“You’re off your head. I’m getting out of here. I’m going to get the horses.”
“I’m going to have one last drink.”
“Do what you want. I’m off.”
Bowman hoisted his saddlebags over his shoulder and held his rifle tight against him. At the entrance to the tent, he saw the fat landlord, who was returning accompanied by three armed men. He was standing on tiptoes, trying to spot someone over the crowd of heads.
Bowman crouched down and rushed back to the bar, where he grabbed John Doe’s arm.
“Time to go.”
The Indian remained leaning over the bar and yanked his arm free.
“Don’t touch me, Bowman. I told you, we’re going our separate ways here.”
“Stop fooling around and come with me.”
The landlord and his escort were pushing through the crowd, headed in their direction.
“What are you playing at?”
“Beat it, Bowman. I’ll find you again, one of these days.”
“The landlord wasn’t fooled. You know what’ll happen to you, you bloody idiot? You’ll do another Okipa at the end of a rope, and I’ve never seen a hanged man smile.”
“I’ve done my part, white brother. Just go.”
Bowman tried to drag him from the bar. John Doe turned around and, in a single movement, freed himself from Bowman’s grip and loaded his rifle. For a fraction of a second, his grey eyes met Bowman’s and a wide smile cracked his smooth face.
A few yards away from them, the landlord pointed towards the bar and shouted: “It’s them! Jesus, they’re here!”
The Mandan raised his gun and fired a shot in the air, piercing a hole in the canvas roof. Around him, men scattered, while others cheered. He lowered the barrel of the gun and aimed just above the bellowing landlord’s head. The bullet whistled through the saloon and this time the crowd panicked.
“Go, Bowman! I’ll see you again on the road, somewhere or other.”
John Doe aimed at the ceiling again and fired three shots, shattering some oil lamps and sending them crashing to the ground.
“Come with me. We can still get out of here!”
The Indian no longer heard him. He jumped over the counter, resting his elbow on the bar to aim his rifle. His bullets skimmed close and all the drinkers started screaming, tearing off the cloth doors of the tent in their desperation to escape. The three men who had come in with the landlord fought against this movement, trying to fire back. Bowman ran into the crowd, shoving his way through to the cloth walls, where he took the knife from his belt and sliced the fabric open.
He heard a burst of gunfire before he’d had time to jump into the mud. John Doe was whooping and the bottles and glasses on the shelves behind the bar were exploding. Bowman thought about turning back, but instead he cursed and leapt outside, running all the way to the stable. There, he waited for the grooms to leave so they could see what was going on in the saloon, and when they had gone, he rushed inside and strapped the saddle to Walden’s back. The gunfire continued. He could still hear the sound of rifle shots. He cut the cloth wall of the stable, slicing it in two, climbed on the mustang and rode away.
*
He galloped straight to the mountain, urging the horse up steep slopes and not stopping until the lights of Woodland had disappeared behind him. Avoiding the gold-diggers’ camps, sleeping on his horse, Bowman made his way around Pikes Peak, progressing through ever deeper snow. On the fourth day, after crossing over the mountain and heading back down the northern side, he stopped to spend the night in a forest, above a small town nestled at the bottom of a valley, the only viable passage for continuing on his way. Wearing his raincoat with the collar turned up and his hat pulled down over his head, he entered the empty streets of Idaho Spring the next morning, riding through town without stopping and coming to a crossroads on the other side. He headed towards Mountain City, about fifteen miles away, at a trot, and turned off the road before he reached any houses, leaving the valley behind to ride up the hillier ground.
The pain in his back was getting worse and worse. He came to a halt and curled up against the enormous stump of a redwood, putting his hand under the bandages that he had not changed since separating from John Doe. When his fingers touched it, he cursed: the wound had opened up again and become infected. He emptied his pockets and counted the money he had left. Thirty-seven dollars and a few cents. Bowman also inventoried his ammunition – twenty bullets, plus the sixteen in his gun – and decided to sleep far away from town and to come back the next day to buy the medical supplies he needed. There was still an hour of daylight left before nightfall. Arthur Bowman, trembling with fever, opened his bag and took out his pen and ink.
