Bodyguard

by James W. Marvin

  ‘He don’t look good, and that’s the truth,’ admitted the shootist. Bending and pressing the flat of his hand against the lad’s forehead, feeling it hot to the touch. ‘Yeah. Seems you got to make yourself a decision, folks. Stay here and hope he gets better. Or go back towards Hobson’s Hole and try to get him some shelter.’

  ‘We can carry on, surely?’ protested Richard Okie, walking to look down at his son. ‘Come on, Edgar. Stop this damned sniveling and get up. Play the man and be of good heart.’

  ‘I feel sick, Papa,’ moaned Edgar.

  ‘We must carry on. How long before we reach the end of the first part of the map, Crow?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening. It’s a good enough plan, so far. Give you that. Not that hard to follow once you understand the lie of the land as he saw it. I reckon it’s time to show the rest of it.’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Okie, hand going involuntarily to his chest. ‘Tomorrow, as we agreed.’

  ‘But what of the boy, Dicky?’ asked his wife, bending by Edgar, and wiping some blown snow from his face. The wind kept rising, only easing away every evening, then tearing back with a banshee wail at dawn. And it was becoming ever colder.

  ‘Why can’t he ride?’

  ‘He can,’ said Crow. ‘Tie it in the saddle and you can even get a corpse to put in a long day. Won’t do him no good.’

  ‘We must go on.’

  ‘But Mr. Crow says …’ protested his wife.

  ‘I pay Mr. Crow. I listen to his advice and I see no reason to take it. I say we will go on until tomorrow evening and then we will see how he is.’

  ‘Sure blinds a man to what life really is,’ said Crow.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This black bird mine of yours. Sure hope it runs out to be the stuff dreams are made of,’ Crow said quietly.

  Crow saw the first figure, dark against the skyline, a little after noon. Shrouded in blankets it was difficult to see whether it was man or woman, but it was undoubtedly Indian. And round there it was a good safe bet that the figure would be an Apache.

  Okie saw him looking up at the cliffs, around a half mile ahead and to their right, much higher up, and he stopped his mule.

  ‘Indians, Crow.’

  ‘They sure aren’t mountain buffalo, Okie, and that’s for certain.’

  ‘What shall we do?’

  Crow looked across at him. Scornfully: ‘What do you suggest? How about getting all the wagons into a great big circle?’

  ‘I didn’t, you know …’

  ‘We keep going. They don’t want us. Leastways, not yet. So they’re maybe waiting to see where we’re going and why.’

  ‘This isn’t some sort of religious land to them, is it?’ asked Amy Okie, worry riding at the front of her voice.

  ‘Indians don’t look at it quite like that,’ replied Crow. ‘There’s sun and moon and crops and animals and rivers and mountains ... I could go on all day and not come close to the half of it. I guess you could ride a hundred miles in any direction from here, if’n the weather’d let you, and not see anything that didn’t have some sort of religious meaning to someone.’

  ‘But this isn’t like ... like the Black Hills up in the Dakotas?’ said Richard Okie.

  ‘No. Not like that. Paha Sapa, is what the Sioux call it. That’s a real sacred area to them. These mountains are different. But the Apache know that a handful of prospectors means silver or gold and that brings miners and towns and drink and soldiers and disease. I guess I could go on all day about that too, and still not come close to the half of it.’

  ‘So what do we do?

  ‘We ride on, Mr. Okie. Less’n you want to go back. You’re the boss.’

  So they rode on.

  Twice more that long chill day they saw Apaches. The first time it was an adult and three children. Then a half dozen adults. Warriors, carrying rifles, looking impassively down at the small party as they labored upwards. Edgar was clearly ailing, swaying in the saddle of the mule, face white with just two hectic spots of color on the cheek-bones.

  ‘The boy is so ill, dearest,’ said Amy, as they finally drooped to a halt, Crow choosing a camp-site on a broad plateau, clear of snow, protected from the biting winds by a high cliff.

  ‘We’ll rest up and make a late start on the morrow. This is nearly the last place marked on the map, is it not, Crow?’

