Had it really only been a few short days since Kansas City? Not time enough for the memory to fade. He had struck her, or his arm had struck her, and he had left her alone; bleeding and sobbing, in that tiny little furnace of a room. And now, his brother, lost or dead or taken, disappeared into wastes while he lay unconscious. He knew, no matter how alluring he found this strange woman who had followed him into the desert, His path that night led him in a different direction.
There had been a little whiskey left in his glass, and he had downed it with a single tip. He looked back to the stairs with a mixture of regret, frustration, and determination. He had stalked out of the saloon and towards the battered shape of the Blackjack, taking the first steps towards Billy the Kid, vengeance, and, he hoped, finding his brother.
And so for hours he had nursed the damaged vehicle across the desert. He had left the scrub grass and the pine forests far behind and was now deep in the wastes, surrounded by nothing but rock, sand, and the occasional stubborn bush or tree. He had stopped at the battle scene to pick over the remaining vehicles for canteens and RJ-1027 cells, and strapped it all to the back of the Blackjack. He had driven along the railroad tracks at an agonizing pace, watching for the telltale marks of the driller. When he found them, he turned without pause and followed them into the wastes.
He drove the first day until nightfall, having been in the saddle all night and day. He was parched despite the water he had salvaged, and his stomach was a distant rumbling insistence that he found it all too easy to ignore. As the miles reeled out beneath him, his mind leapt from image to image, replaying everything he had lost since that morning he had decided to hit the bank in Missouri City without his brother. The two images that constantly churned to the surface were his brother’s face and a face he knew was Misty’s, although it seemed to melt from the beautiful, smooth, young face of the dancing girl to the twisted, angry, torn face of the victim he had cruelly left on the floor of the tiny room.
Where was Frank? Was he even alive? Jesse’s mind was tormented with fear and worry, but he knew he could never have tracked down the survivors of the Union Advanced Patrol. Even if he could have, what could he have done then? Billy’s gang was almost completely intact, and they had to have been nearby, in Diablo Canyon, when the Union must have fled. Maybe they had seen something? It was Jesse’s best hope that the Youngers had taken his brother away after the battle. The fact that they had left him but taken his brother, he thought, was a good argument that his brother still lived, while they had been convinced that he had died. Cole had always been Frank’s friend and war buddy first, and Jesse’s friend and loyal follower a distant second. The rest of the Youngers followed their oldest brother’s lead without question. The scenario was not so far-fetched that it failed to offer at least slight comfort.
Still, if Cole and his brothers had managed to spirit Frank away, where would they have taken him? Not back to Kansas City, not after run in against the Union. So Billy’s the only trail he had to follow, he chose to see this as a gift of fate. Following this path he might learn more about his brother. At the very least, he should be able to learn where to start looking. He would definitely be able to seize this moment from Billy and make sure he could not enjoy the benefits of his backstabbing scheme. If anyone was going to emerge from this whole mess as an outlaw of the first water, it was going to be Jesse.
As the sun set on his first full day in the desert, he felt the first hints of despair. There was every possibility that his damaged Blackjack would not be able to outpace the driller. He would be no match for Billy’s ‘Horses, he knew. He figured he could at least catch the driller, but there was no way to tell how old the tracks were as he raced along the desert. There was plenty of room for his mind to torment him, amidst all the other torturous images, with fears that he would never catch his rival.
When the flaring reds and oranges of the glorious desert sunset finally faded from the sky ahead; he triggered the Blackjack’s running lamps. The frantically jumping shadows made it nearly impossible to see the driller tracks unless he slowed his movement to a crawl, however. He continued for a time, but he felt his vision blurring, his attention wavering from one moment to the next. The second time he lost the trail completely, jerking awake to realize he was staring at smooth, featureless sand, he circled back, found the trail once more, and then stopped for the night.
