Doubtful Canon (5 page)

The drunk picked himself up, grabbed the hat, and pulled it on his head, then swayed, cursing the swinging batwing doors. “I don’t need you,” he said, pivoted, and leaned against a hitching rail, shaking his head and testing his busted nose. His eyes caught me and held, or so I thought, and then he wobbled across the street, dodging a buckboard with an oath, and drew nearer.

“Mister,” he said in a thick slur, “could you loan an old hand enough money for a drink or two. I got me a powerful thirst.”

My face reddened, and I trembled again. My father, my wretched father stood there so in his cups, he didn’t even recognize his own son. Blood trickled from both nostrils into his thick scruff of beard, unkempt, unwashed. “I can do you some turn,” he said. “Water your horse. Shine them new boots.”

A snort sounded behind me, and I realized my mistake. My father had directed his conversation at the two men now standing behind me, Curly Bill Brocious, still working on the peppermint, and the second man, rolling a cigar in his mouth.

“Pay the cur.” The gunman called Dutch struck a match and lit his cigar. “It’ll keep him off the street. Out of our sight.”

With a rough laugh, Brocious fished a coin from his trouser pocket and tossed it into the dirt. “Whatever you say, Dutch. Whatever you say.”

The chimes of Brocious’s spurs faded as the two gunmen walked down the sun-warped boardwalk, and I stared, sickened by the sight of my father, on his knees, digging through the dirt in search of the two-bit piece Curly Bill Brocious had thrown at him.

I left him there, ashamed, hurrying to find the home of old John Eversen. Not that I needed to hear anything the old stagecoach man had to say about Doubtful Cañon, Apache attacks, and a strange man called Whitey Grey. Overruling doubts and distrust, the sight of my father had all but changed my mind, yet again, reconfirmed my desire, my need, to get away from this place. I didn’t care if Whitey Grey lied or not, and, even if he didn’t plan on showing up that night at the Lady Macbeth, I’d be on my way.

I was leaving.

Candlelight flickered, casting a low, warm glow on my friends’ faces just inside the mine’s entrance. We had met, as arranged, after supper, sneaking out of our houses without incident. The desert night had turned chilly, the early autumn wind moaning outside, but the Lady Macbeth remained warm. I lit another candle, placed it on a rusty old lunch pail, and looked at my friends, their faces eager yet anxious.

“A lot of things that man says, I find suspect,” I told them. “Some of what he says about Cochise and that time doesn’t exactly match with what I read in some old newspapers that my father has saved. And I asked this old stagecoach man…Mister Shankin sent me to him…this afternoon. Mister Eversen never heard of a Whitey Grey. Nor has Mister Shankin.”

Ian Spencer Henry gasped. “You wasn’t supposed to tell nobody about that white-skinned man, Jack Dunivan. Now you done spoilt everything.”

“I’ve done no such thing….”

“Done, too!”

“Done not. I’m just collecting facts.”

“No, you ruint….”

“Shut up, Ian Spencer Henry,” Jasmine sang out, “and let Jack finish!”

Pouting, my friend folded his arms and shook his head.

I sighed. “I’m going with Whitey Grey,” I said, and Ian Spencer Henry’s face beamed instantly.

“Really?” both of my friends asked, unable to control their excitement.

“Yes. But we can’t trust him. That’s what I’m saying.”

“Well, yeah,” Ian Spencer Henry said. “He’s a Texian. Texians can’t be trusted. I heard this fella outside the FalstaffTavern the other day, and he says if he was standing on his porch with a single-shot shotgun and there was a rattlesnake coiled up in front of him and a Texian coming over to shake his hand, this fellow says he’d shoot the Texian and let the snake bite him.”

I tried to ignore the pointless interruption. “Mister Eversen, he says that he had heard stories about Apaches raiding the Stein’s Peak station right before the rebellion and an attack on a stagecoach at Doubtful Cañon, so that part of the story could be true. Plus, the Giddings name rang a bell, he told me. Seems he heard it more recent, but he couldn’t place when or where. So I say we meet back here at ten. I mean, that’s my plan anyway.”

“Mine, too,” Ian Spencer Henry said.

“Why not wait?” Jasmine asked.

“Too risky. If your mother, my pa, or Ian Spencer Henry’s daddy were to check on us….” Outside, coyotes began yipping in the dark. “We also need to leave a note for them to find.”

“We don’t want them looking for us,” Ian Spencer Henry said. “What if…?”

“They’re going to come looking for us,” I said. “They’ll realize we’re missing at some point. Even my….” I fought off the shudder. “Well, Mister Shankin…someone, at some point…they’ll realize we’re not around and….”

“Maybe they’ll think Apaches took us off,” Ian Spencer Henry suggested.

“The Apaches are all penned up at the San Carlos Reservation over in Arizona Territory,” I said. “Except for maybe five hundred or so down in Mexico. We don’t want to leave notes in our rooms, nothing like that. We have to make it hard for them to find us. First, they’ll start looking around town. That’ll give us time. But eventually they need to find a note saying that we’re running away from home.”

