The Rise of Ransom City (15 page)

I did not read most of the words. I just stared at the photograph that was reproduced beneath them.

The book speculated that the man was dead. He had done nothing wicked or grand for years, and surely that meant he was dead. A man of John Creedmoor’s proud restless spirit would not think of retiring, and besides his masters would not allow it. The only way out of the service of the Guns was by means of a noose or a bullet.

I lowered the book to see that Old Man Harper was watching me. Our eyes met but we said nothing.

I was terrified and did not know what to say. I grew up in a town on the edges of Line territory. We were not important or glamorous and we had nothing much to steal and nothing much worth sabotaging. Except for in books and songs I had never met an Agent of the Gun. Not at that time in my life. But I had seen what they left behind at Toro and I had seen one hanged at Secchi. I had been present at a town called Kloan when there was a shoot-out between an Agent and forces of the Line, hiding behind a barrel— I have nightmares about it still.

Anyhow that night he came into my room. I was not sleeping but did not notice him standing by my bed until a cloud moved from the moon and revealed his silhouette. He stretched out his stick and pressed it against my chin as if to close my mouth. It hurt. The back of my skull was pressed against the headboard, so that my head was in a kind of clamp, like I was about to be the subject of dentistry.

“My fame has found me out,” he said.

I could not easily open my mouth to answer, so I did not try.

We stayed like that for some time. I was afraid, and then angry, and then afraid and angry at the same time, and then I started to feel ashamed, as if I had wronged him by snooping into his past. It seemed some of the menace faded from his eyes and he just looked tired.

“That was a long time ago,” he said. “I gave it up. I am no longer that man. My bones hurt in cold weather and my hands shake and I sleep badly. I am not the giant that I was. But do not think I am not still a danger to the likes of you.”

He turned and left, entertaining no questions.

That was at the beginning of winter, like I said, just a few days before we got to White Rock.

No yarn of world’s-edge adventure and daring is complete without wolves. If I ever got this far into a story-book without wolves I would demand my money back.

For example: in
The Autobiography of Mr. Alfred Baxter,
there are wolves no later than the second chapter. As a young man Mr. Baxter set off into the West to make his fortune and when there were rumblings of War he did his duty and signed up— against the Red Valley Republic, which he regarded as unsound and a threat to Property and good order. He was put in charge of a platoon of brave men but they did not make it to the battle at Black-Cap Valley, on account of being led astray by bad weather or maybe the tricks of the Red Republic’s Folk allies. Instead of joining the mayhem at Black-Cap they were harried along frozen plains by starving wolves until they formed a circle, back-to-back, and stood their ground against the snarling fangs. I read all this with great excitement as a boy, though even then I understood that it was only a metaphor for how we must overcome adversity in pursuit of greatness.

It was early winter. There were signs and rumors of impending snow. As the road took us back east it climbed steadily and mercilessly up and into what would soon be mountains. The road was clogged with mud from snow runoff and the woods were glistening and bare. Black clouds leaned in close overhead and were menacing, like policemen. I wore a hooded waxed coat of bilious green that I had purchased in Durham and kept my head covered and did not make conversation. Inside I was in a kind of panic, and had been since that moment the night before, at the fireplace at the World Hotel in Durham, when I learned the name John Creedmoor.

I felt deceived and disillusioned. For weeks I’d traveled with the Harpers and tried to puzzle out their secrets. I’d come to imagine that it would be something grand, something splendid. If they were on the run from the law it was because they were cruelly misjudged, or had stolen from the rich to give to the poor. If the Line hunted them, well that was to their credit, and if they were spies it was in a good cause. I’d been a dupe. I had assisted in a wicked purpose. They were Agents of the Gun. Not only him but also her. I was a fool and the world was worse than I could fathom. It was a terrible injustice. I had been meant to do great and good and beautiful things and this was not my proper fate.

There has never been a man in the West, no matter how upright, who did not sometimes when he was a boy daydream of running away from home and joining up with the Agents of the Gun. I assure you I am no exception. When you are small and weak and poor there are times when your soul seems no big sacrifice to be big and wild and famous and free. But it is one thing to daydream and another to find yourself caught up in the schemes of the Gun for real. It is one thing to see a lion at the circus and another to get in its cage.

How many had they murdered, and how many more would they murder? I was sure that I would be their next victim. I was trouble for them now that I knew and I would be dealt with accordingly. That would be how the newspapers would report it, the notorious john creedmoor strikes again— another victim— this idiot deserved it for sure. They were toying with me. She’d been polite all day but that was her way, it was her little game. We would get far enough out of town and she would give a nod or that quiet little laugh she had and John Creedmoor would turn to me with a smile and faster than I could get my last words in order or even cry out he would cut my throat and roll me into a ditch. Then he would kill Carver and the horses.

