The Reckoner: Highwaymen, Part 4

His hands hanging limp at his side, Aiken could only watch as the highwayman grabbed the strongbox from the jumble of wreckage, and shoot the lock off with his pistol.  Falling to his own knees, he dug through the box and filled his pockets with the cash, gold, and silver that was stored in the box.  The entire time, Aiken knelt their motionless.  He felt the cool wind against his sweat veiled brow.  He watched as the shadows lengthened.  He could taste it on the air.  Death.
The last surviving highwayman would leave a trail.  Aiken knew that smell and could track it better than any hound.  It was his unfortunate misery.  But at that very moment, he didn’t know what he could do.  Virgil laid against the tree, the blood revealing itself from the hole in his stomach glistened in the sun.  Aiken could only watch.  The bandit had grabbed what he could and retrieved his horse, he never even looked in Aiken’s direction.  He was off and Aiken would be on his trail.
He left his rifle in the sand of the wash when he finally stood.  The distance between him and Virgil was not very far, but with each step it felt like the path to Calvary.  With each step, every life that he had taken came flooding back to him, a torrent rushing back to his soul.  With every shot that he remembered he forgot every smile that he had made.  He forgot the smooth, cold feel of the nickel that he had begun to win at the faro table and it was replaced with the cold, smooth feel of the brass casings that he had spent so much time of his life with.  The warmth of friends was replaced with the coolness of death. 
And yet, Virgil, laying there dying, still had a smile on his face, “I believe it exists.”  He fought through a rush of blood filled coughs, “And you’ll find it at the end of your road.”
Aiken knelt at the side of Virgil, nearly as cold as the first time they had met.  Getting colder as the lifeblood faded from Virgil’s face, Aiken could only look at his friend, wishing, hoping that there was something that he could do, knowing that within a minute or so there would be nothing left to do. 
Virgil coughed again, “You’ll find it.”  It was his last cough.
Aiken watched as his only friend died at his side.  He never thought what could have happened differently, he knew exactly what could have happened differently.  And yet, if that was the case he never would have hoped that things had happened differently.  He knelt there for a minute or so more, the entire time wishing that he could let everything go.  A wish to forget everything, let it pass before him with an eye turned away.  And yet it would never come.  He knew what he had to do, it called to him.  He walked back to his rifle, a purpose behind every step.  Each step tempered his soul.
He had forgotten how it felt to be cold, how comfortable it was to feel nothing except the cold embrace of doomed judgement.  He shivered slightly as it embraced his soul.  He felt the air upon his skin again, each change of direction he felt.  He saw every movement with the crisp vision of a soothsayer.  He thought he felt whole again, and yet his soul finally remembered what it had forgotten so many years before.  It was that small memory in his soul that wished for warmth.
He found a horse outside of the cedar lined wash.  He tightened the saddle a little before placing his foot in the stirrup and kicking himself over.   It was no longer blind justice that forced him to ride out.  He stopped the horse at the cedar that was Virgil’s headstone.  For one instance, Aiken saw the face of justice.  And he hoped that his friend was right.
The prints of the horse the highwayman had taken followed the road, the way that Aiken would follow.  It was straight across the wash and then continued on to the horizon, bearing straight the entire time.  The wash was his only option and even knowing that nothing could be done differently, there was still a prick of regret.  Perhaps it was that prick that forced him to turn back around and look one last time on the only man he had called a friend, maybe it was chance, or it may have been his soul feeling its own judgement.
Turning back he saw fear.  He had only felt that type of fear once before.  It washed over his soul, over his entire body, fear forced itself upon him.  Every hair on his body stood to attention.  The muscles across his chest contracted, forcing each breath shallower and shallower as each came faster and faster.  It filled his veins with ice, physically chilling every part of his body.  Instinct cried out to him again.
A lone horseman came around the bend at the exact moment he turned to look back.