  The shootist nodded, unsaddling his horse and tethering it to a boulder. ‘Yeah. First light tomorrow I want to see the second part.’

  ‘I think that …’

  ‘Keep your “think”, Okie,’ he snapped, angered by the man’s indifference to his son’s suffering.

  ‘Either I see it then, or I leave. And if I leave, you all die.’

  ‘I am not the kind of man, Mr. Crow, who sits down under that kind of threat.’

  ‘Okie. What you are is the kind of damned fool who can’t tell the difference between a threat and a promise. Me, I don’t go much for threats. Waste of breath. But I’m strong on promises.’

  The Easterner objected when Crow managed to tease a small fire into life. It will attract those savages as surely as a flame will attract a moth.’

  ‘Moth gets himself burned, Okie. Indians know that they’ll get burned if they try and come at us while we’re here.’

  Covered with as many blankets and clothes as they could spare, Edgar Okie sweated out his fever, eyes bright, babbling to himself with a painfully high temperature. Crow insisted that the lad should be placed as near the fire as possible, making his mother sit with him and keep replacing the blankets as he kicked them off. Perspiration streamed off his face, soaking through his vest.

  ‘Better out than in with a fever. Keep him covered and try and make him drink as much as you can. Otherwise his body’ll just dry right up.’

  ‘We might run low on water,’ said Okie.

  ‘Look around. See all that white stuff piled around the edges of the cliffs. That’s called snow and . . .’

  Okie snorted and stalked away, sitting by himself, playing with his pretty guns. Spinning the chambers on them and trying fast drawing. Crow watched him for a few moments, fascinated by the man’s stupidity.

  Despite his iron self-control, Crow was becoming excited at the prospect of seeing the second part of the map. The one that supposed to show the actual location of the hidden mine. The Black Bird, as he’d come to think of it. If the mine was there then there should be rich pickings for everyone, and there was no reason why he shouldn’t be in among the first. The idea of having a large sum of money had never really occurred to Crow before.

  As an officer in the United States Cavalry there were precious few chances of collecting more than a miserly few dollars. Forty miles a day on beans and hay was what they said about the blue-bellies, and it was true. Since then the pickings had been lean. A shootist could make enough drinking and eating money, but he wasn’t likely to get rich.

  More likely to get dead.

  Next morning Edgar was better. Still a long way from being well, but a whole lot healthier than he’d been for days. Well enough even to make the joke about Crow being a big black bird. Something he hadn’t said since the death of his brother.

  ‘There. Knew I made the right decision to go on,’ said Okie, brimming with self-importance. ‘Just knew it. Have to press on, now, Crow. Get to the mine and then out again. Look. Sunshine for us. Good omen that.’

  It was a beautiful morning. All around them the sky stretched blue, with only a handful of ragged wisps of white high, high overhead. The wind had dropped to a gentle zephyr and there was no trace of any further snow, though it was still cold. The breath from the mules and from Crow’s black stallion plumed in the air, hanging around their noses. The trail wound on ahead of them, going upwards, then vanishing over the edge of the cliffs, reappearing another five hundred feet higher up on the further side of the valley. Snow was lying, fresh and clean, streaming down off the tops of the mountains, lying in banks at the sheltered corners.

 
‘What about the map, Okie?’ asked Crow, flexing his fingers against the cold. He’d taken the last and longest watch, running through from midnight to dawn, letting Richard Okie take the first spell. Amaryllis had asked if she could be allowed to stand as guard, but Crow had rejected the suggestion, feeling that she would do more good nursing her son.

  ‘Sure. I’m happy to trust a man who I know trusts me. Indeed I am. It is here in my pocket and …’

  He checked the movement, hand inside his thick jacket, eyes widening as he stared out behind Crow. The shootist fought the temptation to spin round, suspecting a trick from the heavily-built merchant. But the look of fear was too real to be contrived and he turned his head.

  ‘Apaches, Mama,’ said Edgar Okie, also seeing the movement, black against the white of the snow. Two figures were there, edging slowly down over the treacherous surface. Both shrouded in cloaks, with gray blankets pulled over their heads.

  ‘Mr. Crow! What?’

