The Winter Family Read online

  4

  O’Shea’s household stirred into activity. First the servants rose. Despite the ambitious size of the servant wing, there appeared to only be two: an elderly black man and his wife. The man sniffed at Bill Bread in his rocking chair, but his wife smiled and asked Bill if he wanted coffee. Bill accepted.

  Not much later O’Shea plodded downstairs, coughing and snorting like an angry bull. He went straight out into the fields and Bill could hear him through the windows shouting at his hired hands. After an hour he clomped back inside to the kitchen. The high-pitched laugh of the boy. O’Shea’s gruff responses.

  Bill held the mug of coffee in his thin fingers. He could not drink it—even the smell of it made him sick—but he liked its warmth. By now, Bill thought, the little Indian village had been wiped out. The Family would be miles away. Perhaps they were drinking; perhaps they were sleeping it off. Tonight he would ride to the rendezvous point with O’Shea or his men. Bill wouldn’t receive a share of the night’s profits, but they wouldn’t leave him behind. Of that much he was sure. For now he could enjoy this interlude of domesticity.

  One of the hired hands came in the front door, went into the kitchen, and spoke to O’Shea. Bill did not hear what the hand said, but he heard O’Shea’s reply.

  “What do you meant it’s been cut? Where?”

  The hand spoke.

  “Well, those telegrams need to go out today. Someone will have to carry them to a different telegraph office.”

  Bill dropped his mug of coffee on the carpet. He felt like his entire body had turned into glass. Hard, inflexible, transparent. And as if the room around him was not real, but instead a painting or photograph. The moment stretched on, and to his surprise, he found that he knew exactly what he had to do.

  Both O’Shea and the boy were having porridge. The boy was not eating much, just stirring it with his spoon and laughing and staring at his feet. But then he looked up abruptly and fixed his eyes on something behind O’Shea. O’Shea turned in his chair. Bill Bread stood in the doorway.

  “If you’re hungry—” O’Shea began.

  “They’re coming,” Bill said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Bill’s eyes were almost orange with jaundice and broken blood vessels.

  “They’re coming,” Bill said. “That’s why they cut the telegraph line.”

  It only took O’Shea a moment to understand.

  “Coming to attack us?” O’Shea said.

  “Yes sir,” Bill said.

  “Was that your plan?” O’Shea asked.

  “No, it wasn’t the plan,” Bill said. “But I’ve been with Augustus Winter for twenty-five years, and I’m telling you the plan done changed. I can feel it.”

  The weight of the years seemed to hit Bill.

  “Twenty-five years this November. They cut the telegraph line and they’re coming. You got to get ready.”

  O’Shea stared at Bill, unblinking, then bellowed: “Nathan!”

  The black servant appeared.

  “I’m going to Pryor Creek,” O’Shea said, standing up. “Take my rifle out of the study and keep an eye on Mister Bread here. If he tries to move, shoot him.”

  Nathan nodded.

  “You ain’t got time to go to Pryor Creek,” Bill said. “How many men you got here?”

  “There aren’t thirty real fighting men in the whole fucking town,” O’Shea snarled. “And they won’t last five minutes against the Winter Family.”

  “Hooah hon hon!” the boy laughed.

  The boy’s bright blue eyes were fixed on the floor as always, but the expression on his face was almost sly.

  “Why are you telling us this?” the boy asked Bill. “Hmm? Won’t they kill you if they find out you told? Find out you told? Yes!”

  “Hush, Lyndon,” O’Shea said to the boy. His voice was rough but not unaffectionate. “Nathan, tell Macy to bring the boy up to his room. And to keep him away from the windows.” Then O’Shea turned back to Bill. “Why are you telling us this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “I honestly don’t.”

  5

  Winter had prepared himself for his visit to town. He was clean shaven, save for his mustache, with his hair neatly combed and parted, and he guided his horse with his knees while he held his Winchester rifle with both hands. The green corn crumpled and snapped beneath the hooves of his galloping horse, and of the horses of the riders who followed him.

