by Peter Corris
He was sitting at the window of his room in the Pecos Hotel, trying to summon the will to hire a horse and ride to Snakehole, when he saw the mail wagon pull up outside the Fort Stockton post office. He had neither sent nor received any mail since arriving in the town and it had not occurred to him to enter the building. He grabbed his hat and hurried downstairs and across the street. The post office was built of sandstone blocks; it had wide, overhanging eaves and was cool inside. Two clerks were working at desks behind the counter and Lincoln could see a telegraph operator, bent over his key, in a partitioned-off corner. There were no other customers.
One of the clerks, in shirtsleeves and weskit, looked up from the list he was checking and flicked back a lock of hair. 'Yes?'
Lincoln stood at the counter and fixed the young man with a hard stare. 'You want me to shout my business from here, or you fixing to come across polite-like?'
The clerk blushed and pushed back his chair. He wore tight trousers and a heavy watch-chain. Lincoln watched his slow movements with amusement. 'Can I help you, mister?' the clerk said.
'Maybe. I don't suppose there's a telegraph wire to Snakehole?'
'Where?'
'Snakehole. Little place south-west of here.'
'Not that I know of.'
'Think you could make sure?'
The clerk shrugged and strolled off to confer with the telegraph operator. Lincoln saw the man look up from his work with irritation, shake his head and point towards a set of pigeonholes on a far wall. The clerk returned to the counter. 'Nope,' he said. 'No wire to Snakehole. Never has been. That all?'
'No. What happens to mail for Snakehole? Does it go through?'
The clerk shrugged.
Lincoln leaned across the counter. 'I'm getting a mite tired of your rudeness. Now, your partner back there pointed to those slots on the wall. What'd he say?'
The clerk sighed. 'That's where we put stuff that's got no place to go. I guess that's where Snakehole mail'd go, supposing there was any.'
Lincoln pointed one black gloved finger at the wall.
'Get your ass across there and look, if you like your nice soft job here and 'lessen you want me to cause a real ruckus.'
The clerk took one look at Lincoln's pale eyes and scurried across to the pigeonholes and rummaged through the contents. He extracted two envelopes and came back to the counter. 'That's all we got the last year or so, mister.'
Lincoln snatched the envelopes. One was addressed to the Reverend Shelby Lincoln, the other to Wesley Lincoln. His hand trembled as he read the two different scripts. The letter bearing his own name was a heavy, sealed buff envelope which carried a Colony of Victoria stamp. He tapped it on the counter. 'Lincoln's my name. This here is addressed to me. The other's to my father. I'm collecting this mail.'
'Yes, sir,' the clerk said. But he spoke to Lincoln's retreating back with the gun riding high on his hip.
Up in his room, Lincoln's hand shook again as he applied a knife blade to the envelope addressed to his father. He slit it open and poured himself a shot of brandy although it was only mid-morning. He tossed off the drink and pulled out the folded sheet of paper. The letter was dated almost two years previously.
Holy Church of the Pierced Palms and Tortured Body and Divine Soul of our Lord Jesus Christ
Nazareth
Georgia
Dear Brother Lincoln,
This community was proud to receive your application for the post of Pastor to our sinful flock. Praise the Lord!
The elders of the church gave it careful consideration and were impressed by the Good Work you have done in the benighted state of Texas. His name be praised!
We would like to extend to you our heartfelt sympathy for the calamities which have befallen you. To lose an only son to sin, a dying wife to Papish superstition and near an entire congregation to plague and pestilence would test the faith of any mere mortal man. Jesus lives!
We are gratified to see that your faith remains strong enough for you to wish to continue with the Good Work wherever it may suit the Lord to send you. Hellfire awaits!
Unhappily, we are unable to offer you the aforesaid appointment. We note with regret that you cannot cite any Protestant Bible College diploma, and that you apparently have no experience of baptism by total naked immersion nor of the spiritual power of talking serpents. Saints will rise, sinners will perish!
