“What do you mean, they want to gallop?”
“This part of the land is theirs. Many of them were born here.”
Bowman smiled.
“What are you on about?”
He had not finished asking his question when the two horses began stamping on the ground. He got back in the saddle and felt Walden’s muscles trembling between his legs. The Indian jumped on his horse.
“Brother Bowman, do not touch the reins.”
Bowman clung to the pommel.
After three days of detours and precautions, the horses set off at a fast gallop, tracing a perfectly straight line through the night, faster than trains, not even slowing down when the land began to climb. John Doe looked up at the sky and spread his arms wide. Bowman let go of the pommel with one hand, and then with the other, opening his arms to feel the air on his body.
He yelled:
“When will they stop?”
Little Black burst into laughter.
The air grew colder as they climbed up through the woods. The horses went their separate ways, each following its own itinerary for a while before coming back together, leaping over a stream, running through thick-grassed clearings. The riders picked up the reins again and finally slowed them down. John Doe led them to an overhang, a rocky mass suspended like a jawbone over the void, its peak covered with high grass, between pine trees with their roots in the stone. They removed the packs from the horses’ backs and let them graze. They did not light a fire, knowing that it would soon be daylight. When Bowman woke, the shadows cast by the pine branches were dancing on his face and the sweet smell of resin filled his nostrils. He stretched out to the limits of his pain, feeling rested and breathing calmly.
The Indian was not there.
Bowman picked up his rifle and walked to the edge of the peak, searching for the source of the noises he could hear. Below him, in the valley, a convoy of carts was following a track past a waterfall. The bells on the cattle and the yells of the drivers rose up to him and, at the same time as the uninterrupted procession of pioneers, lifting his head, he discovered Pikes Peak and its still-snowy summit. The mountain was a few dozen miles away, towering over the first foothills of the Rocky Mountains. In the distance, to the east, he saw the desert plains he had crossed with John Doe. All around him lay the green mountain, crisscrossed with rivers, where high-altitude flowers were blooming.
Bowman did not hear the Indian arrive. When he turned around, John Doe was just behind him, smiling, a young pronghorn draped over his shoulders. They lit a fire, chopped up the animal, putting the quarters aside to dry and smoke, and putting a thigh on a stake over the flames to grill it for breakfast. The two men swallowed the meat in small mouthfuls, trying not to eat too much after all those days of hunger. When they were full, John Doe took a handful of cranberries, slightly sweet and sour, from his pocket. Bowman opened the bottle of whiskey and they shared the last few drops.
“Are they all going to Pikes Peak?”
“The first big camp on this side is Woodland. Maybe it’s become a town since my last visit? The biggest camps are on the other side, on the northern slope, where they found the first gold. Idaho Spring, Black Hawk, Mountain City and, over towards the plain, Denver. The deposits are starting to run dry, and there are more and more people working the same lodes. Concessions are more expensive and gold is rarer. The money has already been made. These men are going there for the crumbs, or because they took too long to get here.”
They sat with their feet in the void, watching the incessant ballet of immigrants climbing the mountain. After the rocky plains and the company of snakes, this absurd transhumance gave the impression that the world had become too small.
Bowman had imagined Pikes Peak as a huge bare rock in the middle of a desert, covered in men with pickaxes. Pikes Peak was a majestic and peaceful mountain, the southern gateway to the Rockies, transformed into an anthill by gold-diggers whipping their cattle while, above them, the lodes were almost exhausted.
“If your brothers are mad, Bowman, it won’t be easy to find them among all these others.”
Bowman smiled and tossed a stone into the void, watching it crash down the slope before coming to a stop in the grass.
“I don’t want to make it sound like I believe in your spirits, Indian, but them and me, we will always find each other.”
Little Black smiled at him.
“Let’s just call it luck then.”
“Yeah, amazing bloody luck.”
John Doe patted his shoulder.
“We must prepare the meat. We’ll need plenty in reserve for the journey. We can leave tomorrow morning.”
*
At sunset, the anthill changed into a volcano. The lanterns on the carts looked like thin lava flows at the bottom of the valley, accumulating in bright craters as the pioneers came together and lit their campfires. The entire mountain was scattered with points of light, sketching a galaxy of yellow stars, an ephemeral mirror of those in the sky above. The sound of singing and musical instruments, distorted by the wind and the shape of the land, reached the two men lying in their rocky nest.
“Brother Bowman, we must go our separate ways at Woodland.”
Bowman laughed softly.
“So you decided together, you and the white?”
“Our meeting was good. It is the reward for those who travel alone. But I must also continue on my way.”
Bowman tried to think how to respond, but he couldn’t put into words what he wanted to say to John Doe.
“Thank you.”
The white Indian replied in his native language. Bowman did not understand.
Bowman took Brewster’s flask from his pocket.
“In England, I used to smoke opium when I wanted to end my nightmares. Over here, an old man gave me this. It stops pain, but it also has plants that make you dream. That old man, he lived in a town called Reunion, which he’d built with other immigrants. A town where they were all trying to be happy together. Maybe those are the whites you should have met, the ones who could have listened to you. There was a big communal house in the middle of their town. You couldn’t even run around it now because it doesn’t exist anymore. Their dream is at the bottom of this bottle now.”
