P. K. Pinkerton and the Pistol-Packing Widows

by Caroline Lawrence

  He said, “Yup. The first snow has not yet come this year. The trail is clear all the way to Placerville.”

  She said, “I am only going as far as Pray Mill.”

  “Pray Mill is at Walton’s Landing,” he said. “You go south on Carson, then right on King Street. Keep heading west till you come to Lake Bigler.”

  She said, “I know. I have been there before. I just wanted to know if the trail was passable.”

  “It is for now,” he said, “but I reckon the first snows ain’t far off. ”

  I judged she was scouting out a possible toll road as Jace had told me. I quickly saddled Cheeya and swung onto his back.

  Carson Street was wide & empty in the dawn’s early light. A mule brayed in the Plaza and a bird tweeted from a telegraph wire.

  I was just in time to see Violetta turn right on King Street. She was riding a gray mare sidesaddle. I am always impressed by ladies who ride all asymmetrical like that.

  If you keep going west on King Street it becomes Johnson’s Cutoff, which is one of my favorite rides because it goes up King’s Canyon into the Carson Range mountains. It is still a trail and not yet a toll road. A man named Will Wagner had mapped it all out a year before and several groups had got Legislators to put their names forward for franchises. In one of my reports to Jace I told him it was one of the best.

  It was the sort of cold, bright Sunday morning that is perfect for an aimless and meandering ride.

  Violetta was not aimless nor meandering; she was on her way to Pray Mill on the shore of Lake Bigler. Knowing her destination, I hung back & kept out of sight most of the time, so she would not spot me following if she chanced to look over her shoulder. On certain straight stretches of the road I could see her far up ahead in her maroon riding habit trimmed with black fur and a matching ostrich-feathered riding hat with ear rosettes.

  I followed her up that trail between scattered farms & ranches & half-built way stations & golden-brown hills speckled with sagebrush. Once a herd of deer lifted their heads to look at me and Cheeya. The trail was not fit for wagons and there were no other riders out, so it was real peaceful. As the trail got higher, the sagebrush gave way to juniper & fir trees & the path was felted with rusty-colored pine needles.

  After a little more than two hours I reached a pretty little lake. Its smooth blue waters mirrored a bristling row of dark-green pine trees along the crest behind it. I had never been this far up before and I assumed it was Lake Bigler but Violetta kept on riding.

  Another half hour’s ride through dark pinewoods took me to the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

  Even if I were to live a hundred more years (rather than a hundred more minutes) I do not think I will ever forget my first glimpse of Lake Bigler. You go over the ridge and come down through those lofty pine trees and suddenly there is a meadow as green & smooth as a billiard table, and beyond it a lake as blue as Heaven and beyond that mountains rising up all snow-topped and jagged and gleaming in the cold winter sun.

  I had to rein up Cheeya so that I could take it in.

  Some folk call it Lake Bigler and others Tahoe, which is a version of the Washoe name Da-ow-a-ga.

  Sitting there on my pony, I had to blink and swallow hard because that view was so fine. I offered up a whispered psalm of praise and Cheeya kind of snorted, as if to say “Amen.”

  In the middle of the billiard-table-green meadow ran a brook and beside it stood a house and beyond that was a heavily wooded promontory with piles of freshly sawed lumber by a pier. An arrow sign pointing to these things said WALTON’S LANDING and below it PRAY SAWMILL.

  I did not see any sign of smoke coming from the house nor any movement of any kind. That place was as peaceful as the trail leading up to it. I heeled Cheeya forward & we went down a path between the meadow and the pines to a sandy beach beside the lake.

  I dismounted, and Cheeya & I both drank our fill of water so cold it made our teeth ache. The winter sun had come out and its rays made the water all jewel colors like emerald & sapphire & such. Farther out, the lake was the same dark blue as Opal Blossom’s spittoon. I reckon if I lived there I would become a Poet.

