Wagons to Nowhere

by Orrin Russell

  ‘Don’t shoot me,’ he blurted.

  ‘I’m not going to shoot you,’ Joe replied calmly.

  ‘Wha…’ Billy’s mouth hung open and his eyes widened. His face so often pinched together towards the middle seemed to spread out, as if the elasticity of the skin had been lost.

  ‘I thought you was mute,’ he said, hands still raised.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve thought many foolish things.’

  ‘Wait. What are you gonna do?’

  ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘No, wait. You said you weren’t going to shoot me.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m going to cut you apart with this hatchet.’

  As he spoke he moved Billy’s gun to his left hand, and with his right reached behind his waistband and slid from it the short-handled ax used for splitting firewood.

  Billy breathed harder. He considered turning and running, but giving Joe his back put fear into him. He had thought the half-breed was dumb. Mentally inferior. He had seemed to Billy little more than an animal, a creature short on defense. Hearing the man speak so clearly, in such calm, measured tones turned him into something else. The roles of predator and prey had blurred.

  ‘Give me my gun back,’ he said.

  Joe flung the gun behind him.

  ‘Wait! You can’t kill me like this. I ain’t got no weapon.’

  ‘That’s not a concern of mine,’ said Joe. He stepped forward.

  Billy bounced backwards in sync with Joe’s forward motion. He felt an uncontrollable pounding inside his body, and lost the proprioception of his physical self in the material world about him.

  His sympathetic system took control. It flung him around and the pounding drum inside him burst to action, contracting the muscles in his thighs and legs and setting them to a sprint.

  He propelled himself into the trees, legs beneath him pushing off the ground in panicked strides. They numbered over five before he was thrown to the forest floor. It was as if he had been pushed down by an invisible hand. He reached an arm past his neck and over his shoulder to where the blow had struck him.

  The hatchet blade had sunk itself deep into the meat of the rhomboid, and rested along the edge of the scapula.

  Adrenaline allowed him to jerk it free. He picked himself from the ground and turned to see the Indian rushing towards him. He swung the hatchet to meet his attacker. It was an awkward swing. His body did not carry out his wishes in perfect motion, and the blade missed.

  Joe’s body crashed into his. They landed again on the soft bed of needles, this time Joe on top of him.

  Billy stared upwards. Joe sat on his chest near his throat, knees pinning down Billy’s shoulders. He felt his head jerk back. Joe gripped his hair in one hand and with the other swung the hatchet in short brutal chops from the forehead over the crown of the skull.

  Billy heard himself scream. The man on his chest lifted the rag of bloody scalp into the air, blood dripping wet and red and warm down onto Billy’s face. He heard himself gasp for air and let another scream rise out into the forest of pines.

  Joe brought the hatchet down. It split through Billy’s skull, cutting the scream short in a quiet gurgle, and the pine-covered mountainside returned to its natural state of silence.

  34

  Balum heard the shot fired from the opposing mountain face. The ricochet echoed across the valley floor, bouncing back and forth between the two slopes containing it.

  He waited, listening for more. The scream that followed told the story. Its echo took the same path as the echo of the wasted gunshot. Leigha, next to him, heard it. The settlers marching towards the bowl canyon heard it. Frederick Nelson and Major Shroud, riding on the wagon, heard it.

  The scream, and it’s abrupt ending, changed the script of the play unfolding for the Oregon Expedition.

  Major Shroud looked at Nelson and held his gaze.

  ‘That was Billy,’ he said.

  ‘Could have been anyone.’

  ‘You know that was Billy. He’s dead.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Nelson. ‘You’re panicking.’

  ‘Gus is dead, now Billy. This isn’t how it was supposed to go, Frederick.’

  ‘Everything is fine. Compose yourself.’

  ‘We should have waited until we got them to the bowl canyon. We should have taken care of those two roughnecks first. Compose myself? You lost your composure when you heard Gus was dead.’

  ‘I didn’t hear any protests from you. What’s done is done.’

  ‘I say we ride up to them and let them have it with the gatling.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘We’ll wait for Saul.’

  ‘What if Saul doesn’t come back?’

  ‘Saul’s coming back.’

  ‘You sure about that, Frederick? What if Saul is dead? What happens when night falls and Balum and Joe come for us and we’re the last two left?’

  Nelson looked ahead at the figures of the settlers making their way down the valley chain.

  ‘We wait for Saul. Tomorrow they’ll hit the canyon wall and it’ll be easy shooting.’

  Major Shroud clenched his teeth. He stared at Nelson.

  ‘That’s your decision. I’ll tell you this though. Saul doesn’t come back and I’m riding out.’

  It took several hours after the sun dropped below the mountain ridge for the sky to darken. Balum left his horse with Leigha and made his way on foot down to the valley.

  At the edge of the trees he paused and listened, then dropped to his belly and crawled toward the wagon in small advances. At each stop he would listen for the cactus wren. He set aside the screeches of bats and the chorus of crickets, assimilating them into the background of sound until he heard it.

  He cupped his hands together with a small opening between his thumbs and blew softly into it. The call of an owl rose out of his palms into the night air. The cactus wren called back, and Balum continued his crawl forward.

  They met in the grass fifty yards out from the wagon, on the side opposite the huddled mass of people.

