MacKinnon

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Do like I tell you,” she said. “Put those pebbles under your tongue. Swallow what spit you can.”

  “Spit tastes nasty.”

  Her chest still heaved. She tried to smile, but she failed. “You’re a boy. You’re supposed to like nasty things.”

  “I ain’t supposed to eat dirt.”

  “Just do as I tell you. And get back by the wagon, in the shade, out of the sun.”

  She made herself grab the handle of the pickax, cringing at the pain, but she did not have enough energy to lift it right now. She rested, breathing in and out, aching all over.

  “Can’t I have some water?” Gary whined.

  “Later. We have to save it.”

  “Till Pa comes back?”

  The pickax dropped to the sand. “Your pa,” she snapped before she could stop herself. “Not mine. Not Florrie’s.”

  “Better not say that.” Gary wagged his little finger up at Katie’s face. “Pa don’t like it when you say that. He’ll beat you when he comes back.”

  She laughed slightly. Like he’s coming back.

  “I’m gonna tell Pa what you said. And I’m gonna laugh when he whups you.”

  If her muscles would cooperate, she might have clenched her fists, but then she probably could not unclench them. And this grave would never get finished.

  Gary kept acting like the annoying brother he was. Stepbrother, she told herself, and hated herself for even thinking that. You didn’t have any say in picking your parents. Parents didn’t pick their kids, unless they were orphans who happened to get adopted.

  She thought: Are we orphans now? Her head shook. I’m too old to be an orphan, but … She considered her sister and her stepbrother—no, her brother. Shaking her head, she tried to clear away those thoughts. Such things did not matter. Not now.

  “Gary …” She tried a different approach. “It’s hot. I’m tired. And I’ve got work to do. You’ll get water later. Please. Go help Florrie. Go help—”

  “Ma’s still asleep,” Gary said. “Florrie’s still crying.”

  “I can hear her.” Katie filled her lungs with hot, dry air, and wondered if her nose would start bleeding again. She pulled the bonnet from her head and wrapped it over her right hand, the one with worse blisters and more splinters. The sweat stung, but she bit her lip and just kept wrapping the cotton tighter and tighter.

  “Is Ma still sick?” Gary asked.

  “Not anymore,” Katie said. She tied off the bonnet, and gripped the pickax. “Get under the wagon or in the back with Florrie. Go. Now. Do like I tell you.”

  “Can I hold Ma’s hand?”

  “Yes.” Her shoulders sagged. “She’d like that, Gary. She’d like that a lot.”

  “Maybe Ma would like some water.”

  “Get!” she barked, and the boy jumped back. “Now. I’ve got work to do. Go. Go with Florrie and Ma. You’ll get water with the rest of us this evening.”

  “I’m gonna tell Pa!” the boy whined, but at least he was running back to the wagon.

  “He’s not my pa!” Katie barked, and managed to lift the pickax over her shoulder and bring it down hard into the desert ground. “And he’s never been a pa to you, either,” she added, but not loud enough for Gary to hear.

  She hated herself for saying that. Of course, she had hated herself for some time now, but she despised someone else even more.

  The pale rock took a new form. It shaped itself into the weasel face of Thomas “Tommy” Truluck, with the dark eyes too close together, the cheeks and chin covered with pockmarks, the crooked nose, the big ears, the hair that never looked clean, and the peach fuzz that barely amounted to a mustache but what he considered a tonsorial artist’s masterpiece.

  The pickax slammed into Tommy Truluck’s right ear, the one that hung lower than the left. The ax came up and struck into her stepfather’s bloodshot eye. The iron bit into the broken incisor of the worthless excuse of a husband and father. It cut his greasy hair. Again. Again. Again. Again. She cursed and swung, swung and cursed, until she found herself on her knees, her skirt ripped, and her hands as raw as her throat. The wind blew, hot and hard, and she sank into the dirt. She spit out the pebbles she had put underneath her tongue. Her lungs burned. She heard the angels singing.

  Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in thee;

  Let the water and the blood,

  From thy riven side which flowed,

  Be of sin the double cure,

  Save me from its guilt and power.

