Wimmera Gold

by Peter Corris

  Perry nodded as he poured two cups of coffee. Jess Logan was intrigued by the sight of the elegantly dressed mulatto, living in a better class of hotel room than Logan himself had ever occupied, doling out the coffee like a lord. 'What exactly is your line of business?'

  Logan sipped his coffee noisily. 'I sweep up in the barber shop, collect glasses in a couple of saloons and do a bit of carpentry for the undertaker. I've known men to have their hair cut in the morning, take a drink a bit later and be lying in a box not long after that.'

  Perry smiled. 'I see.' He reached into his vest pocket and took out two silver dollars. 'Mr Logan, have you ever heard of a man named Wesley Lincoln? Sometimes calls himself Tom Shelby.'

  Logan stroked his stubbled chin. 'Names ain't worth much. Texian?'

  'I believe so.'

  'Biggish feller, thirty or so?'

  Perry took out two more coins and placed them on top of the others.

  'Think I know the man you mean. Might I have that whiskey now, d'you think?'

  Perry knocked out Tadeus Brennan in five hard-fought rounds and announced to Kite that their next stop would be Fort Stockton.

  'Well, I don't know about that, John. Brennan wants a rematch and he's got backers. I'd say a thousand-dollar purse could be in the wind. I doubt we'd get anything like that in a one-horse burg like Stockton. You ever been there? It's nothing but cactus and dust and horseshit.'

  'This isn't about fighting, Major. This is private business. I'm on the Fort Stockton coach tomorrow come hell or high water, but I sure would like you to come along.'

  Kite puffed on his cigar. The tour had been profitable but he felt that in Perry he had found the meal ticket of a lifetime and he couldn't afford to let him go. 'Mind telling me why, if it ain't to do with the noble and manly art?'

  Perry clapped Kite on the shoulder. 'Major, the men who served under you were lucky. You're sane and smart, which in my experience most military men are not. I need you along to head off the possibility of being lynched as a sassy nigger doesn't know his place.'

  Kite sighed. 'Well, I guess I'd better come along in that case. Now I think of it, there's soldiers in Stockton. Might get up a match or at least an exhibition or two.'

  'You're a stubborn fellow, Major.'

  'Me? I'm stubborn?'

  36

  'Easy with him.'

  The gambler helped lower Lincoln down from the coach. The driver and the shotgun guard carried the inert man to a bench in front of the Fort Stockton livery stable. The gambler took Lincoln's valise across and put it down by the bench. He had taken the wallet from Lincoln's jacket and he opened it carefully, moving his hands slowly so all could see him. He took out a doctor's prescription note. 'Name's Tom Shelby, right enough, and he's using some kind of medication.'

  The driver sent the guard to fetch a doctor and detailed the livery stable attendant to take care of the horses. He was headed for the nearest saloon and sick passengers were no concern of his. The rancher and the army officer had collected their bags and left. The judge stood uncertainly while the gambler restored the wallet to Lincoln's pocket. He had extracted $40 without being spotted and he was anxious to be off. He tipped his hat to the judge. 'Maybe you should talk to the doctor, Judge, as one professional man to another. So long.'

  The judge protested but the gambler had moved away quickly. He stood by grudgingly with his bags at his feet until the guard returned in a buggy with the doctor.

  Dr Willard Johnson was a competent physician and surgeon. He made a thorough examination of Lincoln, who was twitching slightly, breathing in short shallow gasps and dribbling slightly from his open mouth. Johnson looked at the bandaged hand and nodded. 'Good job for an amateur.' He adjusted his half-glasses and looked up over them at the judge. 'You, sir. Do you know what kind of an injury this is?'

  The judge had collected his bags and secured the help of a boy with a wheeler to carry them. 'I've got no idea. There's some kind of medical paper in his wallet. Good day to you, doctor.'

  'Love to meet upstanding Christians like that,' Johnson murmured. He took out the note and whistled in surprise when he saw the name on the letterhead. 'Dr Grant Tyrrell. Surgical case, must be.' He bent closer and sniffed at Lincoln's breath. A small crowd had gathered and Johnson enlisted the aid of a bystander to help him carry Lincoln to the buggy. Lincoln's valise and trunk were loaded and the doctor drove off at a smart pace. He was worried about his patient's pallor and the irregularity of his breathing. He had also noted the pistol in his pocket and the throwing knife strapped to his arm.

