Mr. St. John

by Loren D. Estleman

  “They’re going to want to know what it was they saw flashing in the sun. Did you figure on telling them it was your smile?”

  The detective accepted the field glasses.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cold Camps

  “That’s as far as you come, mister.”

  The shout was scarcely audible, thinned by distance and swallowed in the vast emptiness of the plains. It had been preceded by a pale eruption at the entrance to the wash and a dull chug in the earth just ahead of Rawlings’ horse, the crackling explosions following almost as an afterthought. He had reined in immediately. The horse tossed its head and wickered, nervous but unaware that it had been fired upon. Rawlings stroked its neck and shouted back that his name was John Bitsko.

  There was a pause. The Pinkerton squinted, but the edge of the gully threw a shadow that engulfed his challenger. The sun was two hands from the horizon and turning red.

  “Where’s Carroll?”

  The Pinkerton was prepared. “In the hospital in Denver with a broken leg. His horse threw him.”

  “No horse ever throwed Carroll,” replied the voice. “None ever could.”

  “I guess no one told the horse.”

  “What’s your bona fide?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “No one ever has been.”

  Again silence. Lowering his lids until the lashes formed a spidery screen across his vision, Rawlings thought he detected a slight movement in the shadow, but it could have been just the sunset breeze stirring bare brush. The voice spoke.

  “Climb down and move up. Slow, or you’re bird meat.”

  He dismounted and came forward, leading the horse, his free hand held well away from his body. There was a cold dead feeling in his chest that he remembered from Mississippi and especially from the Arkansas jail; it wasn’t so much fear for his own safety as an irrational dread that he wouldn’t be able to cross back over to his own side when the time came. Association with criminals awakened something in him that he never felt while actually upholding the law, and it frightened him.

  “Stop there!”

  He halted two hundred yards short of the entrance, wondering if a bullet was to follow. Moisture trickled down his back under his shirt and coat.

  “Ditch the iron.”

  He unbuttoned his coat with his left hand and slowly drew out his revolver, holding the butt between thumb and forefinger. It plopped into the snow six feet to his right. Next he freed the Winchester from his saddle scabbard and sent it after the belt gun.

  “Merle?”

  A beat, and then a figure separated itself from the darkness, moving toward him with an awkward gait, as if the legs were stiff from riding. A new-looking Stetson with a brim bent down in front cast a shadow to the man’s chin, but his build and obvious inexperience with the strenuous life pointed to Merle Buckner. He held a Henry clasped to one hip in both hands, its bore staring at Rawlings. At ten feet he pulled up.

  “Well, turn around.”

  The Pinkerton obeyed, his stomach crawling. When - Merle spoke again he jumped as if struck.

  “Hands up.”

  He raised his palms shoulder high. A hand came forward and patted his chest and underarm first on one side, then the other, and proceeded down each of his legs inside and out, even inside the tops of his boots. The binoculars were confiscated, inspected, and returned. He’d left his badge and credentials with St. John. Clothing rustled as the man stood and stepped back.

  “Let’s go.”

  It was warmer inside the wash, where the wind didn’t reach and the sun shone coppery beyond the fan of shadow. It took Rawlings a second to link the man standing in the spreading darkness with the picture on the wanted bulletin from Kansas. He looked older, less cocky, and his stubbled face was thinner. He was holding a Mauser in one hand with the barrel dangling. It looked like the model the Spaniards had carried in Las Guásimas. Very likely it had been used on more than one yanqui before entering his possession. He was shorter than expected.

  There were two others standing near the remains of a fire, one a stout Indian woman with Eskimo features wearing man’s clothing, her right hand wrapped around the butt of a Remington revolver like the ones in Race’s and Merle’s holsters, its muzzle pointed at the visitor. Her companion was a dark young man with even features marred by expressionless flat eyes. One arm was bent. Automatically Rawlings glanced down and spotted a blue bore where the fellow’s hand should be. His other stump was crossed beneath alertly. He was in his shirtsleeves, the cuffs unbuttoned.

