Packing Iron

by Steve Hayes

  ‘Had some doubts ’bout that myself,’ he said, thinking about how hard he’d ridden the Morgan. ‘But thanks to the delay an’ a shortcut through Massacre Pass I was able to catch up with you.’

  ‘Mean you’re comin’ with us?’

  ‘Far as Sacramento, yeah.’ Scooping Raven up in his arms, he carried her to her seat and stood in the aisle smiling down at Ingrid. ‘If that still meets with your approval?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, playing along.

  ‘Momma!’

  Ignoring Raven’s angry protest, she added:

  ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable.’ Gabriel set Raven down and wiped the rain from his eyes. ‘Now if you ladies will excuse me, I’ll go make sure Brandy doesn’t kick nobody while they’re loadin’ him on the train.’ With a polite tip of his hat, he turned, opened the door and stepped out into the rain.

  CALIFORNIA

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was mid morning when the train carrying Gabriel, Ingrid and Raven finally pulled into the Central Pacific Railroad depot alongside the Sacramento River.

  At that hour the stationhouse, freight yard and bustling waterfront were at their busiest. Mule-drawn wagons were lined up twenty deep as the drivers waited their turn to unload their cargo onto the decks of the paddle-wheel steamers tied up along the riverbank. Wranglers shouted and cracked their long whips as they herded sheep and cattle up ramps leaned against the vessels. The bleating and bellowing of the animals, mingled with the clanging of streetcars and whistles from arriving and departing steamers was deafening.

  Opposite the station was a shack with a rooftop sign that advertised: ‘California Steam Navigation Company – Steamers for San Francisco. Cabin $5 – Deck $2.’

  Nearby, a rival steamship company sign invited visitors to take an ‘Exciting steamer ride up the Mighty Sacramento River.’ Below, a barker dressed in a flashy striped suit waved tickets in the faces of passers-by, urging them not to miss the trip of a lifetime!

  As arriving passengers poured from the stationhouse, urchin newspaper boys swarmed around them, shouting the latest headlines. In the street fronting the station horse-drawn streetcars run by the City Railway Company waited to carry arriving passengers into Sacramento. Adding to the traffic jam was a long line of carriages and buckboards filled with impatient passengers, all anxious to board the departing trains and steamers.

  Raven couldn’t believe her eyes. As Gabriel helped her and her mother off the train, she just stood there on the crowded platform, gaping at the spectacle.

  ‘Mite different than the desert, huh?’ Gabriel said to her.

  She nodded, speechless. ‘Are all cities like this?’

  ‘Some are much bigger,’ her mother said. ‘As a little girl, when I came over from the old country with my folks, I remember landing in New York and thinking that all the people in the world must live there. Have you ever traveled back east?’ she asked Gabriel.

  ‘Nope. Likely never will either. I like my crowds to come one at a time.’ Carrying their valises to a bench, he told them to wait for him while he unloaded the Morgan from the boxcar.

  ‘Want me to help?’ Raven asked. ‘Brandy won’t bite me.’

  Gabriel ignored her and continued on along the platform to the first of several boxcars that were attached behind the last passenger car. As he approached he saw the conductor standing beside a loading ramp. Two depot workers were on the ramp trying to rope the stallion which was snorting and kicking in the boxcar. A third man stood nearby nursing a bleeding hand.

  ‘Mister,’ the conductor said as Gabriel joined him. ‘You got just ten seconds to get that muckraker out of there. After that I get someone to shoot him.’

  ‘Do what you gotta do,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’ll do the same.’ His hand strayed to his gun. As the conductor jumped back, alarmed, Gabriel signaled to the workmen to get down. They quickly obeyed.

  Gabriel walked up the ramp into the car and looked at the Morgan. Eyes blazing red, nostrils flared, it lunged at him.

  Gabriel stood his ground. The stallion stopped a few inches from him and bared its teeth. Gabriel felt its hot, rancid breath on his face.

  ‘New territory, new rules,’ he told the horse. He dug into his Levi’s and pulled out the last of the piñon nuts. The Morgan eyed the nuts suspiciously then gently ate them out of Gabriel’s hand. Gabriel picked up his saddle, threw it over the back of the stallion and cinched it tight. He then grabbed the bridle from a hook, eased the bit into the horse’s mouth and fastened the straps.

