Amaryllis had taken whatever medicine kept her normal and was back at the saloon taking charge of some repacking, throwing out the less essential items among their luggage. Crow had looked through it and ordered ruthless pruning of the masses of dresses and female underpinnings that Mrs. Okie had brought with her all the way west from Boston.
The store, run by a man called Chesterton, had the name of Floyd Thursby over the front door, roughly painted on a faded shingle. When they tried to find out what had happened to the man who was Thursby the stone-faced Chesterton muttered something about having to go out on business. There weren’t many kinds of business around Death Valley and Crow felt the uncomfortable prickling at the back of his neck. The blabbing of the news of the gold mine could bring death a whole lot quicker than it would bring riches. He took care to stock up on ammunition for the three guns. Okie wanted to buy lots of picks and shovels, but Crow dissuaded him.
‘We aren’t going to dig it out, Okie. Just to find the place,’ he muttered, still trying to maintain the tottering facade of secrecy.
‘It was first-class ore. Had it assayed in Chicago to keep my name out of it. Turned out at…’ lowering his voice …‘thirty-one hundred dollars to the ton.’ Repeating the amount, licking his lips as though the words were the finest French brandy. ‘Thirty-one hundred dollars to the ton. Tell me if that is not ore of the finest quality, Mr. Crow.’
The tall man nodded, his mane of black hair tumbling across his shoulders. ‘It’s good. Damned good. And all we need to do is find it. Let’s get on with these supplies and food and ammunition.’
‘There might be danger?’ asked the eldest of the boys. ‘With Indians?’
Crow nodded. ‘Could be.’
‘The Sioux, like those murderin’ devils that tore the heart from General Custer’s brave command?’
‘No, Edgar,’ said Crow, patiently. ‘Sioux are plains Indians. We’re goin’ high in the hills. Might be a few stray Apaches around. And those Sioux you called on about there were simply defending their lands from old Yellow Hair Autie. He rode into a trap so big a day-old babe could have seen it. And he paid the price for it.’
That night Crow slept in one of the three rooms available to paying guests in the saloon, on sheets that had a thin gray look to them, as though they’d been on too long and washed too many times. The Okies shared the large room along the narrow corridor and the third room was empty.
He made sure the Purdey was ready to his hand on a chair pulled alongside the head of the bed, with the pistol hanging on the back of the seat. Within two or three days he figured that word of the party seeking the lost mine would have travelled close to a hundred miles and there’d be all manner of folks on their way to express an interest. Outside the wind was rising and he heard sand pattering against the glass of the window. That was good news, as it would cover their tracks westwards within a quarter hour.
But there was the matter of Thursby, the disappearing storeowner. That was more worrying.
Before he dropped into a calm, dreamless sleep, Crow thought back to the map that Okie had finally shown him, handling it as delicately as if it was a missing fragment of the gospels, written in the Lord’s own hand.
It was written in a clerkly fist on what looked like the sort of brown paper that they used in grocer’s stores to wrap sugar. The paper had faded to a very pale fawn color and ink used was also dulled. But it wasn’t that difficult to read and Craw stared at it with great interest, doing his best to memorize every detail just in case he never saw it again.
It was signed with the name of Radley Hungerford and what appeared to be the beginnings of a date, but the paper was torn in that bottom left corner and it was impossible to make out what it had been.
Hobson’s Hole was there on the right, and the surrounding desert was also marked. The compass bearing was shown as westering, only veering a few degrees from the full west. “Two days and one half day,” was the neat instruction, and then followed the first of a series of careful descriptions, all referring to certain detailed points. “One mile and about one tenth of a mile along the second arroyo into the foothills on the right keeping the irregular waves of dark purple rocks as near to ahead as you can manage, crossing only three of the dry river beds and pausing at the fourth.”
Crow had trained his memory and after several minutes of careful study he had committed the whole thing and could have written it down word-perfectly. But Richard Okie was not a fool in some things.
