His bare feet were cut and bruised from the trail, and the heat of the climbing sun began to punish him.
A tall, undercut rock, wedged among a stand of juniper and a single, wind-racked pine, offered the promise of shade and a chance to rest. Oates stumbled into the blue shadow at the base of the rock and threw himself on the ground. He let a dreamless oblivion that wasn’t sleep take him. . . .
Eddie Oates felt himself rising, leaving the earth. He kicked and struggled, afraid of soaring too high and falling. But then he was shaken like a rat and a man’s laughing voice said, “Feisty little cuss, ain’t he?”
Oates opened his eyes. A big, bearded man wearing a buckskin shirt had him by the back of the neck and continued to shake him hard.
Another voice said, “What’s he got, Clem?”
“Nothing that I can tell, Pa.” The bearded man wrinkled his nose. “Smells like the business end of a polecat, though.”
“Bring him here.”
Oates was dragged from the rock into the open. Two men sat mustangs, grinning at the sight of him. The older of the two had a mane of dirty, silver hair that hung over the shoulders of his buckskins and a beard of the same color fanned out across his chest. The other man was a carbon copy of his companion, except that his hair and beard were black. Both carried Winchesters across their saddle horns.
“Well, what ill wind blew you here, boy?” the older man asked.
Oates had trouble focusing his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but managed only a mangled croak.
The big man shook him again. “Answer my pa.”
“He’s tetched in the head, maybe.” The older man grinned.
“Alma . . . I’m a couple of days out of Alma,” Oates said.
“Where you headed, boy?”
Oates remembered the note. “Heartbreak. It’s a town east of here.”
“Heard o’ it,” Pa said. “Never been there, though.”
The man’s pale blue eyes grew shrewd. “Here, what’s ailing you, boy? You sick?”
Oates shook his head. “I need a drink of whiskey, Mister. I need a drink real bad.”
Pa turned to the man beside him. “Now, that’s not a bad idea, is it, Reuben? Pass me the bottle.”
The man called Reuben reached behind him and produced a bottle of bourbon from his saddlebags. Oates noticed that it was three-fourths full, glowing gold in the sunlight.
Pa drank, then wiped his bearded mouth with the back of his hand. He looked down at Oates and smiled.
Oates tried to match the man’s smile and succeeded only in stretching his mouth in an insane grimace. “Mister, I appreciate this,” he said.
“You got money, boy?” Pa asked.
Oates shook his head. “But I got me a fancy rifle gun.”
Suddenly all three men were wary, looking around at the trees where the wind was playing. “Where is it?’ Pa looked stern. “Don’t you lie to me, boy.”
Oates tried to think, an effort that was rewarded by a cuff on the back of his head from Clem. “Where is the rifle?” Clem asked.
“It’s . . . friends of mine have it. Three women, whores, and a simple boy.”
“Where are they?” Pa asked.
“East on the trail. They’re headed for Heartbreak.”
Clem looked up at his father. “Pa, we haven’t had us a woman since the Apache squaw we jumped in Burnt Corral Canyon.”
Pa nodded. “It’s been a spell right enough.” He looked at Oates. “Whores, you say? Are they real purty?”
“Pretty enough,” Oates said.
“And a simple boy?”
“Yeah. Just tell them I said for them to give you my rifle.”
“Victorio might have ’em by this time, Pa,” Reuben said. “Or ol’ Nana.”
“It’s worth a look-see,” Clem said. “Last I heard, Victorio’s young bucks were playing hob west of here, raising all kinds of hell.”
Pa leaned forward in the saddle. “Boy, if you’re lying to me . . .”
“I ain’t lying, Mister. Now, can I have a drink?”
“Naw, this is prime whiskey. It ain’t for trash like you.”
Oates couldn’t believe what he just heard. “But . . . but you said . . .”
“I didn’t say nothing about giving you whiskey.”
Anger, the first he’d felt in years, flared in Oates. “You dirty, lying, son of a bitch!”
Pa’s face hardened. “Clem, you gonna let trail trash speak to your old man like that?”
