Ratchet rode on. “Just as you say. Boss.”
Ratchet galloped west after the gunmetal tracks.
Chapter 26
A Pullman car. Cinders and smoke flew past windows. A young girl named Rachel perched on a mohair seat—pretty dress, shining buttoned boots.
She stared fixedly at something across from her.
“Mama? That lady’s dead.”
Mother looked up from her book, annoyed, risking a glance.
Sary huddled in the seat—gray, lifeless, dirt-smeared, and disheveled. Is that blood? Mud? She does appear dead. A saddlebag looped tight about the unconscious woman’s arm drooped under the seat. Sadly, it was the only seat totally unoccupied by males. The mother supposed this creature wasn’t male under all that dirt but was probably drunk. She purposefully ignored her.
“Nonsense, Rachel. She’s dru—indisposed.”
Mama looked away with distaste and the hope for somewhere—anywhere—else to sit.
At the far end men drank, smoked, played cards, and bellowed jokes. She was only too happy she could not hear.
“We’ll move later.”
“No, Mummy, she’s really dead.” Rachel covered her own flat chest with both hands and piped, “Her pid-dows stopped moving.”
Rachel pushed her nose close and advanced a finger to Sary’s cheek. “See? Not breathing.”
“Rachel! Let me!” Mama turned Sary’s head. She gasped as hair matted with congealed blood from the seared track gouging Sary’s skull was exposed, and she tugged at the saddlebags, cutting into the wretched female’s arm.
Sary moaned, not letting go. Frustrated, Mama stood up.
“Is there—might there be a physician on board this train? This woman’s—sick!”
Men glanced up and to each other. Annoyed, they returned to their cards. Mama wove down the aisle and slapped the suitcase off their knees. Cards and money flew.
“Ah, ma’am!”
“No! You get someone!”
A man playing a mouth harp stopped his riff. “Abernathy? He’s kinda a doctor, kinda.”
A man with a tilted derby mugged dubiously around a mouthful of cigar. “Sometimes.”
Mama nailed him with a stare.
Derby tossed cards and pushed through to the last car. Mama waited, tapping toes.
Portly, vest misbuttoned, underwear hiked above his belt, Doc lumbered up the aisle, wavered, and peered at Mama through dirty glasses. She shunted him to Sary.
“Her!”
Doc hawked into a hanky, smeared his glasses with the same, swayed judiciously, and attempted to focus. “Save’d thish for the occasion.” Uncapping whiskey, Doc wavered, a ship in high winds, raising the bottle to slobbery lips.
Mama snatched it. “Tchaaaa!” She sloshed whiskey on her hanky and daubed Sary’s shoulder till some of the dirt and crust fell away.
Sary twitched.
Abernathy snatched at the bottle and poked at the wound. “I’m doc here!” Sary’s eyelids fluttered. “Kin see daylight through that’n.” Doc held his hand out and took the whiskey, pouring a tot on the wound. Sary bucked and slumped. Doc reluctantly handed Mama the bottle and fumbled Sary’s sticky hair.
“Thish here’s just a bone-brusher—maybe. A bleeder, though. Not much more I can do.” Abernathy latched onto his bottle and shuffled off as fast as he could while Mama watched his fat lumbering rear with disgust and gingerly lifted Sary’s vest. “Don’t look, Rachel!”
She gasped again and called to Abernathy. “Wait! That’s all? What of her side?”
Abernathy grunted. “Used up all my med’cine, din’ I?”
“Ohhh! Horrible man!” Mama hopped from a widening pool of blood. “Rachel! Fetch me my reticule and remove your petticoat.”
****
In her confusion, it seemed to Sary she was stepping into a hot cloudy hell that hissed like a hundred snakes.
Someone clutched her elbow. Not an unwelcome hold—without it she’d surely fall. She staggered heavily into the unseen someone.
“Ooophhh, s’sorry,” Sary mumbled, aware her arm wasn’t working and her other arm was strained beyond breaking. A hard, leathery band cut her palm. Oh, yes. Saddle bags. Heavy, heavy, as if all the pain in the world centered in her hand, her side, and her throbbing head—her muzzy, muzzy head.