  The conductor and workmen fell back as Gabriel led the Morgan down the ramp toward them. As he passed the man who’d been bitten Gabriel flipped him a silver dollar.

  ‘Better see the doc ’bout that hand, fella. Hate for you to get infected.’

  Stepping into the saddle, Gabriel rode back to Ingrid and Raven. They weren’t on the bench and their luggage was gone. He frowned, puzzled, and then heard Raven call out his name.

  Turning, he saw her emerge from the stationhouse with her mother. With them was a big, fleshy, handsome man in his early fifties. He wore a black jacket over his gray vest, a white shirt fastened with a string-tie and his black pants were tucked in half boots. Beneath his spotless pearl-gray Stetson his face was square, jut jawed and pugnacious. He had banker’s eyes.

  Dismounting, Gabriel led his horse up to them.

  ‘Gabe, this is my stepbrother, Reece Blackwood,’ Ingrid introduced.

  ‘And you’re Mr Moonlight,’ Reece said quickly. ‘Can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you.’ He shook Gabriel’s hand firmly, chewing as he talked. ‘Ingrid’s been telling me how kind you’ve been to her and Raven.’

  ‘More like the other way ’round,’ Gabriel said quietly.

  ‘Ingrid said you’d say that.’ Reece smiled and Gabriel smelled licorice on his breath. ‘But modesty aside, I’m truly grateful to you. And if there’s ever anything I can do for you – anything at all – just let me know. They both mean the world to me, as you can imagine.’

  Gabriel nodded. He wasn’t fully sold on the other’s sincerity but decided not to rush to judgment.

  ‘Look what Uncle Reece gave me,’ Raven said, holding up a small pale blue package with Black Jack printed on it. ‘It’s called chewing gum. It’s the latest fad. Want a piece?’

  Gabriel, who’d never seen chewing gum, reluctantly took the stick from Raven, peeled away the tin foil and put the gum in his mouth. His eyebrows arched approvingly. ‘Tasty.’

  ‘I chew it all the time,’ Reece said. ‘Helps keep me relaxed. Trouble is the dam stuff doesn’t hold its flavor so I must go through a half-dozen packs a day.’

  ‘Uncle Reece gets boxes of it shipped to him all the way from St. Louis,’ Raven told Gabriel.

  She went on talking but he’d stopped listening. Behind Reece, Latigo Rawlins had just stepped out of the depot into the sunlight and Gabriel had a hard time hiding his surprise.

  Latigo looked equally surprised to see Gabriel and his hands dropped close to his guns as he approached the group.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Small world.’

  ‘You two know each other?’ Reece said, surprised.

  ‘We’ve met,’ Gabriel said coldly. He tipped his hat to Ingrid. ‘Reckon I’ll be ridin’ on now.’

  ‘Can’t you stay and have lunch with us? Our connection doesn’t leave for another two hours.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you must join us,’ put in Reece. ‘There’s a fine restaurant not far from here and—’

  ‘Sorry,’ Gabriel said. ‘Got a long ride ahead of me.’

  ‘You can’t make Carmel by tonight,’ Ingrid said, hurt. ‘Surely another hour or so won’t make a difference.’

  ‘Why don’t you take the train?’ Reece suggested. ‘I’m sure the Southern Pacific or Central Railroad goes to Monterey. From there it’s just a short ride.’

  ‘Had my fill of trains,’ Gabriel said. He bent down and gave Ra
ven a hug. ‘Remember what I told you.’

  ‘Be responsible.’

  ‘That’s part of it.’

  ‘An’ take care of Momma.’

  ‘Hallelujah.’

  She sniffed, fighting tears. ‘Will I ever see you again?’

  ‘Count on it, scout.’

  He straightened up. Nodded goodbye to Ingrid and Reece. Gave Latigo a curt look. Stepped into the saddle.

  ‘Be nice to Brandy,’ Raven called after him.

  Gabriel waved to show he’d heard her and rode off.

  ‘Interesting fella,’ Reece said.

  ‘If I had a son,’ Ingrid said quietly, ‘Gabe’s how I’d want him to grow up.’