  ‘Just stay quiet and easy,’ replied the shootist, releasing the thong that kept the hammers of the Purdey safe and snug.

  ‘There’s only two,’ hissed Okie, watching the Indians, hands hovering over the butts of his matched pistols.

  ‘Sure. With maybe forty more over the skyline. I don’t think they’ve even seen us. Stay quiet, all of you.’

  If it was a trap, then it was the oddest that Crow had ever seen. Half-turned away from the watching whites, the two Indians picked their way towards them, coming closer. Advancing until they were only about fifty paces off, still on snow, but now on more level rock.

  ‘Watch ’em, Crow,’ whispered Okie. ‘One false move and we can …’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said the shootist. ‘Just get those guns clear of the holster and cocked ready. But don’t touch the damned triggers before I give you the word.’

  ‘They might try and kill us,’ sighed Amaryllis Okie, voice trembling with terror as the pair of Apaches advanced closer, still without seeming to have seen the whites.

  ‘Sure they might. But they might not want to fight at all. Man kills someone for no reason, merits all he gets.’ But he drew the Purdey from its specially deep holster, easing back the twin hammers.

  ‘Ho, there,’ he called, warning the Indians of their nearness, now less than forty paces. Less than thirty.

  Had he fired an artillery piece at them the response could hardly have been more dramatic. Both figures turned to face them, frozen with shock, then one of the Indians fumbled inside the layers of blanket.

  ‘Bastard’s goin’ for a gun!’ yelled Okie.

  ‘Don’t sh …’ began Crow, a suspicion rising in his mind.

  But he was too late.

  With two motionless targets, almost within spitting distance, even Richard Okie could hardly have missed them. Firing two-handed, standing square and tall and brave, he pumped bullets into them, emptying both pistols, carrying on clicking the triggers, hammers falling on spent cartridges, whooping to himself.

  ‘Take that! And that! Sons of fuckin’ bitches!! Yeah, and another. Look at him roll! Oh, wonderful! The blood. Yeah, blood!’

  Edgar stood silent, watching the carnage, the bullets tearing the two Indians apart, sending them yelling in thin, high voices, arms flailing as they slid about on the frozen snow. One shot took three fingers clean off a hand, leaving them, joined together by a thread of gristle, like a macabre piece of jewelry. Crow saw three shots miss, kicking up spurts of snow beyond the bodies.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said in disgust. ‘Jesus Christ Almighty.’

  There was a silence after the last shot, the mountains about them still echoing from the thunder of the Colts, powder smoke wreathing all about their camp. The mules were kicking unhappily and even Crow’s patient stallion was turning its long head away from the noise and the stench of death and blood.

  ‘Oh, the horror,’ whispered Amy Okie, so quietly that only Crow heard her. ‘Oh, the horror of it.’

  One of the bodies was still twitching, trying to crawl, then slumping forwards, making a low keening sound. Crow holstered the Purdey and drew his own pistol, putting a bullet through the back of the dying Apache’s skull, killing it instantly.

  ‘Guess that’s taught them bastards a lesson, huh?’ panted Okie. His face was flushed, tongue flicking out to taste the salt sweat on his lips. To Crow’s distaste he realized that the eminent Bostonian had been sexually excited by the slaughter, breathing hard and grinning as if he’d just left the tangled bed of a whore.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Them or us, weren’t it, Crow?’

  The shootist looked at the draggled corpses, lying still in the crimson-splashed snow, seeing the torn flesh and the whiteness of greasy bones showing through burst skin.

  ‘I don’t figure.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Amaryllis Okie. ‘Of course my husband had to shoot. And a fine thing too, seeing as you just stood there.’

  ‘Take a look at those Apache warriors you just gunned down, Okie.’

  ‘I fear I don’t understand your meaning, Crow.’

  ‘Go look at them!’

  ‘I have no wish to. They are dead and that’s all that concerns me and …’

  ‘It’s not all that concerns me, Okie. Do like I say. I told you not to fire. I just felt somethin’ was wrong. Go look at ’em.’

