by Gene Curry
“Anyway you like,” Claggett said, but I knew he wasn’t buying everything I was selling. Without another word, he climbed into the wagon where the foreign women were readying Hannah’s body for its last rest.
No one offered to help Sam with the grave. It couldn’t have been more than a shallow grave, because he was back in less than half an hour. The others were gathered by Hannah’s grave while Claggett read over her. Culligan was burning her name into the headboard of her grave. The smell of the burning wood and the hot iron were strong in the quiet morning air. Culligan had to put the iron back in the fire several times before he got all of Hannah’s name and her dates on the heavy slab of wood.
I kept my eye on Sam while I listened to the preacher’s droning voice. There was no emotion in it: she might have been anyone. Some of the women cried. I looked up and saw Maggie O’Hara staring at me. I couldn’t be sure how much the others knew about Cyrus’s death, but somehow Maggie knew everything, and for the first time there was something other than dislike in her eyes.
Sam didn’t attend Hannah’s funeral. It might have got him killed if he had. The mourners dispersed, and I found Sam waiting for me after it was over. I don’t know whether Sam was grieving over his son, or just full of hate for me. Same thing, I guess. I couldn’t blame him, but that made no difference either. Sam had to be gotten rid of, and now was the time.
“You made me kill my own boy,” Sam said, as if I didn’t know it.
“You had a choice, and you took it. Now, get out.”
I don’t know why Sam looked so surprised. “I signed on with Claggett to see his cows to California. We made a deal. All right, Cyrus killed the girl, and I killed him. That was a deal too, and I kept it. You figure I’m going to assault some of your ladies, is that it? Them days is behind me for good.”
“Get your gear and get out,” I said. “If you’re still here fifteen minutes from now, I’ll kill you.”
This time Sam’s anger won out over his caution, and his hand went to his gun belt. The draw he tried for would have been good for a man half his age. The Schofield has a long barrel, but it came out fast. But before it did my .44 Colt was cocked and aimed at his heart. Sam stopped his draw before the muzzle of the Schofield quite cleared leather. Still, it was a good draw. If he had tried to complete it, I would have put one through his heart, another one in his face.
The Schofield dropped back into its oiled holster without making a sound. It was all over in seconds, and no one had seen it except Culligan, who was putting away his tools, and Maggie O’Hara.
“You still have fifteen minutes,” I said. I knew I should have killed Sam then for the good of all mankind. The old man stank of a bad life—the smell of a man who didn’t know good from evil. Maybe I’m not tough enough, but I had just forced a man to kill his own son, and that’s a hard thing to do. I knew I was making a mistake in letting him live, but I went ahead and made it. I hoped it would end there, but in my gut I knew it wouldn’t. Call me a fool, and you’d be right.
Sam looked at me for a long, hard moment before he turned away and went to collect his gear. What he was doing was burning my face into his memory.
“You’re riding high now, Saddler,” he said. “But everybody stumbles, and I’ll be there when you do. You’ll never make it.”
After Sam left, Culligan came up to me. “I saw that bit of business with the guns. Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?”
“I’d have to explain why I did it. That would dirty up Hannah’s name.”
“In a way it would,” the Irishman said. “But she’s dead, and what harm could it do her? We’re alive, and Kiowa Sam is on the loose.”
“To do what? A while back you hinted something about Sam. Say it straight, for Christ’s sake.”
Culligan said, “There was no proof against him. That’s what Sam said. But the fact is, two trains Sam herded for never got to California. The wagons were looted and burned, young women stolen, guns and money—everything—taken. Funny thing was Sam and Cyrus survived both times. The first time Sam’s story was that him and Cyrus was miles off, catching strays when the attack came. They got back too late, when everybody was dead except the stolen women.”
“What about the second train?” I was beginning to wonder if I should go after Sam, but he was out of sight. Out of sight and maybe waiting with a long gun.
Culligan padlocked his tool chest. “Sam’s story was that they quit the train because of the leader’s making fun of Cyrus. They quit the train and let it go on from there. On the face of it, both stories could have happened the way he told them.”
“What’re you saying?”
“I knew the leader of that train, the second one. His name was Jonathan Bass. A better man you never met on this earth. Making fun of a half-witted boy was the last thing he’d do.”
I said, “These burned trains. Were there any dead bodies besides the wagon people?”
Culligan spat. “Both times a few dead Indians. Another funny thing. Most of them were shot in the back. So tell me, Saddler, what do you think of all that?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
Chapter Nine
We made good time crossing Missouri. No brigands, no attacks of any kind. Except for the remnants of the various outlaw gangs, hunted by posses and spied on by the ruthless Pinkertons, Missouri had left its wild days behind.
I wasn’t out to blaze any new trails. The old Oregon Trail had proved itself a good way to go, and that’s how we were going to go until it came time to branch off at Fort Bridger, right smack on the Utah-Wyoming line, and head southwest to California. Wyoming came after Kansas and Nebraska. And after we passed Fort Bridger into Utah, we would still have to cross Nevada, east to west, before we got to California.
