Mojave (23 page)

“Damn you, Crutchfield,” I heard myself saying drowsily, “stop snorting up that water.”

Crutchfield didn't listen, but kept right on making a racket as she drunk.

That's when my eyes shot open. It was dusk, and I was back at the water hole, and somebody else was drinking, but it couldn't have been Candy Crutchfield. Not unless she'd gotten as lost as I had.

It wasn't.

I held my breath.

“Hey,” I said softly after realizing that this was no mirage.

The chestnut Arabian horse stopped drinking, lifted its head, stared down at me.

I came up slowly. The horse stepped back.

“No,” I cooed. “It's all right.” The ears flattened against his head. Not a good sign. I tried to be stiller than I'd been when I'd been playing dead. The horse studied me, but I knowed it might take off at a gallop at any second.

First I smiled. Then I wet my lips. “Hey, Yago,” I tried. Stopped myself. Yago was the Arabian horse who'd been killed. Yet the name caused this horse's ears to perk up as if he was interested.

“Yago,” I said again, softer, cooing, and the horse stepped toward me. I smiled, wishing I had a cube of sugar. The horse snorted. I caught a rein. Breathing much easier, I got to my feet. Took the other rein. Let out a sigh of relief, and come to the horse, rubbing my hand on his neck.

The cinch was loose, but the saddle was still there. So were the bags behind the cantle. And there was a Winchester in the scabbard. Even better, there was a canteen wrapped around the horn.

“I don't know what your name is, boy,” I told the Arabian, “but it's Yago from now on.”

I let the horse drink more, then I filled the canteen, checked the bags, which had some clothes that wouldn't fit. But smelling my own duds, and seeing the hobbles in the other bag, I decided everything has a purpose. I hobbled Yago close to the pool, and replaced my bloody and ripped shirt with a fancy one of red silk, and exchanged my pissed-on, and bloodied, and dirtied striped trousers with a pair of
vaquero
pants of deerskin the color of a palomino. They were too long, and too big, but they slid into the tops of my boots, and the gun belt would keep them from falling down.

Of course, I was still something out of my head, because after I'd put the hobbles back in the saddlebags, and swung into the saddle, I was yelling, giving Yago plenty of rein, letting him find his own lope.

The sun was down, but I rode that night. I rode, cussing Candy Crutchfield and Whip Watson. I rode west, and this time I wasn't gonna go in circles. I'd find Calico.

I yelled to the sky:

“‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse'—I mean a chestnut. ‘And his name that sat on him was Death!'

“You hear me Crutchfield? You hear me Watson?

“‘And Hell followed with him!'”

Some folks at Folsom argue this point, but shortly after I left the sand dunes, my madness ended. I slowed Yago down, then reined him to a stop. Climbed out of the saddle, loosened the cinch, and waited till the moon rose. Then, after letting the Arabian hurriedly drink from my shot-up hat, I tightened the girth and got back in the saddle. I kept the pace at a walk, moving into a trot every now and then when the country—and my ribs, back, and buttocks—could handle it.

When dawn neared, we found us a spot that would be shady. That's where we stayed, waiting till the sun was going down, and the weather had cooled. Then we'd ride till it got dark, rest and wait for the moon to rise, and hit the road again.

That, my friends, is how we made it out of that furnace alive.

Oh, it wasn't easy. Taken us three and a half days, and the last day was without water, my canteen by that time dry. I was leading Yago down the trail late in the day, the sun sinking behind some big clouds, following a well-traveled trail that I remembered as the Calico Road. Ahead of me, I spied dust, so I taken the Winchester from the scabbard, pulled back the hammer, and approached slowly.

Slow, that is, till I topped a rise and saw what was making that dust. Then I pulled myself into the saddle, kicked Yago into a lope, and hurried down the hill toward the wagon, rode right past it, before I wheeled the horse around, blocking the road, and give the driver and his companion a polite nod.

“Howdy,” I said.

They just stared. Slowly, both men raised their hands.

“You robbin'
us
?” one of them asked.

I blinked.

The fellow who had asked that damned fool question looked to be older than Methuselah, bald underneath the most miserable excuse for a hat I'd ever seen. You might have mistook his duck trousers and muslin shirt as leather. That's how dirty, greasy, and awful they was. I doubted if they'd been washed since the last rain. His face was the color, and texture, of leather, thanks to who knows how many years in the desert and not a razor handy for a week or so. He had real beady green eyes.

The other guy was maybe a hundred or two hundred years older, but he had hair, white as Moby-Dick. Hair he had, but no teeth, and his face had more wrinkles than Rip Van Winkle. He did have second helpings of muscles. Old man like that, but he seemed sturdy, solid, and tough. Well, maybe not that tough. I mean he had lifted his hands way higher than his pard's.

I said, “Nice dog.”

The dog, a bony mutt of black ears and patches of black here and there where the mange hadn't taken off the hair, looked to be trying to hold its front legs up in the air, too. The dog, I figured, was older than the two desert rats combined.