  Reluctantly the Easterner trudged across, trying to avoid stepping in the bloodied snow. Bending to peer at the corpses, hooking the blankets back with the barrel of the empty Colt. Turning away and suddenly throwing up.

  Crow joined him, looking down. At the corpses.

  Of the two old women.

  Chapter Eight

  If it hadn’t been for the map, Crow would have swung his lean body into the saddle and moved back out of the Sierras just as fast as the stallion would have taken him.

  But there was the map.

  Richard Okie tried two or three times that morning to justify to himself and to his wife, son and to Crow what had happened.

  ‘I thought he was … she was going for a gun. You saw it, didn’t you? They could have been murdering Apache bucks.’

  ‘They were old women. The one looked like she was around seventy, from what you could see through the broken bones and blood. When she was born you didn’t see a single white man out this way. Now she ends up getting butchered like a lack-brained imbecile like you.’

  ‘What will happen now, Mr. Crow?’ asked Edgar Okie breaking the taut silence.

  ‘Now, son? Now your Papa has shown what a great hunter he is, we’ll likely have thirty or more Apache come whoopin’ after our scalps.’

  ‘Oh, but we could tell them …’ began Amy, her voice tailing away as she realized the absurdity of what she was saying.

  ‘I tell you that if it wasn’t for your cousin’s damned map, Okie, I’d up and leave you right here.’

  If it wasn’t for the map …

  It was drawn on the same kind of paper as the first half, but less neatly written. The outlines were sketched in with a hasty, shaking hand, as though in darkness, or under pressure from excitement or fear. And some of the words ran over each other or seemed to be incomplete. But it was enough.

  If the weather didn’t break against them again, then it would be enough.

  ‘Can you understand it?’

  Crow nodded. All three of the Okies were around him, crowding in, peering at the tattered piece of paper over his shoulder.

  ‘How long will it take to get to the mine?’ asked Amy, her hand resting, so casually, on Crow’s shoulder, her hair dangling loosely down against the side of his face.

  ‘Looks like around three more days.’

  ‘Three! And then we get to see that big black bird!’ squeaked Edgar.

  ‘You understand that reference to the black bird, Crow?’ asked the father.

  ‘I don’t know. And, incidentally, since we are surely likely to get us some company in the next few hours you’d do well
to reload those fancy pistols of yours.’

  While Okie did as he’d been told, Crow stared again at the map. Trying to puzzle it out. So far the descriptions had been fine, with no possibility of error. And for nearly all the remainder it was the same. Except for the very last bit. The black bird.

  It was drawn in. The inky outline of the head of a bird, looking like some kind of falcon. The beak hooked and sharp, seeming as if it sprang from a cliff of some height. Lines ran from the tip of the beak and from what appeared to be the eye of the creature, meeting at a point roughly half-way down a wall of rock on the opposite side of the valley. There was a small, wobbly arrow pointing to that spot, and some sort of a trail drawn in from the bottom of the page up to it. There was no “X” against the place, and no mention of it being the mine. But there was nothing else on the map at all that might have been it.

  ‘Has to be it,’ said Crow to himself. ‘That has to be it.’

  They were in a wild part of the mountains that Crow had never visited, and he was scouting his way forward using the map, turning from mark to mark. From a dead tree stump, left along a narrow draw with a natural bridge carved by flood water over the centuries. Then right, aiming for a notch shaped like the claw of a bear. Up and over into the next valley.

  Constantly on the watch for any sign of the Apaches. Once they found the raggled bodies of the two old women, Crow was certain as he could be that the chief would order the men of the tribe out in full pursuit after them.

  The good weather was passing as swiftly as it had come, with the wind rising again from the north, tearing great ragged veils of powdery snow from the tops of the peaks around them. The sky was clouding over, grayness spreading down across the hills like a dull shroud.

  ‘I’m not feelin’ so good, Mr. Crow,’ complained Edgar Okie. The shootist turned to look at him, seeing that the boy’s face had again gone chalk-white, and that he was shivering like an aspen in a hurricane.

  ‘Give me your hand, lad,’ he said.

  Leaning up from the saddle on the mule the teenager pulled off his gloves and laid his fingers in Crow’s hand.