Sudden Country (22 page)

"You had them right along?"

"I would have shared my portion with you." My eyes were stinging. "I would have given you all of it to go away with you and fight Indians and bandits and ride through the West like the heroes in Jed Knickerbocker's books. All you had to do was ask."

For a long time he was silent. The back of his neck was creased and red and I was aware for the first time of the deep furrows on the good side of his face. He looked his age and more.

"I reckon you'll be holding us for Knox and the rest. They're due here at noon for the trade; that schoolteacher never gave up a flicker when I laid it out. Deadwood ain't far. We can be tried and strung up proper there."

"Take the map and go."

Even Panther was startled. I think that if all three of them had whipped their horses at that moment he would not have been able to collect himself in time to stop them. But they were as stricken as he.

"They are killers," he said. "You told me yourself they murdered the man Sampson."

"There is nothing to prove he did not fall from his horse and hit his head when his cinch broke. I do not care to see any of them again. The map is yours," I told Wedlock. "You are welcome to it and all the misery it has brought me. Take it and go."

He scooped it off the ground without dismounting, grunting as he straightened. He dug out the Confederate note, studied the addenda, and took off his campaign hat to fold the map inside the sweatband, throwing away the empty pouch. His fair hair was plastered tight to his big skull. His eye caught me.

"It ain't over, Davy. Someday we'll do all them things you said. The frontier ain't over for those of us with sand in our craws. Not by a damn sight it ain't." He put on the hat at a rakish angle and gathered his reins. "Let's ride, boys. We're burning daylight."

"What about our guns?" Blackwater was plainly unaware of the boon that was theirs.

"We'll get better ones and provisions in Deadwood. You'll see to Bald Jim?" he asked me. "He's a fair healer and wants for nothing but whiskey."

"We will deliver him to the authorities in good fettle. His bravery may spare him the gallows."

"Right and good!" said he; and regarded me one last time, Judas eye glittering. "No, sir, Davy. It never will be over for our kind."

He backed the sorrel away from the wagon and reared it as he wheeled. A smack of his hand on its rump and they were away, trailing the others. The trees took them in, and soon even their hoofbeats were gone.

I never saw any of them again except in dreams.

"Thank you for not interfering," I told Panther.

"You were the wronged party." Winchester lowered, he was gazing after the departed company. "And 'I suppose I owe Wedlock for my life. I do not know that I agree with the price."

"I have known little but wickedness since the map came into my possession. I am free for the first time in many weeks."

Wedlock for once was true to his word. The sun was barely overhead when five men entered camp from the north, two mounted, three on foot. There was no mistaking the Deacon's granite angular figure aboard his rangy claybank, or the big Swede Dahigren riding Mr. Knox's mare Cassiopeia with a stained bandage knotted around his right thigh. Mr. Knox was leading the mare–unshaven and obviously exhausted, but no less Mr. Knox.

Young Will Asper looked fit, if disgruntled. Several steps behind them hobbled Judge Constantine Blod, leaning heavily upon his stick, his overabundance of flesh hanging from him like some enforced burden. He alone was not carrying a weapon.

At sight of me, Mr. Knox uttered the only blasphemy I had ever heard from his lips and hastened forward, dropping the mare's reins so that it halted. He put away his pistol to rest his hands on my shoulders. I noticed then that one of his fingers was bandaged several times around.

"David! Lad, I thought it was another of Wedlock's tricks. When he handed me your jacket–"

"I am all right," said I; and being with him again filled me with energy, so that I told him everything, beginning with Mad Alice and finishing with Wedlock's departure, as an excited boy tells his father all the details of a day at the circus. His reactions to our escape from the stable and to the deaths of Christopher Agnes, Nazarene Pike, and Charlie Beacher were nothing compared to his astonishment over what I had done with Flynn's map.

"Gave it to Wedlock? David, what could you have been thinking? I know you were shaken, and yet–"

"That was the condition for my release," I said. "I could do no other, having given my pledge."

Will Asper was enraged. "We risk our skins and he gives the swag away like a bloody saint! Dolly and me throwed in with the wrong side!"

The Swede said something in his native tongue that did not sound like argument.

"Treasures to Babylon." Hellfire squirmed in the Deacon's ice-blue eyes. "May Elder Sampson sit in judgment."

Judge Blod was weary. "I said at the start the boy should stay home. In one fell swoop he has rendered the entire expedition meaningless."

"How can that be," said Mr. Knox wryly, "when you have said that you are not interested in wealth, only in journalistic fodder? You have made a man's choice this day, David. Your life is worth more than bullion."

"But I did not give up the bullion."

Silence surrounded me. I felt the scrutiny of six pairs of eyes. I did not keep their owners waiting.

"The map," I said, "is a lie. Follow me and I will take you to Quantrill's gold."

OUR QUEST ENDS

F
rom a distance, the stable and dugout looked like natural features of the landscape, between which the shadows of the five wooden crosses joined to form a latticework in the late-afternoon light. There was no sign of the old woman.

"It looks abandoned," said Mr. Knox, handing me his binoculars. "Perhaps she cleared out after your escape."