Yet that dog wagged its tail. The two men stretched their hands higher.

“Don't shoot us, mister,” the man with the big arms pleaded.

That's when I remembered the Winchester in my hands. Quickly, I eased down the hammer, and slipped the rifle into the scabbard.

“Boys,” I said, “I'm no highwayman.”

Well, I had robbed a cattle buyer in Denison City, Texas, some years back, but only because I'd been cleaned out by some crooked faro dealer and needed a stake and the cattle buyer had money to spare.

Only the dog seemed to lower its paws.

“You look like one,” the big one said. “Don't he, Cicero?”

“Shut up, Kermit,” the driver said.

“Listen.” I pointed back toward the east and north. “I've been in that hellhole for more days that I'd care to remember. Haven't had water in a day. I'd be obliged.”

The old codgers glanced at one another, then even looked at the dog, and finally turned behind them as if they didn't know what they was hauling into Calico. After the longest while, they both turned back toward me.

The big cuss scratched his chin with dirty fingers.

The driver patted the dog's head, then sighed and said, “But this wagon belongs to the Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated.”

“It's a water wagon,” I said, “and I'm dry.”

Again, they looked at each other, without speaking, turned to the dog for advice, who wagged his tail, and looked again at me.

“It'll cost you,” the driver said.

The big coward sang out, “Not because us, no sir. Iffen it was up to us, you see, we'd let you even take a bath. But, well, we work for the Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated.”

“Three dollars.” That driver's beady green eyes had brightened and gotten bigger with greed. “To fill your canteen.”

My shoulders slumped. I pushed my hat up. I stared at the big coward, then the dog whose head had dropped onto the edge of the pillow that was sticking out of the driver's butt. At last, my eyes locked on the driver.

“It only costs two dollars,” I reminded him, “in town.”

The sorry excuse for a man grinned. His teeth was white and shiny and straight. Well, the three he had was, anyhow. “Yeah, mister, but we ain't in Calico . . . yet.”

Hell's fire, the only thing I could do I done. The Winchester came out, and I eared back the hammer, and I pointed it straight at the driver's dirty buttons on his shirt.

“You get out. You come here. You get my canteen. You fill it. Or I fill that water barrel behind you with holes. Then you can explain this accident to the Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated.”

Both of them started off the wagon, but I turned the rifle barrel and pointed it at the big cuss. “Not you, mister. You stay and scratch the dog's ears.”

That's what he started to do.

“And you give me information.”

He nodded. The driver was already at my horse. Keeping the rifle on the big one, I used my other hand to unloop the canvas strap so the skinny one could take my canteen to the back of the water wagon.

“Is Whip Watson in town?” I asked.

“Who?” the big one asked back.

“You'd know if he was.” Which meant he wasn't. Waiting then, because even with those buses loaded down with petticoats, parasols, and Gatling guns, he should have reached Calico by now.

I didn't expect Candy Crutchfield to be in town yet, not walking. Hell, she was probably dead in the desert. But I asked anyway.

“Who?” both men answered. The skinny driver was hurrying back with my canteen.

“Any women in town?” I asked.

“What kind?” the big one answered.

“Not boardinghouse operators,” I told them.

They blinked.

“Soiled doves!” I snapped.

They blinked again. “Well,” the skinny driver said as he inched back toward the mule-drawn wagon. “You mean . . . Betty?”

“No. Not her.” While the driver climbed back into the box, I took the canteen he had draped over my horn, pulled out the stopper, and let that tepid, awful, iron-tasting water go down my dried-up tongue and throat and into my empty stomach. Not too much, though. Didn't want to get sick.

I spit out some, because I knowed I wasn't going to die of thirst, or pay for water, and told the driver, “You'd charge a man three dollars for this?”

He shrugged.

The big guy wore a bowler. I told him to fill his hat with water so my horse could drink. It taken him a lot longer to climb out of the wagon, and he had to ask the driver for instructions on how to get the water out of the back.

“Same way we get it in,” the driver yelled back, “only in reverse.”

I could have ridden to the Colorado River and back by the time Yago got to drink, but I kept my interview going during that eternity.

“How's The Palace of Calico?” I called out to either the skinny one, the big idiot, or hell, even the dog.

“The what?” the dog answered.

I'm funning you. It was the skinny driver who said that.

“Big building. Wood frame. Going up at the end of town. Next to Miller's store.”

“It's gonna be a palace?” the driver asked.

The big one from the back of the water wagon said, “With princesses and knights and fairies?”

I sighed. Holding up water wagons ain't what it used to be.

“Is it finished?” I demanded.

“Fancy windows went in the other day,” the big one called. Then he yelled. “Hey, Cicero, how do I stop the water from coming out?”

Cicero's head shook, and he rubbed his temples with his thick, disgusting fingers. “Stick your finger in the dike,” he said.

“What?”

“Just turn the knob the other way.”

“Oh.”

Moments later. “Hey . . . that worked.”