  ‘Billy’s dead,’ whispered Joe.

  ‘Heard it. Saul too.’

  ‘How do we get these two out?’ said Joe.

  ‘I was hoping you’d have an idea.’

  They lay in the grass listening to the crickets.

  ‘We rush that wagon and someone’s getting shot,’ said Balum.

  ‘We can wait till morning. They’ve got to get up on that wagon seat eventually.’

  ‘Alright then.’

  They lied on their bellies, concealed in darkness.

  They did not need to wait until the light of morning. Shortly before the moon had begun its trip across the sky a commotion came from the wagon. The sounds of a horse being saddled and readied, a string of profanity unleashed from the mouth of Frederick Nelson, and then a racing of hoofbeats.

  They came pounding into the earth in a direct line towards Balum and Joe. There was no need to exchange a word. Both men drew their arms in the invisibility of the night and as the man on horseback charged towards them, his unwitting blunder was met with a greeting of bullets that slammed into his body and took him from his horse. He landed on his back with a thud. He did not move, for he could not. He stared at the moon until its shape was blocked by the figures of two men above him. The blast of gunfire above him was the final vision his eyes took in.

  No sooner had the explosions of gunpowder dissipated, than other sounds took their place. Nelson had thrown open the ammunition box and was throwing rounds into the hopper. He grabbed the crank, spun it, and the gun came to life, pummeling the valley with lead.

  Balum and Joe broke into a run, each circling outward and turning back in towards the safest spot nearest them; beneath the wagon.

  They dove between the wheels and rolled to their backs, drawing the hammers back on their revolvers and letting loose their bullets. They smashed through the wooden wagon base and sent splinters of wood explo
ding around them.

  The gatling gun stopped abruptly and Frederick Nelson dove from the end of the wagon.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ he screamed, splayed on the ground where he landed. ‘Don’t shoot!’

  Balum and Joe crawled out from under the wagon.

  ‘Don’t shoot me, please,’ he pleaded. He rose up in the open grass, his hands outlined above his head against the stars.

  ‘You sure you wouldn’t prefer it if I did, Nelson?’ said Balum. ‘What do you think those folks are going to do to you once they get their hands on you?’

  ‘You’re a marshal, aren’t you? You wouldn’t let that happen.’

  ‘Not a very good one,’ said Balum. ‘If those people want to tear you to pieces with their bare hands, I won’t stop them.’

  ‘Just don’t shoot me,’ begged Nelson. ‘Don’t shoot me.’

  His voice shook. The confidence was gone from it. He stood with his arms in the air, a small figure against the backdrop of the cosmos.

  35

  It took only one day for the settlers to return to their wagons. They were tired, injured, and sick, but at the realization that they were not to die butchered at the base of a canyon, they found the energy to re-cross the valley.

  They arrived at night, but did not sleep. They made fire and cooked food, and tended to the wounds of the injured. In the morning they buried the dead. They performed the rituals of ceremony, and when they had finished they stood lost and directionless under the endless blue sky of the Wyoming Territory.

  ‘Aren’t you going to dig one more?’ said Balum to Jonathan Atkisson.

  ‘You mean Nelson?’

  Balum nodded.

  ‘It’s not vengeance we want, Balum. This country is filled with vengeance. But where will that take us? No,’ Atkisson shook his head. ‘Justice. That is what is needed.’

  ‘Justice in the form of the courts?’

  ‘It’s the only way this country will move forward.’

  ‘We’re a long ways from the law.’

  ‘You’re the law Balum, are you not?’

  ‘According to the affidavit.’

  ‘Then we leave him to you. We’ll put our trust in the sentencing of a judge. In the end, his fate will be worse than the quick death we would give him here.’

  The teams were hitched. The wagon wheels were pulled into motion, driven by men and women bearing little resemblance to the versions of themselves that had set out innocently only weeks ago from Jackson Stables.

  They made their goodbyes after reaching the Platte River and crossing again for the second time. Jeb Darrow and Robert Venton shook his hand and promised to toast to him the next time they drank. Suzanne hugged him, more tightly that anyone, and whispered words in his ear that nearly made him reconsider the ride to Denver.

  Leigha said her goodbyes. There were tears in her eyes, which Balum wiped away with his hand. She kissed him, lightly on the lips, unashamed of who might see her. Then she turned and ran to her buckboard.

  He walked to the wagon where Nelson lay tied, and with Joe’s help, threw him over a saddled horse. They tied a rope from his hands to his feet, connecting them under the belly of the horse.

  ‘It’s going to be a long ride back for you,’ said Joe.

  ‘Even longer for you,’ said Balum. ‘You’re the new wagon master. It’s a sight of responsibility.’

  ‘It’s worth it. I’ll wire to Cafferty once we’ve made it.’

  They shook hands beside the river, and Joe left to take his seat on the lead wagon. The Oregon Expedition once more took to motion, and Balum stuck a plug of tobacco in his cheek and watched them ride into the western horizon.

  ‘You hear what he said?’ Balum asked. ‘It’s going to be a long ride back.’

  Nelson grunted.

  Balum spat into the grass and turned the roan around. He grabbed the lead reins of Nelson’s horse and started them walking.

  Back to Denver.

  Restless still.