  They were all so young. Even Merle, the oldest, was several years the detective’s junior. Suddenly he felt ancient.

  “How’d Carroll get throwed?” asked Race. His tone was conversational, but Rawlings knew he was on the grill.

  “His horse stepped in a gopher hole on his way to see me. A farmer found him and took him to the hospital in his buckboard. He’ll be out in a week, but he’ll be on crutches for the next two or three months.”

  No one said anything right away. Merle, who had collected Rawlings’ weapons from the snow outside, strode around him and deposited them on the ground in front of Race. He was a head taller than his cousin and wore a moustache that needed trimming.

  “You must be older than you look,” Race said then. “I’ve been told that.”

  “You look like a railroad detective, Mr. Bitsko.”

  “What does a railroad detective look like, Mr. Buckner?”

  No response. Rawlings slipped a yellow telegraph flimsy out of an outside coat pocket and held it out. Race hesitated, then accepted it. “What’s this?”

  “It’s the wire Carroll sent me from Pinto Creek.”

  Race read, Merle crowding in to look over his shoulder.

  “That’s it, all right,” admitted the older Buckner, stepping back. “We helped him work out the words that night in the shack, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Folding the paper, Race nodded to the Indian woman and Shirley, who lowered their weapons. The telegram was returned. The leader’s eyes flicked toward the guttering sun. Then: “Sorry we can’t offer you something hot, Mr. Bitsko, but I reckon you know about not burning fires at night this side of the law. How about some whiskey while we talk about this here train we’re going to make lighter?”

  “I’d like that,” said Rawlings, smiling. Then his gaze collided with Merle’s and he stopped.

  After clearing the cloud cover, the sun dropped behind the butte like a coin through a slot. The day’s warmth scuttled away through countless holes and cracks in the landscape and the cold damp breath of darkness chilled the watching posse through their coats and made the horses stamp and blow silver vapor. The snow creaked when the men shifted their weight.

  “They’re in there, I guess,” George commented, whispering as if his voice might carry to the wash more than a mile away. “He’d be on his way back by now if they weren’t.”

  St. John removed his hat, ran-fingers through his thinning gray hair, and put it back on. It was one of the nervous mannerisms George remembered from the past. The farther they strayed from civilization, the more of Judge Parker’s old deputy marshal manifested itself. “Cold camp tonight. You stand first watch.” He started for camp at the base of the butte.

  “How come I’m always first?”

  St. John kept walking. “Because you’re an injun.”

  “Oh.”’

  Wild Bill Edwards was seated on his bedroll in the dying light, picking lint off a tobacco plug preparatory to cutting off a slice with a bowie knife balanced on his thigh. Pierce watched Bitsko trying to get to sleep on the hard cold ground. Paco Menéndez had retired and Diego was crouched on a rock sewing up a tear in his worn right boot with sinew and a bone needle. St. John lowered himself to the ground beside Edwards.

  “I didn’t know you chewed.”

  “Picked up the habit in Detroit.” He sawed off a quarter-size piece, popped it into his mout
h, and returned the rest to his breast pocket where it wouldn’t freeze. Finally he wiped both sides of the knife blade on his pants and put it away in a soft leather sheath on his belt. Chewing: “I seen two niggers carve each other up with homemade knives over a hunk no bigger’n a harness rivet. One died. They gave the other life and last time I seen him he was still doing everything with his left hand. I guess I got to thinking that anything worth getting killed over was worth trying.”

  “Was it?”

  He shook his head. “Wasn’t worth getting killed over, either. I ain’t seen anything yet that is.”

  The wind came up, lifting snow from the flatlands in grainy white clouds. Edwards spat. The brown juice crackled when it struck the ground between his boots.

  “Hope he don’t get hisself killed,” he said.