He took a strip of the jerky from his saddlebags, a sip of water from his last canteen, and then huddled up against the warmth of his machine, wrapped in a duster, and succumbed to an uncomfortable, fitful sleep.
His dreams were a blurred moving picture array of faces. Frank was there, then Cole, smiling his cruel, open smile. He saw Billy, forever trapped between boy and man, and he saw Lucy, looking over one smooth shoulder as she moved through a crowded room towards a steep set of stairs. Each time the faces melted into the next, however, there was a flash of Misty’s face, twisted in hatred or soft in sleep, smooth as the day he met her or torn as the day he had left. The only thing that never changed were green her eyes, always boring into his, never letting him go.
Jesse came awake slowly, eyes blinking in the harsh glare of sunrise, mouth working to generate any moisture it could. He threw off the duster, took another quick swig of water, and mounted up once more. Hanging over the saddle to get a better view of the tracks, he continued on his way.
The Blackjack had sputtered along well past midday before Jesse saw, in one of his quick glances ahead, a confused jumble a little ways off from the driller’s track. He found a narrow trail intersecting with Billy’s path. The remains of a wrecked wagon were piled up in the sand and rock a couple hundred feet away from the driller tracks. Jesse looked up the digger trail. It took a sharp left turn and then continued on into the distance. Off the trail the tumble of wood, canvas, and metal gleamed dully in the rising sun, a silent pivot point for Billy’s change of direction.
He nursed the Blackjack down into silence and then swung off, pulling a hyper-velocity pistol as he moved towards the wreckage, weapon down and to the side.
“Hey, anybody there?” Jesse shouted more to make himself feel better than in the honest thought that there might be people nearby. The wreckage looked total. Anyone left alive probably would have retreated long ago. He was not surprised when there was no answer.
“Hey, you okay?” He repeated, not knowing what else to do.
As Jesse came up on the wreckage he noted the charred blast marks of RJ-1027 weaponry across the sideboards of the wagon, and the blasted wheels, spokes scattered across the sand. The small generator that had been jury-rigged beneath the body of the wagon to drive the rear wheels was dead, none of its vents or telltale lights winking at all in the shadow of the dead cart.
Jesse moved around the wagon, his gun still held level. The canvas cover of the main compartment was collapsed, more blackened holes blown through it. Much of it had burned away. The wagon was canted to one side, resting on the remains of one shattered wheel. Pots, pans, and clothing were scattered across the desert all around, mixed in with a muddle of booted prints. He had nearly completed his circuit around the devastation when he saw the bodies.
There were two of them, slumped to the side and tied back to back. They both looked like half-Injun outcasts judging from their skin, hair, and clothing. Middle-aged, they looked similar enough to have been brothers. There were flint knives and a bow nearby, a quiver of arrows half emptied into the sand. Both of the men had had their throat’s slashed. Their faces had been further brutalized with a sharp knife.
“Smiley.” Jesse muttered under his breath as he crouched down beside them.
Their clothing, mostly leathers, were decorated with the bone and feather fetishes he had seen many folks of mixed heritage wear in an attempt to identify with a culture that had denied them as surely as White society. Jesse wondered if the Apache Kid was traveling with Billy, and if so, what he must have thought of this work. He shook his head again.
Jess
e reached out with one hand, laying the feedback pads against one corpse’s arm. Information compelled its way into his mind. The body was cold. The newly-risen sun had not had time to warm it again. They had been dead for some time.
Jesse stood up and stretched his back. Whatever had happened here, Billy had learned something that had changed his course. Could these two outcasts have known something about the artifact Bonney had been hunting? Or at least, knew of this mysterious valley the dead medicine man had mentioned?
Something about the torture, about the way the bodies had been left, filled Jesse with a new sense of urgency. He ran back to the Blackjack. He muttered a quick prayer to a God he barely thought of anymore as he turned the key and closed his eyes with a quick nod of thanks as it stuttered back to life. He leaned down to quickly check the indicator lights along the charge cells. Not strong, but no need to replace them yet. He opened the throttle on his machine and roared off after the tracks turning south, deeper into the wastes.
