Dutch Uncle

by Marilyn Durham

  ‘Let the kid go, that’s all.’

  Becker stood up, throwing the length of the belt over one shoulder. ‘Sure thing. I’ll drop him off somewhere across the border.’

  ‘No! I mean outside of town. He has someone there who will take care of him.’ He was beginning to gather himself for a one-chance lunge, the knife hidden in his hand, his good leg tensed to push him up the wall. Becker saw the motion and came back to jerk his arms up by the handcuffs and shake the knife out of his fist, while Jake sucked in his breath against the sharp pain and fell down again. Becker folded the knife and pocketed it, letting go of the handcuffs. While Jake was still limp and the light was swimming in his vision, Becker blew out the candle.

  ‘For that, I’m going to let you live in the dark a while instead.’ Jake heard his boot bear down on the first ladder rung. ‘Don’t fret yourself about that boy while you’re waitin’ to die — tío. If he takes after either his ma or pa, he’ll get by all right. After all, he’ll be down there with his own kind of people, won’t he?’ He went up the ladder carefully in the dark.

  Jake rolled over on his left knee and got his good foot under him, then launched himself blindly at the invisible ladder. He hit it with his whole weight behind the lunge, striking it with his right arm first. He felt the ladder crack apart, the way his whole chest seemed to crack apart as the force of the blow sent him past it, stumbling to the ground. He screamed or Becker screamed, or both. He heard the heavy descent of Becker’s body and the hard crack of it as it hit the ore-wagon bed.

  He was sobbing with the effort to keep moving. With his head against the far wall, he put his feet up to feel for what was left of the ladder and kicked at it. The old wood split again and the ladder fell apart. He lay on his back, tangled in the debris, and gasped with relief and with the overwhelming pain. He could move no farther, but he tried to reach Paco with his voice.

  ‘Paco! Get to the horse! Grab the reins if you can’t get on him. Do you hear me? Grab the reins and don’t let go! He’ll take you home. Paco!’ There was no answer.

  He heard a faint moan from Becker. It surprised him. With the best of luck, he didn’t think he could possibly have done more than stun him. He’d clear his head in a second, and Jake would be a dead man. But at least Becker wasn’t going anyplace for a while either.

  Becker moaned again. It was almost like a sob; very childlike. It sounded like Paco. There was no movement from the direction of his voice.

  ‘Becker?’ he whispered. He felt nothing now himself except pain and cold and exhaustion. What was holding up his execution? ‘Becker?’

  ‘I — think my back’s broke,’ Becker said faintly. ‘You play a — rough game — old Jake — but you still lost the pot — this time. That kid won’t be able to find this place again. We’re both of us goin’ to die down here — now.’

  Jake heard him, but couldn’t answer. Becker didn’t speak again, Jake had closed his eyes to dream one last dream. He saw Paco running after the horse, falling down and losing the end of the reins, but getting up again to follow the animal in the darkness.

  What Becker said was true. They were both going to die now because Paco wouldn’t be able to find his way back with someone to get them out. But Jake wanted him to find home again. He willed it, clinging to the fading image of the boy running as long as he could; summoned up welcoming lights to guide him, searchers to find him and take him home to Carrie.

  Then he was too cold and tired even to dream.

  23

  He never knew when they came for him. They found him and pulled him out of the pit by a rope tied under his arms. They hauled him back to Arredondo tied across a mule’s saddle, because it looked like he was going to die soon anyway, and there was no other way to do it without losing four more hours on another round trip into town for a wagon. It was a rough haul, but he was too deep in shock to feel it by then.

  When he did feel it and began to moan, somebody poured whiskey down his throat and nearly choked him. Somebody else complained angrily about that; somebody jabbered, someone was crying quietly.

  He was lifted, stripped, tortured in some incomprehensible manner so that his arms would no longer move at all, then put down at full length on a bed that smelled of sun-sweetened fresh sheets.

  A soft voice was speaking to him. It was Carrie’s. He knew that much, but both the will and the ability to answer her were lost to him. He slept for a very long time. Even when he was awake for a few minutes together, he clung to the pretense of sleep, keeping his eyes closed and listening to know if there was anybody in the room with him ready to pounce on him and make him wake and talk.