  “Didn’t think you cared for Pinkertons,” replied St. John.

  “Sometimes I forget he is one. He don’t wear their brand.”

  “Not where it shows, anyway.”

  “You’re worried about him too, ain’t you?”

  “I worry about a heap of things,” St. John said. “Comes with the job.”

  “That ain’t it. Not all of it, anyway. I heard you two talking a few times. Seems to me I remember you and Bill Tilghman talking just like that first-time you arrested me, only then it was him saying to you everything you said to Rawlings. Like a pa teaching his son.”

  “You talk too much. Just like him.”

  Edwards laughed and squirted more juice.

  “This here’s my son. The only one I got.” St. John handed him the tintype.

  Edwards squinted at it. The light was almost gone now. “He’s right handsome, Cap’n.”

  “You’re looking at the wrong side.”

  He hesitated, then turned it over.

  The old lawman snatched it away. “How blind are you, Bill?”

  “Night blind.” He spoke quietly. “I’m fine when the sun’s out, but when it’s coming or going I can’t see my hands. Or when I’m indoors away from a window or just coming out.”

  “You did all right in Elephant Crossing and again in Pinto Creek. You were inside both times.”

  “I was going by the voices mostly. All I could see was shadows.”

  “How long’s it been like that?”

  “Since before I left Michigan. Lately it’s worse.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “Glaucoma, they call it. I never heard the word before I got to Cleveland. I still don’t get how it works. All I know is it means I should buy a white stick while I can still pick out the color.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say something?”

  “What if I did?” He looked at St. John, not seeing him, eyes blank behind the spectacles. “You’d of put me on the train back to Seminole. How long you think I’d last with Comanche Tom when he found out his sharpshooter needs a jeweler’s piece to load his guns?”

  “Does George know?”

  “I never told him, but I think he knows. Whenever my eyes got to hurting on the circuit he’d fix tea bags over them in a bandana to draw out the pain. Chaw tobacco works the same way; that’s the real reason I took it up, though that story I told you about the niggers is true enough.”

  “George should of told me. Christ, it’s bad enough I’m too old and we’re all out of practice. This is a business for whole men.”

  “I’ll be whole enough when the shooting starts.”

  “So long as someone points you the right way.”

  They listened to the wind. After a moment St. John spoke again.

  “Shoot me next time I say something like that.”

  “I will if you point me the right way,” said Edwards, and spat. He struck the toe of his boot by accident and scrubbed it off in the snow.

  “Something I been meaning to ask,” he said then. “How is it a shrewd man like you let hisself get euchered in business and politics?”

  “I reckon I just wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Sorry.” Edwards thought he’d offended him.

  “No, really. Problem with both of them is it takes an hour of talk to do ten minutes of dealing. It’s like talking to injuns, and I never had the patience for that either. I always left it to George. Only I didn’t have George to leave it to in Missouri and the other places. So I got skinned.”

  “Funny how you never see a necktie in prison,” Edwards said.

  “Yeah, funny.”

  The wind rose, picking up more snow from the posse’s camp, depositing it in the wash where the Buckner gang and their guest were preparing to retire, and departing with a queer elemental chuckle.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  First Light, Blue Smoke

  Emmett Force Rawlings awoke cold and sore and not knowing where he was or how he got there. There was frost on his blanket and when he sat up the cold air enveloped his face like an ice mask. The air was still and the ground was hard enough to clang if a man stamped his foot.

  Someone was snoring. Long ripping noises, each ending in an explosive pah and the sour smell of half-digested alcohol. A very pale blue streak in the east limned a blanketed shape nearby, and slowly the events of the previous evening took shape in the Pinkerton’s sluggish mind.

