“On the road, there’s only one name on people’s lips, Sergeant: yours.”
“Stop saying that. I’m not like him.”
Peavish raised his bottle. The alcohol disgusted him, but he kept drinking.
“If you’re asking me not to feel compassion for him, I’ll have to stop feeling it for you too.”
“You should go back to preach in your churches, Peavish. You’re not cut out for this job.”
Bowman turned on his heel and walked away.
“You’re wrong, Sergeant. I won’t give up. But you won’t be able to escape this logic.”
“What logic?”
“The sequence that began when you chose me on board the Joy.”
The preacher lay down and rested the bottle on his belly.
“That was my first scar. Bufford’s knife wound.”
Bowman looked over at the track. It was too late to start riding again today. The two men remained where they were, sipping the whiskey until it was all gone and falling asleep drunk, with dry mouths and heavy heads, without having lit a fire.
*
For two days, they continued on their way, keeping close to the hills and only approaching the road again at Rock Springs – a few shacks built around an inn. From the shelter of the trees, they observed the main path, bathed in sunlight. They saw a stagecoach stop, long enough for its three passengers to eat a meal, and a little later, a Pony Express horseman galloped hard to the inn, where he swapped his horse for a fresh one and left at once.
The small town seemed to come alive only when couriers and stagecoaches passed through. There was only one main building, adjoining the inn and the stable, and workmen were still finishing its roof. The other houses, about ten of them, were shabby wooden huts. This was the end of the Wyoming plateau. After Rock Springs the road began to climb up to the Rockies. The final stage before the mountain, the town was returning to life now that the winter snows had melted and the mountain passes were open again. For them, it was a mandatory stopover before they headed towards Salt Lake City.
“You go first. If all is well, give me a sign.”
Bowman watched the preacher join the road, cross through town and stop outside the half-built construction next to the inn. Peavish looked inside, turned around and, pretending to greet the workmen on the roof, shook his hat at Bowman, who left the woods and went into town. When he crossed the empty street and passed the saloon, hotel and general store of Rock Springs, the roofers hailed him. He saw figures in the windows of houses, and outside the inn’s stable a negro was currycombing the dust-covered horse left behind by the Pony Express rider. The black man glanced at Bowman. Instead of continuing on his way, Bowman pulled on the reins and tied up Walden a few yards away from Peavish’s piebald. It would probably have been more suspicious to ride through Rock Springs without pausing than to stop and have a drink here.
The counter of the shop had been extended to become the bar of the saloon, and the tables where people drank were also those of the hotel’s restaurant. There was an unlit stove, some furniture that didn’t match, and half-empty shelves; rays of light passed through the gaps between the planks that formed the walls. The main room smelled of spices and alcohol.
Peavish was leaning on the bar, talking with the landlord, a glass of water and a foamy beer in front of him. Two tables were occupied. Three men were in discussion, seated around a map; one of them, well-dressed, was talking to the other two, dressed in work clothes, about land, surface areas and prices per acre. An old man sat alone, drinking coffee and turning the pages of a smudged, creased old newspaper. They looked up when he entered. Bowman pulled out a chair and touched his hat with one hand.
The landlord excused himself with Peavish and asked the new arrival what he wanted to drink.
“Whiskey.”
Peavish had stared, wide-eyed, when he saw Bowman come in, and now he turned back to the bar, his shoulders hunched.
The landlord brought him his glass.
“Well, you’re today’s second visitor to Rock Springs, after Father Peavish there, who’s sitting at the bar! So where are you headed to?”
Bowman nodded at Father Peavish, who gave him a tense smile, and told the man he was going west. His American accent was not very convincing, but his attitude was cold enough that the landlord left him alone and went back to the bar to chat with the preacher.
