White Desert (4 page)
Authors: Loren D. Estleman
Halloran, the captain of
the guard, was a short, thick hunk of carved maple with his head sunk between his shoulders and the look of a prizefighter beginning to go to seed. His belly had started to loosen, cinched in with his belt, and bits of steel gray glinted where he had shaven his hair close to the temples. His faded blue eyes had all the depth of tacks holding up a wanted poster.
the guard, was a short, thick hunk of carved maple with his head sunk between his shoulders and the look of a prizefighter beginning to go to seed. His belly had started to loosen, cinched in with his belt, and bits of steel gray glinted where he had shaven his hair close to the temples. His faded blue eyes had all the depth of tacks holding up a wanted poster.
His lips moved behind his handlebars as he read Judge Blackthorne's letter and Warden McTague's brief addendum, then without a word he stood aside from the iron-reinforced door for me to pass through into the corridor that led to the cells. He locked it behind us with a key on a brass ring as big around as a lariat and led the way between walls of sweating granite, lit by barred windows set eight feet above the floor and fifteen feet apart. The place held the dank, earthen smell of a neglected potato bin.
At length he unlocked another iron-bound door and let me into a tiny room containing only a yellow oak table carved all over with initials and a pair of split-bottom chairs that might
have come from different hemispheres for all they matched. A dim shaft of gray light fell through yet another high barred window I could have covered with my hand onto a dirt floor trod as hard as bedrock.
have come from different hemispheres for all they matched. A dim shaft of gray light fell through yet another high barred window I could have covered with my hand onto a dirt floor trod as hard as bedrock.
“I'll have your sidearm,” Halloran said.
I hesitated, then unholstered the Deane-Adams and offered it to him butt first.
“Sit on this side, with your back to the door.” He shook the cartridges out of the cylinder into his palm, pocketed them, and threaded the revolver's barrel under his belt. “Off to the left is best, out of the crossfire.”
He went out and shut the door. A key rattled in the lock.
I was alone long enough to wonder if an old warrant that was still out on me in Dakota had found its way to the warden's office. I fell to calculating how much time had to pass before the Judge realized I hadn't made it to Canada and traced me to Deer Lodge; my head was full of arithmetic when the key rattled again and the door sighed on its hinges.
John Swingtree was smaller and more frail-looking than his reputation suggested; but then, the recent amputation of an arm might have had something to do with the latter. His head was shorn so close I could see the muscles working in his scalp, his ears stuck out. The hollows in his cheeks and the deep set of his eyes left nothing to the imagination about the configuration of his skull. The skin stretched over it was the color of terra cotta, the only visible inheritance from the Creek side of his family.
None of this meant anything in relation to what he was and what he had done and could do if given his freedom. For that I looked to the hardware that accompanied him. An iron belt encircled his waist, secured with a padlock the size of a stove lid, with a manacle attached that prevented him from bending his left elbow. The manacle on the other side was empty; the vacant
sleeve of his striped tunic was folded and pinned to the shoulder. A pair of chains clipped to the belt hung to iron cuffs welded about both ankles and linked together with another length of chain that forced him to walk with a shuffle, the thick soles of his shoes rasping the floor with the chain dragging between them; the sound set my teeth on edge, like someone sliding a coffin. The arrangement put me in mind of a Bengal tiger I had seen pacing its cage in a traveling show in Denver. I'd thought at the time that I'd have been less impressed with its savagery if we'd met face to face in the woods, without all that iron standing between us. It didn't mean I wasn't grateful for the iron.
sleeve of his striped tunic was folded and pinned to the shoulder. A pair of chains clipped to the belt hung to iron cuffs welded about both ankles and linked together with another length of chain that forced him to walk with a shuffle, the thick soles of his shoes rasping the floor with the chain dragging between them; the sound set my teeth on edge, like someone sliding a coffin. The arrangement put me in mind of a Bengal tiger I had seen pacing its cage in a traveling show in Denver. I'd thought at the time that I'd have been less impressed with its savagery if we'd met face to face in the woods, without all that iron standing between us. It didn't mean I wasn't grateful for the iron.