  Rolling onto her back, feeling that furnace of a sun broil her already sunburned face, she made herself look into the eyes of St. Peter, or Jesus, or the devil himself. Whoever it was to judge her, but no archangel or demon or Redeemer stared at her. She saw a sky that looked white, and the voice she heard came from no angel.

  God gave Florrie the voice. And the beauty. Her twelve-year-old sister sang. Ma always said that Florrie sounded like an angel. And it was Sunday.

  Not the labor of my hands

  Can fulfill thy law’s demands;

  Could my zeal no respite know,

  Could my tears forever flow,

  All could never sin erase,

  Thou must save, and save by grace.

  More than once Ma had also said: “Florrie, promise me you’ll sing at my funeral.”

  “God!” Katie brought her right arm over her eyes. She had told herself she would not cry, that she could not cry. She just wanted to dig this miserable grave. Mostly, she wanted to kill Tommy Truluck for getting them out here, in the middle of desert. For making them leave Medicine Lodge.

  The dry climate, Margie. That’s what you need. Clear up them lungs. Sell the store. We’ll use the money to get me, you, and the kids down south to New Mexico Territory. There’s gold down there. We’ll make our pile. Get you back on your feet. It’s like paradise, Margie.

  “Shut up,” she told the voice, the awful memory. “Shut up.”

  The voice did not listen. It never listened.

  Ma had listened to Tommy Truluck, however, and they had left Kansas. They had taken the old Santa Fe Trail and the Cimarron Cutoff all the way to Santa Fe. From that dirty little town of adobe, mountains, and food spiced with chile peppers, Tommy Truluck had led them from one mining camp to another. Elizabethtown … Cimarron … San Augustine, where Gary was born … Georgetown … Silver City … Hillsboro … Chloride … Vera Cruz … Fairview … White Oaks. Always getting there too late to find much pay dirt. At least, that’s how Tommy Truluck explained things. It had to do with bad luck, poor timing, cheating thieves, but never Tommy Truluck’s laziness, his taste for ardent spirits and loose women, and his inability to recognize that he had no skill at faro or roulette. Town to town, camp to camp, living in tents or in a wagon like the one Tommy Truluck had left them. Till finally he had decided that there was no fortune to be found in New Mexico Territory but he had heard good things about this place down in Texas. A town called Shafter. He had talked Katie’s mother into heading across this furnace to Roswell. From there they’d just follow the road south and find a paradise and their fortune in the Chinati Mountains.

  They had made it here. Nowhere. Perdition. Hell. A vast expanse of sand and rocks where even the cactus looked dried up and about to die. Till Tommy took a mule, a Henry rifle, saddlebags filled with most of the food he could carry, and three canteens, two filled with water, one with whiskey, or whatever whiskey he had not consumed over those long miles from White Oaks. He left them with a wagon with a busted wheel, one old mule—the blind one named Bartholomew—the tepid, iron-hard water left in the two barrels, a shotgun (likely because he couldn’t carry everything), and the promise that he would send help as soon as he reached Roswell.

  Nothing in my hands I bring,

  Simply to thy cross I cling;

  Naked, com
e to thee for dress,

  Helpless, look to thee for grace:

  Foul, I to the fountain fly,

  Wash me, Savior, or I die.

  Katie made herself stand. She glanced at the sun, and figured it would be behind the mountains in another hour. The air would cool then. Maybe, she told herself, the ground would become softer at dark. She let out a hopeless chuckle, and moved toward the back of the covered wagon.

  She looked inside and saw her kid sister and brother. She saw her mother, so pale, so cold, so suddenly ancient looking, and Katie let herself join in on the last verse, even though she could hit no note or carry any tune.

  While I draw this fleeting breath,

  When mine eyes shall close in death,

  When I soar to worlds unknown,

  See thee on thy judgment throne,

  Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in thee.

  Florrie and Gary turned to stare out of the wagon at Katie.

  “I’ve heard dogs howl that sound better than you do, Katie,” Gary said, and giggled.

