by Paul Lederer
Cameron shook his head wearily. His neck seemed to have no strength. He couldn’t answer, his mouth was so parched. The big man, the one who seemed to be in charge, was shaped like a barrel, with stubby legs and thick arms attached. He wore twill trousers and a faded red shirt.
There was a badge attached to his shirt front.
‘Well, you ought to know,’ the other man, the one who remained mounted on a black gelding, said, tilting back his hat. ‘Ask him where the money is. That’s all Wells Fargo wants. After that you can do with him what you like.’
‘I’ll ask him,’ the lawman said. His voice was very ugly. He grabbed Cameron by his hair and jerked his head up, pushing him roughly against Dolly’s flank. ‘Come clean, Stony. It might save your life.’
‘I’m not Stony Harte,’ Cameron said, with a mouth that felt as if it were clogged with dust. The lawman laughed and glanced at his companions.
‘See! He knew Stony’s last name and no one had mentioned it.’ For something to do, it seemed, more than out of anger, the sheriff bunched his big fist and drove it into Cam’s ribs, forcing his breath out in a sudden rush. ‘Give up the payroll, Stony. I might be able to keep you from hanging, or at least cut a few years off your sentence.’
‘I’d co-operate was I you,’ the man on horseback told Cameron Black. He was narrow, his face deeply tanned and lined. Apparently he was a Wells Fargo detective from what Cam had overheard. ‘I’d hate to let Sheriff Yount loose on you. Save yourself some trouble and a lot of pain.’
‘Others all ride. Fast across river,’ the Indian tracker told them. ‘No tracks in river. Too much sand and rocks for good sign.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sheriff Yount said, with a shrug of his heavy shoulders. ‘We’ve got their leader now. He knows where they’re bound, I guarantee you.’
‘Why don’t we look through the cabin again, Barney?’ the Wells Fargo agent suggested.
‘You do that … there could be a place to cache the money,’ the big sheriff said, breathing roughly as he stood in front of Cameron Black, his eyes feral and cold. ‘Pocomo, whyn’t you see if you can’t cut sign somewhere along the river? That might give us an idea where the gang is headed, though my guess is Mexico.’
‘Long time gone now,’ the Indian said with a small shake of his head. ‘Try.’
When the other two had moved slowly away on their horses, Pocomo toward the river beyond the live oaks, and the Wells Fargo man to the cabin, the sheriff pulled a twist of tobacco from his pocket, bit off a wad of it and faced Cam deliberately.
‘You got bad trouble, Stony.’
‘I’m not—’
‘No. And I’m a canary bird. Whose hat is that?’ he demanded, moving his boot to nudge Stony Harte’s doeskin hat with its unique silver and turquoise band. The sheriff bent down and picked it up, jamming it on Cameron Black’s head. ‘Fits pretty good, don’t it?’
‘First of all—’ Cameron tried again. The sheriff would not let him speak.
‘What’s that gray horse’s name?’ he asked slyly.
‘Dolly, but … if you’d listen to me for a minute!’
‘Dolly was thirty miles south the day before yesterday, Harte. Pocomo is a tracking fool. He never lost your sign. Not only that, we have an eye-witness who saw you gun down a shotgun rider and a passenger on the Wells Fargo Tucson link. Know what else?’ the large man asked, standing nearer so that his raw road scent of perspiration, stale tobacco and whiskey was rank in Cam’s nostrils. ‘You talk like a Georgia boy, did you know that? I spent six months down there occupying Rebel land for Sherman. I can hear Georgia all over you.’
His voice lowered. ‘I don’t like you Rebels. I don’t like boys coming out here and raising hell, thieving and murdering. I don’t like Georgia and I don’t like you, Stony Harte. Understand me!’ Then again, as if just for the hell of it, he slammed his fist into Cameron Black’s body. The blow landed against Cam’s liver and he staggered back in enormous pain, falling against Stony Harte’s horse once more. Tiny multicolored sparks lit up behind his eyes and fountained away. Cameron bent double, holding himself. Dolly, tired of being abused by these man-games, tossed her head and walked away a few steps.
The Wells Fargo man had returned, leading his black horse.
‘Any luck, Morton?’