She saw from one eye. What’s wrong? Sary tugged one lid from the other on the other eye. It ripped open, as though sticky. A blot, a crust of blood, trembled in front of her vision—Sary blinked, and her spiky lashes glued shut again.
Can’t draw a breath, either. Pain knitted her side as if the ribs were crocheted shut. Stitches snapped with each inhalation—she was aware too of a gumminess down her side. So irritating, that itchy messiness. Her clothes stuck, and something was running down her leg.
“Quite all right,” she enunciated, detecting anxiety and impatience beyond her unknown companion’s calm words.
The guiding hand fell away.
Sary moved limbs hammered by a blacksmith to unyielding iron, to view her companion. A lady—a true genteel lady, the likes of which Sary had not beheld since she didn’t know when.
She could stand. Take unaided steps…till the fog or mist separated her from the woman and girl-child. Vaguely familiar, that young female…“Is she dead, mommy?”
Steam clouds thinned. Sary stepped through—and all bustling San Francisco, at least the part beyond the station, spread magically before her, full of color, with the syncopated clip-clop of horses, rattle-clack of wagons, and an unbelievable mass of people…
All alive and happy! How can there be so many in one spot, all busy-busy and…Wonder of wonders!—Sary staggered back almost run over by a carriage—Without a horse!
She eyed its gleaming blackness and glittering metal, so blinding in its glory, as it clattered by at terrifying speed, veering at the last second with a rude back blow. Folks in all-over coats head to toe and big eye gear like bug’s eyes sat high and proper, as in a buggy. Sary caught a feminine name in glittering fancy script written flamboyantly across the front of the amazing contraption.
“Mercedes…” she breathed, wondering if the female riding with her companion was Mercedes.
The automobile scuttled along, disappearing with bucking and fanfare. Sary stared until the magical conveyance was out of sight, aware of a tapping on her arm through steam clouds still billowing from the locomotive. But then a red-and-gold plaque snared Sary’s eye, glossy, important, demarcating a turn in fortunes.
A lodestar.
Sary lurched toward the sign that glittered in the brilliant San Francisco sun.
The tapping came again, insistent.
She cricked her neck, irritated, and looked down at the hand.
Oh! The woman and the little girl—and what is this? Her own bosom, covered in daisy sprigs. Never owned anything like this. Sary’s gaze roved over the ill-fitting dress, crude bandages, and her own death grip on the saddlebag.
The woman talked from inside a tunnel. “But where will you go? What will you do?”
At last Sary focused, puzzled, on the woman with the little girl. “Do?” Sary frowned then, fixated on the red sign. “Do? Win.”
She scanned the dress. Yes, still daisies. “Appreciate the dress.” Sary turned and painfully hefted the saddlebag.
“But—what’s your name, anyways?” The question was only a burr behind her. Already a memory.
“Oh, never mind!” Mama yanked Rachel off, nettled, as Sary lurched across the street, dragging her dirty old bag.
Sary halted, croaking, “Wait! Little…little girl…”
Rachel skipped back.
Sary pressed a nugget into her palm. “Give this to your Ma. After you don’t see me no more.” She tried a smile, but her mouth stretched too tight.
Rachel crinkled her nose at the gritty beige rock but curtsied. “Mommy, look what the sick lady give me! A rock!” Sary smiled grimly as Mama glared after her.
Clutching the saddlebag s
traps, halting every few steps, Sary hitched painfully across the street.
Mama spun, resolute. She studied the rock and, her mouth open, stared back at Sary, who continued to make her way to the brick building, weaving through shoppers, foot traffic, peddlers, and families, never wavering from a path toward the brilliant red-gold sign: WELLS FARGO BANK.
Sary hauled the bags up onto the wood walkway, panting. The stain on the sprigged dress widened. She waited as a stranger, looking at her strangely, emerged and stepped aside to open and hold the door, keeping clear as if her appearance was catching. And so she entered the cool, dim, polished room, dragging the bags.
****
Tellers and customers scanned Sary—blood-stringed matted hair, hastily cleaned face, trailing bandages with alarming stains, shuffling toward them in mucky boots, the bloody saddlebag scraping wood floors.
Customers parted or shied. She eyed a guard rushing toward her as she dropped the bag at a teller window and smoothed her hair.
