Here by the Bloods (14 page)

“I'll need to make provisions. We ride at night. That will take some planning, finding you the right horse and whatnot. Leave that to me. You do not talk to anyone until I come find you. We clear on that?”

“As a bell, Mister Two-Trees.” And then her mouth finds mine again.

“The game broke an hour ago,” Merle says, sliding a warm beer across the bar to me. “I reckon the gambler's back at the hotel, licking his wounds. It wasn't his night.”

“You hear anybody lookin' to unload a pony?” I ask.

“Not offhand, no. But tough times tend to put folks in a selling frame of mind.”

“Lost the mule in the fire. Need something that don't spook.”

“I'll keep an ear out.” Merle picks up his chamois and goes back to his polishing.

The Jewel has settled back into its usual rhythm—a handful of regulars getting a jump on the night's drinking before the sun has even set. The door bangs open and closed again. I feel a sturdy figure move up behind me. I turn to see Big Jack. He removes his hat and nods to me.

“Harlan. I owe you an apology, speaking to you like I did last night. I feel just awful about it. Them folks what is blaming you for any of this are dang fools and I don't care who knows it.”

“All right.”

Jack spies the empty stool next to me and lays his big doe eyes on me. “Mind if I sit?”

I slide over a hair and Jack plops himself down, relieved. Merle sets up the three shot glasses and uncorks the whiskey.

“Everybody's friends again,” Merle says. The door bangs once more and purposeful footsteps click across the floor toward the bar, right for me. It is Bix, the Pinkerton second.

“Afternoon,” he says stiffly.

“To you too, sir,” Merle counters. “What can I get you?”

“It's him I want,” Bix says, nodding at me. I look over from my stool without turning. “We're putting a team together, governor's orders. We're going to hunt down LaForge, bring back the money before they have time to spend it. Dead or alive, his reign of terror's over.”

“Tall order,” I say.

“Pinkertons doing this job on their own?” Merle asks.

“We got a need for one or two more, someone who knows them hills. Maybe could intercede if the Indians get squirrelly.”

“Captain send you in here with that?” I ask.

“Tell you the truth, he's not crazy about it. So don't make me beg.”

“You don't have to. I wish you all the luck.”

“Look, this was my idea. I figured what better way for a man to clear his name of any involvement than to be part of the team what sets things right.”

“So, you come in here for
my
benefit?”

“Not entirely. Truth is . . .” Bix trails off, aware of listening ears. He bends down and barely whispers, “Without you, I don't think we'll ever find them.”

“Thank you all the same, but my days of charity are over. Sorry.”

Bix straightens again and clears his throat. “Job pays a hundred a day, plus a share of the reward on the Snowman and his gang, plus a percentage of the recovered loot.”

Her face comes to me, a flower in the soft morning light. We will need money.

“A share?” I ask.

“That's the deal.”

“Where is the captain now?”

Bix steps aside and motions toward the door. I rise and follow him out, Merle and Big Jack tailing behind us.

 

 

Outside the Jewel awaits the full complement of armed Pinkerton men, nearly two dozen strong. In the middle, seated atop his horse and eyeing me suspect, is the captain.

“He's in,” Bix says.

“He can tend the horses. We leave in an hour.” He starts his horse toward the jail and I stop him.

“Captain,” I say, allowing my voice to find its full weight. “If I ride it's for an
equal
share. Same as any other man.”

The captain glances over his shoulder, but only far enough to catch Bix's eye, not mine. The nod is barely perceptible. Bix spits in his hand and extends it my way. I slap my palm into his.

“Witnessed!” Merle adds, from the steps of the Jewel. But it is the captain who has the last word. He calls over his shoulder as he rides away.

“You defy my orders, I'll shoot you myself.”

 

 

Casey comes around the corner of the jail, a stack of folded blankets under his arm. “Two per man,” he says, doling out a pair to each of the men in the staging area. A cold wind whistles down from the Sangres.

“What about for the horses?” I ask, taking the bundle from him.

“Well, you can always share.”

I cinch the blankets behind the saddle pack and pull the rope taut. Storm hates the cold, and likes plunging his hoof into a snowdrift even less. But the slate gray sky to the east tells me the first frost is still a day or two away. So we have our window.

I take stock of the Pinkerton men as they load up with extra socks and enough ammunition to stop a train. Despite their surly grumblings, they retain the aura of professional lawmen, capable, as anyone can be, of the mission at hand. I put our odds at even money, which, short of enlisting the aid of the U.S. Cavalry, is as good as anyone could expect going up against the Snowman's gang.