“Well, of course we’ve heard about Bowman! But if you want my opinion, they’ll never catch him. In this country, a man who can hunt can hide out for two or three centuries before anyone finds him! Especially a man who’s lived with Indians. If Bowman had been through here, we’d have seen him, no doubt about it. The men who are searching for him for the reward money will go all the way to the Pacific and back again if they have to, believe me. I did hear rumours that him or a man who looks like him went over the mountains, but you hear stories like that all the time and the men from the patrol didn’t believe it. After two weeks of riding all the way here from Bent’s Fort, they were starting to lose heart a little bit. There’s even one who fell off his horse and is staying here at the hotel.”
“You mean he’s still here?”
“Well, yeah! He broke his leg.”
The landlord, pleased with himself, leaned towards Peavish and spoke so loud that all the other drinkers could hear his secret: “And he saw the killer in person, because he was at Bent’s Fort when Bowman tried to help the Comanches escape!”
The landlord stood up tall and turned towards the staircase.
“Oh, Mr Nicholson! We were just talking about you . . .”
A man came down the steps, holding on to the banister, a crutch under his arm and a splint on his leg. He hobbled over to the bar and sat down. The landlord poured him a glass.
“I was telling Father Peavish what happened to you while you were pursuing the killer along the track, and how you saw him in person.”
The man with the crutch turned towards the preacher.
“As you can see. I was guarding them damn redskins and Bowman walked past me, as close as you are to me, Father. And a little later, I saw him escape after he’d knocked out two of my colleagues. A real savage, he was, firing at everything that moved. But there was another Indian with him and they managed to get away.”
The man drained half his glass and slammed it down on the counter.
“They found the Indian in Woodland. They gave him the treatment but he wouldn’t say a damn word. Tough as hell, that one, too.”
“Is he in prison?”
Nicholson smiled to himself as he looked at the preacher, then changed his mind.
“Not that I want to sound happy about it, Father, but they hanged him right away. Four inches from the ground, and he took a good two minutes to die with his feet almost touching the earth. Never saw anything like it, Father, because he didn’t shake or anything. In fact, he managed to stare at us and smile while he was choking to death. He was either tough as hell or totally crazy, that damn redskin.”
The Bent employee picked up his glass again, perhaps to chase away the memory of that Indian who smiled as he died, but he froze before he had brought the glass to his lips. For a second, he smiled, as if thinking it was a joke. The landlord was pale, his hands in the air. Nicholson turned around and his crutch fell to the floor. He clung to the counter. Peavish moved out of Bowman’s line of fire. When he moved the lever of the Henry, the men at the other tables pushed their chairs back, without daring to run away.
“Don’t move.”
Bowman aimed at Nicholson and walked slowly towards him, until the mouth of the barrel was touching his forehead.
“Drop your pistol.”
Nicholson pissed himself. The urine made a quiet rattling noise as it landed on the floorboards.
“Don’t kill me, Mr Bowman.”
When Nicholson pronounced his name, the customers and the landlord fidgeted nervously, but did not move from their positions.
“I’m going to blow open
your belly and tie your guts round your neck. I’m going to sit on a chair and watch you die while you try to put your innards back where they belong.”
Peavish slowly approached him.
“Don’t do that. Go, my son. Leave this place.”
Nicholson slowly drew the pistol from its holster and let it fall to the floor.
“Preacher, pick that up and put it in my pocket.”
Peavish obeyed. The barrel of the Henry was trembling. Bowman’s hands were white. He took another step, pushing Nicholson’s head backward, making him bend his back over the counter.
Peavish reached out and put a hand on the rifle’s barrel.
“Leave, please. This would do no good. Just leave this place.”
Bowman turned towards Peavish. The preacher started to cry.
“Please.”
Bowman stared at Nicholson and pressed the barrel into his throat.
“You and your race – slaves who think they’re upholding the law – we should shoot the whole fucking lot of you.”
Peavish closed his eyes.
“Mr Bowman, leave him. I beg you.”