Oates heard Clem laugh. A fist as big as a ham crashed into his face. Then he doubled up when the man rammed a punch into his belly. Oates fell to the ground, retching, as Clem’s boots went in hard.
Chapter 7
Eddie Oates woke to pain.
He lay unmoving, but opened his eyes, checking on the day.
The afternoon was far gone and the day was shading into a violet twilight. He turned his head, wincing as the movement brought new pain, a blinding agony that lanced into his brain. Above him the sky was the color of a duck egg and a single star stood a lonely picket to the north.
The salty, smoky taste of blood was in Oates’ mouth and he twitched in painful shock as his fingertips touched his left eye. It seemed to be enormously swollen and, judging by his vision, almost closed shut.
Carefully, favoring his right side where his ribs ached, Oates struggled into a sitting position. Using his hands as crutches, he inched his way back to the rock and laid his back against the cool stone.
He was hurt bad, but it did not trouble him. Some men know they should never have been born, and suddenly Oates felt strangely content to be one of them. In all his life, no one had ever been happy at his coming or sad at his leaving. If he died here, he would not be missed.
The whiskey hunger had left him, and he found he was no longer mourning his lost friend. His boon companion, for so many years both wife and child to him, would not be coming back, and about that, there was nothing to be done.
He would stay there, right where he was, and pass away as the wind sang his requiem in the trees.
But Eddie Oates was not to be allowed the privilege of choosing the manner of his dying.
The coyotes were a hunting pair and the smell of blood was strong.
Wary, they kept their distance from Oates, studying him, calculating his strength and ability to fight. They were in no hurry. Coyotes will often battle a full-grown moose for eighteen hours before they bring it down or admit defeat and quit. This pair suspected they had found a much weaker and more vulnerable prey.
Oates looked around him for a weapon, a tree branch or rock. He found neither. The ground under the stony overhang was covered in sand that offered nothing.
Yelling at the top of his lungs, Oates bunched up a fistful of sand and threw it at the coyotes. The sand sifted apart in the wind and drifted harmlessly to earth.
The female tested him first.
Incredibly fast, she darted, fangs bared, for Oates’ feet. He quickly drew up his knees, but the coyote changed her angle of attack and bit at his left thigh. The animal’s teeth closed on Oates’ pants and tore free a strip of the thin cloth.
Frustrated for now, the female retreated, growling as she shook the cloth in her mouth.
The dog coyote had watched the attack with keen, knowing eyes. The prey had moved slowly and that suggested an injury of some kind. It was weakened so much it had made little attempt to defend itself. This could be an easy kill.
The dog moved to its left, positioning itself for a flank attack. Dropping the scrap of cloth, the female advanced a few steps, then stopped. Head lowered, the animal kept its amber eyes on Oates’ face.
“Get the hell away from me!” Oates yelled. He threw another handful of sand.
This time the coyote attack was coordinated. The dog rushed in from the flank and the female ran straight at Oates. Oates tried to rise to his feet, failed, and the dog sank its teeth into his right forearm, immediately drawing blood. The female had sprung f
or the man’s throat, but he had raised himself enough to upset her aim. Her fangs closed on his belly and tore at him.
Oates screamed. He kicked out at the female and the hard sole of his right foot took her full on the snout. The coyote yipped in pain and backed off, snarling. The dog, hearing his mate’s cry of hurt, was startled and he too bounded back a few steps.
The first round to Oates. But, wiser now, the coyotes attacked again.
This time both of them jumped on Oates and he collapsed under their weight, falling on his side. He smelled the feral stench of the animals and felt their fangs rip into his back and thighs.
Desperately, Oates tried to sit up, striking out with his right arm. He hit the dog a couple of times, but his punches were weak and ineffective. Blood sprayed around him and dripped like rubies from the muzzles of the coyotes.
Oates was done, and he knew it.
The flat statement of a rifle shot racketed through the hollow quiet of the evening.
The dog coyote shrieked and fell away, landing on its back, its legs twitching.
Another shot.
The female dropped without a sound, her deadweight suddenly heavy on Oates.
