Here by the Bloods (5 page)

The little eye, half-open, punches through the night's blackness, gobbling up the stars that dare swing too close. The ground crunches under Storm's easy stride. Up ahead, the orange glow of the station house frames Big Jack's wide shoulders where he stands in the open doorway, awaiting me. I put it dead midnight. “You shoulda seen it, Harlan,” he says, plodding down the steps as I tie off Storm. “Me and Elbert blasted him with the fire hose. Had to bathe him somehow and he proved most disinclined to do it of his own accord. Stench was overbearing.”

“That why you got the door open?” I ask.

“Well, not entirely. I do not much care for his company. He unnerves me. I admit I was eager for your arrival.”

“He is a talker, all right.”

“That is the matter right there. He has said hardly a word. Only that he would not wash. And after we put the hose to him, he demands a can of boot polish. You believe that? Fella is sitting in there in a burlap smock, but has the shiniest boots from here to Laredo. There is no figuring his kind, that is for sure.”

We move up the steps and I catch the glint of Big Jack's five-point star pinned to his vest. He comments on it before I ask. “Pretty swell, huh?”

“Where you get that?”

“The mayor give it to me. ‘Special Deputy Atta-shay. ' By appointment of His Honor, the Mayor. Yours is sitting there on the desk. And Elbert's makes three. Merle wanted one too, but Boone figured the fella pouring the whiskey ought not have too much legal authority. Probably good thinking.”

“Sheriff wears the star. And appoints the deputies. Sheriff is dead.”

“Oh, it is just temporary. A special ‘dee-cree,' he called it.” Jack hands me the key to the cell and lumbers back down the steps, still gripping his shotgun as if someone aimed to snatch it from him. “Elbert will be in come sunup. And mind his stare, Harlan. It will unsettle you.”

 

 

The most notorious outlaw in the West cuts a slighter figure when laid out on his back in a ten-foot cell, swaddled in ill-fitting burlap. He does not move when I come in. His eyes stay fixed on the ceiling. I settle in behind the desk and pick up the star. No writing or emblems, just a flimsy piece of tin, cheaply made, like a child's toy. I wonder if Boone keeps a box of them under his bed. In his honor I give it a spin on the desk and watch it fall over itself and sputter to an unsatisfying stop. I toss it into the bottom drawer.

“Will you not wear it?” the Snowman asks, hardly containing his amusement. “The way those two fools fussed and flapped over a five-cent piece of tin, you would swear they had been appointed U.S. Marshals.” He sits up on the cot. “I was starting to think you had abandoned me.”

“Hardly.”

“I suspect you were out reveling in newfound glory, if not rolling in a welcoming bed somewhere. Tell me, did one of them whores toss you a free one?” He laughs at his own joke, lays back again. “Oh, I have learned all about you this night. Those two really can gossip like a couple of old hens. Until today, folks in this town did not think much of the one they call a half-breed.” I stand up, but he throws his palms open in an instant. “Easy now, friend, I am only reporting history. I have felt the sting of your overhand right and do not care to suffer it again.”

“I am not your friend.”

“Fair enough. I see now how bringing me to incarceration took precedent over retrieving the booty. Why, you were still a boy when the sheriff took you in. What, thirteen, fourteen, thereabouts? No wonder you would trek all the way to hell and back, leaving fifty pounds of gold sitting by a campfire. Your quest was personal. I respect that. Cannot say I understand it, but I respect it. And you are quite the tracker, it seems. That is the Navajo blood in you, but you know that. And the way them whores hung their mouths open as you passed—yes, I saw that. The Snowman sees everything—why, from that I deduce that the white man who partook of your mother's services was of a handsome stock indeed. But in a town of churchgoing white folks, you are just the bastard of an Injun whore. Hell, I know how you feel. Once an outlaw, always an outlaw, even when you go straight, whatever that means. And if you got a drop of dark blood in you, that is all the white folks will see. But what I cannot figure is why they seem to take you for simple. I know you are not simple. Surely someone along the way saw to your schooling.”

“You talk too much.”