‘Where’s the mention of the black bird?’ Crow had asked him, scanning the paper and turning it over in case there was more on the other side. But it was blank, except for a semi-circular stain of rough black hue, as though it had been dropped, while folded, into some sticky liquid. Something like blood.
‘On the other piece of the map.’
‘Other?’
‘There were two, Crow. I’m not such a ninny that I’d give them both to you and watch you disappear over the nearest horizon in a cloud of orange dust.’
‘When do I get to see that?’
‘When?’ Okie repeated.
‘That’s right. When do you show me the rest of this map? The bit with the actual location of the mine on it?’
‘There is a hastiness to you, Crow, that I confess to finding refreshing after the mealy-mouthed merchants and bankers with whom I mix back home. Why, upon my soul but I shall not gull you. As we reach the limits of this first sheet, and all is well, so we shall look together at the second map.’
The sun wasn’t even showing the pink glow of its false dawn as the party set out for the west. Crow led the way on his black stallion, glancing to left and right as they jingled past the few houses of the little settlement, noticing that, despite the earliness of the hour, there were lights in most of the windows and drapes jerked as they moved on into the velvet darkness of the desert. Against the golden aura of an oil-lamp in the front of the store of Floyd Thursby, Crow saw the silhouettes of two men. Perhaps the mysterious Mr. Thursby had returned from his equally mysterious business.
Richard Okie drove the rig, finding the doubled reins difficult to handle. Amaryllis complained ceaselessly about the bucking of the wagon and the boys spent most of the time sleeping inside the Conestoga, sometimes clambering down to walk ahead of it, avoiding the great spiraling pillar of dust that went circling up into the dawn skies.
Crow pulled his horse to one side of the rutted trail, standing in the stirrups to try and make out whether there was any sign of pursuit, but the desert rolled in endless dunes behind them. The light wind brushed out their tracks as they moved on. And ahead, like a huge barrier set down across their path by a malign god, snow-tipped and massively jagged, the Sierras blocked off the west as far as the eye could see. Crow hadn’t spent a lot of time in the mountains, being more of a plains man, but he knew enough to know that he knew next to nothing. And that was a big step on the road to survival.
The first two days passed quietly enough.
Both Okie and his oldest boy suffered from the heat of the day and it was sometimes left to the wife and to young Arthur to drive the wagon while the other two lay under the canvas and moaned.
In the bleak wilderness of tortured rock it wasn’t possible for Amaryllis to keep her secret any longer and on the first afternoon Crow caught her inhaling a white powder as though it was snuff. When she saw him watching her the woman nearly choked, blowing a cloud of dust about her.
‘You’ve made me lose some,’ she cried, bringing her husband and sons running.
All five of them stood looking at each other in a bizarre tableau. Without saying anything Crow stepped forwards and licked the end of his finger, touching it to the soft skin at the centre of the woman’s palm. The contact of their flesh made Amaryllis jerk away as though she had received a shock, her eyes turning from him. Her face white as death but for two hectic spots of red at her cheekbones.
Crow brought his finger to his own lips and tasted it, grimacing at the bitterness.
That morphine?’
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Amy had a difficult time with … ’ began Richard Okie.
‘You told me. Female problems, was what you said, as I recall.’
‘It’s heroin,’ she said. ‘After my … They gave me morphine to dull the pain.’
‘And you got its hooks into you. I seen that after the War. I heard of heroin.’
‘It helps,’ she protested, finally looking him in the eyes, trying for defiance and only succeeding in being pathetic.
‘I heard this heroin’s much the same. You get out one set of claws and this is another. Maybe worse. Call it the Army Disease, because so many poor bastard soldiers gotten caught by it after they tried to wean them from morphine.’
‘It’s not your concern,’ began Okie again, but stopped when Crow turned angry eyes on him.
‘Not my concern, Mr. Okie?’ he said quietly.
‘No. I don’t see why …’
‘Then you’re a bigger damned idiot than I took you for. And that is saying plenty as I rate you kind of high in the orders of fools.’
‘Why …!’
