Sudden Country

by Loren D. Estleman

  Panther was worse at dawn. When I helped him to his feet he was barely conscious, and although he had not bled through his bandages, his forehead was hot, indicating that the fever was in his blood. Helping him aboard our bleary-eyed mount, I knew that he would not survive another night without medical help.

  For what it was worth, I now knew how to get back to where I had left Mr. Knox and the rest. Whatever his shortcomings as a Union Army paymaster, Orrin Peckler was an able cartographer and had faithfully recorded the landmarks that surrounded us on his makeshift map. With the sun’s position as my guide I turned the horse’s head to the southwest, and with my arms around the sagging Indian and grasping the mane, and using my knees and heels, started us along the path of least resistance. For sanity’s sake I did not allow myself to think about what we might–or might not–find at the end of our journey.

  The day was blistering. I had had the foresight to bring along the water bag, but even so we stopped often in the shade of the pines to cool our bodies and let the horse blow. Panther was now alert, now nearly comatose. He was actually easier to manage in the latter state, for when his senses were about him he would argue that we were headed in the wrong direction for salvation, that I must give up my friends as lost and set a course for Standing Rock. I knew not where Standing Rock was or how long I could depend upon him to guide me, and so I ignored his protests. Fortunately, he hadn’t the strength to override me.

  Or perhaps unfortunately; but again I am outdistancing myself.

  The sky was broad and blue and polished painfully bright. High above the hills an eagle (I preferred not to think it was a vulture) slid between clouds upon spread wings, flapping them now and again only to climb higher before diving hundreds of feet into the next updraft–mocking, it seemed to me, our ants’ progress along the uneven ground. Other, lesser birds whistled and squawked in the trees and squirrels repelled down the trunks and scudded across the forest floor with the noise of crashing elk. The plenitude of the game, unarmed as I was, served only to remind me of the gnawing in my stomach. I began to think nostalgically about Mother’s sickbed soup.

  Mother. What was she doing now back in Panhandle? If it was Monday, she would be washing the linen and airing out the mattresses; Tuesday, scouring the floors with the harsh soap that bleached the boards and made her knuckles swell and crack; Wednesday, shopping in town for the corned beef whose fat melted like butter on the tongue and milk by the pail, still foaming from the cow’s heat, and if there was a boarder, canned peaches or apricots, served chilled from the icebox and so sweet they hurt the teeth; Thursday or Friday, the windows; Saturday, sewing, her fingers working as fast as any bobbin as she replaced buttons, repaired rents, pieced together my shirts and the dresses she fashioned from bright prints to look her, prettiest for the male roomers she admired; Sunday, coming back from church to fill the house with the warm sunny smell of baking bread. I smelled it now, and I saw her face, and unashamedly I wept, the boy who would be a man, stranded in strange country with a dying Indian and an ancient horse and a numbness inside that passed for hope.

  I felt loneliest when our way took us through forest so deep that nothing grew and consequently no animals lived, where the dense trunks did for night and silence spread around us like a brackish pool. My skin, so recently slick with sweat, grew cold and clammy and I shivered uncontrollably. The horse sensed my unease and shied from the sound of its own hoofbeats. I took what heat I could from Panther, who by then was burning up with fever and muttering deliriously in his semiconscious state. Of what he spoke I was for the most part ignorant, for it was mainly in a language that I assumed was Sioux. Once only did he raise his voice clearly in English, and I wished that he had not, because the words left me colder than the forest shadows.

  “The white man’s road,” he said, “is the way to death.” After that he lapsed back into his native tongue.

  The sun was growing rusty when we passed out of a narrow cleft between hills whose steep faces rose like cliffs on either side and into a clearing I recognized with my insides before my mind caught up. The horse recognized it too, and the memory was not good, because it threw up its head and whistled through its nostrils and tried to rear. Its old muscles were not equal to its heart, however, and before it could pitch us off I slid to the ground and brought Panther tumbling down with me, breaking his fall as best I could with my own body. He sank down with a grunt. I made sure, first, that he was still breathing, then that he was in a relatively comfortable position in the tall grass, and turned to try and soothe the big drayhorse. Clearly my priorities were in faulty order. It had wheeled and was retreating the way we had come at a gallop several times faster than I had managed to get it into thus far. It would not stop running until it was safely back in its own stable.

