Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places

by Loren Estleman

“I scooped ’em out of a sack they was using for a doorstop. They’ve got careless. It’s been years since anyone tried to stick up the place.”

  “Bull. What stopped you from picking up the sack?”

  “I didn’t want to put them on their guard. I intend to go back with help and clean the place out. A sack of coins only goes so far, but what’s in the safe could shore up the likes of me and you for life.”

  “If it’s as easy as that, how come it ain’t been stuck up in so long?”

  “The local law’s got a reputation. Fellow name of Red pinned on the marshal’s star a good while back and shot five good men as they come out the door with the gold. Another man wanted in Texas and Louisiana tried to beat him to leather when Red braced him; he had the edge on everyone in New Orleans and San Antonio, including two Rangers, but Red put him in the ground with one shot. Things kind’ve fell off after that. I said there was risk,” he added.

  “Red who? A man with that behind him ought to have his last name plastered over six territories.”

  “Well, it’s a sleepy little town name of Sangre, most of a day’s ride from this jerkwater. Three hundred years back it was a mission. Some tin-hats from Spain used it to coin the gold they stole from the injuns down in Mexico and store it till they got back, only they never did. The folks that still live there each claim an equal part.”

  “No job’s that good,” I said. “Dry-gulch this Red and just ride out rich as J.P. Morgan? You’re drunk.”

  “Ain’t had a drop. I rode all night hoping to find a man experienced enough to help me get the bulge on that lawman. When they told me at the saloon you was in here I figured God must want me to be rich.”

  I drummed my fingers on the bars. “Well, I got a heap of doubts, but anywhere’s better than here. First thing in the morning—”

  “What’s wrong with right now?”

  “Court ain’t open at night. You can’t just settle up my bill with the deputy.”

  He was still holding the poke. He bounced it up and down on his palm, making the coins inside shift around with a pretty little noise. “I didn’t hear him squawk when I slipped him one of these to let me in past visiting hours.”

  “I’d as lief not take the chance. If he gets a sudden fit of honesty, I’ll have a cellmate.”

  “I’ll just go and feel him out. I’m a fair horse trader, don’t forget.” He left before I could stop him, closing the door behind him and leaving me in darkness.

  In a few minutes a crack of light showed and he came back in, rattling the key on its big brass ring in his hand. “Told you he was reasonable,” he said, inserting it in the lock.

  The office was dim, lit only by the lamp on the desk with its sooty chimney. The deputy sat on the edge of the light resting his head on his arms folded on the blotter. A bottle of busthead whiskey stood nearly empty at his elbow. He’d stunk of it when he locked me up. You just can’t get good help in public service out on the frontier.

  He was a sound sleeper. He didn’t stir when Roper hung the key back on its peg and took down another to get my pistol rig out of a drawer in the gun rack. My hat was on the halltree, my bedroll leaned up in a corner, and I got those. We let ourselves out of the quietest room I’ve ever been in with a drunk passed out in it. He didn’t snore so much as a Sister of Mercy.

  My tough little piebald was saddled and tethered next to a big gray with Roper’s outfit on it at a rail behind the jail.

  “I got your horse and gear out of the livery after I left the saloon,” he said. “I was pretty sure you’d take me up on my proposition.”

  I strapped my roll behind the cantle and stepped into leather. “I hope to hell you’re right about that gold. I’m already into you for more than I’m worth.”

  He grinned at me in the moonlight, gathering his reins. His eyes looked as bright as if he’d had a stiff snort. I figured he’d helped himself from the deputy’s bottle. “We’ll work out something.”

  It was desert country. The sun came up red as a boil and made its way clear across the sky and we didn’t meet anyone on the road. By daylight Roper looked even paler and more gaunt than he had at night; at times I swore I could see right through him, but that was the heat. It looked to be taking more out of him than it did me, though I never once saw him drink from his canteen, even when he poured some in his hands to water his horse. I was sure he had and I’d just happened to be looking at all that fine scenery—mesquite, cactus, and the odd darting lizard—but when I drank my last drop and he offered me his, it was almost full.