Now, if you study these trails on a map, they look simple enough; the lines appear to be direct—the easiest way to get from one place to another. But a land trail is far from being a railroad line. You don’t just sit a seat and let other men do the work while you sleep, eat, drink, play cards and smoke. A map can indicate a desert or a stretch of mountains or badlands, but that doesn’t tell you what they’re really like. A map can’t tell you a thing about the heat, drought, blizzards, Indians, or outlaws you might encounter. A map has no way of telling you about the regions where half the rodents carry bubonic plague. A child, or someone else, can pick up a baby squirrel or prairie dog, get a bite, and kill off a whole train. And then there is typhus and cholera.
But Missouri was fine. I expected Claggett to come around asking questions about why Kiowa Sam was no longer with the train. He didn’t, and I was glad he didn’t. I wanted to put Hannah and her death behind me. It was just one more of those things that smudge the clear picture of a man’s life. Come to think of it, Claggett didn’t have much to say about anything, at least not to me. He wasn’t a stupid man; he had figured things out. Now he drove the lead wagon by himself, offering to share it with no one. There was some squabbling among the women and the days began to drag. They always do, except that with this train it happened faster than usual.
Sometimes I found women looking at me—or at Iversen. Culligan’s only love was his work and his whiskey, so he was out of the running. Reverend Claggett was as remote as God, or at least as the prophet Abraham. As the days dragged on, I found Flaxie Cole staring at me again, and Maggie was not unmindful of this attention. I did my best to keep away from them both. Flaxie never spoke when I approached their wagon. Maggie was always civil enough, though never without a touch of sarcasm in everything she said. As long as she left it at that, it was jake with me.
Iversen was getting a big play from the ladies in spite of the preacher’s warning, and I couldn’t blame the man for going around with a confused look on his face. A well set-up man, he must have had his fair share of women in his lifetime. Here he was with more women than he could handle and couldn’t do much about it. For a while, not knowing the
facts about Maggie and Flaxie, he seemed to concern himself with their well being, always coming around with a cheery hello and what he considered to be the right tone of light talk. I was all set to warn him off, not that I liked him much, but that was before somebody—Maggie, no doubt—set him on a straight course. After that he stayed with the cows and did his other day-to-day chores. But I wasn’t completely sure that the trouble had passed. Set a girl like Flaxie down anywhere in the world, and there is going to be trouble.
After Hannah’s death I didn’t feel much like women for a while. That was the oddest thing, because I’m always interested in women, all races, shades and colors. But then my old lightning rod dangled in my pants. I knew memories of Hannah would fade along with the guilty feeling I had about her. And then there would be another woman.
I was more concerned about Kiowa Sam than I was about Iversen’s balls, or my own. If the sailorman lost his cojones to Maggie’s double-edged knife, that would be too bad for Iversen. The wagon train would sustain the loss. Usually, when you lose your balls you lose your life. However, we did have a bona fide doctor in the train, so it was likely that Iversen would continue to live, ball-less or not.
I had been on several crossings of the Plains, but this was the first time I had run into this particular situation. Usually, nothing happens to a man who kills another man who has been trying to get his wife’s bloomers down, especially if he has been warned about it. In a way, Maggie and Flaxie were man and wife. Most definitely Maggie was the man and carried both knife and revolver and knew how to use them.
Kiowa Sam stayed in my mind most, but finally I stopped cursing myself for not having killed him. What I had to do then was watch out for him day and night. Not in Missouri, though; the law was too strong there and most of the hideouts were well known to the law. No band of marauders could operate there without being spotted, except maybe the James Gang, who were local heroes. Kansas and the bottom end of Nebraska were safe enough. I felt sure that if trouble came from Sam, it would come in the wastelands of Utah or Nevada.
From Culligan’s stories, it looked like Sam and Cyrus had been working with renegade bands with strongholds far beyond the reach of the law. Long before an attack came, the marauders would know every detail of the wagon train, right down to the number of guns and cartridges. They would know what was of value and what was not. All but the poorest emigrants had some gold or greenbacks socked away to help them get started in the Promised Land. It must have looked pretty foolproof to Sam. Who in hell would suspect a gabby old man and a lame brained boy of working with merciless killers?
Everyone would be murdered except the young women and girls. And young women, the younger the better, were as good as gold in the Far West. Better, in fact, since a gold bar is cold to the touch and doesn’t have legs with a hot furry hole between them. Some of the women would be doped and sold to the Chinese whorehouses in San Francisco. Some would live out their short lives in cow town brothels.
So this train would be like a gold mine on wheels to Kiowa Sam and his partners. There could be more than one gang, but I didn’t think so. Sam was a vicious and foxy old man and would work with men he knew and could trust in a business way. Half a hundred women and all young! It would be like heaven on earth to Sam. All those furry holes! All that money!