The Indian sat facing Bowman. He took the bottle from him, drank some of the potion, and handed it back to the Englishman.
“Our village, too, had a big hut where we all came together.”
Little Black, sitting cross-legged, smiled and closed his eyes.
Bowman leaned against his saddle and watched the gold-diggers’ fires as they were born and died out in the valley. Following the lines and the dots, after a few minutes he began to make out shapes, patterns that altered with his thoughts. A strand of red hair, the fire in the abandoned house reflecting from old Brewster’s glasses, the brightness of the sun rising over the Trinity River when he arrived in Reunion at dawn.
The Indian began to sing.
10
All day long, staying in the highlands, following the ridge paths, they advanced towards the snow-covered mountain. They walked a few hundred yards above the line of carts before having to descend to the valley. Located at the foot of Pikes Peak, in the middle of a brown circle of cleared forest, Woodland was not yet a town, merely a vast stretch of tents, set up close to one another, without much logic that could be seen from this distance.
Crouching in the grass of a steep clearing, Bowman and the Indian observed the camp, holding the horses’ bridles. John Doe smiled inscrutably as he chewed a root.
“I bet Reunion doesn’t look like that.”
“At least they had planks to make coffins for the last inhabitants. Here, they probably just throw you to the pigs when you’re dead.”
John Doe slid his rifle from its holster and loaded the magazine. Bowman watched him do it, then picked up the Henry, used the lever to open it, listening to the gun’s mechanism, and loaded it. Sixteen bullets.
He climbed into the
saddle and the Mandan came over to him.
“Indians don’t shake hands. That may be the only thing we should have learned from you. Unfortunately, so many lies were sealed by a handshake that we have become reluctant to adopt this tradition. It should only be done between friends.”
Little Black held out his left hand. Bowman did the same, wrapping his three remaining fingers around the Indian’s four.
“You’re not going into town?”
“I have no intention of missing that, but I would rather say goodbye here. Oh, and one last thing: when we’re down there, let me do the talking. You may be white, but you don’t know these places.”
“I shouldn’t say anything?”
“Just be yourself. You scare people and I’ll do the talking.”
John Doe spurred his horse, and Bowman urged Walden into a gallop behind him.
*
Woodland was like a cross between the Pueblo pioneers’ camp and the Paterson ranch in construction, but its atmosphere was closer to the frenzy of St Louis, multiplied tenfold. There were ten times more alcohol vendors, ten times more shops, ten times more whores and preachers. The camp was growing as fast as the lumberjacks could cut down trees. There was no time to build anything with more than one storey, and most of the dwellings were merely tents of various sizes, including saloons big enough to hold two hundred customers. The streets were rivers of mud and the carts sank down in them to their axletrees.
Outside the few permanent constructions, made with wood and nails, armed men stood guard. The traders’ offices. Along with the gold merchants, the most flourishing businesses were those that sold gold-extracting equipment. Pickaxes, shovels, sieves and pans arrived on carts and were piled up in their hundreds inside the tent shops. While some men came out of these tents with new equipment, others went in to sell their old gear. The ambience in this mining town was febrile but not happy, tense rather than serious, and definitely more aggressive than welcoming.
Among all those who’d had no luck, the few men with gold to spend were easily spotted, and Woodland existed purely to empty their pockets as quickly as possible. To the music played by orchestras under the tents, the fortunes of a season of gold-digging were squandered on drinks for everyone, and the last night in a dry bed, before going back to work the lode, was paid for on credit. The landlords of the bars, the pimps and the pickaxe-sellers had hired bouncers who worked calmly but steadily, picking up drunkards by their belts and gently throwing them outside, while those who put up any resistance were thrown a little harder and further, landing in the mud.
When they decided on a saloon that also offered rooms, girls, first-class steaks, cold beer, gold-panning equipment, second-hand guns and a stable for the horses, Bowman felt reassured that his Indian companion could pass for a white man. The dominant emotion in Woodland was not gold fever but disappointment, numbed by large quantities of alcohol. The presence of a redskin at the bar was probably the worst news for these luckless gold-diggers.
There was still room to move around inside the tent, a sign that the busy period had not yet arrived. They asked for two rooms and the landlord led them to the dormitories, telling them that they would have to share one.
“There’s not enough space for everyone in this shithole, so you’ll have to squeeze up. And pay in advance.”
Under a roof that offered no shelter from sunshine or rain, bits of cloth hung down from ropes: these were the walls. On the floorboards full of holes lay some dirty sheets, sewn together and stuffed with hay: these were the beds. Even for the modest sum of fifteen cents per guest, it was daylight robbery.
“Where do we put our things?”
For ten cents each, their personal belongings would be securely guarded in the saloon’s special room: another space with cloth walls, watched over by a bearded old man armed with a flintlock rifle and a bottle.
“So if someone steals my things from here, can I be reimbursed in fat from your belly?”