  The animal’s panic had not been entirely the result of memory. When with an air of resignation I turned back to see to the Indian, I saw, not thirty yards away, what at first appeared to be a pile of discarded clothing lying, as Panther was lying, in the grass. I knew long before I got to it that it contained the remains of a man.

  Dignity in death is a civilized invention. There is no place for it in the wilderness. What Lives Again’s braves had started in their superstitious determination to handicap a despised enemy on his way to the Happy Hunting Ground, the wolves, coyotes, and carrion birds had finished. But for his clothes I would not have recognized Aintchell, the former prison guard mortally wounded in his attempt to overpower Mike McPhee just before the Indian attack. My stomach crawled, but it did not turn over. Scant weeks before–even days–it might have; but the boy who had wept for his mother that same day could spare no bile for the dead in a place where all his energy was required to keep from joining them. Still, I whispered a prayer for Aintchell’s soul. He had been true whatever his motives, and it seemed unlikely that Deacon Hecate had had time to do as much for him.

  A wider search disclosed another heap of bones and sinew whose soiled and tattered garments I identified as those of Mike McPhee. Someone, either an Indian or one of my own retreating party, had relieved the corpse of its weapons, even going so far as to pluck Aintchell’s knife from between its ribs. The skull grinned through gristle that had been the Irishman’s face.

  For his soul I wasted not a breath.

  Everywhere were signs of upheaval: torn grass, trampled brush, rusty patches where men had bled. My head ached and I sought to relieve the pressure by unwinding Mad Alice’s bandage, wincing when it tore away from the gouge in my right temple. I touched the spot gingerly. It was roughly two inches in length and formed a perfect groove. I have it still, also the headache whenever rain threatens.

  The light was going. I left off the investigation to comfort my companion. He had ceased babbling and I thought at first, with a shameful mixture of grief and relief that I had lost him. But when I placed the back of my hand against his lips and waited, I felt his breath, faint and hot with fever. He was clinging to life as desperately as his people had fought to keep their land. I made my bed next to his and huddled close to keep him warm, for I knew something about shock–a legacy of Mother’s infatuation two years earlier with a boarder who had left medical school to practice veterinary science, badly.

  I did not sleep. The air was biting cold and hunger was a feral thing clawing my stomach from inside. I heard the rustling of wildlife and wondered if the scavengers that had ravaged the remains of Aintchell and McPhee would return for us. Among these considerations wound the mystery of what had become of Mr. Knox and Judge Blod and the Deacon and all the rest. It was as if a great wind had swept them from the face of the earth. Were they dead, or had the savages taken them away, wagons and all, to divide the provisions among themselves while watching the torture of their captives? After what seemed hours of this I left Panther sleeping and took a moonlight walk; as if that would induce weariness better than a full day’s flight.

  The sky was cloudless and the landscape was washed in pale light. Remembering a thi
ng that the scoundrel Black Ben Wedlock had told me, I continued in a straight line, picking out such landmarks as a shelf of fallen shale and a deformed young pine and walking from one to the next. The steady rhythm of my footsteps was mesmerizing, sponging disturbing thoughts from my mind. I even managed to forget the pain in my head.

  I was planning to turn around and go back when I came out of a copse of seedling spruce and knew that I was not walking at all, and that in fact I had not left my bed beside the Indian and was asleep and dreaming.

  The man who lives long enough will see many beautiful sights if he keeps his eyes open, and I imagine that I have seen most of mine. But for sheer soaring joy I cannot recall one to compare with three patched and sagging wagons arranged in a rough triangle at the base of a grassy slope not two hundred yards from the clearing where I had found the two bodies. I stopped walking and rubbed my eyes and blinked, hardly daring to do so for fear the mirage would fade. It did not, and the next thing I knew I was running.

  “Mr. Knox!” I shouted, fairly flying as I approached the wagon I knew to be his. “Judge Blod! Deacon!” From that day to this I have never felt so light and unbound by the laws of God and nature.