The new trail moved straight as Warrior Nation arrow for the rest of the day. When the light faded off to his right again, he did not even try to push himself; he simply slowed to a stop in the middle of the track and huddling down for the night.
The newfound sense of urgency woke Jesse before the sun and he resumed his travel, going as slow as necessary to keep the tracks clear in the murky dark of pre-dawn. He did not mark the rising of the sun except to slowly bring up the speed of the Black jack as the divots became clearer.
Jesse sipped down the last of his water on the morning of the fourth day. He had eaten the last of his jerky the night before. Voices of defeat and a sad, pathetic death alone in the middle of the desert had been whispering in his ear all night. His sleep had been restless and broken. He was too far gone now, though. He would never make it back to civilization now, not without water or food. If he could not catch up to Billy in the next couple of days, the voices would be proven correct. He would die, alone, in the desert.
As he rode along, Jesse thought of all the people who would be affected by his death. Most folks would think he really had died in the shootout with the Advanced Patrol. Lucy would know better, but maybe she should think he had just lit out. She would think he cared nothing for her proposal, and forgotten about her. For some reason, that thought bothered him more than he felt it should. The most driving fear he felt at the idea of dying, however, was that Frank, if he still lived, would never know he had survived the battle.
Thoughts of his brother distracted his mind so that he did not know how long he had been staring at the tall streaks of smoke in the sky. He slowed to a crawl over the sand and then stopped. Somewhere, not too far ahead, someone had lit several fires. The smoke rose up into the clear blue sky overhead. Jesse squinted up at the smoke, trying to judge how far away it was. He did not hear machinery or engines of any type, but if it was Billy, he did not want to give away his position until he was good and ready to face the puling chiseler on his terms.
Jesse killed the Blackjack’s engine and slipped off the saddle. He opened up the cargo compartments and dug through the plunder there. He pulled out an ammo belt of RJ-1027 cartridges and slung that over his shoulder, pulled a holdout pistol and shoved that into the back of his belt, and was about to close the hatch when he saw the sleek shape of Carpathian’s new weapons lying in the bottom of the hold. He reached in and looked again at the mysterious ion pistol. With a shrug he shoved one into a pocket, closed the hatch, and began the hike towards the distant smoke.
He heard the machinery long before he reached the lip of the shallow canyon. He heard a vicious, grinding whine, strangely muffled, beneath the dragon-roar of an RJ-1027 engine running at full power. A column of white dust or smoke rose into the sky over the canyon. He slowly lowered himself to his belly and began to crawl to the edge, moving towards a gnarled, spidery tree that might offer a little cover. He moved up behind the tree and peeked over, his heart suddenly thundering in his chest as he realized that he had actually made it.
The valley was not deep, possibly the bed of a long-dead river tangled up with countless others forming a maze in the middle of the lifeless land. Billy’s men had parked their Iron Horses all along the bottom and were lounging around, taking their ease. They obviously trusted to the remote location in the middle of nowhere to provide their security. Jesse could see Billy standing near a large hole that had been blasted into the side of the canyon. The driller was backing out, accompanied by the plume of dust and grit. The men of Diablo Canyon were standing nearby, directing the drill or holding a mixture of strange equipment. Off to one side was a framework of metal struts that had been built to support another machine that seemed to be pointed at the wall.
Two of the Canyon men were arguing, one pointing to the shadowy hole, the other back at the framework with its machine. Billy walked to them, bringing them together, and listened carefully to what they said. He nodded once, patted one man on the back, and then pointed to the hole. Both of the men shrugged, and one yelled something to the driver of the drilling machine. The thing reversed course and crawled slowly back into the hole, the many drills reaching out in front of it spinning back up, creating the terrible, echoing roar that had led him to the canyon.