“I need to see someone…of importance,” she grated.
Chapter 27
Sary lay naked on a bed that dipped in the middle, focusing on a ceiling crack that resembled either a pig or a basket of fruit. At times, she wondered how on God’s green earth she’d gotten there. She thought perhaps she was dying, and that electrified her into hanging on, clutching the thin quilt. It kept the throbbing at bay. Otherwise it crouched on her, or bounced malevolently on her bed, or mocked her from the dim corners of the room, though at times, when she turned her neck, it waited like a one-eyed scruffy cat on the crumbling sill outside, scratching at the cloudy glass.
She groaned. The same wooly San Francisco fog throbbed in her head with each pulse beat.
From the ceiling, as she envisioned herself looking down, every bruise, swelling, and bullet wound must be evident, as was her torment as Sary sweated through sheets frayed to transparency, tossing and speaking in tongues.
The ribs scabbed but didn’t heal. She felt one of them grate, not piercing a lung but making it hurtful to breath, like dragging saddlebags with each inhalation. Concentrate. Suck in, breathe out. She twisted for comfort that wasn’t there.
One day she shrieked, not in torment, not entirely.
Sary eyed her shoulder in a clouded hand mirror, aware for days of the hotness welling beneath taut red flesh. She had crawled from bed to fetch the dim mirror from a dusty, scarred dresser. A rare sunbeam highlit her shoulder. Sary sucked in. Sun painted her shoulder an alien green, the green of meat gone bad, puffed to bursting, radiating from a jagged, black, crusty epicenter.
Even now, as she tentatively probed, a turgid paste oozed from the gritty burnt-cinder edges—hot threads spidered from a scarlet epicenter, shiny, tumescent—and from the black hole.
She touched it—and woke up later on the floor, her skin a sheet of flame laid over bone, aware of a pounding on the door.
“What in heaven’s name is goin’ on in there?” A woman’s voice—older, colloquial, querrelsome. Sary shrank from this presence and proof of the world out there. Her throat was raw. She must have yelled. She tried to croak something out, “Water…” But the footsteps lumbered off.
There followed a period of intense throbbing all down her arm. Her mouth was as dry as the blanket, and as rough. Where is that girl? Some girl? She recalled promising the drab person something. Oh—the world! If only she returned. Skinny little thing. Stick wrists and fingers.
Someone else, too—fat under iron stays, and a wobbly chin. She had directed Sary upstairs, with the thin girl guiding her. How many days ago, hours ago was that? Sary felt herself sliding away…
Oh, please! She watched the door—the knob. To die here alone…Listened for footfalls, creak of boards. Am I the only one? Oh. There it is!
A pitcher. Brimmed to overflowing with cloudy water. Cold rivulets dripped from it. When did that come? Who brought it?
She woke on the floor again.
The fingerprinted pitcher was now dry. Still thirsty. She looked to a drear oblong of window. Water obliterated the panes.
She would break them. Smash her head through, face the skies, and drink, cool her blazing skin, cleanse her matted itching scalp… She was aware, too, that she smelled. A stench emanated from her burning flesh and clothes.
Ahhh, good! She had raised the loose window. With her head out, she luxuriated in a bone-chilling stream, inundated with cold wet diamonds.
Later, on the floor again but this time under the window sash, her face and hair wet, her shoulder seared. She looked down. Dark yellow muck oozed from a burst center, like pollen from an evil flower.
Much later, she was aware her shoulder had crusted over again. It should be cleansed and rebound. And then her ribs. She pressed her side; there was yet a dull grating throb. She explored her face. A scab slanting above her right brow and hairline formed an odd part under Sary’s probing fingers.
Not too painful. Not puffed. She could ignore that.
She risked a glance at the ghastly area once more, gently exploring the epicenter. Something unyielding—not bone. A bullet? She recalled the round tins of balm her mother used to buy from tinkers back in Indiana. Touted to cure all.
She laughed, in the dark on the floor, looking upside down at the moon through the dirty window.
She must have slept. It was still dark. She was half on the bed. The girl had brought more water. Sary elbow-hitched over. She spilled most, gulping the rest from the spout.
Should have saved some.
No matter. Sink back. Rest.
