Damnation Road

by Max McCoy

  “Oh, that’s coming out of your hide,” Burns said.

  Gamble cocked the Manhattan and advanced, trying to get a clear shot that wouldn’t endanger the writhing girl.

  A puddle of whiskey had formed beneath the broken bottles, and as it grew it began sending rivulets downhill toward the fire in the stone circle.

  Gamble cursed.

  The whiskey ran between the stones. Suddenly, blue flame was zipping uphill toward the bottles of liquor.

  “Get out of here,” Gamble shouted to Penny Dreadful.

  “No,” she said.

  The liquor ignited with a whump as Gamble followed Burns and the girl outside. The razor had drawn a smear of blood where it touched her neck.

  “Let her go.”

  The lodge was brilliant with the glow of the alcohol fire and flames were shooting from the smoke hole.

  “After I trade her off,” Burns said, “I swear I’m going to come back and show you—”

  He didn’t get the last of it out, because the girl had sunk her teeth into the hand that held the razor. The muscles in her jaws stood out as she bit down, and there was the sound of teeth grinding on bone. The razor fell from his hand into the snow, and Burns cried out.

  With his other hand, he made a fist and struck the girl in the temple. She fell backward, a strip of his skin still between her teeth. Blood welled on the back of his hand and fell in splatters upon the ground.

  “Run,” Gamble said.

  Burns reached out and grabbed a handful of the girl’s long black hair, jerking her back. Gamble took his shot, shattering the man’s wrist apart with a .38-caliber slug.

  Now free, the naked girl ran.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” Buell asked, standing in the snow twenty yards away. He was wearing only his union underwear and a pair of unlaced boots. His stick man and other motley residents of the Porch were arrayed behind him.

  Burns held up the hand which dangled from the ruined wrist.

  “Goddamn you,” he said.

  “I’m sure he will,” Gamble said.

  Then he fired a round into the left side of Burns’s chest. The man staggered backward, his face gone blank with surprise. Then he steadied himself and, as realization came, he fixed Gamble with a wicked stare. He knelt, used his left hand to pick up the razor, then rose. He took a couple of steps toward Gamble, his face glowing with rage.

  Gamble fired two quick shots, the slugs hitting just inches from the first wound. Burns fell over dead in the snow, the razor still in his hand.

  The report from the last gunshot echoed from the side of Lookout Mount, then it became very still. The fresh blood steamed in the snow.

  “That was murder,” Buell said.

  “It was self-defense,” Gamble said, the Manhattan still in his hand. He ejected the three spent shells and replaced them with fresh cartridges from his pocket.

  Gamble glanced around for the girl, but did not see her.

  Then Gamble ran back to the burning lodge and threw the door covering aside. The heat made him shield his face with his arm. He shouted for Penny Dreadful, but there was no response—only the strangely sweet smell of burning flesh.

  He holstered the gun and walked around to the horses. The animals were shuffling and stamping their hooves, trying to move away from the fire. Gamble took his pocket knife and methodically cut the leads that tied each of them to the picket line, starting with the buckskin.

  He saved the chestnut mare for last, leading her far away from the burning lodge. He dropped her lead in the snow, and she stayed there. He retrieved the blanket and saddle and tack from beneath the tarp and then took his time about rigging her up, speaking gently to her as he did.

  “Mister.”

  It was Little Door Woman. She was still naked, her body shivering, but was determinedly pulling the buckskin by the lead rope through the snow. Her neck and chest were splattered with blood.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not my blood.”

  Gamble found another blanket beneath the tarp and threw it around her shoulders, then used a piece of rope to cinch it around her waist. Then he lifted her up onto the buckskin’s back.

  “You can’t walk in the snow in bare feet,” he said. “You’ll lose some toes.”

  “My feet are all right.”

  “I don’t see how. Tear some strips from the blanket and wrap them up. You’ll have to ride him bareback, and guide him with the lead. Can you handle it?”

  “I’m Kiowa,” she said. “Can I come with you?”

  “No,” Gamble said. “I’m going to have people coming after me, and it wouldn’t be safe. You’re responsible for the winter count now, so you have to be careful.”

  “But I want to come with you,” she said.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Gamble said. “I’m an old man.”

  Gamble took a handful of coins from his vest pocket, wrapped the money in a bandanna, and handed it to her.

  “Take this money now,” he said. “No arguments. Nobody should travel without money. And I’ve done it often enough to know.”

  “I thought you liked me.”

  “I do,” Gamble said. “In the way that kinfolks like each other, you know? If I had, say, a girl child, I’d want her to have your kind of—what was that word for power?”

  “Daughw-daughw.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Your kind of daughw-daughw. You’ll do all right, daughter.”

  She smiled.

  “You know which way to town?”

  She pointed to the north.

  “Go find the Methodist Church. They’ll feed you and clothe you and take you back to Fort Sill. You don’t have to pay them. Just tell them you love Jesus and everything will be square.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you think an eagle will really fly around the moon?”

  “Nothing would surprise me,” he said.

  “Me neither.’

  She rode off, not looking back.