  Lincoln was seized with panic when he woke up. Nothing was familiar—not the bed, not the walls or the ceiling, and he was wearing some kind of nightgown. Dimly, he remembered being in the coach, fully dressed with his bag at his feet and his gun in his pocket. Now he was near to naked and could see nothing that belonged to him. He tried to sit up and found that his left arm was strapped down to a rail running bedside the bed. More panic. His first thought was that he was in gaol and that they'd got him for the Gila silver mine robbery. Then he realised that he had no sensation at the end of the arm and he jerked the sheet away to make sure that his hand was still attached. He saw the white, professionally applied bandage, moved the fingers and felt comforted. The fear left him and he was aware of a soft warmth seeping all through his body. There was no pain anywhere. He drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

  'Mr Shelby! Thomas Shelby!'

  Lincoln surfaced reluctantly from soft warmth into cold harshness. He tried to go back down again but a light was shining in his eyes and something was propping his eyelids open. He blinked, moved his head and felt a fingernail rasp his cheek.

  'Feel that, son?'

  Lincoln nodded.

  'Good. I was beginning to think I'd given you too much morphine.'

  'Morphine, what the hell for? Who're you?'

  'Easy does it. I'm Doctor Willard Johnson and you're in my clinic here in Fort Stockton. You came in on the El Paso stage, remember?'

  'Sure I remember. No, not really.'

  'Got some bad news for you son. I …'

  'My hand! You cut off my hand!'

  'No, no. You've still got your hand, but I had to work on it some, and all that good surgery Dr Tyrrell did has gone for nothing. What in the name of Jesus happened to you?'

  Lincoln was beginning to feel things again. His body ached and his head felt heavy, with a dull throbbing behind his eyes. His hand was stiff and the slightest movement was an agony. 'I got a knife put through it, doctor. What's it going to be like? I mean when it heals?'

  'Stiff and ugly. I'd say you'd be best off wearing a glove on it. What's wrong?'

  Lincoln's shoulders were shaking with laughter. 'A glove,' he said. 'Wear a glove.' Tears rolled down his whiskered cheeks and he lay back on the pillow, laughing and gnawing at his bottom lip.

  'That ain't going to be the worst of your troubles. How long've you been taking that opium mixture?'

  Lincoln sniffed and got himself under control. 'A couple weeks. Month, maybe.'

  'You drink liquor with it?'

  'Some.'

  'You damn near killed yourself. That's a powerful mixture. I took a risk giving you the morphine but you'd have died of shock when I was working on your hand otherwise. You're a tough hombre, Mr Shelby, and lucky to be alive. Another day and gangrene could have taken your hand and most likely your life.'

  'I must owe you some money.'

  'You ain't got but ten dollars. I guess that'll about cover it.'

  'You sure? I had fifty in my wallet. What the hell, I can get some more by wire. How long you figure I'll be laying up with this?'

  'You can spend another day or two here. I want to keep an eye on that hand. Then you should rest up for a while. Where're you headed, if I might ask?'

  'Snakehole.'

  'Why? It's a ghost town.'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'That's the unluckiest goddamn town there ever was. Creek dried up for no r
eason, I heard. Well water went sour pretty much. Had some attacks by Apaches and Comancheros. Most of the folks just upped and moved away.'

  Lincoln smiled. 'It's my home town and that's the best news I ever heard. So who's living there now, doctor?'

  'I don't rightly know. Water's the big problem. They shut down the silver mine on that account. Last I heard the main street was a passel of boarded-up stores and there was tumbleweed blocking the cantina door. I believe there's a crazy old parson still there—sells whiskey to the Indians and preaches in an empty churchhouse. I can't see why you're smiling, son.'

  Lincoln's hand was on fire but he was building pictures in his head that helped him to ignore the pain. 'It sounds,' he said slowly, 'as if I might be able to buy the whole damn place.'

  The doctor studied his patient's eyes for signs of brain fever. This was crazy talk. Maybe the opium had rotted the brain the way he'd seen it do to Chinese miners in California. But he seemed to be calm enough, lying quietly now with his head turned slightly towards the wall. The shivering and twitching which had afflicted him had passed and there were only a few drops of sweat on his forehead. Johnson sponged them off and moved back from the bed.