Alexandra,
I don’t know what day it is or how long ago I left Reunion. A month, maybe two now. Tonight I am hiding on a mountain and I have an infected wound. A man shot at me while I was trying to free some Comanches but they were hanged anyway. Another Indian helped me escape. We separated in Woodland four days ago. He was the strangest man I’ve ever met but we talked quite a lot. Because he went through something that was similar to what happened to me in Burma. He said I wasn’t looking at my past in the right way. That I could be a new man and I thought of you when he said that. I’m sad that he stayed in Woodland, because the people there will finish him off. He was mad and I think that is what he was looking for, but he didn’t deserve to end up like that. I hope he managed to escape. I am walking the earth, as he said, but only to escape and hide because I am a wanted man. I am searching for Peavish and Penders, and the others are searching for me.
I’ve still got a little bit of Brewster’s potion left. I’m keeping it until after my letter, so I can write to you without falling asleep.
Tomorrow I have to go to Mountain City to buy some medical supplies. I hope I won’t have any trouble and that I’ll be able to write to you again.
This reads like a letter written by someone who is going to die. I’m not going to die.
I would have liked to introduce you to my white Indian friend. I told him about Reunion and I said that the Indians should meet people like you.
It’s dark now and I can’t see the paper anymore. For the first time in a long time, I feel alone.
Sleep well.
Beneath the sign announcing the entrance to the town, a sentence had been added: The world’s richest square mile.
Mountain City was abandoned. The lone gold-panners had all left and nothing remained but the gold traders’ empty offices, doors boarded up and shutters closed. The town looked like Woodland after all the tents had been cleared away and all the buildings evacuated. Nature was stealing back its territory in the vast clearing, grass and young trees growing around the derelict constructions. The few tents still standing near shacks were full of Chinamen cooking over campfires. A few carts belonging to white people formed distant, isolated circles, and after stopping here for the night they were already preparing to leave again. Bowman rode past a large pile of broken shovels and pickaxes, rusted pans and ruined sieves. Plants were also beginning to grow on this monument to the memory of gold-panners who had given up and moved on, a cemetery of abandoned tools.
The Chinamen appeared tiny in their tight-shouldered tunics, the sleeves too short and the fabric frayed by work. Pale and thin, they lowered their heads when the horse rider passed them. Only one general store remained open. Bowman tied Walden up in an alley near the shop, walked hesitantly to the door, then stood still before entering, wiping away the sweat that was trickling down his forehead and pulling his hat brim further down towards his eyes. Behind the small counter, standing on a chair, a barrel-hipped woman was decorating a shelf with tins of food. She turned around when she heard the bell ring, greeted the customer, and continued her work. It was hot inside; a large earthenware stove was purring, and Bowman walked slowly past it.
“What can I do for you?”
Bowman cleared his throat.
“I need m
edicine for my horse. He was injured on the rocks and the wound’s getting infected.”
The woman turned around again to observe him. Leaving the tins where they were, she got down from her chair. She was about forty years old, with round pink cheeks and curly blonde hair, and she looked incongruously healthy amid all this decay. She leaned forward and her large breasts overflowed from her low-cut dress.
“You don’t look too good yourself.”
“I caught cold in the mountains.”
She looked at him too insistently and Bowman attempted to divert her attention by turning towards the store’s window.
“So, everyone left?”
She gloomily followed his gaze.
“Yeah, it was like a stampede. A year ago, there were ten thousand people here. Now there’s just a few Chinks and Gregory’s men, but even they don’t come here anymore. They’re at the mine up on the hill, on the Black Hawk road. That’s the last mine that’s still active, apart from a few crazies who are still in the mountains and who might well be dead by now.”