‘None,’ the thin man answered. He removed his hat to wipe the sweat band and now Cameron saw that he was bald on the crown of his head, a monk’s fringe type of baldness. He replaced the hat. ‘There’s no place to hide much in that shack, Barney. No floorboards, the walls are only pole and mud.’ He shook his head. ‘Either they buried the money nearby,’ he said, scanning the brushy hillsides, ‘or they rode off with it. Maybe they decided to cut Stony out of it; maybe he took that bullet graze down south and he couldn’t ride.’
‘They didn’t bury it,’ Barney Yount said definitely. ‘They knew we couldn’t be far behind. Besides, if they buried that scrip it would be rotted away before they could come back and retrieve it, and the silver chest would need a big hole.’
Eyes scoured Cameron Black’s, hoping for some hint, perhaps. Cameron knew that the scrip was already gone, that the silver had been discarded for its weight because Stony was traveling alone with one horse, and needed to travel fast and long carrying only the substantial fortune in gold, but to reveal that would be all the more damning. How could a wandering stranger be privy to these fact?
It was simple when one realized that the wandering innocent was meant to be killed and left behind as Stony, and that Harte would then be riding along a cold trail. Why hadn’t Stony killed him earlier on before Cam had learned any of these things? Harte had even saved him with that snap shot which killed the rattler. Also simple when given a little thought as Stony had said, two men with arms were better than one in Apache country. And Stony had not cared to lead Cam’s pony with his stiffening, rotting body strapped to it. ‘Stony’ had to be found as if freshly killed. The sheriff, whatever he was, was cunning enough to be able to tell a days-old body from a man who has been shot recently, apparently by his own friends in a squabble over the money.
It did no good for Cameron to know these things. He could not tell the sheriff, and the big man would not believe him at this point. The lawman’s convictions had solidified and Barney Yount was an inflexible man.
‘There are only two choices, Harte,’ the sheriff now said, rolling up his sleeves as the day grew oppressive with the dry heat and the shadows shortened beneath the scattered oaks. ‘Give up the money and tell us where your friends went, or I’ll beat you to death.’
THREE
The hulking shadow of Sheriff Yount blotted out the sun. Cameron, now seated on the hot earth, turned his hands up imploringly.
‘I don’t know where the money is, I tell you!’ he said frantically. ‘I don’t know where they went.’
‘Damn you, you liar,’ Yount said. There was foam on his lips as he leaned down, jerked Cameron toward him by his collar and slammed a meaty fist into his face. Cameron sagged back like a flour sack, his tortured head spinning again, throbbing with pain.
Agent Morton grabbed Sheriff Yount by the arm. ‘Hold on, Barney,’ the slender man said. ‘Maybe he really doesn’t know. He took a slug off his skull. Maybe he can’t remember … or more likely, they had already cut him out of their plans. If they tried to murder him, don’t that make sense?’
‘He knows, the liar!’ Barney Yount said, his massive chest rising and falling with anger.
‘All right,’ Morton went on, still calm and logical. ‘Let’s say he does know and he’s faking it. Where is it going to get us, Barney, if you kill him? The shape he’s in it might not take much to do that. Then where would we be? Wells Fargo wants the money back, that’s all – and dead men can’t tell us anything.’
‘No,’ Barney Yount had to admit, his anger slowly cooling. He straightened up, loosened his tightly clenched fists and wiped back a strand of red hair from his forehead. ‘What do you sugge
st we do, Morton?’
‘That’s your business, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I guess it is,’ Yount said with a heavy sigh. ‘I suppose I’ll have to have his scalp sewn up and then throw him in the darkest cell Yuma prison has to offer. Ever seen that prison, Harte? A hundred and thirty degrees this time of year. Locked in a ten by ten cell. You won’t like it a bit, I guarantee you. If you want to come clean now, I can transport you to Tombstone jail. It’ll seem like heaven compared to the hell of Yuma. Well?’ he demanded, but all Cameron Black could do was sit there and slowly, heavily wag his head.
Pocomo had returned from the river and he approached them now, shrugging. ‘No good sign. They all split apart. Maybe could catch sight four, five hours.’