God bless and prosper you, Brother Lincoln, in your search for a ministry where you may fulfill your lofty aims. Your sentiments, such as the chastity of all unmarried members of the church body, absolute abjuration of hard liquor, tobacco and strong language, do you proud, sir. Only the unborn are pure!
We hope soon to hear of your successful translation to a post worthy of your manifest piety and talents. God works through Good Works!
Yours in Christ
Lincoln was weeping by the time he read the signature—Elder Habbakuk Sorgum—but whether from grief at the knowledge of the death of his mother or mirth at the humiliation of his father he could not tell. He had another drink and opened the letter addressed to himself. It was postmarked Melbourne and dated almost three months before.
8 Raleigh Terrace
Clifford Gardens
Melbourne
Dear Lincoln,
I have no idea of whether this will reach you and not much more understanding of why I am even writing. Perhaps I am seeking some small kind of revenge or just taking the opportunity to inform the one person on earth I can about these events.
I no longer have my share of the gold. It was taken from me by a man known as John Perry. He is a mulatto from the West Indies. Put like that it now sounds impossible to me, but that is the truth.
How Perry learned of the gold and our acquisition of it I do not know for certain and will never know. Presumably through Fanshawe. I imagine he is Fanshawe's hireling, although it is difficult to imagine him doing any man's bidding. Whatever the case, he holds over me the threat of exposure as an extortionist, using my professional position to gain information used for my own benefit. As I must continue to earn my living at the law I cannot risk any kind of action against him.
This Perry is a man unlike any other I have met. He is intelligent and resourceful, capable of playing many parts. From cautious inquiry I have learned that he has a formidable reputation as a sharpshooter, horseman and pugilist. He is a most dangerous individual.
Regrettably, I have to reveal that he knows of you and your birthplace. He forced me to reveal this information to him although he seemed already to be in possession of it. It is my impression that he intends to recover all of the gold or whatever proceeds may have been derived from it.
In one sense, I hope this missive never reaches you and that you never intended to return to Texas. In another, I hope for the opposite. Your own skill with weapons is, I believe, considerable and if Perry pursues you it is possible you may best him. I wish you luck if such a contest ever takes place, and would be glad to hear news of it should you prevail. Little good though it would do me.
We could not have anticipated this outcome to our venture. It was a bold plan well executed and that is now the only satisfaction I can take. I trust your circumstances are better than those, of
Yr unfortunate associate,
Lincoln looked at the shaky signature, 'Daniel Bracken', and then read through the letter twice more. The pages were blotched and smudged, not as if written in haste, but as though the writer had been affected by alcohol. There were corrected misspellings and crossings-out where turns of expression had been attempted and abandoned.
'You poor bastard,' Lincoln muttered. He had a dim memory of conversations with Bracken in which the lawyer had told him his ambitions. All to do with building a big house. Well, he wouldn't get it now. Something else was stirring in Lincoln's memory. He poured a smaller drink and sipped at it, trying to locate the recollection and make it solid. He read the letter again and the word 'pugilist' did the trick. The gambler on the coach from
El Paso, the bastard that had robbed him, had been reading in a newspaper about a fighter named Perry. It was a common enough name, but Lincoln forced himself to recall the conversation he'd had with the gambler. His recollection was fragmentary, broken up by the pain he'd endured at the time and the close brush with death that followed.
'Barbados!' he said suddenly. 'That's it. The guy said the pug was from Barbados. By Christ, it has to be the same man. He's coming after me!'
Lincoln was impelled into immediate action. He packed his bags and checked out of the hotel. He had had all his funds wired to the Fort Stockton branch of the bank and he now drew it all out and put in a calico money belt which he wore inside his shirt. He bought a Winchester rifle and ammunition for it and his pistol. Then he went to a horse dealer and, after close inspection of his stock, bought a roan gelding. He had talked about visiting Snakehole to Edward Travers at the billiard hall and Travers had offered to lend him a buggy. Lincoln now took him up on the offer. He packed his belongings into the back of the vehicle, loaded food and water and set off south-east.
