come toward me a little more and check out your environment??

?Rattlers are holed up in here??

?Probably not more than a couple of dozen. Just flatten yourself out against the wall.?

?Your voice sounds a little strange, Jack.?

?He?s had an anaphylactic reaction to peanut butter. It may be fatal,? a woman?s voice said.

?You shut up,? Collins said.

?Is that right, Jack? You want to go to a hospital?? Hackberry said.

But there was no answer.

?I was a navy corpsman,? Hackberry said. ?Severe anaphylaxis can bring on respiratory and coronary arrest, partner. It?s a bad way to go, strangling in your spit, your sphincter letting go, that sort of thing.?

?I can squeeze this trigger, and you?ll be a petroglyph.?

?But that?s not what this is about, is it? You?re haunted by the women and girls you killed because your act was that of a coward, not because you robbed them of their lives. You don?t want redemption, Jack. You want validation, justification for an act you know is indefensible.?

?Sheriff Holland, don?t bait this man or try to reason with him. Kill him so he doesn?t kill others. I?m not afraid,? the woman said.

Hackberry gritted his teeth in his frustration with Esther Dolan. ?That?s not why I?m here, Jack. I?m not your executioner. I?m not worthy of you. You already said it?I?m a drunk and the sexual exploiter of poor third-world women. I?ve got to hand it to you, for good or bad, you?re the kind of guy who belongs to the ages. You screwed up behind the church, but I think the order for the mass shooting came from Hugo Cistranos and wasn?t your idea. That?s important to remember, Jack. You?re not a coward. You can prove that this morning. Turn Mrs. Dolan loose and take your chances with me. That?s what real cojones are about, right? You say full throttle and fuck it and sail out over the abyss.?

There was a long silence. Hackberry could feel the wind puffing around him, blowing coldly on his neck and the backs of his ears. Again he heard a rattling sound, like the wispy rattling of seeds inside a dried poppy husk.

?I?ve got to know something,? Collins said.

?Ask me.?

?That night I went inside your house, you said my mother wanted me aborted, that I was despised in the womb. Why would you treat me with such contempt and odium??

?My remark wasn?t aimed at you.?

?Then who??

Hackberry paused. ?We don?t get to choose our parents.?

?My mother wasn?t like that, like what you said. She wasn?t like that at all.?

?Maybe she wasn?t, sir. Maybe I was all wrong.?

?Then say that.?

?I just did.?

?You think your words will make me merciful now??

?Probably not. Maybe I?ve just been firing in the well.?

?Get out of here, Mrs. Dolan. Go back to your family.?

Unbelievingly, Hackberry saw Esther Dolan running out of the darkness, her shoulder close to the right wall, her arms gathered across her chest, her face averted from something on the left side of the cave.

Hackberry grabbed her and pushed her behind him out into the light. He turned and went back into the cave, lifting his revolver from his holster. ?You still there, Jack??

?I?m at your disposal.?

?Do I have to come in after you??

?You could wait me out. The fact that you?ve chosen otherwise tells me it?s you who?s looking for salvation, Sheriff, not me. Something happen in Korea you don?t tell a lot of people about??

?Could be.?

?I?ll be glad to oblige. I?ve got fifty rounds in my pan. Do you know what you?ll look like when I get finished??

?Who cares? I?m old. I?ve had a good life. Fuck you, Jack.?

But nothing happened. Inside the darkness, Hackberry could hear the rilling sound of small rocks, as though they were slipping down a grade.

?Maybe I?ll see you down the road, Sheriff,? Collins said.

Suddenly, a truck flare burst into flame far back in the cave. Collins hurled it end over end onto a rock shelf where diamondbacks as thick as Hack?s wrists writhed among one another, their rattlers buzzing like maracas.

Hackberry emptied his .45 down the cave shaft, then pulled the Beretta from the back of his belt and let off all fourteen rounds, the bullets sparking on the cave walls, thudding into layers of bat guano and mold, ricocheting deep underground.

When he finished firing, he was almost deaf, his eardrums as insensate as lumps of cauliflower. The air was dense with smoke and the smell of cordite and animal feces and the musky odor of disturbed birds? and rats? nests. He could see the