“See anything?” Jimmy asked, his dark head resting against a mail bag and bundled scarf.
“Nope.”
“Another day of walking?”
“Looks that way.”
Jimmy sat up and looked around.
“You okay, Jimmy?” Nathan asked.
He flashed a squinty eye at Nathan, held his gaze, and then got to his feet. “I’m fine,” he said, but Nathan didn’t quite believe him.
Eli and Gilbert struggled to stand, and Eli in particular placed both hands to the small of his back. He took in that vast land and shook his head.
“Another day,” Mackenzie said and rose, looking to the north. “Maybe we’ll reach another one of those shelters that saved us from the crabs.”
“Maybe we’ll meet something worse than the crabs,” Eli said.
“Well, let’s eat and find out.”
“Fuck you, Mackenzie.”
With no breakfast to be had, the men gathered up their belongings, got a bearing on where the pull was taking them, and started walking in that direction.
The morning was warm, and the sweat of the previous day clung to the men. Their clothing stank with dried perspiration. Only Nathan still had his hat, and that provided some shade from the sun, but by noon, the men were once again stripping down to their pants alone. Their armloads were heavier, and their breaks more frequent. With nothing to drink and no water in sight, their energy quickly sapped, and their progress slowed. They didn’t talk much, saving their breath for the seemingly endless march across the great plains. Whenever they stopped for a rest, it became that much more difficult to rise. Nathan checked his boots every now and again, fully expecting to see holes in the bottom. The others were gasping and staring at their path ahead, where nothing but endless grass awaited.
Mackenzie was no longer ahead of the gang but walking alongside Jimmy. Both men were brown from the neck up, had their bare torsos burned red right down to the waist band. Eli and Gilbert dragged their feet behind them, also with their shirts off, and just as roasted.
Nathan’s boots crunched dry grass as he stared ahead, panting, and wondering just how far it was to the next doorway. He looked left and right and almost stumbled in his own feet, which prompted him to keep his attention on what he was doing. Cold. He wished for the cold. Wanted that as well as a cold drink more than anything. He’d give his share of the train money just for a taste of snow scraped off the side of the Rockies’ back. Every time he closed his eyes, it took just a little bit longer to open them. The left side of him sizzled under the sun, and he realized the desert they’d crossed wasn’t so bad after all.
The sun was scalding. Searing. He continued to wear his hat, which eventually felt like a roasting pot. The cloth band inside pressed against his temples and head like a strip of hot leather. Nathan lowered his head and walked on, struggling to keep pace with the others. He perspired, his sweat damn near sizzling on his bare skin, like lard stuck to a frying pan.
Around late afternoon, Mackenzie and Jimmy stopped and swayed.
“Rest,” Mackenzie croaked and dropped to his rump in the grass. He rolled over, pressed his face into those coarse strands, and stayed there. Jimmy actually staggered, and Nathan knew what he was thinking. If he sat down, he might not have the strength to rise.
“Yuh,” Eli whispered, his hard-case demeanor burned away by the sun. Gilbert dropped his belongings and nearly fell over until Eli reached out and stopped the fall. The pair sat down like men in their eighties. Once on the ground, they lowered themselves onto the grass as if the very earth was a sun-bleached coffin. Their rib cages, hairy and sunburned, fluttered weakly.
Nathan stopped and met Jimmy’s gaze.
“I know… what you’re thinking…” Nathan whispered, feeling parts of his mouth popping free of whatever foul resin had sealed them. He couldn’t generate any spit at all in his mouth or throat, both of which felt like the topside of scorched canvass.
Jimmy only stared.
“You’re thinking…” Nathan said, “if I sit down… can I get back up?”
Jimmy managed a feeble smile. “Doesn’t matter,” he rasped. “Don’t think… I could… take another step.”
Nathan heard that.
They dumped their loads and lowered themselves, and Nathan discovered even the grass was hot, but not unpleasantly so.
“Can anyone… weave us … some blankets?” he asked.
No one answered.
“Just wondering,” he finished and stretched out on the ground.
No one spoke. For a very long time. And the peace of that unending prairie remained constant.
Nathan’s eyes cracked apart, and he licked his lips. The sun was lower in the sky, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t going anywhere. The others didn’t stir, didn’t even moan, and they’d either fallen asleep or were just as done as Nathan. He thought to pull his winter duster up and over his frame, but discovered he’d perched his ass on it, and he didn’t have the strength to yank the thing free.
“Contrary bastard,” he whispered at the thing.
So he lay there, on his back, staring straight into the depths of the sky, and wondering if he could fall into it. Perhaps the sky was a secret ocean, and he could just plunge into its cloudless depths.
He opened his eyes again, realizing that he’d drifted off. Eli or Gilbert was snoring.
Mackenzie was groaning.
“Mack?” Nathan whispered. “That you?”
“Yuh.”