But the scale of advantage tips in LaForge's favor when I do an honest headcount. With the captain and me, we are twenty, a large enough force to match nearly man for man with the outlaws' numbers, but not so small that we will catch them by surprise. No matter what we do, the Snowman will see us coming. And so will the Dineh.

“Five minutes!” Bix cries, checking his watch against that of the captain as they make their way down the steps of the jail. I climb up on Storm and lead him over to the trough for a final drink. A small, pale figure steps out from the alley to my left, long enough for me to see her, and then retreats hastily to the safety of the shadows. It is Genevieve. I slip down from the saddle and disappear, undetected, into the alley.

“You should not be here,” I say.

“You were going to leave without saying good-bye.”

“I left word with Cookie. He'd have found you.”

“What about us?”

“Our plan has not changed. I have to do this first.”

“You speak like it is an errand to the Dry Goods. You most likely will get killed.”

“It is good money. We need it. And it is the right thing to do.”

“Is there anything I can say to make you stay?” Her eyes puddle with tears.

“This should not take more than two days, one way or the other. Can you stall Willis that long?”

“I'll find a way. I will wait for you.”

“There is a chance . . . I will not come back.”

“I'll just have to pray that you do.” She turns and walks quickly down the alley. I vow here beneath the Spirits and the White Man's God that she will see me again.

Four minutes later, the team thunders through the center of town toward the west, dead-on into the sights of the big eye as it retreats behind the cragged peaks of the Sangres.

Our departure is void of pageantry. The curious glances of a few scattershot observers seem to convey a sense of irritation at the noise more than any aspirations that this solemn band of lawmen, of which I find myself a part, represents any hope of vengeance or restitution. That would require optimism—of which the bankrupted souls of the Bend are fresh out.

But there is one spectator who surveys our exodus with fitting reverence, as if he alone comprehends the gravity and complexity of our mission. Avery Willis.

He stands at the open window of his suite in his shirtsleeves, a cigar perched gently between his fingers. My eye catches his and he offers a gracious tip of his head. I return the salutation and resume my place in formation.

How small the town seems now. The buildings fly by until all that lies between the team and the chalky wasteland of open desert is Otis Chandler's house. As we ride toward its fence, the front door bursts open and Chandler himself charges out, wailing with grief. In his arms he carries the rag doll body of a boy, maybe all of fifteen, dead.

“Whoa!” The captain shouts, shooting up his arm in an L-shaped position that stops the team on a dime.

“Look what they did to my boy!” As Chandler lumbers down the paving stones toward us, I see the mortal results of the child's injuries. His head is sticky with dried blood where hair used to be and his face and neck bear the deep, plum-purple of violently ruptured veins. “Savages killed my boy!”

“What happened to him?” the captain demands.

“He never came home from the stables. I went looking, found him out by the hay yard. Oh, his poor mother. Forgive me, son. Dear Jesus, forgive me!”

Bix weaves his bay up next to me. “Who is that?” he asks.

“Stable boy.”

“Looks like they strangled him 'fore they took his scalp. See them dark bruises across his neck?”

“Yeah.”

Chandler crumples to his knees, choking out tears. A woman howls from inside the house, her unfettered grief drowning out the gentler sobs of small, frightened children.

“Your kind did this!” Chandler jabs a finger at me, spitting out the words. “Damn you all, damn every last red-faced one of you!”

Caliche Bend fades from view like a distant, dying star. We cross the desert toward Heavendale, hoping to pick up the Snowman's trail before sundown. The tight formation of horses slackens on the open tundra. I spot Delmer, the crank-gunner, struggling to keep up. The labored breath of his charcoal mare steams in the chilling air.

“She's overloaded,” I say, pulling alongside.

“No shit,” he says. “The stand alone weighs thirty pounds, the barrels another fifty. Then I got a good six cases of munitions. This old nag didn't bargain for that.”

“Headed uphill. Going to get a lot steeper too,” I warn him.

“You travel light,” he says, noticing my spartan load.

“I do not own much.”

“Say, take the tripod, will ya?” He starts to pick at the rope that holds the folding iron stand.

“I will not carry anything you point at Indians.”

Delmer sighs, his wiry shoulders slumping. “How 'bout the saddlebags then? Nothing but coffee and hardtack.”

“Give 'em here.” His thin arms begin to hoist the leather bags and I reach over and do the rest.