  But I am not a Poet. I am a Detective. So I started to scan the area for Violetta. I could not see her, but my sharp eyes saw a flash of white just inside the pine forest on the south point of the cove over to my left across the meadow. It was Violetta’s gray mare.

  I led Cheeya back up to the meadow & left him to graze on some of that lush grass. Then I ran at a crouch towards the forest. My buckskin leggings & blue woolen coat & slouch hat are not the best clothes for speeding across a flat expanse of billiard-table green, but my moccasins helped me leap the brook in one bound and I felt less conspicuous once I reached the shelter of the pines. Had Violetta spotted me? I hoped not. Jace had told me not to let her see me.

  When I found Violetta’s mount I got a shock. Her horse was conversing with a big bay gelding.

  She had not come up here just to scout out a Toll Road.

  She had come up here to meet someone. Was it a surveyor? Or maybe a legislator who had already bid for the franchise? I recalled that several groups of people were interested in this trail.

  As I followed her track through the forest, I could hear birds tweeting & a woodpecker tapping & the rush of water somewhere, though I could not see it.

  It was very peaceful. Too peaceful. I stopped in my tracks and pondered.

  The Comstock was desperate for lumber; it was almost as precious as silver.

  Why was nobody up here cutting wood?

  Then I realized that this must be the sawmill of Augustus “Sabbath” Pray, the Council’s sternest advocate of Keeping Sunday Holy. I reckon if he found anybody at work he would have them bullwhipped all the way back to Carson. Is that why Violetta had come up here on a Sunday? To avoid being seen?

  I am usually as silent as a panther, but town life had made me clumsy. As I resumed following her trail, my foot snapped a twig & it went off like the report of a pistol. A bird flew off, crying in alarm. The unseen water sounded like a thousand schoolmarms shushing me from Heaven.

  From Heaven?

  I looked up & there on my left was the source of the water sound! It was a stream in the treetops overhead. The water was being carried towards the lake in a kind of wooden trough on high stilts: a flume! As I moved forward, I heard splashing & a kind of rhythmic grinding. I emerged into a sunlit clearing, where the flume ended above a wooden waterwheel beside a raw plank building I took to be a sawmill.

  The water was falling & the wheel was turning & the winter sun shining on the spray made a kind of rainbow.

  I guess nobody had told the water or the wheel that today was the Sabbath.

  My tracking skills showed me that Violetta and her companion had gone inside the Mill House. I crept up to the window & slowly rose up & cautiously looked in. I could see planks & levers & belts & two different types of saw.

  One big saw was round like a saucer standing on its edge.

  The other saw stood up like a Bowie knife with a serrated edge.

  Then I saw Violetta with a stocky man in black.

  They were kissing.

  Yes, kissing on the Sabbath!

  By and by, Violetta pulled away.

  My stomach rolled over when I saw the man sparking Violetta.

  It was my mortal enemy from Virginia City, the Deputy-Marshal-turned-Desperado called Jack Williams.

  I FELT QUEASY as I watched Violetta De Baskerville sparking my worst living enemy, a man who had once sworn to see me swing from a hempen rope.

  Why had she met him way up here on the shores of Lake Bigler?

  It was obviously a secret rendezvous.

  I could see them but not hear them, for the glass in the small millhouse window was thick and the waterwheel filled my ears with its rhythmic swishing noise.r />
  Peering through the window, I watched as she pulled off her gloves & took a piece of paper from her reticule and also a pen & inkpot. She set them out on a rough table beside one of the silent saws. She was talking & gesturing with her arms like one of those legislators trying to make a case for a new bill. With her bright eyes & shapely figure & bobbing ostrich feather hat, she looked mighty pretty. Jack Williams was leaning back against the wall & watching her through half-closed, unblinking snake eyes. His expression made me think of a rattler watching a mouse.

  Jack Williams is short & thickset, but he moves fast. Right in the middle of her talking he stepped forward & swept away the inkpot & pulled her into his arms again. They kissed for a short time but then Violetta pulled away & wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She was saying something to him & I guessed she was no longer happy for her smile had faded & there was a little crease between her dark eyebrows. She bent to retrieve the fallen ink jar.