‘I been a scout before and when things go smooth then everyone’s happy and the sun shines and there’s always good water and plenty of meat. When things go wrong then you got to know who you can depend on and who you can’t.’
‘Meaning that I cannot be depended on, Mr. Crow,’ said the woman, her voice trembling on the edge of tears.
‘Long as you got that heroin then you’ll manage, Mrs. Okie. But without it you’ll just fall apart. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen it.’
‘Amaryllis and her illness will, not hold us up, Crow. I promise you that.’
‘Do you, Okie? Do you just?’ There was so much cold venom in the words that the Bostonian stepped back as if he’d been struck on the face.
‘My Ma’s fine,’ said Arthur Okie, defiantly.
‘Sure she is now, boy. I just want to know what she’ll be like when the bad times come.’
‘A few starving, bare-bottomed Apaches will hardly frighten a well-armed party like ourselves,’ said Okie, pompously, trying to regain some of his lost ground.
‘That so? I tell you, Mister, that I’m feelin’ real strong about stuffin’ your hundred dollars back up your ass and getting out from under this. Man says he’s not frightened of Apache is one of two things.’
‘What?’
‘A fool or he’s dead already and don’t know it. The Apache warrior might be hungry and not so well clothed as your Eastern friends, but he’s about the most lethal fighting machine that the good Lord ever invented. And there’s no sayin’ after your boy’s foolishness whether there’s not some white cougars after us as well.’
‘Would we not see them?’
‘Maybe, Okie. Maybe. I heard it said that most men never see the bullet that kills them. Never see the finger on the trigger. It’s just a hammer-blow and then lying on your back looking up at the sky.’
‘I thought I seen some dust, way out yonder,’ said Edgar Okie, flicking flies away from his eyes.
‘Then you tell me, boy, if you do. Don’t keep it to yourself.’
The fat teenager looked away, shuffling his feet in the baking red soil. It was so hot that a man didn’t appear to sweat that much. But out in the sun you’d lose around a pint of body fluid an hour, and that meant death in three hours or so. You did better with the right clothes and keeping in what shade there might be.
Okie cleared his throat, hooking his pudgy fingers into his vest as though he was about to address a meeting of stockholders. ‘Seems we ought to try and make better speed, Crow. This wagon’s slowing us.’
‘Dead to rights, Okie. There’s a small township a half day to the north, close by the beginnings of the hills. We could maybe trade this Conestoga in for five mules.’
‘Why five? You have your horse, Mr. Crow?’ asked Amy.
‘Mules die, Ma’am. Man or woman or child on foot’ll die the same. We need five. Could do with six but they’ll guess our need and drive us hard. You can all ride mules? It’d be astride, Mrs. Okie.’
‘Well … I don’t know ‘bout that …’ Okie started to bluster, but his wife raised a gloved hand to stop him.
‘I can squeeze into a spare pair of Edgar’s breeches, Mr. Crow. And there is a stout pair of riding boots in the wagon here. I believe that I’ll manage very well, thank you kindly.’
Again there was the flicker of the tongue across the teeth that offered Crow something. Something that he was beginning to think he might take advantage of if the chance came.
The squint-eyed man who traded the mules tried-to drive a harder bargain than Crow expected. In the end the lean shootist was forced to casually draw the sawn-down Purdey and cock it.
‘Seems five mules is better than four,’ he said, in that gentle, lethal voice.
‘You stealin’ bastard!’ spat the man. ‘I paid good for them animals.’
‘You’re doin’ well. I know it. You know it. Man who pushes his luck too far too fast ends up ownin’ a bare six feet of earth.’
So, five mules it was. The man shook his fist at them as they drove off, claiming that he had promised the animals to a local religious order.
‘Them mules was for Sister Sara,’ he yelled, as they vanished off westward towards the skyscraping peaks.
Amaryllis Okie was transformed by the change of clothes. She wore a white cotton blouse, tighter across the bosom than decent society might have thought proper. And the son’s breeches, tucked into boots, were loose around the waist, but extremely close fitting around the hips. Dressed like that she could have set her own price in any mining-camp and the way she walked and looked at Crow made it clear that she knew it.
