Brian Garfield (6 page)

The old man lay on his back, his mouth open and slack. Boag looked away with his eyebrows drawn together. He pitied them all and he was angry because he had to be pitying them; they were getting in the way.

The sun blasted his face. Heat glistened on the muddy surface of the Colorado and the water rushed past the banks, tearing bits of it away.

The woman crouched by the old man. “He is dead.”

They buried him in the riverbank. The old woman mumbled words and Boag filled in the grave and tamped it with a stone.

“That was kind,” the woman said.

Boag grunted.

“But there are still the three of us,” she said.

“No, there are the two of you and there is the one of me.”

“And we are not three? You have no sums?”

“I have no ties,” Boag said. “I'm a fool. I ought to let you get across the river by yourselves, the old man did.”

“And now you are a philosopher? Besides, we no longer go across, we go down the river, yes?”

“Yuma is as far as I go with you.”

“That is understood.”

The little girl waited until the woman went away to kill the fire; the little girl said, “She will sit in the sun in Yuma and die.”

“She doesn't care about you,
niña.
Why think about her?”

“She does. She is only gruff.”

“I thought you hated her.”

“I do.”

“Make up your mind.”

“What are you going to do after we come to Yuma?” “Leave me alone,” he growled, and set his good leg in the mud to shoulder the ferry-raft into the river.

7

By the next night he was tired of them both, tired of the little girl's chatter and the woman's sour body smell.

In the dusk he poled the ferry-raft through the crosscurrents of the Gila fork. The Gila rose somewhere in the mountains over in New Mexico or far-eastern Arizona and came down the White Mountains, fed by the Salt River and some others, and went past Phoenix and a few no-account towns and finally flowed into the Colorado here a few miles north of Yuma. Buffalo-soldiering, Boag had followed the pilgrim highway along the south bank of the Gila a good many times across the desert. It was nobody's favorite river.

He got the raft through the turmoil and they floated on down. Boag said, “You said you would tell me about the revolution in Sonora.”

The little girl watched them both with her big angry eyes. The woman sighed. “They are a people who must be slaves or tyrants. Revolution only means exchanging one group of tyrants for another.”

“Who are they this time?”

“Pesquiera is the governor. There are bandits and rebels trying to overthrow him.”

“Who leads these bandits and rebels?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just tell me,
vieja.
”

“I think it is a man called Ruiz from Caborca. I am not sure. There are many bandit chieftains who pretend they are revolutionary leaders.”

“What does Mexico City do about all this?”

“No one in Mexico City cares what happens in the provinces. We beseeched the government to help but they ignored us, which is why we are without our properties. The
peones
burned us out and ran to the hills to join the bandits who promised them freedom.”

It sounded familiar enough to Boag. The woman said, “But there is no freedom for them except for the few who become tyrants.”

“Who's going to win?”

“Who can say? The Governor Pesquiera has many troops, he will probably win.”

It was dangerous making too many guesses. But a man like Mr. Pickett would find some way to make profit out of rebellions. Yet right now that didn't necessarily follow: Mr. Pickett had three hundred thousand dollars' worth of gold bullion and he didn't need to mix in anybody's trouble for money right now.

A ton and a half of gold. It had to leave deep tracks. Boag kept dwelling on that.

And here's Boag without a cent in his kick.
Well there was still the twenty dollars in his boots, he hadn't lost that.

The raft swept around a wide bend and just beyond the tall bluff sprouted the lights of Yuma town. There was a big prison on the bluff, of which Boag had heard tell; he didn't want to get anywhere near that, he'd had enough of jails in Ehrenburg. He poled the ferry-raft up onto the eastern bank of the river in the darkness a quarter mile north of the town. “I get off here,” he said. “You can get this raft to Yuma by yourselves or you can walk.”

The woman gave the raft her dubious attention. “We shall walk, I think.”

The little girl was watching them. She hadn't said a word for quite some time and that was unusual if not unique.

Boag helped them unload the few possessions they had salvaged from their wagon. He still had the old Spanish percussion rifle which he considered a moment before he proffered it to the woman. “You can sell this for the price of a meal and a telegraph wire to your people in Tuolumne.”