  An infection set into his chest from the mauling his splintered bones had given him. He ran a fever for several days and felt such pain when he breathed that he lay like a dead man, trying not to breathe at all. Whenever he opened his eyes in the silence, either Mary O’Neal or Carrie seemed to be there, bending over him with a cold compress and a somber look.

  When he believed he was going to die, he had a lot he wanted to say to Carrie, and couldn’t form the words. But when he knew he was going to recover, it all seemed foolish, like a fever dream. By that time she was very cool with him, never staying longer than it took to feed him or straighten the bed. Yet he knew she had been there before, night and day.

  She had certainly been there once with a hammer while he was too far out of his head to hear. The first time he woke and tried to turn his head he found his money belt skewered to the wall a foot from his nose with a nail that reminded him of something Biblical. It was Jael and Sisera, he found out later, though at the time everything about their story evaded him except the nail.

  He found he was strapped into a remarkable set of splints. The break in his collarbone put his left arm out almost at a right angle to his body, making it impossible for him to move in bed at all. He also seemed to have broken his right arm in the rush on the ladder. It was bound and strapped to his side with a sling; His ankle had been only badly wrenched and was soon mended, but the rest left him embarrassingly helpless in every possible way. He could not feed himself or shave or attend to the simplest necessities. He was humiliatingly dependent on the others for everything. As he recovered, his humiliation deepened and soured. He became a foul-tempered and ungracious patient. Paco was kept away from him, and Carrie was once reduced to tears, trying to feed him the approved invalid’s diet.

  ‘Very well,, don’t eat it, then, if you think it’s swill! Don’t eat at all! Because if you can’t eat this, you can go hungry. Call me when you find an appetite and some decent manners.’ She snatched the tray off his lap so suddenly that the soup bowl and cup flew from it and smashed on the floor.

  With all the concentration and care of a furious woman, she cleaned up the mess from the boards in a deadly silence. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of a retreat into reason, so he kept silent, too, while she collected the shattered china on the tray again and stalked out with it.

  Mary O’Neal appeared a few minutes later and looked down on him as if more in sorrow than in anger. He did feel he had behaved badly, but he was ready to defend himself whenever she chose to open the attack, Instead, she closed the door and tipped her head down as if peering at him over spectacles.

  ‘You’re not fit to live among Christian people.’

  ‘I wish to hell I didn’t! Unchristian people might either let me alone or give me what I ask for.’

  She continued to study him. ‘Let me guess at it,’ she offered. ‘Is it a drink you want, or somebody’s fist in your mouth?’

  ‘A drink! Oh, my God, all I want is a drink and some food that’s solid. A steak, or beans, or even some of Sánchez’s rotten stew.’

  ‘Meat is inflammatory to the system — like bad temper. But if you tuck in your evil tongue and give that poor woman who’s been slaving for you a pleasant look the next time she comes near you, I might see my way to bringing in a small glass of beer and a bit of chicken.’

 
‘All right, even beer would be something. But, Christ, Mary—’

  ‘Don’t blaspheme to me! There’s a little child out there who keeps asking to see you, but Miss Carrie says he’s not to come in until you can stop cursing with every breath. And don’t take me up on it! Remember, you must get on the good side of me to have your beer.’ She started to leave, but paused in the door to break into a sudden giggle.

  ‘Get out of here, O’Neal.’

  ‘Ah, I’m sorry. But it came to me all at once that when you scowl like that you remind me of my father, bless his black heart.’ She left him stunned. It was the final indecency.

  *

  He was much subdued and silent when she came around again. She carried a cloth-covered tray, which, being unveiled, supported a terra-cotta bowl of fragrant chicken stew and a respectable mug of beer. ‘Now,’ she said firmly, ‘you can’t have more than a sip to start with. Then you will either eat Carrie’s stew or watch me drain the rest of the mug right before your eyes.’