Within an hour he had passed beyond the straggling farm settlement around Fort Stockton. The country dried and flattened quickly away from the Pecos River. Ten minutes after he passed the wind-weathered stone marker that pointed towards Snakehole, the horse's hooves and the buggy wheels were throwing up white dust that caused Lincoln to squint and choke. He swore and pulled a bandanna up over his face.
Driving was more difficult with the stiff hand than he had anticipated and he had to stop after an hour to rest and make an adjustment to the reins. He examined his image in the burnished steel magazine plate on his rifle. He saw the black hat pulled down low and the red bandanna covering all but the pale, burning eyes. 'You'd frighten the hell outa Jesse James,' he said.
Lincoln was aware that he was talking to himself more lately. It alarmed him but he couldn't seem to stop it. The hand was hurting and he contemplated taking a morphine pill but rejected the idea. The road was rough and the horse unfamiliar. He needed to be alert. He contented himself with a short sip from the laudanum bottle and a long drink of water.
He covered about thirty miles between early afternoon and sundown and calculated that he would reach the town on the morning of the third day if he was able to keep up the pace. The horse was a good one, strong and steady, well-used to the harness and not inclined to start at jumping rabbits or the occasional snake that slithered across the track.
The Comanches were long gone. Lincoln's chief problems were the condition of his left hand and the state of the road. Although the wound had healed, the flesh around it was puffy after the day's drive and the stiff fingers were painful. He massaged it with liniment but got little relief. Collecting and carrying firewood for his camp was difficult and he realised that it had been some time since he had performed the routine tasks associated with eating and sleeping under the stars. He was aware of the weight he had gained from several weeks of beer drinking and billiard-playing—a layer of soft flesh around the waist. He experienced a shaft of self-loathing and took some laudanum and brandy with his supper of beans, bacon and coffee to dull the pain.
He hobbled the horse, fed it some chaff and let it drink from a bucket. This part of the prairie was dry after a hot summer, and there was little but some saltbush and sour rye grass for the roan to crop. Lincoln lay back against a wheel of the buggy with a folded coat for a pillow and two blankets wrapped around him against the cold night. He worried about the road. It was rutted and almost disappeared in places. If he'd been in better physical condition he could have ridden a horse, but something had told him not to attempt it. It might be hard pushing the buggy through if the road got worse. He might have to ride.
'Will if I have to,' he said. The horse neighed at the sound of his voice. Lincoln sipped laudanum and brandy, smoked a pipe and eventually fell asleep as the night grew damp and chill.
He felt blurred and confused in the morning and his back ached from sleeping on the ground. He poked the fire into life and made coffee. After a breakfast of oatmeal and flapjacks, he had a leisurely smoke and pushed on. The day was warm; dust storms swirled up from the east but passed over without causing Lincoln great concern. He was beginning to recover his feel for this country and to react to it instinctively. He found himself scanning the horizon for smoke and signs of Indian occupation as he moved back into what had been Mescalero Apache territory. He saw nothing but just the looking helped him. The road all but disappeared at times, where flash floods had cut it and dust lay inches thick, but he picked it up again without too much trouble.
That evening, as he was gathering firewood, he spotted a jack rabbit emerging cautiously from his burrow. His pistol was in his hand and the rabbit was jerking on the ground almost before Lincoln had time to think about it. The rabbit made good eating and Lincoln rested more comfortably, needing less of the opium and brandy to soothe him to sleep. His plans were simple enough—get to Snakehole, deal with whatever he found there and wait for John Perry.
38
Perry and Kite arrived in Fort Stockton four days after Lincoln left. Perry appraised the town as the coach wound through several side streets, crossed the main thoroughfare and headed towards the depot. The settlement was substantial, with some solid civic buildings and an impressive army barracks set on a hill at the eastern end. It had a sleepy air in the late afternoon but, from the number of banks and saloons, he judged that it was a place where business got done during the day and fun was had at night. He saw a few dark faces—a man driving a grain wagon, another sweeping a yard, a woman pegging out laundry on a line, but he doubted that they would be permitted to remain within the town's precincts at night.