  'Doctor,' Lincoln said suddenly. 'This hand hurts like hell. You reckon I could have a few drops of my mixture?'

  Pierce Kite was a country boy who preferred cities. Texas was not involved in the War Between the States, and Kite had no particular feelings about slavery one way or the other, but he had enlisted in a Georgia regiment because he loved a fight. After the war, during which he rose from the ranks to become a major, he went north to Chicago and New York and discovered a love for soft beds, coal fires and roofs that didn't leak. He promoted footraces, boxing and wrestling matches successfully but had no judgment when it came to investments. He lost money on rubber-growing in Mexico, banana-importing from Brazil and manufacturing automatic firearms. The cold northern winters began to depress him almost as much as his growing list of creditors, so he crossed the country to San Francisco. California's sporting and business style were much more to his taste and he was modestly prosperous as a realtor and racehorse owner when Hugh Sloan interested him in John Perry. The prize ring was Kite's true passion and the weeks on the road with Perry had been among the happiest of his life.

  Now, as he sat in the bucketing coach, breathing in west Texas dust, he looked at the dozing Perry and wondered how he could keep a hold of him. The man had changed since speaking to that little bar fly back in El Paso. There seemed to be a new hardness to him and it had nothing to do with prize-fighting. At a stop a few hours back Perry had surprised Kite by taking a Colt and a box of ammunition from his bag.

  'Hey, John, put that away,' Kite had said. 'You want folks to think you're a road agent?'

  Perry had merely smiled and strolled off behind a strand of cottonwoods 200 yards away. The wind had taken the sound of the shots away from the staging post, but Kite had heard them and he knew the kind of rhythm a man who could shoot fell into. Perry was practising snapping quick shots at close targets. He seemed satisfied on his return and had apparently fallen asleep as soon as the coach had started up. Perry was smartly dressed in a white linen shirt, flowered waistcoat and black frock coat. He always wore a wide-brimmed hat and kept out of the sun as much as possible. As a result his skin was no darker than many a sunburned white man and with his quiet manners and Kite's generous tipping the pair had no difficulty getting seats on the coach and service along the way. Still, it was best to be cautious and Perry effaced himself as much as possible. The three other passengers were an elderly man with poor eyesight, a schoolteacher who kept his nose buried in a book and a tall craggy man who Kite suspected might be a quarter-breed Indian. They were travelling together comfortably enough.

  Perry's eyes opened and he saw Kite looking at him with concern. 'What's on your mind, Major?'

  'Why in hell are we going to Fort Stockton, John?'

  Perry shook his head. 'It's private business.'

  'It's trouble for sure, that's what it is.'

  'Could be. But I'll make sure to keep you clear of it.'

  'Goddamn it, John! I fought the Yankees for five years. I was at Fredericksburg and Chickamauga. I don't need no protection from trouble. I just need to know what's going on.'

  'I'll tell you when the time comes.'

  'I just hope you ain't looking to throw away your chance to fight Tom Allen for the championship. I don't know much about you, John, but I can tell you've been used to quality living. That fight could put you right on top of the heap.'

  Perry leant closer to Kite and kept his voice low. 'It's time you stopped dreaming, Major. No coloured man is ever going to fight for that title. Leastways, not in your lifetime or mine.'

  Kite coughed as a cloud of dust, thrown up from a long, deep wheel rut, entered the coach. He hated this part of travelling and the heat and discomfort were making him irritable. Perry appeared cool and composed, as always, but with that new, hard-set look about him. 'What in hell do you mean? Slavery's finished. Times are a' changing. Besides, Bill Richmond and Tom Molyneaux fought Cribb for the belt …'

  'That was in England and a long time ago,' Perry said gently. 'And can you name another man with African blood successful in the prize ring since then?'