“Ah, so it is a matter of education. Reading and whatnot.” The Snowman leans back, pondering, like he is gazing up at the stars. “I could see an Injun heathen woman not too concerned with tending to a boy's schooling, but churching types like the sheriff or his wife? That does not figure.”

I rise and cross to the door. “Fire hose it is.”

“All right, all right,” the Snowman says. “I will let it be, sir. There is no need to douse me further. Besides, I doubt the floor could take another soak. Forgive my conjecture.” I think about dousing him anyway. So be it if the floorboards rot. “I was intending a compliment—that you are a man of ability. That should be recognized. Appreciated. Even rewarded. Not brushed aside by a backward town full of timid, little cake-eaters. What you should be doing is riding with me.”

The laugh snorts out of me in a heavy gust. The last thing I ever thought this sack of horseshit would do is fetch a grin from me. I do not believe I have smiled in three days.

“I do not joke, son. A man in my line could make fine use of a good tracker. And you need to be with those who respect you, where you are no outcast, but a brother. Men would kill to ride with me. Hell, no ‘would' about it. I got a gang of men whose hometowns did not deserve them, men who strove toward something greater. I take only the best—them with ice in their veins who can shoot the hair off a hedgehog at full gallop. They are my brothers. And hear me, son—day or night, it is the most fun you will ever have. I swear you have not lived until you have had a whore suck you till dawn on a bed made out of Union dollars.”

“From what I seen, your gang is down to two, one of them shot, and both lost in the Sangres.”

“Oh boy, maybe you are dumber than I thought. You think I require the full power of my gang to knock over a hayseed bank like this one here? No, son. This is what I am trying to tell you. High up in them Bloods, miles from where you found me, in a little ass-crack of rock even you would overlook, are a dozen of the hardest, most killingest sonsabitches the devil ever made. That is the Snowman's gang. And I assure you, Finn and Percy have reunited with them by now. These are loyal men, son. Now do you
comprende
? I do not fear the gallows because I will never see it. They are coming for me. They will bust me out. And any man raises a finger to stop them will die. And them what stand aside will wish they was dead. I could not stop it now if I tried.”

A drop of cold sweat beads on my lip where a smile stood not a minute before. They will do far more than bust him out. The image of the Bend, awash in vengeful flames, stamps itself in my brain. Women scream, raped before the eyes of their helpless, bleeding husbands. The entire town, leveled to ashes. The apocalypse.

“Come with us, son. It is all I can offer you. We aim to cross the Sangres and ride into California, where the gold drips from trees. You are the man to see us through.”

My legs spring from the chair and kick open the door. I bring up the Spencer, shattering the night with a lone blast. A handcart, overburdened with firewood, creaks to a stop on my right. A dark figure skitters behind it. The whites of his eyes fall back on me from between the fresh split logs.

“Cookie, that you?” I call in a harsh whisper, knowing damn well it is Cookie, the stoker from the hotel, trudging his midnight load back to the woodshed in time for the hotel's early risers. Cookie pokes his black head around the cart, eyeing me warily.

“What is it, Mister Harlan?”

“Need you to rouse Big Jack and Elbert. Tell them I say come straightaway. There is a dollar in it for you.” I fish out the silver piece and flip it to him. His thick hands collapse on it midair. “Do not speak to anyone else. Just tell them to come. Can you do that?”

“Sure thing, Mister Harlan.”

“One more thing. Wake up the mayor.”

“The mayor? Lawsy! At this hour? He sure won't like it.”

“I know. There will be another dollar in it for you if you get him here within the hour.”

“I'll get him here, all right, if I have to carry him myself !” Cookie charges off into the night. I stay in the doorway, keeping an ear tuned and an eye on the horizon. I glance back at the Snowman, who shrugs, disappointed.

“Have it your way,” he says, settling back in his bunk.

There is no mistaking a Pinkerton man. The first six ride into town just past noon, holding their team to a perfect chevron and a tidy, purposeful canter, even after the long trek from Heavendale. Mayor Boone comes out to receive them from the telegraph office where he has been all morning. The lead rider gives the mayor's hand a perfunctory pump without dismounting. He states his name as Mulgrew, but to his men, and to everyone else, he is Captain.