Ian Spencer Henry frowned again. “I don’t want to run away from home, Jack. I just want to make all that money, sixteen hundred dollars and sixty-six cents, and get back before my pa knows I’m gone. Pa’ll switch my hide if he thinks I’ve run off.”

“It’s better than twenty miles to Stein’s Peak,” I said. “Through desert, mean country. Then we have to make it to the cañon, find the gold, split it up, and get back here.”
You get back here,
I thought. I had no intention of returning, but this wasn’t the time to tell my friends of my plans for after we got our share of the treasure. “I’m pretty certain they’ll find out we’re missing before.”

“But you’ve asked everyone about Doubtful Cañon,” Jasmine said. “That’ll be the first place they’ll look.”

“First, they’ll look through town,” I said. “And at some point they’ll look here. That’s where they’ll find the note.”

“Say we’ve gone to Mexico to live with
señoritas
and drink tequila and ride horses and join some
rancho
and become
vaqueros,”
Ian Spencer Henry said. “I always wanted to wear them fancy britches that them Mexican cowboys wear. I seen a good drawing on the covers of some of those fun books I so enjoy reading. Then my pa will go looking for me down south, if he thinks I’ve really gone, and I’m not altogether certain, Jack, that he’ll ever notice I’m missing. But if he does, I think the note should say we’ve gone to Mexico to run off. That’ll send them searching in the opposite direction of where we’re going.”

“They’d never believe that,” Jasmine said. “They’ll remember all Jack has asked about Doubtful Cañon and Stein’s Peak. Ian Spencer Henry is right, Jack. You shouldn’t have asked all those questions. That’ll give us all away.”

I drew in a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and shook my head. “I had to ask, guys,” I said. “I had to find out that this fellow isn’t trying to hoodwink us or something. I mean, I had to at least try. But when they look in this mine…because, face it, someone in Shakespeare knows this is our hide-out…then they’ll find a note, but it’s a note to fool the grown-ups. It’s a note I’ve written to Jasmine, saying to meet us at the station at the Southern Pacific tracks.”

“But, Jack,” Ian Spencer Henry said, “that’s where that white-skinned man says we’re going. That’s exactly where we’re going.”

“I know that,” I said with not a little impatience. “But if people are looking for us, they’ll likely have a tracker who’ll be able to follow our trail north of here. But if you two will let me finish. This note, this letter to Jasmine, it says that I think I’ve fooled everyone into believing I’m interested in Doubtful Cañon and that’s where they will be looking while we take the first eastbound train to El Paso. And from there to San Antonio, Texas.”

They let my plan sink in. I thought it was a good one, and found their questions and doubts annoying.

“But, Jack,” Ian Spencer Henry said, “there’s no buried gold in San Antonio that I know of.”

Jasmine broke out giggling, while I just shook my head. “We’re not going to Texas! That’s just so they’ll look for us in Texas.”

“I’d like to go to San Antonio,” Ian Spencer Henry said. “See the Alamo and Texian cowboys, even though that man at the saloon said you can’t trust a Texian.”

“With your share, Ian Spencer Henry, with sixteen hundred dollars, I’m sure you can ride the rails to the Alamo.”

“One thousand, six hundred dollars, and sixty-six cents, Jack,” he said, grinning. “Because we decided to let Jasmine have an extra penny from each of us. Remember?”

I smiled back. “I remember.” I blew out one candle. “Remember, we have to meet back here before ten o’clock.”

After putting out the other candles, we stepped into the wind, heading back to our homes, while I wondered if Whitey Grey would show up that night, and, if he didn’t, if he proved to be merely a grafter or some strange jester, what I’d do next to escape Shakespeare.

He was there, of course, when I stepped back inside the Lady Macbeth three hours later, sitting in the darkness, his cigarette glowing when he inhaled. The small red glow seemed to cast just enough light to illuminate his deathly pale skin, although that had to be mere imagination from the mind of a frightened kid.

I cleared my throat. “Mister Grey,” I said. “It’s me, Jack Dunivan.”

“Jack!” The voice came to my left, and I looked into the blackness.

“Jasmine?”

“Yeah. I got here first. Where’s Ian Spencer Henry?”

“He’ll be along directly, I suspect. Here, I got a candle. Let me….”

“You ain’t lightin’ nothin’, Jack Dunivan,” Whitey Grey said. “What kept you?”

“Nothing kept me. I’m here. I’m ready….”

“Looks like the li’l’ girlie gots the most gumption amongst you chil’ren.” The albino cackled. “That’ll do. That’ll do.”

The glow disappeared, then I heard his boot heel crushing the butt in the dirt.

Silence. It lasted I don’t know how long, and I felt my way through the void and slowly squatted. I couldn’t hear a thing, not even my heart beating, not even Jasmine’s breaths, nothing. Even the wind had stopped. The sounds from Shakespeare died, the dram shops and gambling parlors falling mute. Again, this must have been my imagination, or maybe I simply concentrated on listening for Ian Spencer Henry.

Yet he never came.

“Ten o’clock,” Whitey Grey announced, his voice causing my heart to leap. “We gots to light a shuck.”

“He’ll come….”