  And then I was bound indeed.

  Suddenly I was no longer running. Pain seared me as from a sudden sheet of flame, my legs flew out in front of me, and I sat down hard on the base of my spine, losing my wind and my senses. Then they returned, bringing agony with them. I could not move my arms and looked down blurredly to note that I was wrapped several times around by a strip of rounded leather, at its broadest as thick as my thumb and tapering to a frazzled tip that dangled below my chin like a visible taunt. The other end was clenched in a fist belonging to a lean man standing over me with the moon at his back so that I could not see his face. I did not need to. When he spoke, his nasal whine belonged to the demon of my nightmares.

  “Well, hell,” said Nazarene Pike. “It sure is scrawny, but ain’t it worth keeping?” And over his shoulder: “Beacher! Fetch Black Ben.”

  Chapter 20

  RED CLOUD’S MEDICINE

  Briefly I saw the face of the man whom Pike had addressed as Beacher, and recognized the bland features and sandy moustache of the man I had observed boarding our train in Denver. He said something in those melodious tones I had first heard through my window overlooking the scene of Jotham Flynn’s death; then he disappeared, to return moments later in the company of that ogre of the branded face and Dresden glass eye, that fair-haired hulk who spoke of grand adventure even as he plotted mean deceit, the proprietor of the Golden Gate and keeper of the Great Lie–thief, mentor, cheat, cook, murderer, storyteller, and hound–Benjamin Franklin Wedlock. He had dressed in haste, pulling braces on over underwear, and despite the gray hairs caught in the vee of the rough cotton, the torso beneath was hard and fit. When he saw me he smiled, showing his fine teeth. It seemed to me that there was great relief in the expression; but I knew of his duplicitous heart and placed no credit in it.

  “Davy, lad, we had your scalp gone by this time for sure. How’d you make away?”

  “The story is as long as any of yours,” I snapped, “but mine is not an insult to truth. Where are Mr. Knox and the others? What have you done with them?”

  “Cheeky little bastard.” Pike gave his bullwhip a vicious yank. I fell on my side.

  “Let him go,” ordered Wedlock.

  “Little son of a bitch near got me lynched in Armadillo. I’ll let him go, all right–with my saddle rope around his neck.”

  Wedlock drew his big Remington from his trousers and cocked it. “Pike, you’re the only man I’d say a thing to more than once.”

  There was a short silence. Others had joined us, in varying stages of undress, including Christopher Agnes, Blackwater, and the Negro, Eli Freedman. Finally Pike cursed and let the whip go slack. The coils unwound with a hiss. I sat up, putting a hand to my pounding head.

  “That’s a nasty-looking crack,” said Wedlock, putting away his weapon. “I got a Sioux remedy can draw the sting.”

  The word “Sioux” brought me back to Panther’s plight. “The policeman from Standing Rock needs it more than I. I left him in the clearing where the attack took place. He is infected and feverish.”

  “My snakes are better company,” volunteered Christopher Agnes.

  Wedlock said, “Your pards was all of a piece last we seen them, Davy. Bald Jim kilt the injuns’ chief and they picked up their dead and cleared off. Wasn’t a minute later old Deacon Hellfire told us we had to give up our guns if we wanted to stick. Well, we was sort of unbalanced with McPhee cold as wet rock; but then Pike and Beacher showed on the high ground and got the drop on the Deacon. We traded him and the others their scalps for the wagons and supplies. They’re out there somewhere. If it means a thing, I don’t expect they’d of folded their cards so quick if they didn’t think the injuns had kilt you and carried you off to make a soup bowl out of your skull. Took their hearts out, that did; Knox’s anyway. It was just a question of odds to Holy Joe, and what guts the Judge has wouldn’t fill a shot glass.”

  “They are all right?” I suspected the old raider of lying even in this.