  The Winter Family emerged from the cornfield behind a farmhouse near the edge of town. A woman drawing water saw them. She let the bucket she was holding tumble into the well and she ran, shrieking, into the house. A few seconds later a man emerged with a shotgun. Winter shot him down.

  “Yee haw!” Johnny Empire cawed.

  “Winter!” Fred Johnson called. “Winter!”

  Winter did not respond; instead, he dismounted on the fly, stalked up to the back door of the house, and kicked it open.

  “Jesus,” Johnson said.

  The Empire brothers and a few of the rowdier ones followed Winter inside. Charlie Empire was already unbuckling his pants as he hopped through the back door.

  Johnson turned to face the men still on their horses. “Where’s O’Shea’s house at?”

  “I don’t know,” Quentin said. “I’ve never been there.”

  “We got to get that money quick,” Johnson said.

  “Oh, there will be no help with the telegraph line cut,” Quentin said, his eyes twinkling. “The closest town is twenty miles from here.”

  “If someone gets out of town, there’ll be men in here in an hour.”

  “Well then,” Quentin said, smiling, while his horse nervously danced back and forth beneath him. “I suppose we had better make sure that they don’t.”

  A woman screamed, and Johnson looked back to the house just as Winter marched outside. The expression in Winter’s eyes was terrifying. It was as if his irises were slowly turning, rotating like wheels around the hard, dark, tiny pupils. He looked at Johnson briefly, then headed toward town, on foot, his rifle resting against his shoulder and a can of kerosene dangling from his left hand.

  “Winter!” Johnson called. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Flames flickering up by the windows. The house was on fire.

  “Holy hell,” Hugh said.

  Johnson forced himself to unclench his jaw. “There’s only two roads in this goddamn town,” he said. “We need to cover every exit. North, south, east, and west. Nothing gets out. Then we need to hit the biggest house and we find the money. The whole goddamn state is going to be up in arms in just a few hours. If we ain’t halfway to Texas by sundown we’re all dead men.”

  They nodded at him, nervous, then watched as the pantless Empire brothers staggered confused out of the flaming house.

  “What the hell?” Charlie said.

  “Exactly,” Johnson said.

  Quentin laughed, and they spurred their horses around the house and into town.

  6

  Bill Bread waited in O’Shea’s parlor, rocking back and forth. The shakes had settled into his hands, and a dry agony was crawling around in his chest.

  The black servant, Nathan, stood by the bay window. He kept the gun pointed at Bill, but every now and then he glanced outside.

  “Did you hear a shot?” Nathan asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Bill Bread said. “I don’t suppose I could have a drink of whiskey?” He had intertwined his fingers and was twisting them, like a rag he was trying to squeeze dry.

  “No,” Nathan said.

  “Anything?” Bill asked.

  “How can you think about drinking at a time like this?” Nathan said.

  Bill made a small, sad noise and looked down at his hands.

  A shot rang out.

  “Did you hear that?” Nathan said.

  “I did,” Bill replied. “They’re here. Like I told you.”

  Nathan looked outside, then stiffened.

  “Do
you see one of them?” Bill asked.

  Nathan stepped back and pulled the rifle up to his shoulder.

  “I think you’d better get away from the—” Bill started. The window shattered, and Nathan fell to the ground.

  Bill Bread stopped rocking. He sat in his chair and waited until the door broke open.

  It was Hugh Mantel, big and soft and peering over his spectacles, along with a tall Mexican named Enrique and a bald Swede with a wicked countenance who had only ever identified himself as Foxglove.

  “Bill!” Hugh said. “So this is O’Shea’s house?”

  “Yes,” Bill said.

  “Where’s O’Shea?”

  “Gone,” Bill said. “There’s only a Negress and a boy here.”

  Foxglove shot Nathan in the head.

  “Where’s the money?” Hugh asked.

  “What money?” Bill said.

  Hugh cursed and said, “Enrique, check the cellar, Fox, upstairs. Me and Bill will take the ground floor.”

