The Quiet Game

"You may have to hide out until you get a morning flight. Denver maybe. Do whatever you have to do, but stay out of sight."

A yellow light appears from the darkness ahead, hovering in the air to my right, about fifty yards away.

"That's the campground," Stone says. "Come on."

We separate and fight our way to the south bank. As my hands collide with cold rock, I hear a screech of brakes ahead. Crawling out of the water, I realize my legs are nearly numb.

"They must have driven like banshees to get here that fast," Stone says through rattling teeth. "Tear off a piece of your shirttail."

"What?"

"Your shirttail."

In my weakened state, tearing the soaked cotton is like trying to rip a phone book in half. As I struggle with the hem, Stone jabs a stick through a stretched-taut place and rips off a long piece.

"What do you want me to do? Make a surrender flag?"

He hands me the fabric and rolls over on his stomach. "Wad up a hunk of that and jam it into my wound."

I tear off most of the shirttail and squeeze it into a tight wet tennis ball of cloth, then crouch over Stone's back. Garbled voices float to us from the direction of the campground.

"Where are you hit?"

"Left cheek of my ass. Took out a plug of muscle, I think."

I feel along his left buttock until my fingers mush into a warm opening. Stone doesn't even flinch. The hole is ragged, but it runs across the buttock at an angle, like a deep grazing wound. The swelling below it is considerable, though, and it's bound to get worse now that he's out of the cold water.

"Hurry!" he grunts.

I squeeze the cloth into a tighter ball and hold it against the opening. "Ready?"

"Do it."

In one hard stroke I depress the cloth into the hole as he tenses beneath me. It reminds me of helping my father pack a decubitus ulcer when I worked for him in high school. Now I need something to hold the packing in the wound. Removing my soaked windbreaker, I pull off what's left of my shirt and slide it under Stone's left leg, then tie it over the hole.

"That's the best I can do for now," I tell him, pulling my jacket back on.

"What's the name of the bar?" he asks, rolling over. His face is even whiter than before.

"The Silver Bell. Bartender's Tiny McSwain."

"Good. Move your ass, kid."

"What are you going to do?"

He drops one hand to his waist, where the butt of his.45 glints dully in the dark. "Slow those bastards down for you."

"I'll stay and help you, damn it."

"You can't help me. You don't have a gun. You'll help me by getting your ass back to Mississippi and nailing Portman's hide to the barn wall."

"Stone-"

The old agent grips my arm with more strength than I thought he could possibly have left. "No matter what you hear, keep running. I mean that. If it sounds like the goddamn O.K. Corral up here, you keep running until you reach that bar."

"There's only one way I'll go."

"How's that?"

"If you promise to testify."

His laughter is full of irony. "Boy, if I survive this night, wild horses couldn't stop me from testifying. Portman gave the order for these sons of bitches to kill us because he thought I was going to testify. Well, now he's right. If I'm alive, I'll get to Mississippi. I'll drag Portman's ass down from the mountaintop if I have to tear the whole mountain down with him. Marston too. Now, get your ass out of here."

I get to my knees and look through the trees to the south.

"Don't come back," Stone says quietly. "Not with Tiny or the sheriff. After you leave, everybody up here but me is a target. That's how I want it. The whole thing'll be over by the time anybody could get here, and if I don't come out on top, whoever came would die for nothing. If you come back, I'll shoot you myself."

I grab his upper arm. "The trial starts in thirty-six hours. You get your ass back to Mississippi. You owe it to Del Payton."

He nods in the dark. "That I do, Cage. That I do."

My run to the town is a benumbed nightmare of falls and slides and collisions with trees, an endless march into a killing wind, but I never consider resting. Dwight Stone is offering up his life to cover my escape.

The first gunshot echoes down the valley behind me as the glow of Crested Butte appears like a mirage in the distance. All my instincts say, turn around, go back, and help Stone. But the old soldier's tone of his last order keeps me going. Over rock. Through snowdrifts. Past a black mirror of a lake. Through thickets, thorns. Plodding forward into the relentless wind, ever forward, until at last I am sliding down a white slope toward a geometric heaven of lights and warmth.

When I reach the level of the buildings, I circle to my right in a broad arc that takes me around to the south entrance of town. Muted television dialogue drifts on the air, and the occasional sound of a car motor rumbles from between the buildings.