The dog whimpered. So did I. Hell, I think Yago rolled his eyes.

“Listen,” I said, trying to show some patience. “Is there any strangers in town?”

“Are there?” Kermit was coming around, water slopping over the edges of his brown bowler. He slid to a stop in front of Yago and held out the water for the Arabian to drink.

“What?” I said.

“He used to teach school,” Cicero said. “But got kicked in the head by a mule.”

Yago drunk. I yelled, “Is there any strangers in town?”

“Are there?” Kermit said, his face smiling. “
Are
there any strangers in town? Not,
Is
there. That's just ignorant.”

“Some new miners,” Cicero called out. He looked worried. Might have thought I was about to kill his pard, which, I must admit, had just crossed my mind. “Even some more damned Chinamen.”

I lowered the gun. What I thought was a pretty good notion had struck me.

“No gunmen, though?” I said. “Just miners?”

“Gunmen?” Kermit stepped back, but that was all right because I didn't want Yago to drink too much water. Especially the water that was to be stole, or even bought, from the Calico Water Works Incorporated in that wagon.

“Not since the last shooting,” Cicero said. “That was some affray.”

Affray? He must have gotten that from Kermit during one of his lucid spells.

“Do you know that Colonel Wilson J. M. Drury, the famous writer, is in town?” Kermit said, lucid for a spell. “He's writing a novel about what happened a week or so ago.”

“Thirty men killed,” called out Cicero, who wasn't lucid.

“He's staying at the Hyena House,” Kermit said. “Waiting on remuneration from his publisher for his last work for Beadle and Adams Five Cent Library.”

The Winchester returned to the scabbard, and I nodded at the dog. “Thanks for your help, gentlemen,” I told Cicero and Kermit. “Don't tell anybody that you saw me.”

I let Yago lope up the hill, into the canyon, even pushed him into a gallop. Had to get away from Cicero and Kermit, or risk becoming stupid and ignorant. Well, I quickly decided that I was being harsh on those two boys. They had a nice dog. Didn't mean no harm. And they had even give me an idea.

Whip Watson wasn't in town. Not yet. The Palace of Calico wasn't finished. Maybe Whip was waiting for its completion, but that might take awhile. At some point, though, he would ride into town. Only he'd think I was dead. He'd think he could ride in, and start charging Calico prices for . . . well . . . you know.

Yet if my plan worked, he'd be riding right into an ambush. I could get Calico's vigilance committee behind me, but I needed someone who knowed who was who and what was what and how Calico run things. Someone who was trusted by everyone in town. Someone who trusted me. And I needed not to be seen by one of Whip's boys, because even if Whip and the girls wasn't in Calico, I had to think he'd have some spies lurking on that main street.

That took me right to the Calico cemetery.

As boneyards go, it's more than fair. Big rock wall all around it. White cross on top of the wall with a nice, big gate. I reined in Yago, slid from the saddle, pushed open the gate, and let the horse inside.

Then I closed the gate, looped the reins over the arm of the nearest crooked cross, found myself a shady spot, and sat down with the canteen of tepid water.

Lots of towns I've been in, they have all sorts of cemeteries. There's one for the Catholics and another for the Israelites. You'll find another for the Negroes, and usually a real big one for all the paupers, the tinhorns, the cowboys, the gunmen. Calico only had one cemetery. Now, it was divided into sections. I saw the six-pointed star off in one corner, and figured that was for the Israelites. And the one without no markers, nothing, that had to be where the Chinese got planted. And way off yonder in the back, the biggest section of all, must have been Calico's potter's field. That's where I saw the mounds of fresh dirt. Eight of them. Would have been backbreaking, sweaty work to dig all those holes, then shovel dirt and rocks back over the coffin, or tarp, or nothing but the dead men's clothes. Just sticks in the ground for tombstones, with six of them already washed away or blown down. Made me wonder which of them mounds was Guttersnipe Gary's final resting place, and if Rogers Canfield knowed he'd be spending eternity with gunmen and not alongside regular, law-abiding folks like “Here Lies Joe Turning, Killed in Cave-In, 1883” or “Whit Stacey, Struck by Lightning” or “John R. Robinson, Hanged By Mistake.” Calico's finest.

Wasn't long till I heard the squeaking wheel of the Calico Water Works Incorporated wagon. Then I heard nothing. The sun sank, the wind began to moan, and I waited in the graveyard. Which would unnerve quite a few people, I reckon, but I'd dragged dead bodies into a shot-to-hell omnibus in the middle of the night with angry coyotes and wolves and ravens and buzzards giving me their evilest eyes. I'd survived the Devil's Playground, the worst sand dunes I'd ever seen except in
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly,
and the cruel Mojave Desert. I'd been whipped by Whip Watson and lived to tell about it.

I wasn't frightened by no ghosts.

When the moon rose, I led Yago out of the cemetery, climbed into the saddle, and rode around the long rock wall. Rode into the canyon, which widened, then narrowed, then deepened.