Jesse scanned the crowd of men below. He saw Smiley resting against the canyon wall a bit away, taking advantage of what shade there was. He saw Johnny Ringo and the Apache Kid standing together off to one side. They did not look amused, and cast constant looks along the rim of the canyon. Several times Jesse had to duck back behind his scrubby little tree to avoid their notice.
A man walked from behind a small pinnacle of rock towards Ringo and the Kid, and for a moment Jesse would have sworn it was Bob Cole. A surge of anger and hatred filled his mind. It was everything he could do to stop himself from leaping down into the canyon, both guns blazing. The anger caught him by surprise even as he realized the man was not Cole’s youngest brother. Could he be harboring so much animosity towards Cole and his brothers? Jesse shook his head and forced himself back into the moment. His time had come, and his opportunity to stick Billy in the neck and grab the brass ring for himself had arrived. All he needed was a plan.
Below, the drill continued its grinding work. Choking dust blasted back out of the hole and swirled through the canyon, up into the sky. The men stopped their talking whenever the drill began to work, continuing their conversations only after the hellish noise trailed off. Most of the men turned to the Billy and the cave during these lulls. The few remaining watched the sky, or the lip of the canyon, or the dirt at their feet as their own individual impulse dictated. He saw that Ringo and the Kid usually watched the cave mouth whenever the machine was working, their expressions unreadable from this distance.
The driller stopped and backed out of the shadows again, and again the Diablo Canyon men argued about what was happening inside. Most likely the driller would head back into the darkness again, and Jesse knew he should be ready when it did. The drill’s noise would present him with the best opportunity to make it into the canyon unopposed. Get the drop on Billy, bring him under the weight of the hyper-velocity guns, and the jig would be up; Jesse would be back on top. Most of the men in the canyon were men he had ridden with in the past, and they would take their share of whatever the driller found from his hand just as readily as from Billy’s. Ringo would be tough, and the Kid. Smiley was a monster, but he did not much care who he was killing for, as long as he had the opportunity to kill.
No, the entire thing came down to Billy. It was always going to be between Jesse and Billy when the penny finally dropped. And here it was, tumbling towards the sand.
Frank’s face floated up into Jesse’s mind again. Frank was always the one he could bounce an idea off of. Frank would know which parts of his plans were good and solid, and which ones were harebrained notions that could not possibly survive the light of day. Without Frank there to listen, it almost felt as if any plan could not hope to succeed. He did not even want to think abo
ut jumping into that canyon without Frank’s Sophie to watch his back.
For a moment he thought about going in brazenly calling for his brother’s support, pretending he was up in the hills waiting to slap down any mudsill yahoo that got ornery. Then he remembered that there was every chance Billy and his gang knew more about Frank’s whereabouts than he did. He could almost hear his brother’s voice mocking him for the very thought. A chill ran down his back as he thought about what else he might have missed as he made his simple little plan.
Without Frank, this was going to be even harder than he wanted to admit. He told himself it was his best chance to learn more about his brother’s fate.
And besides, Billy really needed a good spoke in his wheel. And Jesse James was just the man to do it. For the first time in days, the old familiar grin came easing back.
*****
Hanging from the flank of his wagon, Wyatt looked out at the center of Diablo Canyon and shook his head at the devastation. It had looked bad through the vision slits of the Judgment wagon, but without the solid iron frame limiting his view, he could fully appreciate the impact. Two buildings seemed to have completely burned down, and many others showed the unmistakable blast damage of countless RJ-1027 shots. Something monumental had occurred in the center of town, dwarfed only by the scatter of wreckage and bodies marking the sight of the battle a stone’s throw to the south.
“Wyatt, you gonna keep movin’, ‘r you gonna trap the rest of us in here for the rest of the day?” Virgil’s voice muttered from behind him. The Over-marshal nodded an apology and leapt down onto the street.
The Jessie James Archives Page 31