“Much obliged.”

Up ahead, Bix blows into his fist to keep warm. “Any sign, Captain?”

“We'll pick it up,” Mulgrew says without turning. “Every man leaves a trace. I used to ferret out deserters on nothing more than a piss stain.”

 

 

The open desert gives a man time to think. Every passing mile groans from the weight of all that has transpired—a swirl of fire and screaming livestock and the ugly voices of a town betrayed. Even the beauty of her face as I remember it in the hotel light grows leaden with the thought of how I will care for her. I puzzle over each thought until I have whittled it down to the bone. And after a while there is nothing but the desert. But that's when the new thoughts have time to peek out from their darkness. Sometimes the hardest puzzle to solve is the one you did not even know was there.

I fall in next to Bix. “Something sits wrong with me, Lieutenant.”

“What's that?” he says.

“Snowman's gang hit the bank in Agua Verde at eleven-thirty in the morning.”

“So?”

“What time they hit Heavendale?”

“Ten after twelve.”

“That's forty minutes.”

“What's your point?”

“Story is, Snowman does all the blasting himself, that right?”

“Well, any fella can hurl a stick of dynamite, rig up a booby trap and whatnot, but when it comes time for the precise stuff, it's true, all reports say that LaForge handles the vaults directly.”

“Agua Verde to Heavendale is about fifteen miles as the crow flies. That's a lot of ground to cover in forty minutes.”

“Hmm. Nearly impossible. Even at a full gallop he'd just make it.”

“And ain't no horse gallop forty minutes.”

“Captain,” Bix says, trotting forward, “we need to stop.”

 

 

Bix draws an X in the sand. “This is Agua Verde,” he says. Then he scratches another X about a yard away. “Heavendale's here.”

“How many men hit the first bank?” I ask.

“The boy counted six,” Mulgrew says, unsure where this is going and more than a little annoyed. The rank-and-file Pinkertons look on with modest interest, using the break to smoke or take some water for the horses.

“But by the time they got to Heavendale,” Bix says, “their numbers were three times that.”

“Makes sense,” the captain says. “Heavendale's a bigger town with a bigger bank. You'd need men stationed outside, plus the ones in with the vault.”

“So where'd the other fellas come from, the extra twelve?” Bix asks.

“Could've been hiding out in Heavendale, waiting for LaForge to get there.”

“Could be,” Bix says. “But that still don't explain how LaForge covered that ground. And the timeline don't fit with the train schedule, so that's out.”

“Look,” says the captain, growing frustrated, “he can tell us how he pulled off his magic trick when he's standing on the gallows. All this speculation is wasting daylight. The move is to go the last place we know the Snowman was and pick up his scent there. That's Heavendale.”

“Excuse me, Captain,” I say.

“What is it?”

“That display we witnessed around the jail last week, Snowman's gang riding in circles like that, getting everybody riled up. How many riders you count?”

“Twenty souls exactly.”

“And how many hit the bank in Heavendale?”

“Seventeen, maybe eighteen, we're getting conflicting reports.”

“Point is, less than twenty.”

“What are you getting at, Two-Trees?”

“There's two, three men unaccounted for. I'm saying six men ride out from Agua Verde, full gallop. LaForge is one of them. Somewhere along the way, they stop. Change onto fresh horses. LaForge and those six carry on to Heavendale. Meanwhile, the two or three who are waiting lead the spent horses up into the Sangres to the meeting place.”

“Could two men corral six horses?” the captain asks.

“If they know what they're doing, easy.”

“LaForge's gang are all solid horsemen,” Bix says. “I have no doubt they could do it.”

Captain Mulgrew lets out a dissatisfied grunt more suited to a bull than a man. “You don't just stand around with a half dozen horses and no one notice, even in the open desert. The train conductors would've seen something on the morning run. There's hardly a tree trunk in this infernal wasteland, much less a hiding place smack in the middle that's big enough for six goddamn horses.”

I know the midpoint well. It is where I killed Jed Barnes. I take the stick from the lieutenant and jab it down on the line, halfway between the Xs. “Hatchet Rock,” I say. “You could hide an army regiment behind it, no one see a thing.”

The captain grunts again and Bix pulls him aside. I overhear their conversation. “We're still an hour from Heavendale, Captain. But we can be at Hatchet Rock in ten minutes. If we find something, we might could get the jump on them.”

“And if we're wrong we lose a day.”

“They had to change horses, Captain. No way around it.”