When next she roused, the cat on the sill blinked huge blank green eyes. Did she imagine it? It was gone, and she closed her eyes…heavy, heavy…and woke wailing. Her shoulder exploded with another bursting, ripping pain, and hot gruel volcanoed out, running down her arm. The reek was horrendous. She bit her lip. Slowly the hurt receded to a ragged, throbbing echo.
Another dark period. Somewhere a coil of hunger unwound in her stomach. So hot… She threw back the covers.
A moon knifed across her body. Sweat chilled her shift. Fitfully, Sary plucked at brown scratchy covers. Her face was outside the glass now, peering in with big cat eyes, she thought. Pain crouched in the corner, waiting. I must do something!
****
Sary continued to fade in and out of consciousness. When she tentatively probed her shoulder, watching in the hand mirror, daring the torment, the last expulsion of yellow exposed something in the ragged hole. Gently, gently, Sary’s fingers probed deeper, ignoring the tenderness.
Yes. Hard. It moved. Not bone. She jackknifed, hanging onto consciousness, as hot glass shards seemed to pierce her bones, zipping along jagged neural paths clear to her feet. She gritted her teeth and dug her forefinger and thumb down into the wet tunnel of flesh. Fingernails grown long scratched metal.
Yes, a bullet. No, no! Don’t push! Pull!
Gently, oh, very, very gently, Sary pincer-nailed the hard thing, drawing the pellet out, accompanied with a sucking gush of thin brown blood and more green.
The pain was less throbbing now, though, more a numbness. The area around the hole was paler. When Sary next roused, her palm cradled a squashed brass dome.
Chapter 28
Sary swung thin legs over the edge of the mattress by degrees, cringing as her toes hit splintered boards and tripped on a thready rug. Dragging the blanket to the window, she twisted to peer in the occluded mirror at her wounds—their edges were red and puffed but healing.
The day was bright for once, and Sary bathed in sunlight. Her eyes flew to a dim corner behind the washstand. Her poor bundle was yet there, most likely too impoverished-looking to tempt anyone, and her saddlebags rested in the basement of the Wells Fargo Bank, save for a few nuggets and ready cash in the bottom of her bundle.
She poured water into the cracked bowl and wet the cloth next to it. Scraping away the last residue of crusted blood and serum, she scrubbed a thin bar of brown soap into the wound and all around it. No clean cloth to
rip for bandaging. It took a long time, using her teeth and good hand, to tear strips off the towel.
Tired again, she longed to crawl onto the saggy mattress or run shrieking from the fetid room. The chamber pot hadn’t been changed in a while.
She scratched. A rare smile formed. My ribs itch. A good sign. Sary waved the mirror before her face, not recognizing hollow eyes circled in claret or caved-in cheeks. Even her poor hair was thinner. She finger-traced the welt of scar. Ah well, never was a beauty. I now have a permanent part.
Chapter 29
Ratchet himself still showed badges of his own encounter with Sary. Though his bruises and scrapes had faded to a sick lemon color, they seared his memory with ignominy and odium. He fidgeted in line, attempting to push ahead of the brash San Francisco crowd—and was shoved aside by a female, no less!
He snatched the flimsy yellow paper offered by the clerk, reading it regardless of others in the great train station’s Western Union line, and grinned, crushing the telegram.
In the bank, a teller counted Ratchet a wad of money.
At the postal office, Ratchet ripped a tube, sliding out Delacorte’s sketch of Sarabande Swinford.
Freshly shaved and in stiff city clothes so natty even Delacorte would be taken aback, Ratchet showed Sary’s sketch to anyone he snagged. He showed some initiative, too. No sheriffs—not that the lily-fingers were called that in the city. Ratchet scoured the train stations, the tram lines, the poorer sections, guessing rightly but for the wrong reason that this was where she’d hole up.
He could smell her in the tawdry rooming houses, in the bars. Anyone who would have her.
****
At Sary’s room, there was rain. Again.
Raising the warped window, she stuck her head out. She was cleaner, rested, and healing somewhat. It must be soon, or she would never leave. She knew this.
Tall masts studding the sky were a reminder of “jasmine, velvet, and long skinny boats—sunny cobbled streets and gleaming white walls…”
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