  Katie glared, but held her tongue, and she shot her sister a look that silenced Florrie before she could rebuke, or slap, Gary. It wasn’t the insult that bothered Katie, or Florrie, for that matter. Tommy Truluck always used that “dogs howling” insult whenever Katie tried to sing, or whenever their mother could somehow manage to drag Tommy and the kids to a revival meeting or church services in some raw-boned mining camp.

  “I’m …” She turned away from her mother’s lifeless body. “You two need some water.”

  “You said …”

  “I know what I said, Gary. One ladle. That’s it. Just one ladle. Then you can have some more before we go to bed. You, too, Florrie. Go on.”

  “Can I bring Ma some?” Gary asked.

  Florrie squeezed her eyes tight. “I’ll take care of Ma, Gary. Go on. Help your sister. That’s it.” She tried to smile, but could not remember how.

  The boy let go of Florrie’s right hand when he came to the opening in the canvas. Katie lifted her weary hands up to help the boy down, but he stopped when he saw the makeshift bandage covering her right hand and the raw flesh on her left.

  “Let me jump,” Gary said.

  “Be careful,” Katie said as she stepped back. The boy leaped, landed, and rolled over more times than he should have, but came to his feet, laughing. “That was fun.”

  Katie nodded. “You all right?”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “One ladle. Don’t spill any.” She moved back to the wagon and offered to help Florrie.

  “I can manage,” her sister said.

  “You don’t want to jump?” Katie tried.

  Florrie stared hard.

  “I was just trying to—”

  “I know what you’re doing, Katie. But you’ll have to tell him the truth soon.”

  Katie moved to the side of the wagon. “Wait a minute, Gary. Let Florrie get the water.” What had she been thinking? Letting a five-year-old get precious water. He’d let the ground soak up a full cup. “Stop. Stop! Florrie will get you the water!”

  She turned, and leaned against the tailgate. Florrie had managed to climb to the ground.

  “You need water, too,” Florrie told her.

  “Later,” Katie whispered.

  Chapter Three

  All those mornings, MacKinnon thought, after a night of John Barleycorn, when climbing out of my bunk with my head splitting and vomit crusted on my face was the hardest thing I’d ever managed …

  He gasped as, gripping a convenient handhold in the boulder over his head, he pulled himself to his feet. He stood. Well, he leaned against the boulder, at least, and waited for the world to stop spinning and for the gall to sink back down his throat and into his gut, which would start rumbling again any minute.

  A pretty place to die, maybe, but MacKinnon had no intention of dying just yet. For one thing, Sheriff Nelson Bookbinder had led that first posse out of Bonito City, but Bookbinder’s might not be the only one. Charley the Trey had put up a reward, so that would send every out-of-work miner and ne’er-do-well from Lincoln to White Oaks chasing after those cutthroats who dared to rob the Three of Spades Saloon. From what MacKinnon had heard about Charley the Trey, the cheating gambler might be riding hard right about now. And MacKinnon and his compadres had not had any time to cover their trail when they left Bonito City at a high lope.

  Compadres?

  MacKinnon spit at the thought. That hurt, too, and most of the saliva dribbled down his vest and shirt. He rubbed the rest of it off his lips, and checked to make sure he didn’t find any blood in the spit.

  Swallowing hurt. Breathing hurt. The hard granite bit into his back and his hips. Standing upright hurt. He couldn’t bear the thought of actually taking a step or two. But he had to.

  Something made him move away from the boulder. He paused, waiting to fall over unconscious or dead, yet he remained upright. His left foot slid from the rotting tree, followed by his right, and something still kept him from keeling over. Something. No, that wasn’t right.

  Someone.

  “Jace,” MacKinnon said. He saw Martin’s face. “I’m coming.”

  He managed another step. And another. The face laughed at him. The face mocked him. MacKinnon eased air in and out of his lungs, and took yet another step.

  He remembered.