He felt the coyote being lifted from him and a bearded face with good-humored hazel eyes swam into his view. “You all right, pardner?” a man’s voice asked.
Oates tried to answer, but darkness took him and he knew no more.
Eddie Oates opened his eyes. He stared up at a low pine roof supported by log crossbeams. He smelled meat and onions, the faint tang of leather and gun oil and the sweet scent of the pine itself.
A faint sound came to him and he turned his head, struggling to place the origin of the noise. There it was, a soft scuffing on the timber floor, like a man wearing boots who was doing his best to be quiet. From what seemed a long way off, a voice spoke to him.
“So you’re awake, young feller. An’ hungry, I bet.”
The tall figure of a man stepped toward him through the gloom of the cabin and stopped in a column of dusty sunlight streaming through a window.
“See,” the man said, “I’m nothing to be scared of.”
“Where am I?” Oates asked.
“You’re in my cabin in a canyon close to Black Mountain. That’s the cinder cone you can see from out back—stands about nine thousand feet above the flat.” The man stepped out of the sunlight into the shade. “Name’s Jacob Yearly, by the way. You mind giving me your own handle?”
“Eddie Oates.” He looked startled, a thing Yearly noticed.
“Somethin’ I said?” the man asked.
Oates shook his head. “I haven’t given a man my name in a long time,” he said.
“You on the dodge?”
“No. It’s just . . . well, I guess nobody’s been interested enough in what I was called to ask me.”
“Handy thing, a name,” Yearly said. “A man can go far with a good name, not so far with a bad one.”
Oates looked around the cabin, rubbing his bearded mouth. “You got a touch of whiskey?” he asked.
Yearly stepped beside the cot where the younger man lay. “I love whiskey. I love the look of it, the smell of it and the taste of it. And I love what it does to me.” He smiled. “That’s why I never drink it.”
An old man dressed in a plaid shirt and canvas pants tucked into mule-eared boots, Yearly sat on the cot, and the springs squealed in protest.
“Right now, I’d say whiskey is the last thing you need, Eddie. You’ve got a couple of busted ribs and you’re all clawed an’ bit to pieces. You need food and rest.” He rose to his feet. “I got stew on the stove. I’ll bring you some.”
Oates pushed his pillow up against the cot’s iron headboard and leaned back, his eyes lifted to the older man’s bearded face. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Helping me like this.”
Yearly shrugged. “I’d do it for any poor, hurtin’ critter.”
The old man stepped away and returned with a bowl of stew. He handed it to Oates, who suddenly realized he was very hungry. Dipping his spoon into the fragrant mix of meat, wild onions and potatoes was one thing—getting it to his mouth was another.
His hand shook so uncontrollably that he dropped the food, untasted, back into the bowl.
Yearly said nothing. He sat on the cot once again and, taking the bowl and spoon, fed Oates like a father would a sick child.
After the younger man had eaten, Yearly checked the bandage around Oates’ chest, then began to spread a salve on his bites and scratches.
“The coyote has a dirty mouth,” he said. “There’s sagebrush in this and chaparral, so you don’t get pizen of the blood. And willow bark for pain.” Yearly sat back, looking at Oates. “Sometimes a man has other pains that go deeper, but I can’t poultice those.”
Sunlight angled brighter through the cabin window where dust motes danced and splashed yellow light on the red and white cowhide on the floor in front of the stone fireplace.
Oates spoke into a breathless silence. “Jacob, I’d like to share my pain with you, but you’re wrong, I have none. I’ve always been a drunk. That’s the beginning and end of my life story.”
Yearly drew a chair up to the bed. “Tell me about it anyhow, right up to the moment I shot them coyotes off’n you. This is Sunday and I don’t labor on the Sabbath, so I’ve got all day, young feller.”
Chapter 8
“Like I told you, there isn’t much to tell,” Eddie Oates said. “As much as I can remember, my life was hard and always shaped up to trouble.
“I was born over Tucson way in the Arizona Territory. I don’t recollect much about my ma, but my father was a drunken, violent brute who made a living as a stone mason, when he worked.