The captain gnashes down on what's left of his cigar and hurls the stub into the dust. He grinds it beneath his boot heel. And then, glowering over at me, he says, “You better be right about this, Injun.”

 

 

In the gray half-light of the waning day, Hatchet Rock juts from the desert floor like a slab of tombstone granite. The thread of railroad track winnows off to the horizon, a far cry from the pounding lifeblood that still echoes in my recent memory. Storm remembers too. The stallion opens up his stride as we cross the rails.

“Champing at the bit,” Delmer says.

“He knows this place. We hunt out here.”

Circling around the back side of the rock, we fall in behind the captain, forming a single line to minimize our tracks. Reaching the jagged end of the far western corner, we dismount entirely and proceed on foot.

“Bix, you and the Injun follow me,” the captain says. “Rest of you stay put, keep the horses out of it.” My eyes stay with the ground as we tread lightly toward the rock. I know what to look for. Animals leave their marks, same as men do. But a tracker needs soft eyes. The signs have to come to you, not the other way around. Presumption is nothing but ego, and it will steer you right off a cliff, or leave you standing in the wind with your pecker in your hand.

“Nothing but windswept caliche,” the captain says.

“Horseshit.”

The captain's chest expands as he sucks in the air to unload on me. “What the hell did you just say?”

“Horseshit. I smell it.” I follow the scent to the base of the rock, where drifts of sand have settled. Clumps, like buried stones, rise above the surface, a quarter-inch at most. But a quarter-inch is enough. I poke at the mound with my boot and it gives way, betraying a soft, spongy presence beneath the sand. I drag my toe back toward me, smearing a greenish-brown stain across the white surface—dried manure, caked with hay. “They tried to bury it.”

“Captain, look at this,” Bix says, running his finger along a crack in the rock. “Somebody wedged a knot of rope down into the crevice.” Mulgrew walks over to inspect it. “Looks like they cut it in a hurry.”

“I think we found ourselves a corral,” the captain says. “Now let's figure out where they went.” The three of us step backwards from where we stand, clearing the area like we had stumbled upon a sleeping bear.

“Wind's been too heavy,” Bix says.

I take a knee and still cannot see it so I drop to my belly and gaze out across the desert floor. The ground is trying to tell me what it knows, but my brain will not let it in. And then, for all my faults and trespasses, the Spirits grant me a fond, unexpected memory—the bighorn. That day out in the foothills, so many years ago, Sheriff and I had stood twenty yards from the herd and been ignorant of their proximity. It was only upon gaining some distance that I was able to detect a subtle flash of movement from the blessed creature whose stuffed head hung on Sheriff's wall until yesterday.

“Hold on.” I get up and stride toward the massive boulder. “Gimme a hand here,” I say, finding a narrow toehold. Bix appears behind me and throws his weight into mine as I propel myself upward along the rock face. The cold stone, a stark, sobering reminder of the approaching winter, passes beneath my fingers. I grapple my way to the top and will myself over the upper ledge into a cool, rippling autumn breeze that crackles with life from the farthest reaches of the valley. Her song sings to me, honing my senses to razor sharpness. I peer over the edge and am slapped in the face with the glaring signature of the hunted. The gentle, undulating imperfections scream out to me from beneath a dusty blanket of sand, like the faint ruts from a wagon after an hour of snow.

The churned hoofprints swirl at the captain's feet and proceed north, finding focus as the horses built speed, before branching off into two streams. One fires straight toward Heavendale. But the other, lighter of step—evidence of free-running horses—shoots off toward the mountains.

Rising from my knees, I follow the river of ruffled sand with my finger as it winds north, across the valley, up past the foothills and into the Sangres, until it kisses the sky at a point where the mighty range shows the faintest glitch in her armor. Two peaks rip from each other, leaving a steep scar of a ravine between them.

“There,” I say. “That's where they will try to cross.”

 

 

Bix breaks away from his private meeting with the captain and comes over to address the rest of us where we stand, huddled by the horses. “Here's what's we're going to do—divide up into two squads. Casey, Two-Trees, and the Frey brothers, y'all are with me. Rest of you ride with the captain into Heavendale and pick up the tracks from there.”

“We split up, we weaken our numbers,” I say. “Why even mess with Heavendale?”

“Triangulation,” the captain says sternly as he walks over. “One team follows one trail, the other picks up the second. We should meet in the same place.”

“Which team are we?” Casey asks as the men begin to splinter off into their respective details.

“We go straight into the hills,” Bix says. “In the dark.”