Halloran, who came in behind him, had acquired a hickory truncheon since we'd parted, two feet long, three inches thick, and polished to a steel sheen. He steered the prisoner around the table with the stick resting on Swingtree's right shoulderâit would be the most sensitiveâand applied pressure as if the push were needed to seat him in the chair opposite mine. Only then did he withdraw the truncheon. He stepped out into the corridor and swung the door shut with enough force to dislodge a stream of dust from the seam where the rock wall met the pitch-pine rafters. The lock clunked. There was no sound of footsteps going away. I could feel him watching us through the square barred window in the door.
A sour smell of unwashed flesh filled the room. There were no bathtubs in the hole, just an open latrine and the sound of one's own pulse. And absolute darkness; even the weak light we were in made the man in chains blink. His coarse cotton uniform was clean, so he had probably spent the last four weeks naked as well. When they chose not to hang you, they made you be good.
“Your name is John Swingtree?” The question broke a silence as hard as the granite that surrounded us.
Another silence, just as hard, filled the break. His vocal cords were rusty.
“Not in here,” he said.
A swelling around his left eye gave his face a lopsided look. Nearly a month had passed since his tussle with the guards and he still hadn't healed completely. I could only guess how many welts and bruises were concealed by the uniform.
“I'm Murdock, deputy United States marshal. I've got a badge if you care to see it.”
“Why'd you lie about a thing like that?”
I searched the gaunt face for some sign of amusement. It looked like a place where smiles went to die. I asked him if he wanted to talk about Butte.
“Nice town,” he said. “Up to a point.”
“The point where you got shot?”
His eyes went to his empty sleeve, an involuntary movement. He snatched them back. They had begun to adjust to the light. “Them rolling-block rifles are built for buffalo. A Winchester would of did as good and I'd still have both wings.”
“You were robbing the bank. I don't suppose he had time to make a better choice.”
“I never robbed no place. I take care of horses. I got horse blood in my veins. My grandfather stole a thousand horses from the Comanche.”
“The man with the Remington didn't know that. All he knew was someone was hollering that the bank had been robbed, and a dozen or more men were galloping away, busting caps at everyone that stood between them and the town limits. You were the one he got a bead on.”
“I have a bad spirit.”
As he said it, his face showed expression for the first time. He wasn't being ironic or avoiding the subject. He was addressing
the issue of why that bullet had found him while all his companions had ridden free, addressing it with the resignation of a man who had been born blind or deaf or deformed. Then the expression was gone, evaporated like a drop of water in a desert.
the issue of why that bullet had found him while all his companions had ridden free, addressing it with the resignation of a man who had been born blind or deaf or deformed. Then the expression was gone, evaporated like a drop of water in a desert.
“You and your spirit might have had a better chance if Bliss or Whitelaw or any of the others had bothered to stop and give you a hand up. They left you there to die.”
“Only I didn't.”
“No thanks to them,” I said. “Thanks to them the U.S. government is going to bury you inside these walls when your time comes. What's left of you.”
He said nothing.
I joined him in that for the better part of a minute, which in those surroundings you timed with a calendar. During that time I discarded entirely the idea of offering him a break on his life sentence. He wouldn't have believed it even if it were true. He had retreated into a redoubt where hope of any kind was as destructive as bullets. That came from the part of him that was Creek. You could take everything away from an Indian, even his life, but you couldn't destroy him the way you could a white man, because when you stepped back to give him room to imagine anything less than the worst, he didn't take it. What had seemed natural when I discussed it with Judge Blackthorne in his chambers faded away in that dim cell.
“Bliss and Whitelaw are in Canada,” I said. “They looted a village on the Saskatchewan and burned it to the ground. I'm on my way up there to give the Mounties a hand tracking them down. You know that will happen. All we have to do is follow the trail of burned buildings and corpses. You can shorten it and get in a lick for what they did to you in Butte.”
“Why should I shorten it? Every less person left breathing
on the outside makes rotting in here a little easier.”
on the outside makes rotting in here a little easier.”
I sat back and folded my arms. I knew that would irritate him. His would be going numb with the elbow locked straight. “Do you think your name ever comes up when they're talking? More than likely it doesn't. They've forgotten you. Maybe not, though. Maybe thinking about you spread out in the dust with your arm stuck on by a thread makes them laugh. Did they ever laugh about the people they killed? My bet is they did. They've killed more times in five years than the Jameses and Youngers did in fifteenâand stolen a whole lot less money. They have to be getting something out of it. What do you want to bet they serve you up with all the rest when they're stretched out around a fire up north?”