  * * * * *

  “A saloon?” Chuckling, MacKinnon shook his head, and raised the tin cup of Old Overholt in toast or salute. “Well, that’s different.” The rye scalded his lips and torched his throat on the way down to his gut, where it detonated. Stifling a cough, MacKinnon reached across the rickety table and brought the bottle closer. The label read Old Overholt, all right, but MacKinnon knew this bottle had not held legitimate rye whiskey in months. His eyes began to water, but he refilled the cup with more of the forty-rod. This territory would be covered with green grass three feet high from Colorado to Mexico before that miser of a barkeep got the better of Sam MacKinnon. Besides, Jace Martin was buying the whiskey. It wasn’t costing MacKinnon a thing, except his liver.

  “The Three of Spades Saloon is as good as a bank,” Martin said. “Probably has more money in it than most banks in these parts. And there ain’t a bank in Bonito City.”

  The saloon in which they sat had no name. It had no windows, either, but the door remained open, allowing a draft and some light to fall on the table, which was nothing more than a keg with a solid oxcart wheel nailed to the top.

  Jace Martin leaned forward. He was younger than MacKinnon, thinner, too, with bright eyes and a drooping dark mustache. Martin pushed back his black hat. “The Bonito City Mining Company will pay off its miners on Friday,” Martin said softly. “They’ll lose most of their wages Friday night at the Three of Spades. What they don’t lose Friday, they’ll lose Saturday. On Sunday morning, while every miner in town is sleeping off a drunk, Charley the Trey will put his profits on the stage to Mesilla.”

  “And we rob the stage.” This time, MacKinnon only sipped the forty-rod.

  “No. The stage has a guard, and the guard has a Greener ten-gauge, sawed off. We rob the saloon before the stage gets to town.”

  MacKinnon set the glass on the wheel table top. He rubbed the graying stubble on his chin. Leaning back, he studied Jace Martin seriously instead of skeptically.

  “Jace,” he said, “I’ve swung a wide loop in my day, and I’ve done some work with a running iron. I’ve raised my share of Cain. I cheated Delmar Evans at poker, but that was Delmar Evans, and he deserved it. But robbing a person—”

  “Charley the Trey ain’t no person. His dice are loaded, his faro layout is as crooked as his roulette wheels. We rob him, and we’ll be cheered as heroes by every miner in Bonito City. We’ll be written up in those nickel books you fancy. Buffalo Bi
ll Cody will want to shake our hand. The territorial governor will give us a medal.”

  “Or they’ll be turning Charley the Trey into a Deadwood Dick.” MacKinnon managed to laugh as he shook his head and refilled his glass with more of that gut-chewing concoction. “If I remember right, the graveyard at Bonito City has two or three residents, courtesy of Charley the Trey.”

  “Four. The last came Wednesday a week ago. My brother. He was just sixteen.”

  MacKinnon studied the tin cup. He didn’t feel like drinking the rotgut now.

  “Why me, Jace? Why come to me?”

  “You know the territory.”

  “No better than you do.”

  Martin pulled a cheroot from his vest pocket, bit off an end, and found a match. “I got three boys with me. The kid, Harry Parker. Four-Eyes Sherman. And Chico Archuleta.” The match flared, and came up to the smoke. When the end glowed red, Martin drew in deeply, tilted his head back, and sent a plume of smoke rising toward the vigas. “I’d like …” Martin straightened in the rickety chair and smiled across the wheel. “I’d like someone with me that I could trust.”

  “You think you could trust me?” MacKinnon asked.

  “More than Parker, Sherman, or the Mex.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.” MacKinnon drank more whiskey. It didn’t burn as much now.

  “He wasn’t much of a brother. Not worth mentioning. Just got into the territory last week.”

  MacKinnon studied the younger man’s face. No. He’s lying to me, the territory’s biggest liar. He ain’t got a brother. He’s trying to sucker me in. But I’m broke and tired enough to let him do it. Hell, it might even be fun, like one of them adventure stories.

  Martin flicked ash onto the dirt floor. “You ever won a dime at the Three of Spades?”

  MacKinnon’s head shook. “But I’ve only bucked the tiger there a couple of times.”

  “You got a job?”

  He smiled. “Riding the grub line.”

  “Well.” Martin placed the cigar on the rusted airtight that served as an ashtray. “You won’t have to ride for any brand for a while after Sunday. We split six ways. Even. The sixth share goes to my mother in Akron, Ohio.”