  He smiled an ugly smile & took her by her maroon velvet shoulders & pushed her hard against the wall.

  People confound me, but I did not think she was enjoying herself this time. The clews I had were threefold, viz: She was pummeling his chest with her little fists & she had averted her head so that he could not kiss her anymore & her face was wearing Expression No. 3—Disgust.

  She was my enemy & a possible murderess & unfaithful to boot, but I could not just stand and watch, especially as Jace had told me to protect her.

  I ran around the mill house & flung open the door & pulled out my Smith & Wesson’ s seven-shooter & cocked it & said, “Stop molesting that lady now or I will fill you full of lead even though it is the Sabbath and I promised my dying ma I would never kill a man.”

  Former Deputy Marshal Jack Williams slowly turned & looked at me. Then his nostrils flared & he charged straight at me.

  Pop!

  I shot him in the chest at point-blank range.

  But Jack Williams did not even flinch. He showed no more pain than if a mosquito had bit him. I guess the combination of his thick clothing and my small caliber meant the bullet had not reached any vitals.

  As he knocked me to the ground, the last thought I had before I blacked out was, “I have got to get myself a bigger pistol.”

  • • •

  When I came back to the world, I found myself tied to a log like a pig on a spit.

  Jack Williams had laid me on my back on the rough pine trunk & then pulled some strips of whang leather from my own fringed trowsers & tied my ankles and wrists together tightly below the log. Having my wrists tied like that wrenched my shoulders painfully.

  When I lifted my head, my shoulders hurt even more.

  My stomach sank as I saw my position. I was hog-tied to a log half-buzzed by that standing up jagged-toothed saw. “Sabbath” Pray’s workers had obviously stopped in the middle of sawing it in two and would continue first thing tomorrow.

  “What do you intend to do?” came Violetta’s voice. I turned my head. My ears were ringing and my vision a little blurry but I could see her clear enough to spot her hand trembling as she replaced the hat that he had knocked off.

  “I am wondering how this mill works,” said Jack Williams. “Lacking fire, steam and horses, I suppose it is the water in the flume that turns the wheel and moves the log forward and makes that Knocking Saw go up and down. Pull that lever back there,” he said. “Let us see what that does.”

  “You mean to saw him in half?” she gasped.

  “I do,” growled Jack Williams. “I’m gonna pay back that misfit for shooting me.”

  “Look, Jack, I don’t like him anymore than you do but—”

  “Do it!” he shouted. “Obey your husband!”

  I could see Violetta’s eyes flitting this way and that like a panicky ermine I had once trapped.

  Then her nostrils flared & her bodice heaved up & she let out her breath real slow. Something changed in her eyes.

  “All right, Jacky,” she said in her little-girl voice. “Whatever you say.”

  She moved out of my sight and Jack Williams moved closer. He was looking down at me and breathing hard. If a buffalo took up smoking those cheap Long Nine cigars, I reckon his breath would not smell much worse.

  “You dam scalawag,” he said. “That stung where you shot me.”

  I heard the lever creak behind me.

  The log to which I was tied began to judder forward. At the same time the jagged-toothed Knocking Saw began to move slowly up and down. As the saw picked up speed, so did the forward motion of the log.

  “Ain’t you scared of being sawed in two?” asked Jack.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Please make it stop.”

  “Why don’t you look scared, then?”

  “I am scared,” I cried. “Tell me what you want!”

  “I don’t want nothing,” said Jack. “I just want to see you buzzed in half.”

  “Please!” I said. “I’ll talk!”

  He laughed. “What do you mean?” he said. “What have you got to tell me?”

  “A secret!” I cried. “A big secret! The biggest secret in the world!”

  The jagged-toothed saw was coming closer & closer. I reckoned there was only one thing I could tell him that might make him stop.

  So I told him my biggest secret.

  The secret I had kept nearly my whole life.