  “This trooper I talked to one time said he’d been a camel-wrangler, some kind of cavalry experiment that didn’t pan out,” I said, corking it up and handing it back. “He said the critters can go a week without water. I didn’t put any store in it then, but I reckon now you must be part camel.”

  He grinned, teeth long and yellow in his fleshless face, and slung the canteen back onto his saddle horn. “I don’t seem to need as much as I used to.”

  Shadows were getting long when we topped a low rise and there was this little mud pueblo at our feet. It looked like some you see out in that waste, a cluster of rounded buildings, some caved in, around a well that didn’t look as if it would give up anything but a bucket of dust. When Roper picked up his pace I figured we were stopping there to rest our horses in the shade, but then we passed a board from an old wagon nailed to a post with SANGRE painted on it in dusty brown letters that must have been bright red when they were new. My heart dropped straight into my boots at the sight of it.

  “Hell, it’s a ghost town. Why’d you want to pull my leg with all that gold talk?”

  “Keep your spurs on, cowboy. How long you think it’d stay put if the place looked prosperous?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was biting mad. I was grateful to him for getting me out of a hole, but this dried-up pimple of a place didn’t look like much of an improvement. If there was any water at all in that well I’d fill up my canteen and ride on to a town with life in it. That’s how far my hopes had shrunk in eighteen hours, from a new horse and outfit and a spread of my own to just a wet whistle.

  Sangre didn’t look any more promising from the middle of it than it had from on top of the hill. The saloon was still standing with the roof posts sticking out in a row and no door, but the livery and general store had fallen in and I only knew the purpose of these establishments from their signs, painted right on the crumbling adobe in the same faded brown as the name of the town. I considered it an indication of ill fortune that the one building that looked sturdy enough to stand on its own happened to be the jail.

  “I hope that marshal you told me about is one of your stretchers,” I said, drawing rein. “If he ain’t, he’s the only other thing breathing in this bump in the desert.”

  “Oh, Red’s real enough. The breathing part’s up to you and me to fix.”

  I stepped down and tied up in front of the saloon without a word. I knew for sure then he was full of sheep dip, talking about bushwhacking right out there in the open where anyone could hear. That sickly look made sense now; he’d eaten a mess of crazy grass or drunk from a bottle of Dr. Sloan’s thinking it was Old Pepper and it had cooked what little brains he’d had. I unslung my canteen and strode over to the well, ringed with rocks in the center of what had been the town square.

  I couldn’t see to the bottom, but it didn’t even smell like water. The length of stiff rawhide that hung over the edge and down inside wasn’t encouraging either; it looked brittle as hell and if there was a bucket on the end of it the bucket wouldn’t hold so much as its breath. I started hauling anyway. I didn’t expect to draw anything but desert.

  There was weight on the end. That gave me hope, but not much. Sand’s as heavy as water. I pulled up twenty feet of rope if I pulled up an inch, took hold of a wooden-stave bucket by its bail, stood it up on the edge of the well, and looked inside. When I saw what it contained I yelled and let go. The bucket fell to the ground and split open, spilling ou
t a pile of bones.

  It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought at first. At second look they weren’t human. I recognized a cannon bone and pieces of rib too big around even for Goliath and there were some thin hollow shards like pipestems that would belong to roadrunners or those little lizards that raced around on their hind legs like they had somewhere to go. I used the toe of my boot to separate a piece of oblong skull I figured belonged to a Gila.

  Roper came over to see what I was kicking around. “Huh. Critters hereabouts must be as clumsy as fat acrobats.”

  “They couldn’t’ve all fell in. Them horse bones wouldn’t fit with the horse still attached. Somebody put ’em there.”

  “Kind of funny when you think about it.”

  “Kind of crawly. Who collects carcasses and dumps them in a well?”

  “Injuns, most like. They do all that heathen stuff to keep their gods happy. Thirsty?”

  “I’m dry as a deacon. You think I came here first thing to suck on some old bones? Where’s your canteen?”

  “I didn’t mean water. Let’s go in the saloon.”