  He ate, feeling like a pet monkey as she fed him each mouthful, half opening her own mouth with each bite in her total concentration on the job. The beer went down slowly, too, with little administrative wipes at his mustache in between.

  ‘I’m that pleased with you, now,’ she said, putting down the empty mug. ‘Why, you can sip it as fine as a lass at her first wake.’

  ‘I feel like livestock,’ he muttered, ‘being fattened for the market.’ She saw he was in low spirits and not just sulking, and put the tray on the floor for a moment in order to study him.

  ‘It’s hard for a strong, healthy man to abide a sickness, I know. But you’ve been more than a little lucky if this is the first time you’ve ever been down on your back with the womenfolk pecking at you. Most people have had more than one taste of it, though few of them go to such lengths to splinter their bones just to be waited on by the ladies.’

  That wasn’t what troubled him now, she saw. ‘Where’s the pinch? Are your wrappings too tight?’

  ‘No. How old are you, O’Neal?’

  ‘Twenty-two,’ she answered, surprised.

  He closed his eyes wearily. ‘God. I guess I am old enough to be your father.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve just been wondering how long it takes for bones to mend — in older people.’

  ‘Are you a Catholic? Would you like for me to ask Señor Sánchez to send out for a priest to give you the last rites before you die of old age?’

  ‘Oh, shi — I beg your pardon. I just wondered how long I’m going to have to be tied up like this, that’s all. I guess a kid’s bones heal faster than somebody’s my age. What does it take? A month? Two months? Six?’

  ‘Six to eight weeks, young or old. Now, you take my father. He was caught in a cave-in down in the mines when I was a tiny bit of a girl back in the old country. Broke his collarbone and his arm, just like you. He was back picking coal and swinging his belt strap after my skirts in a bit over two months.’

  He nodded bleakly. ‘I see.’

  ‘Did I tell you before that you remind me of him? You do. Of course, I could only guess how he’d have looked at your age. How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-five,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘Ah, well, I wouldn’t know about him then, for sure. You see, he was coming on to sixty when he fathered me, and I have a sister two years younger back home.’ She got up with the tray, the napkin over her arm. He had thought her very plain at first, and much older than twenty-two. She had carroty hair like Delia’s, and, the same milky skin, but heavily spotted with healthy freckles. Her face was soap-and-water shiny like Carrie’s, however, and for all her efficient ways she blushed like Carrie when he asked her, impulsively:

  ‘Have you picked out a man yet, O’Neal? Or does the medical profession keep you too tied down?’

  ‘I’ve been studied over and inspected, like that livestock you mentioned, and I’ve done some inspecting myself. But I’m in no hurry. A woman can be a long time married, so there’s no need to rush. There’s somebody else out here to see you, so I won’t take up any more of your time.’

  The somebody was Paco. His chopped-off hair was beginning to recover from Mrs Cuddeback’s shears, and his clothes were clean and well mended. He had his pocketknife in hand and a sample of work for Jake to see a short piece of board with a portrait gouged out of it.

  The face was long and pointed, the eyes deep slits, the mouth a tight line, the mustache flourishing. It bore a striking resemblance to Simon Legree. Jake studied it for some further clue.

  ‘It’s you, Chake. See? 1 was gonna put some teeth in it, but Tío Sánchez said teeth was too hard to do. Some man came down here last week with a camera, and made a picture of me and Tío Clem and Tío Sánchez and those dead bandidos. They wanted to make a picture of you, too, but you was sick and Carrie wouldn’t let ‘em. So I made one. You like it?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks. Put it over there on the table for me, will you? I’ll use it when I start shaving again.’

  Paco examined him curiously. ‘Why you got all them things on you still? You don’t look sick any more.’

  ‘Did anybody ever find that bag of your mama’s?’

  Paco shrugged. ‘They all looked. Some hombres came here in round hats from the place that bandido robbed and just about tore up the feed-store floor looking for it. And all the boxes and my good stuff, too, that I made in the back. They took it off and tore it up, but they didn’t find nothing.’

  ‘What about your silver mine?’