The albino muttered something and told Jasmine to hush. “He ain’t comin’. He’s gutless. I’ve half a mind to go to that orphanage and slit his throat. Half a mind to slit you two’s as well. Don’t fancy leavin’ that boy behind to spill his guts. And I tol’ you this was an all or nothin’ deal, so iffen I was to leave you behind…which would be my right, ’cause I said I would…you could blame that yeller friend of your’n, but I gots a generous disposition, so I’ll take you two along with me. But by all rights, I should….” He struggled for the word.
“I
should dis-…un-…I should just gets that gold and leave you chil’ren at that orphanage. Be five thousand more dollars for me to spend.”

“He’s coming. I know he’s coming.” I gave my friend the vote of confidence.

“We ain’t waitin’, one way or t’uther. Let’s walk.”

“But….”

“I ramrod this outfit. You tots sure ain’t givin’ me no orders. Get a-movin’. That train won’t wait. It’s time.”

“How can you tell?” Jasmine asked. “You can’t see your watch.”

“Ain’t gots no watch to see nohow. Whitey Grey don’t need no watch to tell the time. I know.” I assume he tapped his chest, maybe his temple, for I heard a slight
thumping.
“I know in here. But we ain’t waitin’. So come along, or I’ll bury you in this mine.”

For the next three miles, as we walked in the night, carrying only a canteen, war bag, and hopes, I kept wondering what had happened to Ian Spencer Henry. He had sounded as if he wanted to come more than any of us. Maybe his father had caught him trying to sneak out. Who knew? I looked over my shoulder several times, but saw only the glow of light from town at first, and then only the faint outline of the desert. No friend.

No rattlesnakes, either, which was good.

The old stage road carried us straight to Lordsburg, and we heard a dog barking long before we saw the flaring lights from the lantern at the depot. Whitey Grey stopped in front of us and dropped into a crouch. Jasmine and I stood, waiting, wondering.

“Don’t likes the sound of that dog,” he said at last in a whisper. “Train comin’ should be a freight, a long one, so we’ll cut ’cross here, hide in the brush ’bout twenty yards from the depot. Town’s growed some. You chil’ren stay quiet.”

I’d been up to Lordsburg just the past week, helping Mr. Shankin haul down supplies from the railroad, and I didn’t see how this town could have grown. It had always drawn travelers, Apaches, soldiers, and ne’er-do-wells because of the natural spring, filling their gourds, barrels, and canteens while traveling to El Paso, Tucson, or points south of the border. The Mormon Battalion marched through here, Mr. Shankin had told me, back in 1846, and I knew all about Butterfield’s stagecoaches and the Southern Pacific.

Yet the town, established by the railroad only a year or two ago, remained mostly tent saloons and uninviting
jacales.
Even the depot lacked the look of anything permanent. The dog still barked, but he sounded far away, at least nowhere in the vicinity of the depot.

When we reached the rails, when it finally hit me that Ian Spencer Henry wasn’t coming, I felt betrayed. By Ian Spencer Henry, who had let me down. By the white-skinned stranger who had refused to wait, to give a boy a few extra minutes.

A whistle sounded in the night.

“Like I said,” Whitey Grey spoke evenly, “that train don’t wait. She’ll take water here, but that’s all, so we’ll have to find a car, hope there ain’t no railroad thugs or some surly boss with a nightstick. We’ll ride to Stein’s, get off there. Now, follow me, and keep your fly traps shut up tight.”

The headlamp flickered in the east, and I tripped over the rail, pitching headfirst into the sand, then scrambled to my feet and raced into the rocks with Jasmine and the stranger.

Waiting.

Slowly the light grew larger, the metallic noises of the locomotive louder—heavy
creaks,
the grinding of gears and metal,
hissing
steam. Then the blinding light lit up the rocks. For the first time that night, I saw Jasmine’s frightened face and the wild eyes of Whitey Grey as he hugged the earth while searching the train as it passed, and just like that, as the engine moved past us, the darkness returned, although fainter now, while the train slowed, slowed, and stopped.

Cries and shouts, muffled by the release of steam and the noise of the locomotive, sang out in the night. Whitey Grey’s joints popped as he rose.

“Let’s move, chil’ren,” he said, and we followed, more from sound than sight, although by now, with the light from the engine’s cab and caboose, as well as from the depot just down the tracks, it was easier to see, we could at least make out the freights toward the rear of the train.

“Here’s one.” Grunting, Whitey Grey slid the heavy door open, unleashing the scent of manure and straw. “You first, li’l’ girlie.” He scooped up Jasmine and tossed her through the opening.

Without a word, the albino whirled, grabbed me and hurled me inside, then with a grunt, he pulled himself into the livestock car. A horse grunted. Another stamped a nervous hoof on the floor, and, with a sudden lurch, the train pulled forward, slowly, creeping along slowly, past the depot, past the road to Shakespeare, heading into the desert again, moving slowly, methodically.

“Ol’ Whitey Grey knows what he’s doin’, eh, chil’ren?” The strange man laughed, slapped his knees. A match flared. “Let’s take a look-see,” he said, and the flame roared larger. He had lighted a rolled newspaper. Where it came from, I hadn’t a clue, but, after hours of lengthy dark, the light felt reassuring.