  I stopped being grateful to him then. The jail back in town was starting to look good. “You fixing to stand me to three fingers of dirt? Who stocks a bar with nobody to sell whiskey to but horseflies and rattlers? Where’s that bank stuffed full of double eagles? There ain’t even a bank!”

  “There’s a bank, but there ain’t no double eagles in it.”

  “I knew it, you—”

  “I told you they’re Spanish coins. They stamped them right here in town out of bullion they shipped in from Mexico.” He took out his poke, plucked one from inside, and laid it on my palm.

  It was about the size of a cartwheel dollar but heavier, with a foreign-looking jasper gaping off the edge and on the other side a ship. Even with the sun going down it glowered there in the desert like a small sun its ownself. The side with the head had Spanish writing stamped on it in a half-circle:

  MONTON DE HISPANIOLA NUEVA—CIUDAD DE SANGRE

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Look at the date.”

  Roper was grinning that horse grin. “Now you want to take me up on them three fingers of dirt?”

  “I’m buying.” I flipped the coin high, caught it, and stuck it in my pocket. He shrugged and took the lead.

  Inside, the saloon was as dark and cool as a cave. It didn’t have any windows. It didn’t have any bartender either, and only two customers. When my eyes caught up to the dim I saw the bar was a thick cedar plank laid across two barrels that might have been as old as that coin, and cedar shelves behind it holding up rows of squat bottles black as ink, with dust on them.

  “Stock’s limited.” Roper stepped behind the bar as if he owned it. “What’ll it be, wine or rum?”

  “Wine, I reckon. I never had rum.”

  “When’d you ever have wine?”

  “Rum, then. Where the hell is everybody?” I’d never seen a ghost town where a man could get drunk without bringing his own. Drifters would’ve cleaned the place out years and years ago.

  “Siesta’d be my guess. Mex habits die hard in these here mission towns.”

  “I didn’t see no mission. Anyway, siesta’s always at noon.”

  “We passed it on the way in. Cross probably fell off the roof back when George Washington was a pup.” Roper uncorked a bottle, sniffed at it, and thunked it down on the bar in front of me. Dust jumped up from the plank and settled back. “It was just like this when I rode in yesterday about this time. Place gets right lively come sundown. Everybody in town shows up.”

  “How many’s that?”

  “About five.” He struck a match and lifted the chimney of a green brass lantern on a nail. What little light there had been was almost gone.

  “Regular mee-tropolis, ain’t it?”

  “They’re the five richest folks in the territory, don’t forget. A fifth part of what’s in the bank’d stake old man Vanderbilt to a bushel of railroads.” He finished lighting the lantern and leaned his elbows on the bar. He hadn’t gotten a bottle for himself. I asked him if he was keeping temperance.

  “Ain’t thirsty.”

  I didn’t rise to that a second time. If he wanted to dry up and blow away it was his business; or perish from lack of sleep. If any piece of what he’d said was gospel he’d spent almost thirty-six hours in the saddle. The Roper I knew could snooze around the dial and still not run out of yawns.

  I took a careful pull from the bottle. The place didn’t seem to have glasses. The stuff inside tasted musty, but it had a nice little kick. I helped myself to a swig and started feeling better right away.

  “What makes a rich man stick around a pile of buffalo chips like this?” I wanted to know. “I’d take my cut and light a shuck for Frisco.”

  “San Francisco’s full of thieves,” said a brand new voice. “Red can’t protect ’em there.”

  I’d gotten so accustomed to just Roper for company I almost choked on rum. I spun around, scooping out my heavy Colt.

  The woman I drew down on was pretty as daybreak, and about as scared of getting shot as a puff of warm air. She was delicate-boned, with a mass of yellow hair that fell in waves to bare white shoulders that looked polished. She had on a white dress with black spots and nothing holding it up but a pair of bosoms I could nearly see all of. Her feet were bare and she wore gold hoops in her ears like the women you sometimes saw dancing on tables down in Mexico, only she wasn’t Mexican. She had blue eyes and red lips and little sharp teeth that showed when she smiled, as she was doing then. She stood in the doorway with one hand resting on the frame and the other on her hip.