But the whorish smiles vanished after a half hour on the sway-backed, stubborn, snarling burros. All four of the Okies were complaining bitterly of the galling and pain from the animals and Crow realized that they would have to stop for the night sooner than he would have wanted.
Eventually both the boys fell off their animals’ back simultaneously and refused to get up and go another step. Since he was getting well paid Crow didn’t just ride away from them, reluctantly setting up a camp for the night on the spot. But it was a rocky area, with numerous draws and trails where you could hide a regiment.
Evening was coming on close, leaping across the desert behind them, the shadows stretching black from the east. Crow tethered the animals, making sure they were secure. They were already running a little low on water, but as they climbed higher there was a chance of finding some streams. Indeed, Crow’s main concern with the weather was that they might get themselves trapped by a freakishly early storm.
This seems good enough, Crow,’ said Okie, limping painfully towards him, thighs well apart, mouth pursed with the discomfort.
‘It’s not even that. Anyone wanting to get in close to us’d find it easier than snatching candy from a blind child. If’n it hadn’t been for your boys and all the complaining I’d have pushed on another three, four miles to a safer camp.’
‘Well they’re tuckered out and I … well, I could surely use a little rest. Maybe on some feather pillows,’ he said, coming as close as Crow had yet seen to a joke.
‘Break out the food, Mrs. Okie,’ called Crow. ‘You boys stay where you are. Rest up. Tomorrow’ll be a hell of a lot harder when we start to climb some.’
Edgar seemed to have fallen asleep but Arthur struggled to his feet, hobbling out of sight around a corner of orange rock, shouting out something about a call of nature.
It was only when he hadn’t reappeared after fifteen minutes that Crow realized that something must have gone wrong.
Chapter Six
‘Hello, the camp!’
It had taken all of Crow’s anger and determination to stop Amy Okie from going out among the tangle of boulders after her youngest child. Her husband had backed the shootist, but whether out of common-sense or cowardice it wasn’t pos
sible to tell.
‘If he’d just got lost we’d have heard him. Means someone’s taken him. Means they’re out there. We go blunderin’ round and they pick us all up. We stay here then they’ll need to come to us. Better that way.’
‘Hello, the camp!’ The cry was repeated.
‘Don’t reply yet,’ hissed Crow, the Winchester in his right hand, staring out into the gathering gloom. Nearly an hour had drifted by in silence and the evening had wrapped itself all around them, with no sign of the missing boy and not a word from whoever had gotten him.
‘Hello! Guess you want to know what’s come to pass with little Arthur Concord Okie, don’t you?’
Amaryllis Okie was at Crow’s side, and he could actually feel her body trembling with the tension of the moment. To try and reassure her he reached out and patted her on the arm. She surprised him by gripping his hand tightly in both of hers, squeezing it so hard that it pained him and he had to pull away.
‘Come on, Mr. Okie. And you, Crow. We heard about what you done back in town there and we don’t rightly like to get too close.’
There was a note of irritation in the voice, and something of doubt as well. That was what Crow wanted. A man who’s drawn tight on edge could well be the man who makes the first mistake.
The “we” meant more than one. And the voice was clearly that of a white man, not an Indian. It wasn’t much information, but at least it was some kind of a start for them.
‘Come on, Crow, you bastard! You want us to start cuttin’ up the boy?’
‘No!’ exclaimed Mrs. Okie, before Crow could do anything to stop her.
There was laughter from out among the rocks. Crow listened intently. Two? Maybe three.
‘She cares, even if you don’t. Come on, folks. There’s goin’ to be enough gold to go round for all of us up at that old Black Bird Mine.’
‘He told them,’ hissed Richard Okie, in despair. ‘They know.’
‘They knew before, thanks to the blabbing back in that saloon. They suspected then. Just means they’re sure now.’
‘Give us the map, and you get your son back. Couldn’t be simpler.’
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