  Gamble took his time in saddling the mare, to make sure that none of the denizens of the porch went after Little Door Woman. When he was sure she had gotten away, he knelt down and tightened the cinch strap again. Then he put his left boot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle.

  “Good girl,” Gamble said.

  Then he glanced over the Porch one last time.

  The lodge poles had collapsed and the tipi was just a glowing pile of embers, burning away to nothing. A pillar of black smoke streaked the winter sky. The body of Lester Burns was still facedown in the snow. Buell and the others were milling about on the far side of the burned tipi, watching him.

  “I knew you was bad news the moment I saw you,” the old man called. “You’ll have to answer to the law. Lester Burns was a wicked bastard, but he was one of us.”

  Gamble swung up onto the back of the mare.

  “If you’re so damned law abiding,” he called, “why don’t one of you get a gun and try to stop me?”

  Nobody spoke or moved.

  “I can wait.”

  Still nothing.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “How far do you think you’ll get in fresh snow?” Buell called.

  “Don’t know,” Gamble said. “But I aim to find out.”

  He touched the brim of his hat.

  “Happy New Year.”

  Gamble turned the mare, then put his heels to her sides. She shot forward, toward Oklahoma Territory.

  NINE

  Temple Houston tipped back the wooden chair and crossed his booted ankles on the top of the wooden desk. Folded and tucked into the pocket of his Prince Albert was the morning’s paper.

  “Mind if I see that?”

  Jacob Gamble was on the other side of the desk, his feet flat on the floor, his hands bound by a pair of heavy iron cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes, now cleaned and patched, that he had been arrested in—a white shirt with no collar, a black vest, and dark coat. He took the paper, unfolded it, and put it
on his side of the desktop. The headline screamed in seven-two-point type across all five columns at the top of the front page:

  OKLAHOMA ANSWERS CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS!

  Then, below:

  Troops Being Organized for 1st Volunteer Cavalry Regiment across Oklahoma and Indian Territories—Recruiting Stations at Guthrie, Fort Sill, Muskogee

  And in much smaller type:

  New Mexico, Texas, Also Helping Recruiting Effort.

  “Thinking about joining up?” Houston asked.

  “Why not? I fought the Yankees thirty-five years ago,” Gamble said. “Reckon I could bring myself to kill a Spaniard or two.”

  Houston laughed.

  “Hell, even Fightin’ Joe Wheeler has volunteered for this one, and the old rebel is sixty-two. You’re a young man compared to him.”

  It had been a month after he had related the story of the killing of Lester Burns and being chased along Hell’s Fringe by the German cousins, using up his money and his ammunition in the process. They were in a second-story office down the hall from the federal courtroom in the Herriot Building on the corner of Division and Harrison, where Gamble had been transported by Jailer Joe Miller for an extradition hearing. Miller was waiting outside the closed door while Houston conferred with his client.

  A frenzied version of “Yankee Doodle,” muted by the window glass, was drifting up from the street below, where a war rally was nearing its climax.

  “It’s going to be tough to explain to a territorial jury why you stole a pump-action shotgun from the hardware store and shot it out in the middle of the street instead of surrendering peaceably and going back to Kansas to plead your case,” Houston said.

  “You can try.”

  “Not even I am that good.”

  “You think I should waive extradition to Kansas?”

  “No,” Houston said. “You don’t have a single witness to testify on your behalf, and from what you tell me, several who are eager to bear false witness against you. Truth is only useful if you can prove it.”

  “Then it’s hard time for me.”

  “Yes, if Leedy doesn’t stretch your neck first.”

  Temple slid open the middle door of the desk and began idly rummaging through the contents. He examined a few ink-encrusted nibs and a broken pencil, then threw them back.

  “We’ve got to walk into that courtroom in about ten minutes and tell the judge what we’re going to do,” Temple said. “You know, I once represented a horse thief in your position, and he asked me for my best advice. I opened a window and left the room.”

  “We’re on the second floor.”

  “Yes, that is unfortunate,” Houston said, turning to glance out the window. On the street below, the band had taken up “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” encouraged by a crowd that went from curb to curb.

  “I’m afraid letting another prisoner go like that will land me in the federal prison. The courts don’t have as much of a sense of humor as they used to.”

  “It is a graceless age.”

  “I can’t encourage you to escape,” Houston said, “but I can point out that you have certain advantages that neither Bill Doolin nor Jesse James had. No wife and child to worry about, no other kin to keep you nearby, no gang members to betray you.”

  “No bullet while I stand on a chair to straighten a picture.”

  “The thing that does in most outlaws is that they can’t leave their identities behind,” Houston said. “Used to be, a man could escape to the frontier and become somebody new. Nobody ever asked what your name was in the States. But now, the frontier is gone. Oh, there’s little patches here and there—Arizona, for example, and parts of New Mexico—but to truly escape I think you’d have to leave the country.”

  “Not that fond of it.”

  “How about the Pinkertons?” Houston asked. “They’ve been known to follow somebody overseas and haul them back. Ever had the Pinkertons on your tail?”

  “Never.”