  “That there’s Cora,” Roper said. “Cora, meet Syke. He’s skittish in the heat.”

  Sheepish was the word. I holstered the Colt and muttered a howdedoo.

  She took me in without moving her eyes. They were the coolest things in that burnpatch, but they set me on fire worse than the rum. “Your friend looks healthier’n you, Roper. Been up to something you shouldn’t?”

  Now it was his turn to look sheepish. “Back off a dally, Cora. I’m a greenhorn.”

  “Green don’t last out here. You best listen to good advice when Red’s giving it.”

  I couldn’t follow the conversation any more than a trail across rock, but I was starting to smell something bad and it wasn’t the bones in the well. I turned on Roper. “You both sound tight with this here Red. I thought he was the lawman we’re trying to avoid.”

  “It’s a mite more complicated than that.” He was looking at the ground now. That floor was made of dirt packed harder than iron.

  Cora said, “Cork that jug, stranger. We got a business meeting to attend.”

  She stepped away from the door then. The pool of light from the lantern was lopsided and when she passed through shadow them blue eyes glowed like red sparks. I corked the jug. A little stimulant seemed to go a long way in Sangre. Anyway when she came back into the light her eyes looked normal, though not ordinary.

  After that the place started to fill up, and nothing was ever normal again.

  They slunk in without so much as a rustle of cloth or the clink of a spur—going out of their way, I thought, to avoid the shine of that lantern, like wolves circling a campfire. Three there was, ragged saddle tramps in greasy hats, shirts missing buttons, and Levi’s faded white, with holes enough to embarrass a scarecrow. These clothes and their bandannas hung off skin and bone, and the shanks of their broken-down boots wobbled on their ankles so loose they could step right out of them if they lifted their feet high enough. As it was they shuffled, raising clouds of dust, and their eyes glowed red to a man, all but the one that was covered by a leather patch the man had cut right out of his vest, where it matched the hole. In a few seconds they and Cora and Roper had me half-surrounded in a piece of a circle like the writing on the coin in my pocket, with the bar at my back.

  Roper was with them, I saw then. He’d stepped away and turned to face me with the rest. His
eyes were alight too, but not as fierce, just a glimmer like the first weak spark from flint and steel. I hadn’t noticed it last night, and we’d ridden miles in the dark.

  I was shaking, but the weight of the Colt was back in my hand and settled it. None of them was packing that I could see.

  “This the best you could rustle up, Roper? He don’t bring much to the pot.”

  It was the man with the patch talking. I could smell his breath six feet off. It was worse than Roper’s. It belonged down there in that well back when the meat was putrefying.

  “I done the best I could with the time you gave me.”

  I turned my gun on Patch. “I got six slugs and there’s five of you. Stand clear or I’ll blow down the lot.”

  Roper said, “Put it up, Syke. It’s a dogfall.”

  I swung the muzzle his way. “You just moved to the head of the line, you snake. All I got’s my horse and outfit. You could’ve bought them fair and square for what you paid the deputy to bail me out instead of hauling me clear out here just to dry-gulch me.”

  “I didn’t give him a cent. You didn’t look at him too close.”

  “What’d you do, buffalo him? I didn’t hear a shot.”

  Cora gave me a pitying look and turned on Roper. “That was taking a chance. You heard what Red said.”

  “I made it back, didn’t I?”

  The air changed, as if the saloon still had a door and someone had kicked it open, creating a current. The half-circle broke in the middle and someone tromped in to fill the space, raising more ruckus than the rest of them put together. He wore heavy silver spurs, the kind vaqueros wear below the border, and they jingled and clanked like irons on a condemned man. The boots they were strapped to were cavalry, the stovepipe kind with flaps that cover the knees, and they fit, but they were in as poor shape as the rest, run down and cracked. He had on a rusty black frock coat, cavalry trousers with stripes up the sides, with darns and patches, and a star on his lapel that looked as if it had been hammered out of brass by someone who didn’t know much about smithing. A forage cap with a square visor sat atop a nest of hair that bushed out and tangled with a beard that covered him from cheek to brisket. It was the color of copper.