Nathan gathered his strength. “How you doin’?”
“Not good, Nate.”
“Yeah. Same here.”
“Festus… was wrong… about the starving,” Mackenzie got out. “And dying. Of thirst.”
“Maybe.” Nathan whispered.
“Listen. I’m gonna… fire my rifle.”
That widened Nathan’s eyes. “What?”
“You heard me. Don’t make me… repeat myself.” A clicking of metal then, followed by a long moment of silence. “God. Damn.”
“What?”
Mackenzie sighed and released a dusty chuckle. “Can’t lift the damn thing.”
“Just shoot it then,” Eli said in a voice that couldn’t have belonged to him.
“Jimmy’s in the way.”
“Goddammit, Jimmy.”
“Wait,” Nathan croaked.
He was on his back, pointed away from the others. His hand found the grip of a Colt, and he pulled the thing free, but not far. Damnation, he thought blackly, it was a wonder to think he was freezing his ass off in Alberta not two or three days ago, and now he was almost cooked on an endless patch of grass.
He rested the pistol on his thigh. Took a moment to cock the hammer, which he almost didn’t do.
“We might… call attention… to something we don’t want,” Nathan said to his partners.
“We’re dead, anyway,” Gilbert whispered in an old man’s voice.
“Do it,” Eli said.
“Yuh,” from Mackenzie.
“Jimmy?” Nathan asked.
No reply, and just when Nathan thought the man might have already slipped away, he croaked. “Do it.”
With no spit or strength to reply. Nathan gripped the gun two-handed and lifted it just above his belly. He aimed for the sky and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his grip, and he almost dropped it, but managed to hold on.
“One,” Nathan said in a shaky voice.
He drew back the hammer and took a firmer hold of the weapon. With a breath, he squeezed the trigger again. The shot rang out, the gun kicking in his hands. He dropped the piece, the bare barrel flailing him across the belly, hot enough to make him flinch.
Nathan eased back and didn’t move anymore. Didn’t care, really.
Strung out on their backs as they were, unintentionally in the shape of a star… they waited.
Nathan closed his eyes, the dark made red by the sun. He hauled his father’s hat over his forehead. That was better, not by much, bu
t a little. His temples throbbed in the shade. And at some point, just before he drifted off, the throbbing once again sounded like the dreamy locomotion of a struggling train.
45
Hands grabbed his ankles, and Nathan’s eyes fluttered at the hard contact.
He heard various grunts from shadowed faces overhead, felt fingers lifting him off the hot ground. He swayed, distantly aware of being carried, until his drooping backside hit a hard edge and painfully lit up his mind. He was dragged over that edge, his sunburned skin screaming all the way, until he landed on hard wood.
Nathan realized two things then.
He was in the back of an open wagon, and there were people with him. Who they were, he didn’t know, but he heard them all the same.
Just before he passed out.
He woke again, spat hay, wondered why that was so. With a lurch, he rolled himself over and felt the bristly ends of yet more hay stab him all along his back. Nathan adjusted himself, realized he was on a blanket, and settled back in time to see fine lines of light seeping through thick timbers overhead. A barn, he realized. He was on his back in a barn.
“What the hell?” he muttered and tried to get up. His world spun, giving his senses a savage spin, and forced him back down.
“Take it easy, Nate,” Mackenzie advised. “Just relax until you’re strong enough. Water bucket’s to your right.”
Nathan turned his head. Sure enough, a bucket sloshing water was right where Mackenzie said it was.
“Get him a drink, goddammit,” Eli swore in a low voice. “Christ Almighty, Mack. Telling the man there’s water right there and knowing goddamn well he ain’t got the strength to pinch piss out of his weasel. That’s goddamn torture.”
“Goddamn torture,” Gilbert repeated.
“And you call us the hard ones. God damn.”
“God damn,” Gilbert tacked on.
No reply from Mackenzie, but Nathan heard him move around until a hand touched his shoulder.
“Can you lift your head, Nate?” Mackenzie asked.
Nathan struggled to his elbows, seeing the men scattered around the interior of a spacious barn. The doors were to his left and wide open, the dirt sprinkled with strands of hay.
Looking like he’d been seared by hellfire himself, Mackenzie crouched nearby and had a wet cup of water in his hands. He helped Nathan to a sip, and let him take it down before giving him another.
“Take that slow,” Mackenzie advised. “Very slow. Don’t drain it down in a few gulps. Eli did that and spewed it up all over himself.”
Nathan did so, feeling the life creep back with every swallow. “Damnation,” he sputtered between sips. “If that. Don’t taste. Good.”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie said with a little smile.
“Where are we, Mack?”
“In a barn. On a farm. In the middle of nowhere. Got here last night, just as it got dark. Barely remember it all, really. We were in such a poor state. Slept most of the night, until a little while ago. That’s all I know. That and the people who brought us here.”