She put some terracotta pots on the counter, unfolded a few newspaper pages, and began to pour a few spoons of powder and seeds into them.
“Business was booming for a few years, but it’s over now. It won’t be long before I sell up, if anyone even wants this pile of planks. Hell, if someone asked, I’d probably give it them for nothing. My husband is buried on the outskirts of town. He got a fever and didn’t want to take anything for it. I don’t need your medicine, he told me, there are customers waiting! Well, those customers all trampled over his grave on their way out of here.”
She folded up the sheets of newspaper.
“For your horse, you boil these flax seeds and spread them on the wound. Twice a day. After three days, you continue with the clay poultices. For you, rub this alcohol on your chest and your forehead before you go to bed. And as we know it doesn’t do anything but everyone believes in it anyway, I’ll put some whiskey in here for you. You boil these herbs three times a day, let them infuse for ten minutes and then swallow it – and try not to think about the taste. Believe me, it’s the most disgusting thing you’ll ever have drunk.”
Bowman opened the bottle of whiskey straight away and drank a mouthful.
“What was I saying? Here’s another one who doesn’t believe in medicine! Well, say hello to my husband as you go by the cemetery. Where are you off to, anyway?”
“California.”
“You don’t say. Get to Denver and out of these mountains as fast as you can, my lad, because the cold will get you if you don’t. Around here, the springtime doesn’t arrive until the summer’s already over. Here, I’ll give you some syrup too. It’s mostly just alcohol, but apparently there are a few plants in it too. On the house.”
“I need bandages too.”
She went into the back room and returned with a sheet, which she bit into pieces, smiling as she stored the strips of cloth in her cleavage.
“I never get a chest cold!”
She burst out laughing.
Bowman handed over three dollars and told her to keep the change.
“The quickest way to Denver?”
“The Gregory mine and then Black Hawk, ten miles from here. After that, it’s all downhill. Sixty miles to Denver.”
Bowman gathered up his purchases.
“Good luck.”
“You too. If your horse wasn’t hurt and I weighed sixty pounds less, I’d jump in the saddle with you.”
She laughed again and Bowman walked over to the door.
“If you’re too cold out there and you change your mind, I’ll be . . .”
She stopped, mid-sentence.
“You’re bleeding like crazy!”
The blood had soaked through the bandages on Bowman’s back, through his shirt and jacket too.
Bowman rushed outside, grimacing as he ran to his horse. He loaded the medicine into his saddlebags and left the town at a gallop that almost made him faint.
Snowflakes fell over Mountain City and the valley filled with fog. As soon as he found a path off the main track, he rode away into the pines, lit a fire, put some water to boil and threw in a few flax seeds. The pain paralysed his neck, and he was so dizzy that he couldn’t stand up. He drank a mouthful of the syrup, followed by some more whiskey, then took off his clothes and began to undo the bandages. The last roll of fabric around his chest was glued to the wound. He took a deep breath and yanked it off. The pain was like a blow to the head and he collapsed on the carpet of pine needles.
When he came to, the water in the pan had evaporated and the flax seeds had burned. He cleaned out the saucepan and started over. He held the blade of his knife in the flames and then, contorting his body, used it as a spatula to spread the poultice over the wound. He wound the strips of cloth around him, put his clothes back on, and threw as many bits of wood and pine needles as he could on the fire without having to move too much. When his shivering was less violent, he got back in the saddle and started to ride again. The mountains were still impracticable and he had to follow the road to the Gregory mine. The fog was getting thicker and at first all he could see was a few scattered shacks. He heard the sound of a river flowing nearby. The snow was starting to settle on the track and the roofs, muffling all noises. He could go through the settlement without being seen. He passed carts and bigger buildings, without glimpsing a single miner. Walden pinned back his ears and moved aside. A man on a horse appeared suddenly, coming forward at a gallop, whipping his mount and not even glancing at Bowman. Bowman had put his hand on the butt of his rifle. He paused until his heartbeat returned to normal, then held the reins more tightly and continued along the path, his senses alert now. The sound of the river grew louder. He rode alongside the rails of a small train track that passed above the roofs. On the track were carts full of ore. He thought he glimpsed something between two hangars. Bowman stopped and listened. Walden was nervous. The mustang snorted and the river drowned out the other sounds, but Bowman was certain he had seen and heard something. He made a U-turn, going under the little viaduct and around the buildings.