Boone gestures to the station house. Mulgrew tips the brim of his bowler once and in an instant the whole crew swings out of their saddles and ties off before disappearing into the station.

Fifteen seconds later Elbert shuffles out, scratching his head at the speedy ignominy of his dismissal. The Pinkertons have it from here, and thanks to a barrage of furious and convincing telegraphs from the mayor, the governor has agreed to foot the bill. “Santa Fe can ill afford the blood of an entire town on its hands, nor the humiliation of seeing its most infamous inhabitant go from captive to fugitive,” Boone said to me an hour ago, after securing the assurance he wanted from the governor's office. Now I watch this transfer of authority from the door of the Dry Goods, where two dollars got me a fresh box of bullets for the Spencer.

“Real-life Pinkertons. Right here in the Bend,” Jasper says, rubbing his hands into his apron. “Never thought I would see that.” The heinous, high-pitched cackle I have grown to detest rips from inside the station house. I turn to Jasper, who looks back at me, fear-eyed.

“What this town never seen before is just beginning,” I say, tearing open the box.

“Got a couple more cartons back there if you want 'em.” Jasper says, pointing toward the stockroom. I finger the last round into the magazine and tuck the half-empty box into my pocket.

“Nah, I best not clean you out.”

“Nobody in town carries a Spencer but you.”

“Set 'em aside for me then,” I say, stepping down off the boardwalk into the street. “If I come back for 'em, we are in trouble.”

“That all you brought?” The Snowman's incredulous voice peals from the open windows of the station house. “Take more'n six Pinkertons to fend off a whole gang of Snowmen!”

 

 

By four o'clock, six has swelled to a dozen. Captain Mulgrew installs his best marksman in the church bell tower, the highest structure in the Bend, while two more sharpshooters roam the roof of the hotel, one training his gaze on the street below, the other on the mountains to the west.

I make four more Pinkerton men, all in the same black waistcoats, smoking what smells like the same tobacco, posted at each corner of town. The captain himself bunkers down in the station house, with four grim-faced deputies stationed outside.

The last man, the only one in shirtsleeves, stands sentinel in front of the jail and dabs his brow with the very rag he has been using to wipe down the ominous Gatling gun perched next to him. The lowering sun catches the glint of the long, lethal barrels, polished beyond comprehension and plainly visible from anywhere on Main Street. The placement is intentional. The Pinkertons want everyone to know who, and what, is in charge.

Elbert cannot take his eyes off the Gatling as we maneuver the handcart toward the station house. “They say it can cut down a whole tribe of savages,” Elbert says. Then, remembering, “Oh, sorry, Harlan.”

“I reckon it cuts down just about anything you aim it at,” I tell him.

The handcart creaks under the weight of the freshly filled sandbags that burden it. Grunt work, this is. The mayor called it a favor.

The breathy cry of the afternoon train echoes across the sagebrush, marking the imminent arrival of the judge from Heavendale. Boone himself drove his hansom to collect his esteemed friend from the depot.

We bring the cart to a stop just short of the front steps. The Pinkerton nearest me looks over, snorts, then goes back to staring out at the horizon. Elbert starts to haul the sandbags onto the ground, but I turn toward home. “All yours, gentlemen,” I say, walking off. Elbert looks at me, confused. I hitch the Spencer higher up onto my shoulder. It will not leave my side until the Snowman is in the dirt.

The station door swings open and I hear the captain address me. “I do not recall dismissing you.”

I turn back to him. “I do not recall being hired.”

The captain flies off the doorsill and closes the distance in a heartbeat. “You uppity red heathen,” he spits through a snarl of gnashed teeth. “I will beat you like a dog.” His arm comes up, the blackjack clutched in his fist.

The sight of the Spencer leveled at his forehead stops him cold. The four Pinkerton men draw their pistols. The veins in the captain's neck throb with rage. I hear the faint click as the sniper in the bell tower beads on me. The scuffle of feet on the hotel's roof follows soon after. Seven guns to my one.