Bowman kicked Nicholson’s broken leg, smashing the splint and bending the knee backwards. The Bent employee collapsed, screaming. Bowman walked backwards through the room, sweeping his gun from side to side, pressed down on the door handle with one hand and kicked it open.
“The first man out of here gets a bullet in the head.”
He continued to aim at them through the window as he untied his horse, then he climbed into the saddle and set off at a gallop. At the end of the street, he stopped and pulled on the reins to make Walden face the way he had just come. Then he raised his rifle and waited. When the door of the inn opened, he unloaded the Henry’s magazine: sixteen bullets, one after another, shattering the shop window and exploding the wooden façade. Sergeant Bowman let out a war cry, yelling like John Doe, dug his heels into Walden’s sides, cut between the shacks and sped away along the path. On the outskirts of the town, he left the road and disappeared into the forest, making a semi-circle several miles wide and returning to a spot about a hundred yards from the road. There, he got down from the horse, hid behind a rock and reloaded the Henry.
Three hours later, Peavish rode slowly past him. Bowman got back in the saddle and followed him at a distance, waiting for dusk when the preacher would move away from the track and make his camp for the night. When the fire began to glow in the darkness, he waited another hour and then joined the preacher. The two men exchanged a look. Peavish climbed onto his horse, the saddle still strapped to its back, and they rode until morning.
*
If the posse that was hunting Bowman had been on the verge of giving up their search, news of the incident in Rock Springs now spread along the western path at the speed of a Pony Express horse. He and Peavish slept during the days, taking turns to keep guard, and moved forward at night, continuing this way for the whole week it took them to reach Salt Lake City. They stayed away from the track, seeking smaller passages through the mountains. Several times, forced to turn back from dead ends or crevasses, they had no choice but to follow the track for a few miles through the darkness, before riding away from it as soon as they could. For one whole day, trapped in a narrow pass, they had to camp a few hundred yards from the track in an icy wind, without making a fire, without any water, listening as convoys of pioneers drove past.
After four days, they reached the mountain pass separating the two sides of the Rockies, crossing the dividing line between East and West in the middle of the night, exhausted, starving and stinking. After drinking from springs that flowed towards the eastern rivers and the Atlantic Ocean, they now went down slopes following streams that ran towards the Pacific. Bowman shot a wild sheep with a single bullet and they ate it half raw, ending their journey with stomach pains and diarrhoea. Their clothes were shredded from climbing over rocks, and the horses were on their last legs. They had to walk beside them for half of the descent.
Their scars and old wounds ached and their fatigue was the kind no-one ever recovers from. They aged years in days, draining their bodies of an energy they would never get back. The two men felt no relief as they reached Salt Lake City. A few miles from the town, near a mountain spring, they collapsed and slept for a whole day and a night. The next day, they were able to stand again and that was their only source of contentment.
The preacher cut off his beard, shaved, washed his clothes and dog collar. Holding his long johns in the stream, he rubbed at them without soap until his odour had diminished slightly. Bowman had decided to bypass the town to the south, circling far from any dwellings and passing onto the mountains on the other side of the valley, where he would wait for Peavish after he had ridden along the main track.
The preacher, having cleaned himself up as best he could, counted their last few dollars.
“You’ll have to wait a couple of days. I’ll bring you some food.”
The two men looked out over the valley and the straight lines of the town, twice as big as Denver. For a moment, they were silent, gathering their courage. They did not exchange a word, but they knew that, after a week of shivering with cold, pressed close together, they would be simultaneously relieved and terrified at being separated.
Bowman crouched down. He thought, again, of John Doe, a root between his teeth, observing the town of Woodland before going down there. I would rather say goodbye here.
“Preacher, if you don’t make it back, if you have any trouble, save your own skin. Tell them what you know about me. Do what you have to. And if you decide that you’ve had enough, I’ll understand. I reckon it’ll take me two days to reach the pass and I’ll stay there another day after that. Then I’ll go on, with or without you.”