  A secret hitherto known only to my Indian Ma and my Foster Parents and to Jace, the only person who had ever guessed it.

  I opened my mouth and shouted, “You cannot saw me in half. I am not a boy. I am a girl!”

  JACK WILLIAMS WAS GIVING me one of the most extreme examples of Expression No. 4 I had ever seen. “You are a girl?”

  “Yes!” I cried. “Now stop it, please!”

  Jack nodded to Violetta, who must have pushed the lever back, for everything went quiet.

  “Say that again?” Jack Williams brought his face too close.

  “I am a girl,” I confessed. “My parents thought I would be safer growing up dressed as a boy.”

  Jack Williams stared at me for a moment. Then he commenced groping me all over with his big calloused hands in a way I do not like to recall. Thankfully he did not feel the need to strip me to check every detail.

  “God d-mn,” he said at last. “It is a girl.” He looked at Violetta. “Did you know about that?”

  “I knew there was something not quite right about her,” said Violetta. She put on her gloves. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ve got some business to finish in Carson and then I will come and join you in Virginia City.”

  “What about this?” growled Jack Williams, holding up the piece of paper she had wanted him to sign.

  Violetta took it from him and tore the paper into confetti. “Forget about that,” she said, letting the pieces flutter to the ground. Then she put her arms around him and kissed him for a long time.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking, dear Jacky,” she said in her little-girl voice. “There could never be anybody for me but you.”

  Jack smiled an ugly smile. “What about her?” he said, indicating me. “We just gonna leave her?”

  “She is of no consequence,” said Violetta, and turned to me. “If we let you live, will you promise to go far away and never show your face in Nevada Territory again?”

  “Yes!” I cried. “I promise. Please don’t kill me.”

  Jack Williams was looking at me with his hooded snake eyes.

  “Turn it back on,” he said. “I don’t care if she is a girl. She is a half-Injun misfit and the world is better off without her.”

  Violetta hesitated for a moment. Then she shrugged. “All right,” she said. “But let’s get out of here. That way nobody will connect us with her death.”

  I do not like having to beg for mercy but this was a despera
te situation. “Please!” I cried. “Have mercy on me. Do not saw me in half.”

  But Violetta had pulled the lever. Once again I was juddering towards the certain death of being sawed in two.

  “HELP!” I shouted with all my strength. “Somebody, help! I have been tied to a log and am about to be sawed in half!”

  I knew it was futile for I was in the middle of a pine forest on the land of a man who expelled any workers found toiling on the Sabbath.

  Jack Williams’s ugly face filled my vision & he took out his kerchief, all stiff with mucus & gray with dirt. Then he balled it up & forced open my mouth with rough, calloused fingers & stuffed it in as a gag. It was disgusting.

  “That should shut you up,” he said.

  I struggled & squirmed & tried to spit it out. I managed to say, “Mmmmph!” Jack Williams silenced me with a stinging slap to the cheek that made my ears ring.

  Then he leered down at me.

  “I reckon you are half girl and half boy anyway,” he said. “So being sawed in half is a fitting demise.”

  Once again I cried, “Mmmmph!” but they had gone.

  I started squirming & struggling again. But the harder I struggled the tighter my bonds seemed to be.

  I lifted up my head to look at the relentlessly approaching saw. It was only about half a foot from my nether regions.

  Movement at the corner of my eye made me eagerly turn my head.

  Someone was peering in the window. Was it a rescuer?

  No. It was only Jack Williams on horseback, bending down to laugh at me one more time before spurring his horse on to Virginia City.

  I never cry, but scalding tears of fear & anger were filling my eyes and spilling over.

  The noise of that saw prevented me from thinking straight. All I could think of was how much it would hurt. And also, in the Resurrection of the dead, would the angels have to stick me together again?

  I struggled & struggled.

  It was one of the lowest moments of my sad and miserable life.

  I know I will soon freeze to death out here in the blizzard, but at least this way I will have a Good Death. That other would have been an awful way to die.