  Foxglove tromped up the stairs. He started in the servants’ wing, but he did not waste much time there, instead progressing to O’Shea’s expansive bedroom, where he pulled the drawers out of the dresser and hacked the mattress with his bowie knife.

  From outside, the screams and gunshots grew more frequent.

  After O’Shea’s bedroom, Foxglove moved farther down the hall and came to a locked door. One short kick with his boot and it broke inward.

  A black woman screamed and lunged at Foxglove with something in her hands. Foxglove caught her arm and stabbed her in the stomach. She gave a dismayed and abrupt cry and fell to the floor.

  “No!” the boy cried, as he tried to crawl under his bed. “No! No!”

  Foxglove looked around the little room, at the books and the toys and the lions and tigers dancing on the wallpaper, then he jerked his knife out of the dying woman and stepped toward the hyperventilating boy.

  “No! No! No! No!” the boy cried, weeping and crawling and for some reason bumping into the leg of his bed over and over again, like a blind dog. “No! No!”

  “Yes, yes, yes—” Foxglove began, smiling, but then a gun barked behind him. A fist-sized chunk of skull and brain popped out of his forehead and flew across the room. His body tripped forward and hit the floor.

  “Eeee!” the boy shouted. “Eeee!”

  Bill lowered Hugh’s revolver, then bent to retrieve Foxglove’s weapons and hurried from the room.

  As he was heading for the front door he met Enrique coming in.

  “I heard a gunshot,” Enrique said.

  “Did you,” Bill said.

  Enrique had only the briefest instant to observe Hugh’s body sprawled next to the rocking chair, smeared with blood.

  There was another gunshot then, and Enrique fell backward into the yard. Bill followed him out and shot him again, though he was not moving. The sun hit Bill in the eyes and he sneezed. His hands had stopped shaking. He felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders as he picked up Enrique’s gun and walked away from O’Shea’s house, toward town.

  7

  The little nameless town was burning. Smoke rose into the sky and ash drifted down like gray snow. Bodies lay in front of the houses. The wounded rolled and gasped and bled into the mud.

  As Fred Johnson had said, there were only two roads in town. He sat upon his horse in the middle of the one heading west, toward Oklahoma City, and looked back to the intersection at Winter’s handiwork. One building after another caught fire.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  Everything was going to hell. They ought to be terrifying everyone into staying in their homes, but instead the fires were driving people into the streets, whereupon they tried to flee, forcing Johnson and the other men to gun them down. Johnson had seen massacres like this dozens of times during the Indian Wars but nothing like it in a white town since Sherman’s army marched through the Carolinas in the last few months of the Civil War.

  He could see members of the Family kicking open doors, dragging men and women outside, filling their bags with loot. But no sign of the money. Where was the money?

  Behind Johnson, Quentin was galloping in a tight circle and waving his hat, leaning back in his saddle and singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

  I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

  “As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal”;

  Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

  Since God is marching on.

  “Where is the fucking money?” Johnson said.

  A rifle fired. That in itself was hardly surprising, but Johnson saw Quentin’s horse stumble sideways with a terrible shriek, cutting off Quentin’s mad cries of “Glory, glory, hallelujah!”

  Someone was shooting at them for a change.

  Johnson leaned down onto his horse’s neck and spurred it back toward the intersection. He saw a little man coming down the laneway of a great house with a rifle in his hand. The man was walking bowlegged, crouched close to the earth, in a half shuffle, half waddle that was very familiar. It was Bill Bread. Johnson relaxed and looked elsewhere for the shooter, and that was when his horse was shot as well, tripping and screaming and pitching him to the earth before limping away in terror.

  Quentin had scrambled away from his dying horse and now he caught Johnson’s arm and dragged him down into a ditch.

  “One of these wretches has a spine after all,” Quentin said as he cocked his revolver. “Did you see where the shot came from? I think it was from the other side of the—”

  “Bill,” Johnson said, although even as he spoke, he could scarcely believe the words coming out of his mouth. “Bill’s shooting at us.”