“What do you want?”
He snapped out the question at the heels of my little speech. I was surprised and a little disappointed; I'd begun to build up some respect for him, and what I'd said had seemed pretty transparent even to me. But then I hadn't been left naked in a black hole for twenty-eight days with nothing but my thoughts for company.
“I've read everything the newspapers have to say about Bliss and Whitelaw,” I said. “It didn't take long, and most of what I read I didn't believe. Journalists are just liars who can spell. I wouldn't go lion hunting without knowing first what they eat and where they sleep. The only one who can tell me that is another lion.”
“You don't have to know how to spell to know how to lie. I could just stretch a parcel of blankets and finish out my time in the hole entertaining myself thinking about you trying to wrap yourself up in them.”
“You could. You won't. You hate your old partners a deal more than you hate me.”
“I only just met you,” he said. “I been hating the law all my life. That's a big hate and I won't have no trouble at all fitting you in.”
I unfolded my arms and rested them on the table. “Why don't you just start talking and let me worry about sorting out the lies from the gospel.”
“I got to warn you, I'm pretty good.” But he wasn't listening to himself. His eyes had retreated even farther back into his skull, searching the darkness there for glittering bits of the past. “I was running with these boys from Texas, not one of them worth the sweat it took to chop 'em up for compost. Fat Tom was always blowing about how tight he was with Lorenzo Bliss back in Amarillo. Johnny Dollar bet him a double eagle Bliss didn't know him from Garfield. Well, everybody but the law knowed Bliss was catching up on his whoring in Buffalo, so we drifted down there to see him call Fat Tom a liar and maybe hook up with his outfit.
“The barkeep in this rathole where we wound up pointed out Bliss drinking under a big sombrero at the back table. Fat Tom told the rest of us to stay put at the bar till he gave Lolo the office and wobbled on over. Lolo, that's what anyone called him that called him at all, though we didn't know that then; we thought Fat Tom was just being Fat Tom. The two of'em started talking low, and I don't know what Tom said, but knowing him I reckon he was jackass enough to say something about Bliss's mother being a whoreâyou know, to poke his memory about how they knowed each otherâbecause Lolo stood up with a big old bowie in his hand and just kind of gutted Fat Tom like a catfish. I remember he give the knife a twist when he pulled it back out and Tom's heart came out with it. It didn't look near big enough for a big fat man like Tom, just a mess of red gristle no bigger than a potato. Anyway somebody started hollering for
the law and we all cleared out. We all happened to head in the same direction. You could say I came to run with Bliss and Whitelaw on Fat Tom's introduction.”
the law and we all cleared out. We all happened to head in the same direction. You could say I came to run with Bliss and Whitelaw on Fat Tom's introduction.”
“I thought they'd be more particular.”
“Well, they was just getting started. I reckon now they ask for letters of character.”
“It doesn't sound like Bliss's temper has cooled down since Amarillo. What about Whitelaw's?”
“Oh, Charlie's the thinker. He put up with his family for eighteen years before he got around to hacking them to pieces. Fat Tom might have lived another thirty minutes if it was Charlie in that saloon.”
“My guess is Whitelaw does all the gang's planning.”
Swingtree nodded animatedly. He was enjoying himself now. “If it was up to Lolo, he'd gun everybody in sight, then turn out their pockets for change. But don't get to thinking that means he don't run the ball when it opens. He's got the reflexes of a diamondback. Charlie'd be dead a hundred times over if it wasn't for Bliss. He is always thinking when he ought to be doing.”
“Jack Sprat.”
It was an absentminded comment; I didn't expect an unlettered breed to pick up on the reference. But his mother must have read to him, because he bobbed his head up and down again and his eyes had come back from the shadows, nut brown and bright.
“They are hell together,” he said. “They wasn't nothing till they met, just a couple of bad hats rolling along, waiting for somebody to stomp 'em flat. Split them up and that's what will happen. Only you'll get dead trying to split them up.”
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