“You have no cause to come at me, sir,” I say coolly. The Spencer holds steady. The Snowman was right. It gets easier.

“The mayor told you to get them sandbags laid up in the windows.”

“Mayor asked me to lend a hand while you positioned your men. They seem to have found their posts. And as them sacks are for your protection, not mine, I reckon the Pinkertons would want to handle directly the laying of them, you being professionals and all.”

“I assumed you were the mayor's laborer.”

It is Elbert, his voice quaking with fear, who offers the correction. “Why, Captain, that there is Harlan Two-Trees. He is the one what brung in the Snowman.”

The pulse in Mulgrew's neck subsides. The blood retreats from his face, restoring his previous pallor. He nods, his eyes cast upward, and I know the sniper has stood down. Same for the two on the roof. The captain stows the blackjack and calls over his shoulder to the four, “Casey, you and Bix fortify them windows. Rest of you lay what is left around the crank gun. Pack 'em tight now.”

The one called Casey snatches a sandbag from Elbert's trembling grasp. “Give me that, dammit.”

“You will pardon me, Captain,” I say. “I have horses to tend to.”

“Wait, son,” the captain says. I turn back to face him. “The Pinkertons are much obliged for your efforts.”

“I have no doubt you would have found him too, if so charged,” I say, unbothered by the lie. “And the money.”

“Yes, the money. Indeed. Well, your sort cannot be expected to think on too grand a scale. The important thing is to bring the scoundrel to justice. Tell me, though, when he spoke of this gang of his, did he put a number to it? We call this
reconnaissance
, you see—”

The sound of his voice drops away as his mouth continues to move. My gaze focuses beyond his shoulder and onto the horizon, where dust blooms like smoke from a torch. Jagged shapes flicker though the unsettled cloud, disrupting nature's rounded curves and betraying the presence of movement, the presence of life. A white dot emerges from behind a gray one, then spawns a dozen more in every shade of brown. Then the dots sprout legs. Horses. I squint, draw my hearing to a focused point.
Eyes of a hawk. Ears of a buck.
The herd swells and contracts, unfussed by the protocol of holding formation—they seem more concerned with hiding their numbers. Their increasing proximity brings forth new colors: a fleck of crimson from a waistcoat, a smattering of black Stetsons. In the center of the herd, a single form, tinged with blue, holds steady as the others swirl about it. The blue mascada.

All at once the sound of the captain's disdainful drawl returns—“Any detail, even minor, could be useful for our investigation as to where they might be holed up.”

“Captain,” I say, letting the Spencer slide down my arm, “they are far from holed up.” The whistle peal from the church tower shreds the air.

“Captain! Riders. From the west,” the sharpshooter yells.

The captain turns and squints into the setting sun. “How many?”

“Twenty, at least,” I say.

“Man that crank, Delmer.” The one called Delmer, in shirtsleeves, slams in a heavy magazine and chambers a round. I see now he wears an eyepatch—if he earned it in the war, he would have been no more than a boy. His small, wiry frame dances from the munitions cache to the tripod that holds the weapon. He pulls free the locking pins that secured it during transport. The muzzle swings freely at his touch, like a dragon loosening its neck.

“She is hot, Captain.”

Two hundred yards out and closing, the riders slow perceptibly behind the tall man in blue. They have human shapes now, and clothes, but not yet faces. They form a fluid and restless mass of bodies, held in the gravitation of a single swatch of azure. The tall man's arm raises from the elbow. All at once the team slows to a trot, then stops altogether behind him.

So much for buried in the hills. He must have broken off from LaForge and the others before I reached the campsite, no doubt to get word to the rest of the men farther up the Sangres, or to plan for the contingency of the Snowman's capture. Yes, there is a clever mind behind that blue bit of silk—a trusted lieutenant, the kind of man you could count on to bust you out of a scrape. I can hear his conspiring brain from here.

“You think they see us?” Casey asks.