I focused the lenses on the stable. We had stopped the wagon containing the prospecting equipment atop a rocky knoll with an unobstructed view of Mad Alice's homestead a quarter of a mile away. With us, mounted, were the Deacon, Will Asper, and Panther on a borrowed horse. Judge Blod lay in the wagonbed complaining of his gout, which he had at last stopped referring to as a wound of honor. Dahlgren, trusting–touchingly, I thought–young Will to look after his interest, was back in camp resting his leg and keeping Bald Jim company.

"No, she is there." I returned the binoculars. "She has replaced the poles we removed, and I can see the horse moving about in the stable. The question is, how do we make our approach?"

"Straight on, if there is any truth in what you told me. Any other way would certainly invite a slug from her musket."

"We still might. There is no predicting her."

He studied me. "We needn't do this, David. That gold has claimed enough lives."

"It is no longer just the gold," I said. "It is the reason we are out here, and why good men have died. Besides, it is only a question of time before Wedlock and the others figure it out. I would not see that bandit and prevaricator gain. There is no good in him."

"Bandit and prevaricator, certainly. No man is evil through and through. I know for a fact that Wedlock is not."

I looked at him. For the first time I saw embarrassment cross his features.

"I am hardly inclined to speak in Wedlock's favor," said he. "However, there is no question that he was devastated when he thought you'd been killed."

"He said words to that effect, I have no doubt. He can make a rock shed tears when he is so inclined."

"There were no words involved. He and I saw you fall in the thick of the fighting. I tried to get to you, but just then the Indians made their push and we were driven back. I lost my gun when a bullet carried away part of my finger. When we could no longer see you for savages, we were certain you were lost as well. At that point Wedlock stood up."

"Stood up?"

"An old Sioux custom," said Panther, "when the battle is hopeless."

Mr. Knox continued. "In the midst of the fighting, with warriors galloping all around him firing and swinging their rifles like bludgeons, Wedlock rose with a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other and dared them to kill him. David, it was the most stirring sight I have beheld, and I saw many such during the war. It's a miracle he was not killed. It definitely was not for lack of trying on the part of the Indians, some of whom have surely died by now from the wounds he handed out."

"Did he . . . sing?"

"Sing?" He paused in confusion. "As a matter of fact–yes, he did sing. 'I'm a Good Old Rebel,' if I am not mistaken. How did you know?"

"He told me a story once. I thought at the time it was another of his lies."

"This is no lie. Ask the Deacon, who saw as much as I did."

"There is nothing in Scripture to equal it," announced that august person, folding long brown hands atop his sad-die horn. "Had the heathens not retreated when their leader was slain, they would certainly have cut him down."

Mr. Knox smiled grimly. "It would have made a fine subject for one of the Judge's novels. Unfortunately, he missed it, having quit the field at the first sign of a feather."

"I observed that our guns were placed too close to one another," explained Judge Blod from inside the wagon. "I decided by changing positions to broaden our field of fire."

"He was broadening it lickety-split when I fetched him back," said Will Asper. "The fight was fit and Knox was afraid he'd trip and bust his gourd."

"In any case, when the Indians withdrew, you were gone." Mr. Knox had stopped smiling. "We thought they had taken you with them, and since we were in no condition to pursue, we were forced to give you up for dead. The bandits made their move shortly thereafter. I must say Black Ben's heart didn't appear to be in it. Blackwater gave most of the orders until Pike and Beacher arrived. Wedlock took charge after that. From the look of him you'd have thought he was on the losing side of the mutiny. No, David, whatever else he was, he was devoted to you. Not that it will speak for him the day they finally drop him through the trap."

I felt the need to say something, but could think of nothing. Nor have I thought of anything to this day. I never got the man's measure.

It was decided that because a wagon appeared less threatening than a band of men on horseback, Will Asper and the Deacon must remain behind, also to protect our flanks in case this reasoning had not occurred to Mad Alice. After some protest, the Judge climbed out of the back and limped to a moss-covered boulder from where he could watch the proceedings through Mr. Knox's binoculars in relative comfort. Mr. Knox studied Panther thoughtfully.

"Perhaps you should stay here as well," he said. "The sight of an Indian would not be calming in view of what happened to her family."

"She knows me for a Sioux, not a Blackfoot."

"If she is as mad as you and David claim, she may not remember."

Panther considered. He had far from recovered from his brush with death; there were dark hollows under his eyes and the angle he sat his horse suggested that he was still in a great deal of pain from his wound. But Wedlock's treatment had released his stores of native strength.

"I will go," said he.

I said, "He has borne more than any of us. It is his right to see the thing through."

" 'And thou shalt make the breastplate of judgment with cunning work,' " intoned the Deacon, inspecting the chamber of his Henry rifle.

"Don't be too quick to use that," Mr. Knox said. "She is just an old woman after all."

"Let us not forget how she came to be old." But he scabbarded the weapon.

Panther said, "Let me ride in first."

Mr. Knox shook his head. "That is not the plan."

"She has shot at you once already," said I.

"She will shoot anyway. There is no good in all of us acting as targets. After she fires, it will take her a minute to reload. Your responsibility will be to get to her before she does."

"What if she does not miss the first time?" I asked.

"That is my responsibility."

Mr. Knox was prepared to argue and would have, had not Panther dug in his heels and bolted ahead down the slope in the direction of the dugout. I, who had the team's reins, flipped them before Mr. Knox could nudge me. We rattled off in the Indian's wake.