“You have been kind.”

“You will find help in Yuma, it is a big town.”

The river picked the raft off the bank and moved it out. It spun slowly into the muddy flow.

“You two go on ahead,” Boag said.

“And what of you?”

“I got things to do.”

The little girl snatched at Boag's hand. “My name is Carmen.”

The woman snorted. “She dreams. Her name is Pilar,
Señor.
”

“I wish to be called Carmen.”

“All right Carmen.” Boag managed a bit of a smile before he pulled loose of her grip. “
Hasta luego.
”

“
Adiós,
” the woman said, and smiled showing the gaps between her teeth. “Go with God, our good friend.”

The woman started off laden with her things, the long rifle sticking out above her shoulder. The little girl didn't stir and finally the woman came back and rearranged her load to free a hand, took the girl by the arm and pulled her away.

Boag watched them fade into the dissolving darkness against the lights of Yuma. When they were out of sight he began to limp along toward town.

chapter three

1

He dusted himself off as well as he could and decided he probably wouldn't draw any more attention than any other black drifter on the night streets of Yuma. He was clean enough; he'd bathed several times the past few days, in the river with fire ashes and grease for soap. It was the clothes that were bad: ripped here and there, caked with river mud at the cuffs. He'd have to get clothes. It wasn't vanity, it was the knowledge that they arrested you on appearance more than anything else and if you looked reasonably prosperous they'd leave you be. It was the ragged army uniform that had betrayed him in Ehrenburg, there were too many mustered-out Buffalo soldiers in Arizona right now and the whole Territory knew they were broke, jobless and vagrant. Nobody trusted them.

Walking into Yuma by way of dark side streets, Boag added up his requirements. Two pounds of iron and a holster and cartridges for it. Clothes. A water canteen, maybe a rope; a hat. A clasp knife surely. A horse, blanket, bridle, saddle. Scabbard and rifle and cartridges. At a minimum that would do it; everything else could come off the land, although it would save him time later if he found a pack of jerky and tinned food to carry along.

He toted up the value in dollars and knew he was nowhere near cutting it with his two gold eagles. A handgun, a decent .44-40 or .45, was twelve dollars right there and that was more than half his stake; a repeating rifle would run twenty all by itself.

You could stop and earn the money doing day labor but it would take months.

Well you could steal a horse, maybe a horse with a traveler's pack on it, and then you could steal guns and clothes here and there. But then you'd have half a dozen victims looking for you along with the sheriffs.

There was one other way and it looked better than the others.

Boag stopped in an alley and worked his boots off and got the two small gold coins out. Put them in his pocket and felt around to make sure there wasn't a hole in that pocket, and squeezed his feet back into the boots and walked on down the slope between houses, his eyes and ears guiding him toward the town's fandango district.

The lamps were bright along the strip of whorehouses and saloons. A steady traffic of pedestrians thickened the mudcaked sidewalks and every saloon had a crimson-faced barker out front hawking the pleasures of the place in a strident voice. A great deal of cheerful racket; and here and there a gambling loser prowling through the crowd with his hands rammed in his pockets and his face twisted up in angry defeat.

Boag had thought of trying his hand at a gambling table but he wasn't all that good at it and had dismissed the idea instantly.

He picked a dive smaller and more poorly lit than most of the others. He pushed inside through the crowd on the porch. The place had no door, only a doorway. That meant it was probably open around the clock. It must have been one of the oldest buildings in Yuma: it was a narrow dark little 'dobe with a low ceiling and improbably thick walls, and the stucco had peeled off parts of it to expose the chipped adobe bricks. The bar was a simple affair of planks laid across big empty beer kegs; a pair of Mexican bartenders moved sweating up and down the backbar slot. There were no mirrors or chandeliers. A few oil lamps on the walls, flickering on insufficient oil, and two ceiling-hung lanterns above round card tables where players sat in candy-striped shirts and laborers' coveralls. One poker, one faro. Scrape of chair leg and bootheels, chinking of coin, clink of bottles against glasses, lusty voices; the place was thick and close, redolent of spilled whiskey and stale beer and used tobacco smoke. The floor was scuffed adobe and boots had worn a trench in it along the base of the keg-line of the bar.