'I've got a bad feeling about this place, Major.'
Kite looked out at a blue-coated soldier stepping back and turning away from a spray of stones from the coach's wheels. 'Appears all right to me. Army town. What's wrong with it?'
'It looks like the sort of town that might have one of those "Nigger, don't let the sun go down on you" kind of signs up someplace.'
'John, what are we doing here?'
'I'm looking for a man.'
'Why?'
'To take back something that doesn't belong to him.'
'Something valuable?'
Perry nodded. 'Very valuable. Worth quite a few thousand dollars.'
'Jesus Christ. A white man, has to be. Holy hell, John, that's just pure trouble no matter what kind of a town you're in.'
'I know. You're going to have to start the ballyhoo the minute we step off this coach, otherwise this nigger'll be run out of town on a rail if he's lucky. Get up a fight, Major, and do it big and quick.'
Technically, prize-fighting was illegal in Texas, but in fact some of the most notable ring battles in America had taken place there. Fort Stockton had been starved of this kind of entertainment for some time and Pierce Kite's announcement in the saloon of the Pecos Hotel that he was the manager of the heavyweight champion of the South Pacific who was challenging all comers for $500 a side created a sensation.
'Where is he?'
'Let's see him.'
'Who's he beat?'
Kite ordered drinks all round and named some of Perry's opponents. He produced some newspaper cuttings and spread them on the bar. One carried a blurry photograph of Perry standing over a fallen opponent. Before any comment could be made, Kite took out his wallet and placed five $100 notes on top of the cutting. 'Mr Perry is a man of colour,' he said. 'From Barbados. He reads books and speaks English better than I do. Any of you don't fancy fightin' him might like to take him on in a spelling competition, I guarantee you'd lose.'
This brought an appreciative laugh from the drinkers.
'As you'll see from these newspaper items, Perry is looking to fight Tom Allen up north for the championship. He figures if he can win fights down south, Philidelphia'll be a pushover.'
Another laugh, but several men in the very interested audience were doubtful. 'You sayin' he
's a nigger?' one asked.
'His father's an English planter in the West Indies,' Kite said, well-drilled by Perry. 'His mother has African blood. He's what's called a British subject.'
'A Britisher's not a nigger.'
'Right!'
'Sure would like to see him match up with that sergeant, Tom Mills. Them soldier boys'd put up the dough for sure.'
Kite singled this speaker out. 'That sounds like a fine idea, friend. I'm an old army man myself. Who's the CO here?'
'Major Lucas Rawlins. A Yankee but not a bad guy.'
'That was my rank. Could be we'd get along. And boxing's good for morale. Can't be much for the army to do now that Cochise is beat.'
Heads were nodded and Kite could feel the idea taking solid hold. He said nothing for a while, ordered another round and let the expectation build. One man offered the suggestion that the fight could take place up at the army barracks, which would get around any objection the sheriff or the magistrates or the parsons might have.
'Just one problem,' Kite said. 'Mr Perry's ready to fight, but where's he going to stay for the few days it'll take to set this up?'
That caused the original group of a dozen or so and the few others who had drifted in for the free drinks and to see what the fuss was about, to fall silent. Kite drove his advantage home. 'I can stay here in the Pecos. Fine hotel by the looks of it, but … '
The bartender, one of the most enthusiastic participants, moved Kite's money aside and looked at the photograph. 'No more'n a high yeller, I'd say. Reckon he could stop at Ma Godfrey's boarding house. She takes Mexicans, long as they're quiet-like.'
Kite shuddered at the thought of how Perry would have received this, but he produced a cigar and offered it to the bartender. 'You're a problem-solver, mister. What this country needs.'