‘They’ve already got at least a twelve-hour lead on us,’ Yount said, looking into the distance, ‘and they have fresh ponies. We’ll have to give it up, Pocomo.’
‘I think so too, Sheriff.’
‘But we’ve got him,’ Yount said, nudging Cameron with his boot toe. ‘And he’ll remember after he has had his taste of Yuma prison.’ The bulky lawman leaned lower, his broad shadow again covering Cameron’s eyes so that he could see Yount’s brutal leer. ‘They say crime doesn’t pay, don’t they, Harte? Your friends just wanted to dust you off for your cut. Me,’ he laughed, ‘I’m going to help you. I’m going to put you in a nice safe place where no one but me can hurt you!’
He turned to Pocomo and said, ‘Get him up onto that gray mare of his and tie his boots to the stirrups. It’s going to be a long, hot ride to Yuma, boys.’
The ride was an eternity of pain beneath a blistering sun. Cameron could not sit his saddle well and they offered him water only infrequently although Yount seemed to get enjoyment out of drinking it in front of him. Sand passed under Dolly’s hoofs, only sand and rock, white sand, black sand; red rock and white glittering quartz rocks. It was a forever ride across the demon desert which didn’t end until he found himself thrown, half-conscious, into some underground bunker in Yuma prison.
Cameron had no memory of reaching Yuma, of being passed through the gates, of being manacled and sewn up roughly by a surgeon with hands like a tailor. The montage flitted past, out of sequence, smothered by the constant pain in his head. He slept, if it could be called that, on a broad board hung on chains from the side of the prison cell’s wall. It was hot, so hot he could no longer stay in his semi-conscious world and awoke with parched lips, swollen tongue, bathed in his own sweat which the dry air quickly evaporated.
Then again it would be dark, so dark and cold that, uncovered by a blanket, he wrapped himself tightly in his arms and drew up his knees wishing for death.
The warden entered his cell after peering in through the iron-barred window cut into the heavy oaken door on what they told him was his third day in Yuma prison. A jailer with his huge ring of keys stood by silently as the little man, cheerful and neatly dressed, stood next to Cameron’s bunk.
‘So,’ the warden said, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his vest, ‘Richard Lovelace was wrong, wasn’t he?’
Cameron stared dumbly at the eager little man in the dark suit.
‘Stone walls do a prison make,’ the man said, smiling. Apparently he was amusing himself at Cameron’s expense, so Cam made no reply.
‘Sit up, Mr Harte,’ the warden said with an inviting gesture.
Cameron didn’t bother to deny the name the warden called him by. He struggled to sit up on the plank bed, each movement causing pain to hammer in his skull. He found that his legs were in irons but his hands were free.
He had a vague memory of a great flabby, shirtless blacksmith driving the pins into the irons while his furnace sparked and smoked. Cam touched his head and found it swathed in bandages. Then he lifted his eyes to the warden.
‘I’m John Traylor, warden here. I wanted to see you, Mr Harte.’
‘What is it?’ Cam wanted to know.
‘I like to pay all of my new wards a visit,’ the man said, ‘just so they know how things work here.’
‘How do they work?’ Cameron asked, burying his face in his palms. ‘I haven’t even been tried or sentenced yet, you know.’
‘Mr Harte!’ the warden laughed with what seemed genuine amusement. ‘It’s only this latest charge for which you have not had your day in court. How badly has your head been damaged? You don’t recall breaking out of the jail in Phoenix after being convicted of bank robbery and assault on a law officer! My goodness, Mr Harte, we have enough black marks in our books that it’s only chance we didn’t hang you the moment we saw you.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Cameron said lamely.
‘You didn’t know!’ Traylor drew a cigar from his coat pocket and lit it. He waved the match out slowly and smiled at Cameron. ‘I guess it would be hard to remember the details of a life of crime such as you’ve led. Did that bullet glancing off your skull drive away all memory? If you plan to use that as a defense.…’
‘My defense would be that I am not Stony Harte!’ Cameron said so violently that the warden flinched slightly and Cam’s headache began to stir angrily again.
