The Last Family by John Ramsey Miller Read Free Book Online

plate in his head?” Aaron asked.
    “Yeah.”
    Aaron tensed, tightened his grip. “Stainless or carbon?”
    “Plastic,” Thorne corrected. “Some sort of space-age NASA junk. They were only planning to do the final cosmetics if he lived.”
    “Why don’t he wear his glass eye?” Aaron asked, knowing the reason wasn’t common knowledge.
    “I heard it kept falling out. Socket was all wrong, but he left the hospital soon as he could stand up to get his pants on.”
    Aaron remembered well enough. His trip to Miami to see Paul had been the only time he had closed the store in decades. He could ask them how Laura and the kids took it, but he didn’t need to. Reb, at three, had been horrified by the altered face. Erin as well. Laura … Well, they’d had problems they couldn’t deal with. Or wouldn’t. Aaron hadn’t involved himself in the details of the split because Paul had never opened a discussion of it. Aaron believed in leaving people with their own private thoughts.
    “That’s pretty nigh on perfect. If you ain’t who you say, I reckon I’m a goner.” Aaron smiled and put the gun away under the counter. “He lives simple up here.” Aaron reached down and placed a wire basket on the counter. “Don’t be offended if he ain’t dancing glad to see you. He don’t always remember people, but I imagine he’ll know you two. Leave your guns here. You’ll find he’s not the same Paul Masterson you used to know.”
    “I’m not carrying,” Thorne said, opening his jacket to prove it. Joe McLean handed Aaron his shoulder rig, and Aaron put it in the basket and the basket under the counter.
    “Can we drive to him?” Joe asked.
    “You can walk. Go out this back door and follow the trail through the pines right on along. You’ll run smack into the back door of the cabin. A half mile. Stay to the right forks or you’ll be cougar food.”
    Thorne smiled. “You know him real well?”
    “Raised him from a pup.”
    The two men went behind the store, where they found the trail. They took it through the woods. There were three forks in the trail and they followed Aaron’s directions. A porcupine lumbered across the trail ahead of them, and the two men joked about being watched. Theywound around the side of the mountain, and just about the time their ears picked up the sound of water moving, they came upon the rear of a cabin. It was a log affair set in a clearing. A sheer wall of dark rock curved out fifty feet above the roof and sheltered it from the sky. Smoke rolled up the wall from the chimney.
    The view was staggering, a panorama of steep blue mountain walls under a cobalt sky and a stream of clear water turned to rapids where rocks broke the surface.
    “My God,” Thorne said. “Takes your breath.”
    “Do make a man feel small,” Joe said.
    They turned the corner, and as well as they knew Paul Masterson, they would not have recognized the man who stood on the porch in faded jeans, his right eye covered by a patch of black glove leather. The military buzz cut Masterson had always worn had grown into a flowing mane that cascaded helter-skelter over his shoulders. The unkempt beard was long and shot through with white hairs. The only thing that was familiar to the agents was the left, undamaged side of his face. The horseshoe-shaped scar that touched the edge of the eye patch looked like a piece of twine that had been stitched under the skin. Despite the surgeons’ best efforts, the skull was indented on the side where the round had shattered the bone. His left arm hung at a strange angle, the hand trembling like a grounded fish.
    “Hi, boys,” Paul said. “You want to come in?”
    “Paul. You’ve changed a little,” Thorne said.
    “You look like a mountain man,” Joe said. Grizzly Adams scrambling out from under a derailed train .
    “Don’t get many visitors up here,” Paul said.
    The men shook hands.
    Thorne said, “Wondering why?”
    “First time I had a twelve-gauge tucked under