until it came to rest on the charred logs that used to be home. She kicked his leg.
Louie screamed. Two ravens lifted into the air from a lodgepole pine and a bull elk snorted from the edge of the forest.
“I want to know why. What were you after?”
He shifted his weight to one elbow, used the other arm to wipe the snot off his face. “I was in the drunk tank in Ouray that night. Check it. You’ll see.”
“You weren’t picked up until two in the morning. The hands sent in the alarm at twelve- ten. Plenty of time to get to town and drink.”
“How’d you break your leg, Louie?”
“Slipped off that damn boulder when I heard your truck coming. Please, just help me up.”
“To prove what a strong bitch you are – just like when you were in rodeo.”
“Long time ago.” Nia moved carefully a few steps to her left, kept the Colt XSE leveled on him. “I didn’t ride after my family was killed.”
“You and your faggot brother, strutting around Cheyenne like you owned it.”
Nia moved quickly, kicked his foot. His scream echoed off the mountains.
“I need clarification of that statement, Louie. You thought my brother was gay?”
“Everybody – meaning those curs you hung with? Not smart enough to be nerds, not enough ambition or discipline to compete in rodeo? The ones who are either in jail or dead?”
“My folks didn’t have a big spread, just a gas station that barely put food on the table. Your folks gave you everything you wanted.”
“My brother and I worked for everything we had. Hard. We both rode fence, did anything else that needed doing. You whined.”
“Frank robbed me. Spooked my horse.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Cheyenne. I had the bronc riding sewn up.”
“2001? The year he won All-Around Cowboy?”
Louie wiped his nose again, looked at the truck parked at the entrance to the meadow. “I got rights. Take me in if you think I killed them.”
“Tell me about the rodeo, Louie. How did Frank steal your buckle?”
“Spooked my horse before the last ride. Came by the chute, talked real low to the animal. I didn’t even last three seconds on that devil. Cost me the buckle.”
“As I remember, that horse had a reputation. My brother probably tried to calm him to help you. Horse was named Sidewinder, wasn’t he?”
“Read me my rights and get me to the fucking hospital.”
“I went back to school that fall, switched my major to criminal justice, joined the Bureau as soon as I graduated. Just so I could enjoy this moment. But you’re taking all the pleasure out of it with your pathetic sniveling.” She shifted her gaze to the house fallen into itself. “Why’d you come back here?”
“I knew you didn’t run cattle any more, thought the bunkhouse might be liveable. Heard you were hunting me. How’d you get onto me after all this time?”
“I was working a case in Denver, had to canvass pawn shops. Guess what I saw in the window of one of them?”
“Shit. Knew I should’ve kept that buckle. My luck sure turned after.”
“Who were you targeting that night? My brother? All of us?”
Louie lay back, moaned. “I didn’t go there to kill anybody, just to get my buckle back.”
“That buckle was All-Around Cowboy, you were only entered in the bronc riding. What made you think you had any right to it?”
“Frank spooked that damn horse.”
“Winning that day meant the world to me. I didn’t know how to do nothing but ride and fix cars. I wasn’t going to be a grease monkey the rest of my life.”
“They called you Snake back then, didn’t they?”
Louie coughed. Opened his jacket and shirt. Nia saw the tattoo, a coiled rattler with “lay low, strike fast” written below it.
“Lovely art work. What happened that night?”
“You haven’t read me my rights, so you can’t use this in court, right?”
“You should know.” Nia walked to a stump, sat, and holstered the Colt. “Tell me what happened that night.”
“I wasn’t there, Louie. I was at a sleep-over at Donna’s.” She picked up a limb the size of a baseball bat and eyed his leg. “Talk.”
“A .22! Cheap piece and I didn’t even know that it wouldn’t blow my hand off.”
“Walked in the back door. I went to the case where you and Frank kept all your fucking trophies. I was grabbing it when Frank came downstairs. He started yelling at me, called me names. Called me a fucking blot on the face of the earth.”
“Finish your story, Louie. I want to know what happened.”
“He went for a rifle, I pulled the piece and told him to stop. When he didn’t, I fired. I heard your mom cry out on the steps, and turned to see your dad coming down the stairs with that big old six-shooter aimed at me.”
“Self-defense. Had no other choice.”
“And my mother, what was she armed with?”
“I thought she was going for your old man’s gun.”
Nia got up, stood at his feet. “And while they lay there, bleeding out, what did you do?”
“Set the fire and got the hell out.” His eyes rolled back in his head, then he closed them tight and flung an arm over his face.
“You sniveling bastard.” She stomped as hard as she could on his good kneecap, had the satisfaction of hearing the bone pop.
His scream sounded like a grizzly growl this time. Deep, primal, formed from rage.
“I have no more use for you, Louie. Enjoy the scenery.”
“You bitch! You can’t just leave me here.”
Nia turned and began to walk away. She heard him moving on the ground, the caws of the ravens, and a whistling sound. She started to turn around but was pushed violently forward as something struck her back.
She regained her balance, felt something on her back. She groped her back until she felt the knife hilt. Then the blinding pain hit and she crumbled to her knees. No way to get out of here, drive all the way into town for help. She’d bleed out. Appropriate. Die here, the same way. Sacred ground to her.
She drew the Colt, flattened both tires, and sent another two rounds into the engine block. She holstered the gun, sat and turned to face Louie.
“Should’ve looked for the knife, knew you were a snake. Now we get to watch each other die. Screw-up.”
“What? I hit you from twenty feet. Pretty damn good.”
“I would’ve sent search and rescue up here for you. I just didn’t want to ride in the same space you inhabited.”
Nia stared at Black Bear Mountain, ignored the stream of profanity from Louie, and remembered growing up on the spread her dad had sometimes called Revenge. His brother had taken all the good bottom land, run it to nothing.
She remembered her dad’s deep baritone saying, “Best revenge is living and doing good.”
S. M. Harding has published short crime fiction in Detective Mystery Stories, Great Mystery
and Suspense Magazine, Crime and Suspense Magazine, and Mysterical-E, and the anthologies
Racing Can Be Murder, Medium of Murder, Dying In a Winter Wonderland, and Bedlam in the
Brickyard. She has completed The Shadow of Truth, the first in a series of Sam Wolfe mysteries.
She has contributed articles to The Journal of Alternative & Complementary Therapies, essays to
The Woman’s Journal (Portland, OR) and Women’s Voices (Santa Fe, NM), and Mystery Scene
Magazine. She is currently editing Writing Murder, a compilation of essays by Midwest authors
on creating crime fiction.
Very cool story – great characters and dialogue, nice pacing. Revenge, indeed.
Many thanks — and glad you enjoyed it.