  “What?” Quentin said. “No!”

  He stuck his head out of the ditch and a bullet kicked up the gravel next to his face, knocking him back down.

  “Bill Bread!” Quentin cried. “Bill Bread!”

  “Bill Bread,” Johnson said. He dropped to his knees and crawled through the ditch toward the center of town. Wet grass and mud scooped into his sleeves and smeared down his pants. The wounded horse was still screaming. Quentin followed.

  “Bill Bread!” Quentin said again. It sounded to Johnson like he might be laughing. “Will wonders never cease?”

  Johnson stopped, propped his rifle on its side to keep it dry, drew a pistol and cocked it, then popped his head above the ditch. Bill Bread had made his way into the center of town, taking the Winter Family unawares and driving them out of the intersection. He saw Johnson and quickly retreated back behind the post office.

  “Cover me, Quentin,” Johnson snarled.

  “Very well,” Quentin said and leapt up and began to fire.

  Johnson bolted out of the ditch with the rifle in his left hand and the pistol in his right. He kicked open the door to the saloon and ducked inside. The Empire brothers were crouched underneath the window facing the street.

  “Is Bill fucking Bread shooting at us?” Charlie asked, bewildered.

  “He done lost his mind,” Johnson said. “Quentin’s got us covered. Johnny, you shoot out the window. Charlie and me will—”

  Quentin ran past, heading east as fast as he could.

  “They’re coming!” he shouted. “They’re coming!”

  “Who’s coming?” Johnny asked, and his confusion was mirrored in Charlie’s heavy, stupid face.

  Johnson felt like a dark, deep mine shaft had opened up in his chest and his heart was falling, falling, falling.

  The first of the riders galloped past the saloon, hours and hours earlier than should have been possible.

  “Oh god no,” Johnson said. “Oh Bill, what’ve you done to me?”

  “What the hell, Freddy?” Charlie cried. “How are they here?”

  Johnson did not reply. He barged out the door and was immediately confronted by the sight of the posse coming up the road from the west, so many of them, so godda
mn many! Like a fucking parade, and before eight in the morning. All of them standing high in their stirrups, horses coated in foam, gasping for breath. The rain of bullets began, but Fred Johnson, hardened in a thousand firefights, stood his ground for a moment. He knew they would not hit him, not with their blood up and from moving horses, and so he took the opportunity to reflect on the end.

  8

  By all rights it should have been a massacre when the posse rode into town, but the Winter Family had an improbably large amount of experience with such situations. Those who survived long enough to get to their horses managed a somewhat organized retreat.

  For his part, when the riders came into town, Bill dropped his smoking weapons into the mud and sat on his heels with his palms on his knees and just watched. It was in this position that he caught a glimpse of Augustus Winter, the last time he would see him for more than eighteen months.

  Winter came out of a burning house, his trim, light-colored suit stained with stripes of blood and ash. A rider spotted him and tried to wheel his horse around but Winter raised the revolver in his left hand, thumbed the hammer back, and fired. The rider dropped. Then Winter raised the gun in his right hand and killed another young man, green and inexperienced, who had rushed to this place when he heard that his neighbors needed him. The bullet caught him full in the chest and knocked him down to the earth where he bled out his last.

  Winter fired his weapons twice more and drove the riders back. As he turned to flee into the woods he looked over his shoulder and his eyes, wide and yellow, locked with Bill’s. Until the day he died Bill would remember their lack of expression. No betrayal, anger, fear, surprise. Nothing. Just bright, alert, and empty. Like the eyes of a mountain lion that glances with magnificent disinterest at the hunter before it plunges away into the underbrush, back into the profound wilderness, unaffected by a brief intercession with the world of men.

  9

  What was left of the Family waited for Winter in the stand of blackjack oaks on the small hill where they had spent the night before. Now the sun blazed down on them from the east and the smoke rose from the burning town from the west and they could hear, faintly, the cries of their pursuers: the horses, the hounds, the men.