*
All the miners were there, under the lights of torches and lamps that glowed in the fog. Perhaps a hundred men, all silent, shoulder to shoulder, massed in a circle around something he couldn’t see. Bowman listened again and started to believe that he was hallucinating, that it was the sound of the water playing tricks on his mind, or that his fever was returning. He got down from the saddle, walked noiselessly along a plank wall and moved closer to the miners. The silence of all these men, gathered in a corner of the deserted mine, made him afraid. He stopped, listening, but could not prevent himself moving further forward. Bowman was now just behind the closest row of miners. Nobody turned around. He put a hand on one of the men’s shoulders and pushed it aside, insinuating his body between those of the men. They stood with their chins on their chests, lips moving, silently repeating the prayer being intoned in the middle of the circle.
Bowman reached the centre. The lamplight illuminated the thick, milky mist. On the snowy ground, a body lay, covered by a blood-soaked sheet.
The cold air made his throat tight. Bowman concentrated on breathing.
It was not an intuition that had made him turn back, and it was not a fever either. It was not Brewster’s passionate attraction or Little Black’s spirits that had led him to guess at the presence of the corpse. Something in him had remembered as he was passing through the mining settlement, a sound mingled with the rush of the river, even before he had seen the lights. A voice.
Bowman tore his eyes away from the corpse and lifted his head, looking for the man who was reciting the prayer. Standing amid the miners, in shabby clothes, as pale as the mist, eyes closed, hands together, Edmund Peavish was intoning an Our Father in the same fragile voice that Bowman had heard for a year from inside his cage. The preacher ended his litany and opened his eyes, contemplating the corpse.
Some miners brought a hand-ca
rt over and loaded the body on it. One scarlet, skinless foot slid out from under the sheet and a man rushed up to cover it.
Peavish lifted his head.
Bowman retreated through the ranks of the miners, returned to his horse, took the Henry from its holster and stood pressed against the wall of the hangar. The cortège of miners moved away, following the hand-cart, torches in hands. Peavish had remained alone, standing where the corpse had been. The sergeant slipped through the mist, passing behind him and watching the preacher’s tall figure for a moment, his head lowered, his narrow shoulders and thin arms, as he prayed over a yard of American earth. Bowman took a step forward and shoved the rifle’s barrel into Peavish’s back.
“Move and I’ll kill you.”
Peavish froze and then slowly, ignoring this order, turned around. The preacher’s face was streaked with little wrinkles. Swollen veins encircled his hollow eyes, and his thin lips trembled, purple with cold. Arthur Bowman felt his legs sway beneath him.
“What are you doing here, preacher? What’s going on?”
The rifle slipped from Bowman’s hands. The preacher’s sunken eyes filled with tears.
“Sergeant?”
Slowly he lifted an arm, hesitated, then put his hand on Bowman’s shoulder.
“You’re here?”
Peavish, a black-and-white ghost in the fog, seemed almost afraid to touch the sergeant, fighting with his reason.
Bowman was paralysed.
“What’s going on, Peavish?”
“Was it you?”
“What?”
“Did you do that?”
Bowman took a step back.
“What are you talking about?”
The preacher leaned his head to the side.
“It’s not you?”
“Peavish, where is Penders?”
“Erik?”
11
Sitting under the awning of a hangar, the two men, numb with cold, could not bring themselves to look at each other. Bowman handed the bottle of whiskey to Peavish. The preacher took a gulp and coughed.
Retribution Road Page 38