  “Knox nicked a finger and the Judge took a ball through his hat and after that he didn’t smell so good, but they both come out ahead of Bald Jim, him with a busted collarbone from when that chief he kilt hit him with a old Henry while he was going down. We buried young Tom. That big Swede Dolly taken one in the meaty part of his leg and I don’t know about Will Asper. God-wallopers like the Deacon just shed lead like boiler plate.”

  “You just turned them out without horses or provisions?”

  “Would of, if anyone listened to me.” Pike’s eyes were evil in his rodent’s face.

  “We let Knox and the Deacon cut out their mounts and gave them tins and water. Two men to a horse and one walking should slow them down if they’re admiring to run for help. I only kill men straight up, Davy.”

  “Like you killed Elder Sampson?”

  He looked hurt. I could not help thinking that the stage had lost a consummate actor when Ben Wedlock took to banditry. “I never wanted it that way. Why a man would put gold ahead of his own skin is beyond me.”

  “What about Corporal Panther? Is he to die too?”

  “Injuns got no business living in the first place,” said Pike. “Nor fresh-mouth brats neither.”

  But Wedlock was rubbing his chin. “You say he’s infected?”

  “He is out of his head with fever.”

  “I might could help him. But if I do, I’ll need your word you won’t bolt.”

  Pike said, “What do we need him for? Slit his throat and let the buzzards have them both.”

  “The gold, you poor dumb bastard. The boy’s Knox’s charge. He’ll give up Flynn’s map to have him back of a piece.”

  “There ain’t no map. Knox swore to it with that hogleg of yours looking him square ‘twixt the eyes.”

  “He knew if he gave it up it was boot hill for the lot of them. The boy’s another thing. These brave ones will do for someone else’s life what they’d never do for their own. He’ll trade.”

  “That’s why you let them go!” I cried. “You thought they’d lead you to Quantrill’s gold!”

  He fixed me with his good eye. “It’s why we’re here, Davy. It’s what we do. What’s your answer? I got no reason to help the injun if it’s no.”

  There was nothing for it. Every second I delayed counted against Panther. I said, “You have my word. I won’t try to escape.”

  “What good’s that?” Pike demanded. “He’ll be over the hill soon as you turn your back.”

  “I say he won’t. And the last time I looked, what I said was the way things was. How was it the last time you looked, Pike?”

  They were standing close now, so that Wedlock was looking almost directly down at the rat-faced man from his superior height. However, his greater size was not what carried the moment. Pike looked away suddenly, and in tha
t instant I felt something of what I had felt in Jotham Flynn’s presence when, so long ago, I had heard the name Black Ben for the very first time. There would be no rebellion that day.

  Wedlock dispatched Blackwater and Christopher Agnes in one of the wagons to bring back Panther. Rising, I followed him to the chuck wagon; where he filled a tin cup from the water barrel and handed me a hard cake the size of a saucer. It was both grainy and greasy to the touch.

  “Pemmican,” he explained. “We’re keeping a cold camp. Eat it. It tastes a heap better than it feels.”

  I was too hungry to refuse. It crumbled in my mouth when I bit into it, a surprisingly sweet morsel comprised of animal fat and berries that seemed to melt upon my tongue. I ate the rest of it and drank off the cup’s contents. He watched me, wonder in his eye.

  “You was a pretty sight sitting there on the ground, Davy. We figured it was just a question of whether they took you back to make medicine bags out of your hide or the coyotes got what was left. Knox, he looked thirty years older. What happened?”

  My spirits were brightened somewhat by food and Panther’s rescue. In any case, I was bursting to tell the story, even if it was to a brigand. I did so, consuming another pemmican cake and cup of water in the process.

  “Mad Alice,” he said when I had finished.

  “I thought she was bones by now. The injuns said she was here when the Wise One Above built the hills. Even Red Cloud–”

  “Can you really help Panther?”

  He frowned. “I picked up a thing or two. Depends on how far gone he is and how deep down his guts go. Set some store by him, do you?”

  “He is as he represents himself,” I said.

  The edge in my voice was not lost upon Wedlock. “I near lost my skin for that gold in ‘63, lad. I paid for it with my eye and eighteen months rotting in Elmira. It’s more mine than anybody’s and I’ll have it if it means a swap with Old Nick.”