Mr. Carver walked beside me, on the other side of the horses. I could not think of any way of alerting him to the danger that would not precipitate it. Creedmoor would be stronger than I could imagine, faster than I could imagine, and his masters might have given him any number of other wicked tricks. It was not impossible that he could hear what I was thinking. I’d heard it said some Agents had that knack. I had been a fool and now Carver would suffer on my account. Or maybe he knew already. I thought over every word he had said to me since we met the Harpers— there had not been many, there were never many— and it seemed every one was a warning. Loyal Carver!

It crossed my mind out of nowhere that I could probably turn both Creedmoor and Miss Harper in for reward money and that that could be a good start toward making my fortune. The idea made me stop in my tracks and I glanced up to see John Creedmoor looking at me in a thoughtful kind of way. All thoughts of profit fled from my mind. I knew I would be lucky just to survive.

I thought about Miss Harper. That was not her real name. Her real name would be a closely guarded secret. Among her fellow Agents she would have her own gloating criminal alias, like Black Casca or Dagger Dolly or Scarlet Mary, something proud and defiant and vile. Somewhere on her person she would have a weapon. I didn’t know much about the Agents but every schoolboy knows that each of them carries a Gun, and that weapon houses their master’s spirit. I’d never seen her go armed. I wondered where, all those weeks, she’d been hiding it.

It occurred to me in the middle of the afternoon that she might be innocent. I had been duped— maybe she’d been duped too. I started thinking of ways to save her. That helped me to be brave.

She asked me as we walked up the frozen road what had got me so silent and thoughtful-looking and I did not know what to say. I said I hadn’t slept all night for worrying about the Apparatus and how it was not yet perfect. I said I had laid awake thinking about what Mr. Alfred Baxter would say if I ever got into Jasper City and showed up on his doorstep like an unwanted child. She told me I had nothing to fear except fear itself.

“Fear,” I repeated, being able to think of nothing clever to say.

“In another week the mountains will be impassible,” she said. “It’s now or wait for spring. We all have places to go.”

“She’s right,” Creedmoor said. “It’s time.”

I said nothing.

I began to think about how snow was a great thing for hiding a corpse, or how they could shove me off a cliff and pretend it was an accident, and I would go pinwheeling into the cold white light like a bird that never learned to fly, their laughter being the last thing I heard before the rushing of wind swallowed everything.

That was what I was thinking when Creedmoor turned to me and narrowed his eyes and drew his gun.

I did not face Creedmoor’s gun with all the pluck I would have liked, but I did my best. I stood up straight and swallowed and looked him in the eye and tried to think of some last words that would sound good if somehow after my death the Ransom Process were to become famous and biographies were to be written.

He said, “Get down, you fool.”

I looked behind me. A gray beast burst out of the woods. Then there was a splash of red and a whimper and it staggered and fell beside the wagon’s wheels. It was a wolf. Creedmoor had shot it.

He knelt down beside the body, wincing as he bent his knee, and inspected it. He had shot the beast in the skull and the light was going out of its remaining eye. He poked it in its mangy ribs with his gun.

He said, “What the hell are you looking at, Ransom?”

The horses were going crazy and Carver was trying to calm them. He had the ax in his hand again.

Creedmoor and the woman had a hissed conversation. I did not know what to do with myself. There was movement in the woods. The gunshot was still echoing in my ears but beneath it I could hear the sound of running feet, or at least I thought I could.

There were at least a dozen of them. They had encircled us. Two of the bigger ones came lunging out from the trees, one in front of the wagon and one at the back, where I was. John Creedmoor got off three shots and I entirely forgot what he was and cheered for him. One shot felled one of the beasts— the one closest to me. The second shot hit that same beast again, unnecessarily. The last shot knocked sparks off one of the wagon’s wheels. Then Creedmoor scrabbled to reload.

I found that odd. Everyone knows that the Guns of the Agents do not miss, and they are never empty.

The beast at the front of the wagon went low to the ground as Golda reared, then with a strangulated snarl it lunged up at her as she came down again, and then Mr. Carver put his ax into the beast’s ribs with a dreadful thump.

There was a silence that seemed to last for hours. Then John Creedmoor dropped his bullets in the mud and said, “Fuck.”

At the same moment a third wolf came out from the woods. It was noticeably smaller than the other two but seemed eager to make its mark. It was growling and snarling and bounding side-to-side. It had three long ragged scars on its ragged muzzle. It came running across the cold wet muck of the road and toward Miss Elizabeth Harper and I forgot all about my fears and threw myself at her too— the wolf and I leaping at almost the same moment, like ball-players—and I landed on her and bore her to the ground beneath me. At once the wolf was on top of me and its claws drew blood on my leg and my chest, but fortune was with me because its teeth missed their mark. It ripped at my jacket instead, with zeal but little effect. Then Mr. Carver put the ax into its back. The first chop didn’t slow it much but the second hit the spot. He put a foot on its back and pulled the ax out and hit it again for good measure. Miss Harper cried out for the first time as blood warmed us both.