John Doe smiled and the landlord, who was indeed rather plump, burst out laughing, “In that case, take the advice of a friend, gentlemen, and look after your own things. It’ll save you twenty cents, and if you buy a drink, I’ll give you the next one free.”
The landlord shooed a few barflies away from the counter – the only solid piece of furniture in the entire saloon – and poured them two whiskies.
“Is this the good stuff?”
“There’s always something better, sir, but it’s not what we give the Indians, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
John Doe laughed along with the landlord and drained his glass. The barman glanced down discreetly at the hands of the two men, the one with tanned skin and the big one with a scar on his forehead.
“You don’t look like gold-diggers. What brings you here?”
“We work for the Bent and St Vrain.”
Bowman nodded, silent, and lifted his glass.
“And what are good folks like you doing in our mountains?”
“We’re looking for someone. Two men, in fact. English.”
John Doe had leaned his head down as he spoke, giving a mysterious look from under the brim of his hat.
“Why are you looking for them?”
Doe stared at the landlord with his grey eyes.
“We have to take them back to Bent’s Fort. If possible.”
The landlord filled their glasses without being asked.
“I know everyone here. If I get you some information, will there be anything in it for me?”
“Maybe.”
“What have they done, your Englishmen?”
The Mandan looked around him and spoke even more quietly.
“They set fire to carts and they tried to help some prisoners escape.” The man puffed his cheeks out.
“Jesus Christ, the ones who wanted to free those four Indians? The ones who killed two men in Bent? Everyone’s talking about that round here. There’s even a detachment of cavalry who came through here a week ago, looking for them. You’re too late, lads!”
Bowman and Doe exchanged a look. The landlord generously served them a third glass.
“Hell, I didn’t know it was Englishmen. Doesn’t surprise me, though. There’s only them and those French bastards who associate with redskins. Say, is it true they cut the heads off pioneers? I heard they massacred a whole family, women and children, down near the Mexican border.”
“Are there any Englishmen in town at the moment?”
“Yeah, there’s always some hanging around here.”
Bowman tried to mask his London accent, imitating John Doe’s speech patterns.
“There’s one who’s pretending to be a preacher. Tall man, with black hair and no teeth. The other’s a big blond man.”
“Well, there’s no shortage of preachers or blonds here. Are they travelling together?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll ask around.”
The saloon was filling up. By the time they left, it was packed solid and night had fallen.
Woodland was in a frenzy. Under each lantern hung to a tent, groups of men crowded around to drink, their feet in the mud, exchanging information on the latest lodes or gambling their earnings in poker games. Most of them had abandoned gold-panning on their own account and were working for the large mining companies. Bowman and the white Indian mingled with the crowds, moving from one bar to the next, seeking out groups of Englishmen. They put their saddlebags at their feet by the counters, rifles on their shoulders, and ordered drinks while listening to the conversations around them, asking a few questions about where the pioneers were headed to, where they were coming from, if there was a Methodist preacher among them. Many were not planning to stop in the Rocky Mountains, but were simply passing through, via Wyoming and the Oregon path, on their way to California. Once they got here, it didn’t take them long to realise it was over, or even that it had never begun, and that only the companies now had the means to hire and finance extraction. So they left Pikes
Peak, swapping the gold of the mountains for the sunshine of the West, the dream of fortunes buried under the earth for that of idyllic farms by the Pacific Ocean.
They hung around in the camp for several hours, accruing no useful information but tons of stories that all seemed like versions of a single story, sharing the same departures and arrivals, the same difficulties and determination. The alcohol made John Doe increasingly taciturn and aggressive. By the end of the night, he was hardly speaking at all anymore, so it was down to Bowman to ask the questions. The night wore on, and the greatest tenacity of all these brave souls was revealed in their unwillingness to go to bed. The two men headed back to the main saloon, the Indian still sure of himself but staring around him with malice in his eyes.
“We should leave, sleep in the mountains. We’ll be better off up there than in this filthy room, and I’m not going to find anything here.”
John Doe’s voice was altered by the whiskey, slow and slurred:
“I have to spend some time with my kind. Go to the mountain, Bowman. I’m going to stay with the whites.”
“I’m not leaving without you.”
“You scared of being alone, brother?”
“It’s you I’m worried about. Where has Little Black gone? I think he’s the one I need to talk to.”
“When I’m with whites, he doesn’t come out. He hides because he’s a coward.”
“You’ve got too much Dutch courage. You’re going to get us in trouble.”
“I want to drink another glass with my white brothers. After that, we can go and hide out in the mountains if you want.”
Bowman went with him into the saloon. John Doe stood at the entrance to the big tent, brought a hand to his mouth and gave a wild yell, an Indian horseman’s shrill war cry. Half of the drinkers in the bar turned around. The Indian took off his hat, revealing his black hair, then made a sort of wobbly bow and smiled.
“Good evening, civilisation!”
A few people laughed. Slowly, faces turned away and John Doe walked through the room to the counter. The landlord was no longer there. Another barman served them drinks. People around were still observing them, and Bowman downed his whiskey quickly.
Retribution Road Page 37