  “So, no Pinkerton file card with your particulars carefully recorded—height, weight, hair and eye color. The Bertillon measurements—the distance from your nose to the tip of the index finger of your outstretched hand, for example. And no mug shots.”

  “Never been photographed at all,” Gamble said. “But what about this?” he asked, pointing a thumb to the eyepatch. “That’s fairly distinctive.”

  “Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable,” Houston said. “I’ll bet nobody around Caldwell, Kansas, can remember for sure whether that patch is over your left eye or your right.”

  “I forget myself, sometimes. It confuses me every time I look into a mirror.”

  “The idea is to go and sin no more,” Houston said.

  “That might be difficult, given my temperament,” Gamble said. He was testing the handcuffs, folding his hands and trying to draw them though the manacles.

  “Billy the Kid could slip his hands out of the cuffs when he wanted to, but his wrists were thick and his hands small,” Gamble said. “I can’t do it.”

  “Pray for a miracle,” Houston said.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “What is it?” Houston called.

  “There’s a visitor to see the prisoner,” Miller called. Houston shot Gamble a questioning look.

  Gamble shrugged.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s his daughter. A breed.”

  “All right,” Houston said, and he put his boots on the floor and smoothed his coat. “Let her in.”

  The door opened and there stood a thirteen-year-old girl in a blue print dress and her dark hair pulled back with a pink ribbon. In her hands she carried a wicker basket.

  “Daughter,” Gamble said.

  “Hello,” Little Door Woman said. “Mother refused to come, but I thought it my duty as a good Methodist to comfort you in your hour of need. After all, no matter what you have done, I simply can’t disown you—I pray for your wicked soul every day.”

  “Perhaps I should leave you two alone,” Houston said.

  “That would be a kindness,” Gamble said.

  “Yes, that’s all right,” Miller said. “I checked the basket—sandwiches and some fruit. But remember, you only have a few minutes before you have to go before the judge.”

  “I understand,” the girl said, stepping into the room after Houston had stepped out. “This won’t take long.”

  “If you need anything, I’ll be right here,” Miller said. “All you have to do is shout.”

  “Of course. Thank you, sir.”

  Miller pulled the door closed.

  “Surprised?”

  “You could knock me over with a feather,” Gamble said in a low voice. “How’d you find me?”

  “I can read,” she said, placing the basket on the desk. “It’s been in all the newspapers about your hearing today, and about the shootout with the bounty hunters. So, I took my Jesus clothes and slipped away from the reservation. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll go back, but I figured it was best if nobody knew where I was.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of this,” she said, hitching up her skirt to reveal a wicked-looking skinning knife in a beaded sheath she had strapped to her thigh with rawhide.

  “Sorry it’s not a gun,” she said, untying it. “Tried to get one, but they’re expensive, and then I tried to steal one, and nearly got caught. So it’s this old knife.”

  “I’ll make it work,” Gamble said, taking the knife and sheath into his manacled hands and tucking them into his shirt front. “Now, you had better get out of here, because things are going to happen right quick. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do if they catch you.”

  “They won’t,” she said, taking the basket. “All Indians look the same to them. Oh, don’t forget—there really is food in here.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Little Door Woman.”

  “Seems to me you already have.”

  Gamble reached in and took one of the sandwiches.
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br />   “For later,” he said. “Now, take off. Walk easy until you hit the street, and then you run—and don’t stop until you’re back on the reservation.”

  “They’ll hunt you.”

  “It’s what they do,” Gamble said. “Now, go.”

  She nodded.

  “Sir!” she called.

  After a moment’s pause, Miller swung open the door.

  “Thank you,” she said, clutching the basket with one hand and wiping a tear away with the other. “This was difficult, but it was the right thing to do.”

  “Certainly,” Miller said.

  “God bless you,” she said, and walked past him into the hall, then turned smartly and walked toward the stairs.

  “Where’s Houston?”

  “Already in the courtroom, waiting,” Miller said, motioning for Gamble to come out. “I hope you have seen what effect your actions have had on that sweet little girl.”

  “Oh, I have,” Gamble said.

  “Finish that before we get into the courtroom.”

  Gamble took a bite out of the corner of the sandwich. It was sourdough and cheese, with a sweet pickle that crunched satisfactorily in the middle.

  Miller locked the door to the office, and then motioned for Gamble to lead the way down the hall to the big double doors that entered into the courtroom. Gamble started down the hall at a leisurely pace. He brought both hands up for another bite, but the sandwich slipped out of his fingers just before he could get it to his mouth.

  “Sonuvabitch.”

  “Leave it,” Miller said.

  “Can’t leave it in the hall in front of the courtroom,” Gamble said. “Somebody’s going to slip on it.”

  “You pick it up then.”

  Gamble held up his cuffed hands.

  “I’m a mite challenged here, or I wouldn’t have dropped it in the first place.”

  “Oh, all right,” Miller said, getting his handkerchief out of his pocket. He bent down to retrieve the sandwich. Suddenly, Gamble threw his arms around his neck. In his left hand was the old skinning knife with its gleaming curved edge.