Once we reached Fort Bridger I was going to ask for an army escort. There was no guarantee that I would get one. The army has a lot of ground to cover, and a lot of bad men to deal with. As I said earlier, the Indian situation was like quicksilver—never steady. It wouldn’t take an Indian war to wipe us out. A band of renegade braves thirsting for whiskey, white women and blood could do it. They did it all the time. Some got caught, and some didn’t. In the old days they blamed half the wagon train massacres on the Mormons, and indeed they had wiped out a few trains of unwelcome settlers, but no one believed that kind of guff any more. Except for a few Mormon-hating diehards, that fear was a thing of the past.
I was betting on Utah or Nevada; the spirit of a train was at its lowest point when it got that far west. Nevada was worse than Utah and not because it was farther along the weary road. Nevada was bleak and bitter, sun-blasted and pitiless. You could travel for days and not see a patch of green. Much of it was desert, and the mountains looked like drawings of what mountains are supposed to look like on the moon. What water there is can be expected to be alkaloid.
Yes, Nevada was a good place to ambush a band of tired people. I wondered if I could hire a few men along the way. I’d do it if I could, if they looked right. But no more beached sailors and jittery doctors. I would take all the Culligans I could get, but men like Rix Culligan are hard to find. Smart wagon masters hire them on as soon as they get the chance. But such men know how valuable they are, and that makes them difficult to deal with. Like buffalo hunters, they’re a breed apart.
I thought about taking the old trail that cuts down into Nevada from Nebraska without going through Utah. In the old days it had been busy enough, but for years the Overland had been established as the main route to central California. I gave up the idea of the old route for three reasons: it was rough travel; it would add time to the crossing; and they’d be scouting us days before the attack. A man, a few men, can dodge off into the wilderness and get lost. How in hell do you keep a wagon train from being spotted?
A lot would happen. I was sure of it. We crossed into Kansas some miles south of Junction City—a collection of unpainted frame buildings trying to look like it had a future. If there had been enough good men along, I would have thumbs-downed the idea of going into the place. At that time it had a bad name all over the West. Law there was lax and rich at the same time, which gives you some idea of what it was like. It was a favorite haunt of killers, cow thieves, army deserters, and tinhorn gamblers. As a sin town it wasn’t as well advertised as other towns I’ve been in. Still, it was pretty bad.
Claggett argued about it, but finally gave in. “The women stay here with the train,” he said.
I nodded agreement to that. I knew as well as he did that some of the ladies might be tempted to go back to their old line of work. Besides, to bring a wagonload of women into a town like that was asking for the worst kind of trouble.
You should have heard the complaining when the women heard I was going to town by myself. Isabel Ames, the doctor’s daughter, wanted to go along and got snippy about it when I said no.
“Then bring back the latest newspapers,” she insisted.
“If they have any,” I said. “Maybe they do at that. There’s a small army post close by. I’ll see what I can get you.” I wondered what kind of news she was trying to catch up on.
Dr. Ames put in his two cents and said he’d be obliged if I looked for some papers. It was a puzzle to me why they hung around together all the time. Of course, they had their own wagon, a big new thing with a snowy canvas top, but most folks who travel together make a point of splitting up now and then, a sensible thing to do. But not this family, not this father and daughter. I noticed that she had the habit of ordering him around, and I don’t mean in the affectionately bossy way some girls have. What I mean is, she told him what to do. They kept to themselves and rebuffed all attempts at friendliness by the other women in the party. Personally, I didn’t give a damn what they did, as long as they didn’t make any trouble. Yet I have to say this: I didn’t like either one of them.
I rode a few hours north into Junction City. Riding in, I couldn’t see any reason why they had decided to build a town there. Maybe they had cut cards as a way of deciding where the town site should be. In the distance, close enough to see, was the small army post.
The town had one short main street with narrower streets branching off it. In the town square a bandstand had been left unfinished, as if the carpenters had downed their tools about six months before. There were a lot of saloons and gaming houses. The town had two churches, but they didn’t look too prosperous. One was painted white; the other wasn’t painted at all.
For so early in the day, the place was well-filled, but a few empty tables were left. I got a mug of beer and a man-sized glass of whiskey and sat down to look over the ladies. Nearly all were the usual, worn-out whores you find working in cow town saloons. All but one, that is. That one was young, barely in her twenties, and pretty enough for any man who wasn’t looking for the impossible. I gave her the nod when the man she was feeding drinks to at a table fell asleep, his head hung over the back of his chair.
I liked her smart, sassy, don’t-give-a-damn look. More men than women have that look, but a few women have it too. She sat down and jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the snoring drunk at the other table. It was hard to place her by her accent. I guessed Pennsylvania.
“I want a drink,” I said. “You’ll be wanting to drink with me.”
“I’ve never had a real drink in my life,” she said. “I don’t like whiskey. If you order champagne, it’ll be hard cider with that gas blown through it to make it fizz. That all right with you? I’ll make a dollar if you buy that.”
I pointed to my empty glass. “Fill that with bourbon. Order a bottle of champagne for yourself. You can drink it. I won’t.”
No waiters worked there; the saloon girls served the drinks in low-cut dresses that were supposed to get the customers excited. It would be good to go upstairs with this young girl. A friendly business transaction and nothing more. Nobody would get killed while we were going at it, or after we finished.