  They had tried to get him drunk, filling his tin cup three times from the bottle Race carried in his saddlebags to every one for them while they asked him questions about Carroll Underwood and gold shipments to and from the mint. Seeking to trip him up. He had answered with information Bitsko had given him before he left for the wash and, using the darkness to advantage, had allowed most of the contents of his cup to dribble out onto the ground, taking one drink to every two of theirs. Even then he had consumed more than was his habit, but any man who could survive the drinking bouts on board an army troop ship to Guba-was-as good as immune to liquor the life. Nevertheless his head ached.

  He got up as quietly as possible, not wishing to disturb Merle snoring next to him, and drew the blanket around his shoulders. He used a corner of the rough material to wipe his running nose. Felon’s manners, he mused, and remembered the stinking bucket that took the place of a toilet in the jail cell in Arkansas. His breath smoked as he moved toward the entrance, stepping carefully around the scattered sleeping forms.

  “Walking in your sleep, Mr. Bitsko?”

  He stopped at the sound of the voice ahead of him. Jim Shirley’s silhouette was a shade darker than the gouged earth at his back. He was leaning against the gully wall with his gun arm resting in the crook of a young cottonwood.

  “My bladder’s bursting,” Rawlings explained.

  “Step over behind them rocks in back, then. More men been picked off taking a leak than doing anything else. Seems you’d know that.”

  The last statement dripped suspicion. Rawlings fell back on the defensive.

  “I was a burglar, not a desperado. There’s a difference.”

  “More than I would of figured.”

  The Pinkerton left him. The area behind the rocks reeked of ammonia. He wondered idly if the woman used it too. Modesty was an early casualty on the scout. His urine steamed in the clear cold air.

  He almost bumped into the squaw on his way back to camp. She was bent over, collecting dead brush from the base of the wall, humming some monotonous savage rhythm as she worked. He hadn’t heard her getting up and wondered if she had risen ahead of him. She ignored him and he walked around her. Merle was stirring, sitting twisted on his bedroll and hacking up phlegm that splatted the ground viscously when he spat. A sharp stench of fermented barley and vomit stung Rawlings’ nostrils.

  “You all right?”

  At the detective’s query, Merle started and slapped the holster containing his revolver. “Who the hell are you?”

  “John Bitsko, remember? We met last night.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He paused, then put away the gun. It took him two tries. He went back to hawking and spitting.

  “Merle ain’t his best mornings.�
� Race rolled out from under his blankets and onto his feet in the same movement. Rawlings admired his energy so early on a freezing morning. “‘Course, the difference ‘twixt his best and his worst ain’t exactly fat.”

  His cousin made a gutter suggestion and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “No fire,” Race told the woman, who had returned with an armload of kindling and was constructing a pyramid on the remains of the last fire. “We’re pulling out, eat later.”

  “How come?” Merle sat with one hand braced on the ground.

  “We been here two nights now, which is one more night than I favor staying anyplace. Besides, we got wagons to hire and Jim has to get in touch with his friend in Canada. You want to do all that in Denver, with my picture and his description on every wall and pole?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Nebraska. None of us is wanted there.”

  “That’s on account of there ain’t nothing there worth stealing,” muttered the older Buckner.

  “I’ll be getting back to town, then.” Rawlings doffed the blanket and started buttoning his overcoat. His gun had been returned and was resting on his hip.

  “Why?” asked Race.

  “I have a business to run. My customers will miss me if I don’t show up.”

  “What’s the matter, you can’t take a day off?”

  “That’s not how I make money.”

  “I been wondering about that.” Merle spoke so low it was hard to catch.

  Rawlings turned to him. They were both standing now. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He heard that pretty good.” Merle was addressing his cousin.

  “I noticed,” Race said.

  Shirley joined them. “Carroll said you was hard of hearing, Mr. Bitsko. It’s funny how nobody has to raise their voice for you to understand them.”

  Breath curled in the frigid silence. Though it was still quite dark, the Pinkerton was conscious that he was surrounded. He snatched at his gun. He knew he was too late even as his fingers found the grip.

  Midian Pierce was having trouble with the Fifty-ninth Psalm.