“Oh, they see us. And the Gatling.” The captain draws his pistol and steps to where all his men, even the itchy fingers atop the hotel, can see him. I drift down to the edge of the station, where the alley leads to the woodshed behind the hotel, and take a position behind the log pile, with the captain and the riders still in view. “No one fires till my signal,” announces the captain steadily. “Those horses touch Main Street, we cut them down.”

The Gatling man flips up the sights, then gives the adjusting knob a single, calculated click. He settles in behind the gun, smoothly caressing the trigger. I wonder how many Indians he has shredded over the years.

The riders pack tighter as they close within a hundred yards. Then, as if suddenly released from its binding force, the huddled form splinters. The horsemen on the edges set off at full gallop, but not toward the jail that holds their leader.

The men break either right or left, skirting the boundary of the town. Each rider keeps his distance from the horse in front of him, vexing any haphazard potshot from a Pinkerton gun. The Gatling man whirls his barrels around to the left, sending his panicked colleagues to the dirt, until he has the station itself in his sights.

“No, you dang ignoramus,” cries Casey.

“Do not fire!” yells the reddening captain. “They are too scattered.”

The bandits stream ahead, cutting two lines, one eastbound, the other heading west, until the town is encircled. They stay at their gallops, shouting and mocking our inferior numbers. I hold the man in blue in my sights as he makes the turn toward me, passing within fifty yards. His eyes fix on me, and as he passes, he points two fingers dead in my direction, acknowledging that this is not our first encounter.

“I have no shot, Captain,” hollers Delmer, whipping the crank gun wildly from side to side.

“I can see that, Delmer. None of us do,” the captain answers sharply. “And they have numbers on us.”

“Do we engage, sir?” calls the voice in the tower.

“We do not,” the captain says, resigned.

A rider at full gallop makes a difficult target. In this revolving perimeter, a clean shot would be the exception, even for trained marksmen, and the bandits know it. As the lines pass each other in opposite directions, the ring tightens, daring us to shoot. I recognize Finn, raising his rifle tauntingly as he passes. And there is Percy, none the worse from when I winged him, standing high in the saddle, a torch ablaze in his up-stretched hand. Others carry flames too, ready to set fire to the tinderbox town at the slightest provocation. Their incessant hooting proves contagious, like the howl of boneyard dogs.

The Snowman starts up from within his cell. “There it is, boys. Ride on! Ride on!”

I feel the hand on my shoulder. “Not today, son. Not unless they come at us,” the captain says, ever proud in defeat. I let the Spencer drop, knowing I could take out two or three of them without a miss. But that might be it for me if they swarmed me afterward. And they surely would.

After a few minutes, their point well made, the man in blue peels off to the east. The rest of the gang fall in behind him. As quickly as they came they are gone, but not without a final flourish.

“Captain! A fire, to the east,” barks the sniper, pointing in that direction.

“What is it?” the captain asks.

The sniper peers through his spyglass, focusing though the waning daylight. “It appears to be . . . it's a wagon, sir.”

“They torched a wagon?” The captain wonders aloud.

“Boone,” I say. “And the judge.”

I break for Buster, and then remember that it is Storm, the stallion, I saddled this morning. He sees in my eyes, as I approach, that it is time to run and can hardly contain his eagerness.

The Pinkerton men are barely to their horses by the time the stallion and I have made short work of Main Street. Anxious voices rise and fall from passing doorways as Storm's rhythm churns the dirt below. We bank left after the post office—I smell the smoke through the dusky air. Storm powers up the gentle slope just past town, into the thickening odor of burning oak and singed whitewash. From there, the source of the smoke fills my vision. A quarter mile off, where the trail rises between two cols, a fireball on wheels sways to one side then topples over. Two figures in black, one frailer than the other, do their best to free a pair of panic-stricken geldings from their reins.

To the men's credit, they get the first horse free as I close to within fifty yards. Seconds later, I jump off Storm and start on the lines of the second horse. Boone's little pocketknife does a third of the work of my bowie.

“Savages! Bloody savages!” cries the older voice.