“I’ll be there, Sergeant.”
“You might think differently when you’re in a bed, eating a steak paid for with my money. But do what you want. You don’t owe me anything, Peavish. I’m the one who’s in debt to you.”
Peavish crouched down next to him.
“Sergeant, I’ll come back.”
The preacher smiled, exposing his rotten gums. Bowman looked at him, and then looked away.
“You didn’t have to follow me. You never should have done. Not you or any of the others. I can find him on my own.”
“I know, Sergeant.”
Bowman stood up, walked over to his horse, and untied his travelling bag. He opened it and handed Peavish the little leather briefcase from the English bank.
“If you don’t see me again, you have to look after this.”
“What is it?”
“Everything I’ve done in the last two years, since the murder in the sewers, and some letters. You have to remember this, Peavish: Alexandra Desmond in Reunion, Texas, near Dallas. If we never see each other again, you have to send this to her. Alexandra Desmond in Reunion. Texas.”
Peavish put one hand on the worn leather briefcase and tried to hand it back to Bowman.
“No need, Sergeant. I’ll come back.”
“I don’t want this to disappear with me. You can still make it through.”
“You know more than you’re saying. You always make it through, Sergeant.”
Bowman pushed the briefcase back at him.
“Take care of it, Peavish. This is all I’ll leave behind me. I didn’t think there’d be this much.”
The preacher shook his head. Bowman smiled at him.
“This is the last thing I’ll ask of you.”
Peavish put the briefcase in his old suitcase, tied to the piebald’s saddle, and turned back to face Bowman.
“Sergeant, who is that woman?”
“Someone I met. I told her I’d come back too. But that’s not possible anymore.”
The preacher tried to smile.
“Was it to her you gave all Reeves’s money?”
Bowman did not reply. Peavish held out his hand. Bowman looked at him, this old ghost, and saw again, in the preacher’s
eyes, a little of the light he had seen there, on board the Healing Joy, when he had asked him if there was anyone on the boat he trusted.
“I’m glad we made it through together. Now clear off.”
Peavish climbed into the saddle, spurred his horse forward, and turned around.
“I’ll see you in three days.”
“In three days.”
13
Bowman found some bushes and dug out their roots, cutting them off and shoving them in his pockets. The valley, flat and pale, was hot, catching all the sunlight between the mountains. He walked out in the open after hiding for days in the Rockies, but he no longer felt threatened. Fifteen miles from the town and the track, there was no-one around and, for the first time in weeks, he no longer sensed the presence of any pioneers around him. He went down the rocky bank of a river, attached the rope to Walden’s halter, tied it around a rock, and left the mustang to eat and drink while he went off hunting.
He crouched behind a bush, on the alert, for half an hour, and finally shot a hare, then returned to the river to cook its meat. He stripped off and dived into the water, soaked his clothes and put them out in the sun to dry, and lay down on a flat rock where he fell asleep. When he woke up, his skin was red and his scars hurt. He ate the remains of the hare then opened his bag and put his things out on the rock. His writing materials and the end of his block of paper. Thoreau’s book. Some underwear, just as shabby as what he was wearing. A shirt in better condition, which he put on. It was too big around his arms and shoulders now. He probably looked more like the preacher than he imagined. He unfolded a pair of work trousers without any holes and the powder horn fell onto the rocks. He turned it in his hands, watching the sunlight reflected from its mother-of-pearl inlays. The silver had oxidised and turned black. For an hour, rubbing at it with a corner of his old shirt, he polished it until it shone again and placed it on top of a stone. Then he took out his pen and sharpened it, and sat down to write, without taking his eyes off the powder horn.
Bowman tried to remember Thoreau, the way he expressed what he felt and experienced. He didn’t want to write anything so complicated or poetic, he just wanted to tell his story. The letters and the notes he had given to Peavish were for Alexandra. What was left of the block of paper was for him. He traced the first words.
Retribution Road Page 41