Boag bought a five-cent beer and saw the barkeep make a face when Boag presented a ten-dollar gold piece; Boag took his beer and his change and went over to the back end of the bar to eat the free lunch that came with the beer. The sandwich bread was stale as overcooked toast and the slices of dry beef had curled up at the edges but it was nourishment and he chewed steadily while he put his attention on the faro rig.

The rigger was sliding cards out of the faro box, intoning “Queen loses, six wins.” They were playing for two-bits a card and Boag switched his interest to the poker table, moving along the back wall to bring it in focus and then standing backed against the 'dobe, thumbs hooked in his pockets, keeping to the shadow where he wouldn't draw attention.

The game was table-stakes pot limit with a four-bit ante. There were six players around the table, playing with varying degrees of interest and intensity. Boag singled out a middle-sized man whose face had a shape and texture that reminded Boag of heaped walnuts in a wooden bowl. The man played carelessly, without a great deal of attention; obviously he was playing to pass the time and didn't much care about the game, but he was getting a good run of cards and in the first ten minutes Boag saw him rake in two fair kitties and one forty-dollar pot.

One of the others addressed walnut-face: “You finding enough good cards tonight, Elmer. You put the Indian sign on that deck?”

“You know I had it in mind to try cheating you boys,” Elmer said cheerfully, “but when you all sat down to play I saw I wasn't going to have to. 'Scuse me a minute, save my chair. Deal me out one hand.” Elmer went over to the bar to buy another drink and the player beside him put his boot up on Elmer's chair to keep anybody else from sitting there.

When Elmer returned to his chair Boag settled down to watch the game and wait it out.

Elmer said, “Lee Roy, when you aim to get delivery on that cherrywood bed I ordered?”

“Should of been here by now. I can't say. You know the way things get, coming across. They had to ship it out of Boston and probably it got held up wagoning acrost Panama. Then they bring it up to San Pedro on an ocean steamer and they transfer it onto one of the Johnson-Yaeger steamers up there, and it got to come all the way back around below Baja California and up to the mouth of the Colorado and then they got to transfer it again over onto one of the riverboats. I mind that rocking horse Mrs. Watson ordered from Baltimore took eight months getting here. You just never can tell.”

Boag sipped his beer and watched with his eyes half closed. A man who could afford to order a cherrywood bed shipped from Boston wasn't poor.

One of the other players said, “Hey talking about steamers and all, what the hell happened to the
Uncle Sam?
”

Lee Roy said, “What you mean?”

“She was due in yesterday. Still ain't showed up. My cousin Brill supposed to be on board, comin' back down from Hardyville. I hear he made two thousand on pelts this season. Man we want to rope him into this poker game, he shows up.”

“Well two days ain't much overdue,” Elmer said comfortably. “I raise you three dollar, Sammy.”

“Fold,” Lee Roy said. “I wouldn't worry much. She might of got hung up on a sand bar. Sometimes takes them three, four days to work loose of them sand bars in the river.”

“I call,” Sammy said, “give me two cards.”

Now that gave Boag something to think about. The
Uncle Sam
hadn't showed up in Yuma yet but Boag hadn't passed her anywhere on the river and he'd come all the way down by raft behind her. He'd expected they would probably ram right through Yuma on the river and keep going right down to the estuary of the Colorado, which was in Mexico and out of Arizona's jurisdiction. But she hadn't come through. Now where the hell did you hide a hundred-foot paddlewheel steamboat?

It took him fifteen minutes' thinking but he finally worked out how they must have done it, and that made him feel better. A good deal better because it meant he wasn't as far behind them as he had feared.

He watched Elmer's stake grow steadily for two and a half hours until Lee Roy suddenly stood up and pressed both fists into the small of his back to lean back and stretch. “That's it for me, Elmer, your luck's running too good tonight. I'll see you boys.”