  ‘Nice sentiment. But he belongs in a museum.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The world’s passed him by.’

  ‘Nonsense. Just because a man wants to ride—’

  ‘I meant he’s a gunfighter. Can tell by his eyes. The catlike way he moves. Am I right?’ he asked Latigo.

  The little gunman shrugged as if he didn’t want to be included.

  Reece turned back to Ingrid. ‘We’ll be in the twentieth century before you know it. His kind will be nothing but a memory, a bad memory, ground under by progress.’

  ‘That include me too, Mr Blackwood?’ Latigo said, deadly soft.

  ‘Sure.’ Reece popped a fresh stick of gum in his mouth and chewed vigorously. ‘You and Moonlight, you’re the last of a dying breed.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It took Gabriel three days and three nights to reach the Carmel Valley. He could have reached there sooner but he didn’t want to push the Morgan too hard and he also had a lot on his mind.

  He kept to the back trails, avoiding towns and people as much as possible and eating off the land. He rode past fragrant peach orchards, vast cattle ranches and farms surrounded by corn fields and acres of vegetables, and, as he got nearer the coast, through forests of oak and pine. Deer and rabbits were everywhere. He shot only what he needed, built a fire where the smoke wouldn’t be seen, and ate everything but the bones.

  He felt, he thought, as if he’d been reborn.

  At night, under an indigo sky bright with stars, he let the Morgan graze at will, spread his bedroll in secluded hollows and lay there smoking and thinking about Ellie and Ingrid and Raven, trying to figure out what place they belonged in his life.

  On the afternoon of the third day he reached Monterey Bay. The craggy, dramatic coastline was fogged in. Monterey Pines grew along the cliff-tops, their twisting gnarly branches poking up through the fog like ghostly skeletons. The weather reminded Gabriel of his childhood when he traveled with his father, a devout circuit preacher, among the gold camps in the Colorado Mountains.

  The fog unnerved the Morgan. Gabriel was forced to dismount and lead the skittish stallion until they got farther inland where the sun had burned the fog away. Along the way he stopped and ate wild black berries growing beside the trail.

  Ahead, a family of Mexicans was filling baskets with the berries. All the children were girls. The oldest smiled shyly at Gabriel, who politely tipped his hat and asked her for directions to the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. She pointed the way and he nudged the Morgan inland.

  He rode over low rolling hills covered with lush grass and scrub bushes and across a valley bright with wild flowers growing among clumps of oak trees. Still within sight of the Pacific Ocean, he finally topped a rise and saw spread out below him a large plain with a river winding through it. A few hovels were scattered along the far bank. Above them on a green hillside was the mission.

  Gabriel reined up and looked at it in surprise. It wasn’t what he expected; certainly nothing like the well-kept missions in New Mexico and Mexico. There were no other buildings or stables and only the weed-covered ruins of a protective wall remained around the church, which was in sad disrepair. The domed bell tower was cracked and its bell badly rusted by the sea air. The stone walls of the church had crumbled in places and swallows darted in and out of the broken windows. Yet strangely, despite all the deterioration, the slanted shingle roof of the church was relatively new.

  A faint sound came from inside the church. At first Gabriel thought it was the wind blowing through the crevices; but as he rode closer he realized it was children singing.

  Crossing the river, he dismounted by the arched doorway, tied the Morgan to a stump and entered the church. The interior was equally deteriorated. Wind-blown sand covered the floor along with sprouting grasses and weeds. Rafters and chunks of stone from the old roof blocked his way to the sanctuary and as he picked his way over the debris, squirrels fled underfoot.

  The singing, wondrously clear-pitched, was coming from the sacristy. Gabriel peered around a crumbled wall and saw half a dozen shabbily dressed Indian children singing in front of a nun whose face he instantly recognized: it was Ellie!

  She saw Gabriel at the same moment. In the midst of conducting the misfit choir she suddenly froze, her expression a mixture of shock and disbelief.

  Then she fainted.

  The children stopped singing and cowered as they saw Gabriel. Not knowing what tribe they were he spoke to them in Spanish, trying to calm them. But they didn’t understand him and fled in all directions.

  Picking Ellen up, Gabriel carried her outside. There, he removed her coronet, revealing her close-cropped, pale honey-colored hair, and splashed water on her face from his canteen.