  Paco broke out in a crow of joy. ‘Oh, man, that was a funny part. Las’ week, before they got here, the Gebhardts put a privy on it. They said it looked like that’s what it needed to keep somebody from fallin’ in. So those round-hat men tore up the privy, too, and got down in it with shovels and buckets! Man, Gebhardts was mad, and the men was mad, too, ‘cause there wasn’t nothing at the bottom but a lot of rocks and crap!’ He fell over on Jake’s knee, nearly strangled with the humor of it. Jake chuckled at him. They both grew solemn faced for a moment, looking at each other. Then they broke out laughing again.

  The door opened enough to show Carrie’s face. ‘You can’t stay very long, Paco, if you’re going to be so boisterous.’

  ‘He was just telling me about the Wells Fargo detectives digging up Gebhardts’ new privy.’

  She started to smile, then tucked her bottom lip under. ‘Just the sort of topic I might have expected the two of you to fall on.’

  ‘Come on in, then, and raise the moral tone of the place. But let the kid stay for a while.’

  Paco glowed at the reprieve and climbed up on the bed with Jake, while Carrie took the chair and smoothed her skirts thoughtfully.

  ‘I understand they couldn’t find the money. Tell me what else happened while I was out of my head.’

  ‘Well, it’s been very busy here. The sheriff came for the two — bodies. He said there was a reward out for one of them, the one named Frank Becker. He wasn’t sure about the other one. And the express company is going to pay a reward for the return of the stolen money, if it’s ever found.

  ‘We had a judge in from the capital, day before yesterday, to hold a hearing, and while he was here he performed marriage services for eight of the twelve women who just came, and two of the women from the Golden Moon. He also promised Clem that as soon as the legislature meets again we can be certain to get our papers of incorporation, and a circuit judge, too, since the railroad is drawing so close.’

  ‘What’s Delia doing?’

  Her mouth tightened. ‘Miss Moon isn’t here any more. The day you were rescued from the mine she sold her house to Mr Sánchez, took back her tent, and left, just behind the stage for Mesilla. I’m afraid you’ve missed another one.’

  ‘Sold out to Sánchez? My God, what’s he fixing to become here, the merchant prince of—’ He floundered, unable to think of any way to edit the comment at the last moment.

  She appeared not to notice. �
�No, Mr Sánchez is going to turn the place into a hotel. It’s going to be the Arredondo Carriage House from now on.’ She had more trouble with the corners of her mouth and turned pink. ‘It’s because he wants to cater to the carriage trade — respectable travelers — not for the reason that must have instantly occurred to you.’

  Jake began to shake with laughter, joined by a mystified but eager Paco. She smiled at the two of them reluctantly at first, but their amusement was contagious. The dimple woke again that he had seen only once before, since she had smiledso infrequently in his company. She looked away from his examination of her. There was a pause. Paco lay on his back beside Jake, making an investigation of his splinted left arm.

  ‘I guess Clem’s in his element with all the comings and goings, then,’ he said, to fill her silence.

  She drew a deep breath and looked thoughtful again.

  ‘Yes, he’s very busy these days. When Miss Moon left us so suddenly he was — disturbed more than I thought he should be, until— Some of the people in the League have suggested that when we have our first election he ought to be mayor. He says no, of course, but he’s flattered that they’d think of him. I believe he wants it.’

  ‘Why not? He’d make a good mayor. He’s got the kind of guts that people look for in a politician.’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘I mean it. It took a lot of nerve to put a shotgun on that mob of miners and make them back off. Enough of them had guns that they could have made Swiss cheese out of us both if he’d flinched a little. But he made believers out of them right there. He’s not very big, but he’s man enough.’

  Carrie glanced at Paco. ‘Yes. He — we had a talk about something last week that we should have talked about years ago.’ She looked at Jake helplessly.

  ‘I know,’ he told her.

  She shook her head, her fingers beginning to pick at the lap of her skirt. ‘I don’t understand why he didn’t tell me before. How could he think it would hurt me to know he was all right? Why did he do it? It makes me feel as if I’ve spoiled his life. I never wanted anything like that from him. Why couldn’t he have been honest and set us both free?’