  Kite could not and stared moodily out at the dry Texas landscape. Jack rabbits were jumping in a patch of shade under a mesquite tree. He wondered whether Perry could knock them over from the moving coach with a rifle. The man could do just about anything he chose, but he was probably right about this. Kite had known it in his heart all along, but had pushed the thought aside. 'Maybe up north in Canada,' he said. 'Or down in Mexico. Allen's an Englishman, ain't he? We could … '

  'It'd never be recognised in America and that's where the big money is. Face up to it, Major, there isn't a state in the Union that would let the fight go ahead legally. And if we had to hold it in some barn someplace … '

  Kite held up his hand. 'Okay, okay. The money'd say you lose and if you won there'd be a necktie party for sure.'

  'I'm sorry, Major. You're very good at this kind of work. You should look out for a white boy with fire in his belly. Someone brought up poor and hard. Irish maybe and … '

  The big, craggy-faced man sitting opposite Kite bent forward and extended his hand to Perry. 'Couldn't help overhearing what you gentlemen were sayin'. Silas Smoot's my name.'

  Perry shook the hand that was as hard as a piece of unworked teak and spoke his name. Smoot touched his hat to Kite but kept his dark, slanted eyes on Perry. 'I reckon you're right. Be some time before the coloured people get their just deserts in this country. My grandmammy was a Cherokee and that bit o' Injun blood been a problem for me all my days.'

  Kite coughed to clear his throat of the dust. 'You seem to be doing all right, Mr Smoot.'

  One eye closed in a wink. 'I don't go round shoutin' about it. I know a couple boys with Injun blood can fight pretty good. You might meet up with 'em someday?'

  Perry shook his head. 'I think my fighting days are just about done.'

  Smoot leaned back against the seat and took out his gold watch. He tapped it and returned it to his pocket. 'Mr Perry, if you'll excuse me, I'd say you got the look of a man with a few good fights left in him.'

  'John?' Kite said.

  Perry was staring out at the foothills which were taking on a bluish tinge as the dropping sun slanted across the sagebrush. 'I hope you're right, Mr Smoot,' he said.

  37

  Lincoln's wound healed slowly and the hand remained stiff and painful. He was unable to perform the exercises Tyrrell had advocated and Willard Johnson was disappointed with the result.

  'Been some shrinking in there,' he said after one examination. 'I'm sorry, son. That paw ain't never going to be much use to you.'

  Lincoln had taken to wearing a glove again— black leather as before and in many ways he felt as if he had never left Texas. The people hadn't changed and he was back to being the way he
was. Except for the gold. That was a comfort on the nights when the pain had him gulping brandy and laudanum. Unknown to Johnson, he had secured some morphine pills which he found more soothing than anything else. He used them sparingly at first because they were expensive, but after a time he increased his dose. Not only were they the best thing for the pain—often brought on by his attempting to exercise his stiff hand—but for the doubts and fears that afflicted him.

  'Snakehole?' a billiard hall acquaintance said. 'They had a sickness through there just after the water dried up. 'Bout that time there was more people waitin' to be buried than alive in the town. Word was, somebody had poisoned the only water supply left. They do say the town is haunted by all sorts of ghosts. Can't vouch for that, though. Have your shot, Mr Shelby.'

  Travers' billiard hall was a popular place for Fort Stockton's loungers and gamblers. It had been established by Edward Travers, an Englishman who had served in the Indian Army previous to fighting for the North in the Civil War. Addicted to the army life, he had drifted to Fort Stockton, made money out of cattle, and imported the tables at great expense at first for his own amusement and then as a business enterprise. Wesley Lincoln, the sharpshooter and former champion horseshoe thrower, took to the game with alacrity. His stiff left hand made a perfect bridge and, when not affected by morphine or brandy, he was practically unbeatable over five or six games. He tired quickly, however, invariably began to drink and lost the touch. Twice this weakness had caused him to lose narrowly to Travers, who had reigned as champion of his own establishment for six years.

  Spending much of his time and money in the saloons and the billiard hall, Lincoln was conscious that he was delaying his home-going. He was unsure of the reason, but had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about the place. Snake-hole was almost 100 miles away and Lincoln could find no one who had actually been there since successive disasters had overwhelmed the town. There appeared to be a feeling that it was bad luck to talk about the place, let alone visit it. He could learn nothing solid about his parents or the large Burgos family. The road that used to run to Snakehole was now a rutted ruin. The army detachment station at Stockton did not patrol in that direction. It was as if the little village, which was all it had ever really been, had been wiped from people's minds and memories.