‘I see,’ the warden said as if pondering this seriously. The smoke from his cigar was rank in Cameron’s nostrils in this airless cell. The little man leaned closer. ‘Look here, Harte, I understand you – or think I do. There’s a lot of you Rebels out here. Listen, I am a Southerner myself originally, from Tennessee. But this raiding and looting has to be put to an end. The War is long over. They won. You have to live by Yankee law. It’s over. This raiding of their banks, of Union Army payrolls – which by the way is the current charge against you, aside from multiple murders – has to come to an end. And that man in the stage you believed to be an aggressive civilian was actually an army officer assigned to protect the soldiers’ pay. That won’t look good at all.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s four capital crimes against you, and two of them Federal crimes. You haven’t a chance, Harte.’
The little man stubbed out his cigar on his boot sole. His smile now was much harder. ‘You might be able to wriggle free of the hanging sentences if you can convince a jury that the others in your gang did the actual killings.’
‘And?’ Cameron asked, noting the hesitation in the warden’s voice.
‘Well,’ he said, flipping an open hand in a careless gesture, ‘obviously returning the stolen payroll would help your cause. Fifty thousand dollars in scrip and coin is, after all, quite a bit of money, isn’t it?’
It was an awful lot of money, Cameron conceded. And after the warden had gone it occurred to him through the confusion of his battered senses that most of the questioning he had been receiving was not about the crime itself, the murders, or the identity of his assumed accomplices at all.
It was all about the stolen money.
On the third morning two guards came to remove Cameron Black from his dungeon and he was assigned work duties. The bandages had been unwound from his head and he was judged fit enough to be a part of the labor force, that being the main reason, it seemed, for the prison’s existence.
Outside in the white glare of the relentless sun men could be seen breaking rocks with sledgehammers, others wheeling the rocks to their destination in wooden barrows, their movements stiff and unnatural due to their leg irons.
The rocks were intended to be used to lay a bed for the Eastern Arizona Railroad’s path across the relentless shifting sand of the desert. Cameron doubted such a project could ever be completed. His knowledge of the desert left him convinced that the implacable desert and its uncertain foundation would defy such a project forever.
Nonetheless, men worked on. If they fell out it was of no importance to the prison officials, others could be found to take their place. Most of these prisoners were young, arrested for minor crimes such as brawling or drunkenness. They labored on for twelve hours a day, winter or summer, their hands and faces growing dark and then nearly blackened by the desert sun until eventually the dead skin began to rot and
peel away, leaving them with gaping patches of new raw flesh which would become savagely blistered.
There were other jobs at the prison. Those engaged in work in the tomb of the prison entrails were chalk gray with the ghostly pallor of men who never saw the sunlight at all, but only suffered in its unendurable heat. Cameron discovered early on that there was no doubt about which gang men belonged to because of this difference. Inside laborers, like gaunt skeletons, colorless and thin because of the reduced rations they were given to survive on, contrasted sharply with the sun-blistered, heavy-shouldered laborers on the rock pile.
Cameron Black was assigned to the boot shop.
‘What are they saving you for?’ his first acquaintance there, a Dutchman named Voorman asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The inside jobs are only given to those they want to keep alive. For trial, for political favors.’
‘I don’t know,’ Cameron told the Dutchman. But he did know, of course. They wanted to keep him alive until he would give up the gold – gold he didn’t have.
There was no short supply of boots to work on – old boots. Cameron never saw a new pair in his time there. Only old ones, needing restitching, new soles and a cursory shine. These were removed, a pair at a time from those who died on the rockpile. There were hundreds of them needing repair they never got while their last owner was alive.
‘Dead men don’t need boots,’ the Dutchman said as he tossed another dusty, broken pair on the huge pile in the back of the boot shop. No man out of Yuma prison was ever buried with his boots on.
The gruel became thinner now that Cameron was on the mend. It was of oats in tepid water. The roaches who had stupidly crawled into the cooking pots or come bagged with the oats were the only additional ingredients, although once Cameron did drop his bowl of oatmeal when a still very alive centipede made its way up out of the gray lumpy gruel to crawl over the rim.
He did not eat the next day, but that was self-defeating and he learned to eat whatever was served with his eyes closed, his nostrils pinched. It made him long for the days past and Stony Harte’s stringy, flavorless Indian pemmican.