  Gradually, she regained consciousness.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said as she looked confused. ‘Don’t be scared, Ellie. It’s me – Gabe. Remember?’

  ‘’Course I do.’ Suddenly she smiled. ‘It’s just that … for a moment, I thought I was seeing a vision.’

  ‘More like a nightmare, you mean.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, Gabe, Gabe, I’m so happy to see you.’ She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. ‘All this time I thought you were—’

  ‘Dead? Nah. I’m too ornery to die.’

  ‘But when you rode away you looked so weak and pale … had lost so much blood … I was certain you couldn’t last much longer—good gracious!’ she said suddenly. ‘The children – where are they?’

  ‘They ran off. Reckon they thought I was a vision, too.’

  Eager to regain their trust, Ellen led Gabriel to the river and introduced him to the impoverished Indian families living in the hovels. Shy and reclusive, they said little and seemed downtrodden, Gabriel thought. He therefore wasn’t surprised when later as he and Ellen returned to the church she explained that these few Indians were all that remained of the once-proud Esselen tribe that in 1771 Father Junipero Serra had recruited to build the hillside mission. Disease and brutality, she said, had all but exterminated them.

  Same old story, Gabriel thought bitterly. Everywhere the padres go they end up killing more Indians than they convert.

  Ellen next led Gabriel to the sanctuary garden. ‘Father Serra’s buried here,’ she said, pointing to a tiny weed-strewn grave, ‘along with some of his compatriots and all the Indians who died over the centuries.’

  ‘You stay in this pile of ruins, Ellie,’ Gabriel said gruffly, ‘an’ you’ll die too.’

  ‘If that’s what the Good Lord intended, so be it. I’ve finally found peace of mind. Can you understand that? All these years I’ve been trying to find what it is that I was put on earth for and now at last I know.’

  ‘Mean, dyin’ for no reason?’

  ‘Oh, but there is a reason – those poor creatures you just met, living in squalor when once they roamed free by the ocean, healthy and happy and in harmony with the earth.’

  ‘An’ you, you’re supposed to save ’em?’

  ‘It is God’s wish,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’m humbly grateful that He chose someone as lowly as me to do His work.’

  Gabriel studied her in the sunlight shining in through a broken window. Her lovely face shone bright with God.

  ‘Please don’t be angry with
me, Gabe. Just be glad that I’m finally happy.’

  He knew then she was out of his reach and stopped trying to make sense of why she was throwing away her life.

  ‘Come,’ she took his hand, ‘I want to show you where I live. Then no matter where you are, or how far away, you’ll be able to close your eyes and see me any time you want.’ She led him back into the church and along a corridor to a tiny, bleak cell. ‘This was once Father Serra’s room and now it’s mine.’

  Gabriel looked at the barred window with its decrepit wooden shutters, at the bed of boards in the corner and the tarnished silver crucifix hanging on the opposite wall and slowly shook his head.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ she said. ‘But living here and helping the Esselens has given purpose to my life. I am truly content. And what more can anyone ask for?’

  Early the next morning they walked, hand in hand, along the cliffs and watched the waves breaking on the empty beach below. They did not speak. Cooled by tangy breezes and surrounded by what Ellen called paradise, there seemed to be no need for conversation. Even Gabriel, much as he hated to admit it, felt a sense of serenity he’d never known before.

  When it was time for him to leave, Ellen waited until he was in the saddle before asking: ‘Where will you go now?’

  ‘Reckon I’ll let Brandy, here, decide that.’

  ‘He’s certainly changed,’ she said, fondling the stallion’s nose. ‘Not long ago he would’ve bitten me for touching him.’

  ‘He’s gone soft,’ Gabriel said. He reached down and fondly squeezed her shoulder. ‘I wish you well, Ellie.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She kissed the back of his hand. ‘May God be with you wherever you go.’

  I’m sure He’s got better things to do, Gabriel thought. Tipping his hat, he kicked the Morgan into a canter and rode away without looking back.

  Keeping within sight of the ocean, he headed north trying to convince himself that he didn’t know where he was going. But deep down he knew that was a damned lie. He was going where his heart lay: Old Calico.