“Then one day when I was about ten, he got into a fight in a cantina over a woman and got shot. My ma died six months later, of a broken heart some said, but I never cottoned to that story. She drank bad water and it killed her. That was all.”
Oates shifted position on the cot and Yearly told him to make sure he was favoring his ribs, otherwise they’d play hob and never heal properly.
“So then what happened?” the old man prompted.
“I was taken in by a family who needed a slave who wouldn’t eat too much. I was just a little feller, so I fit the bill. Pretty soon they started to beat me, telling me I was a lazy, shiftless and ungrateful wretch.
“Then the local preacher, a man named Stryker, told my foster mother that the trouble was meat. ‘I recently read all about it in Mr. Dickens’ great novel Oliver Twist, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Give a boy too much meat and you’ll spoil him and turn him into a slothful creat’ur who’ll give you no work but plenty of sass. That’s what Mr. Dickens says. He knows how to deal with boys.’
“I was only being fed table scraps as it was, but pretty soon even those dried up. Then, one day I found a jug of corn liquor in the kitchen, took it down to the creek and got drunk.
“They beat me unmercifully when they found me passed out on the creek bank, of course. But I didn’t mind. I knew I had found my calling. That jug was like a passport into a new and better world.”
“I’ve also read Mr. Dickens,” Yearly said. “In fact, I have a few of his volumes on the shelf over there. He was holding up Oliver Twist as an example of the cruelty of England’s poor laws. Your preacher, Stryker, was a fool.”
“Maybe so, but he helped me make up my mind. A few weeks after I found the jug, I stole some money from the house and ran away.
“I drifted east, doing whatever odd jobs I could find, swamping saloons or cleaning outhouses, I wasn’t particular. Every cent I earned I spent on whiskey and when I couldn’t earn it, I stole it. I figure at one time or another I wrote my name on the wall of every hoose gow from Tucson to Santa Fe.
“Eventually, I don’t know, when, why or how, I drifted into Alma. There was plenty of whiskey in Alma and I drank more than my share. The cowboys would make me play fetch like a dog,
sometimes in the saloons, sometimes in the street, but they bought me whiskey, so I’d run and bark all they wanted.”
“So why did you leave?” Yearly asked.
“They threw me out. Me, three whores and a simple boy. The citizens’ committee said we were useless mouths to feed. After that, I don’t remember much. . . .”
Suddenly Oates looked stricken. He sat silent for several long moments, then buried his face in his shaking hands and rocked back and forth on the cot. “Oh my God,” he whispered, “what have I done?”
Yearly’s voice held a note of confusion. “Son, I don’t catch your drift.”
“I betrayed them all,” Oates said. He dropped his hands and turned his face to the old man. “Sammy Tatum, the three women, I sold them out for a drink of whiskey.”
“I guess you better explain that,” Yearly said. “You’re not making a lick o’ sense.”
“Before you saved me from the coyotes, I met three men on the trail, big men, wearing buckskins.”
“Did they give you their names?”
“No. But the oldest they called Pa, and I heard them call the one who give me this”—Oates’ fingers moved to his grotesquely swollen eye—“Clem.”
Yearly nodded. “I’d bet my bottom dollar you ran into ol’ Mash Halleck and his boys. They’re bad ones, so danged mean, even the Apaches ride wide around them.” A frown gathered between Yearly’s unruly eyebrows. “How come you had dealings with the Hallecks?”
“They had whiskey and I offered to trade a rifle for a drink.”
“Pity. A rifle could have saved you grief from them coyotes.”
“I didn’t have it. The women took it. They left me a note saying they were headed for a town called Heartbreak and that I should catch up when I sobered up enough.
“I told Pa—Mash Halleck—that the women were ahead of me on the trail and he should tell them to give him the rifle.”
Oates looked strained as memories returned to him bit by bit, like the pieces of a mosaic coming together.
“They wanted the rifle all right, but they were more interested in the women. . . .”
Ralph Compton The Man From Nowhere Page 4