“People brought us?”
“They heard us. A mile away, they said. Friendly folks. Real friendly. They were in a wagon heading home. Heard the shots and investigated. Found us on the prairie, and thought we were all gone. Weren’t, though. So they came and loaded us into the wagon.”
“I wasn’t loaded,” Gilbert said. “I climbed on.”
Mackenzie smirked. “That’s right. Gilbert climbed on. Jimmy almost did it, but he sorta just half-loaded himself into the back before he ran outta steam.”
“You get their names?” Nathan asked.
Mackenzie shook his head. “Nah. I wasn’t much for talking. None of us were.”
Suppose so, Nathan thought, not remembering anything of the rescue. “So we’re in Saskatchewan?” he asked.
“Yeah. I think. We might be just inside the Manitoba border as well. Jimmy thinks the same, too, except… well. Except for it being summertime.”
Nathan stared at the man. They’d boarded the 311 in the Rockies, in the dead of winter.
“Yeah,” Mackenzie said. “I know. We all know. We’ll get the straight of it sooner or later. For now, just lie back and settle in. Drink your water and get your strength back.”
Nathan relaxed, letting the last swallow work its magic. He looked to the open barn door, and noticed Jimmy sitting on the dirt just inside the shadows. The man had a face full of thought going on, staring outside while tugging on his beard.
“You okay over there, Jimmy?” Nathan asked.
The Metis man turned his head at the question and, in the warm shade of the barn, smiled ever so faintly.
Some time later, chickens clucked and swore at someone shooing them out from underfoot. People approached the barn, and Nathan, now sitting and just taking it easy, watched as two folks wandered into sight. There was a man, holding a pot, while a woman carried a stick with clay mugs hanging from its length. They were an older couple, perhaps in their fifties, with silver creeping into their otherwise dark heads of hair. Nathan saw they were Metis, their skin sun-browned and healthy, and had the look of hardworking plainsfolk.
“You men feel like a late lunch?” the man asked in an oddly calming voice.
A late lunch.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Eli and Gilbert replied as one.
The couple went about handing out mugs, and the spoons to go with them. The broth was chicken, with pepper and salted to flavour, and filled with soft chunks of carrots and potatoes.
Considering the state they were in, it was the best meal Nathan figured he’d had in a very long time. Not since dining at his own table, with his mother and father.
“Begging your pardon, Ma’am,” Mackenzie started after finishing his soup in short time. “But we were wondering where we were.”
The couple appeared bemused at the question.
“You’re here,” the man said after a bit, revealing a smile with only half its teeth.
“Where’s here?”
“On the prairie.”
“Saskatchewan?”
That got another smile.
“Manitoba?”
The smile widened.
“Not Alberta?” Mackenzie stressed.
“Not Alberta,” the woman said as Gilbert finished off his meal with a belch and a quick wipe of his face with the back of his hand. He gestured for more with a hopeful smile and the lady obliged.
“We like to keep this place secret,” the man said, his dark eyes sweeping over them all.
Nathan noticed that the man lingered on Jimmy just a while longer.
“We like to keep it secret since… we noticed the mail bags you were carrying there.”
“Ah,” Mackenzie took up. “Have no fear of that. Or us. I mean that. You saved us from… a most terrible death out there. Sun-scorched and left to dry out like leather. On behalf of my boys, I, we, thank you both. For your help and compassion, and nursing us back to health.”
A round of thank you’s then, from the gang, including Nathan.
“My name’s Mackenzie,” Mackenzie said and then went around the barn, introducing the others. Jimmy included, who Nathan thought had an odd expression on his face.
“Bichem,” the older man introduced himself. “Henry Bichem. And this is my missus. Marie.”
Nathan hadn’t taken his eyes off Jimmy, so he caught the subtle stiffening of the man’s back upon hearing the words.
“A pleasure, Mister and Missus Bichem,” Mackenzie carried on. “Again, thank you so much for your kindness and hospitality. We owe you a grand debt. If you’re not adverse to the idea, we’ll gladly pay for our lodgings here. And your trouble.”
Henry Bichem placed the pot on the ground and straightened. “No need for that. But if you feel partial to leaving a gift, that’s entirely your choice. As for our trouble? No trouble at all, but we do hope you… ah… respect our property while you’re here. Until such time as you’re able to move on.”
&nbs
p; “We most certainly will,” Mackenzie said.
“You men finish that off,” Henry Bichem pointed at the pot. “Marie will have something a little more solid for your supper.”
“You’re too kind, Mister and Missus Bichem.”
The couple smiled at the train robbers, ignored their weaponry, and made their way out of sight.
Jimmy watched them go.
“Pleasant enough folks,” Mackenzie said after a time.
“The hell you offering them our money for?” Eli grumped.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Mackenzie said.
“It is fair,” Gilbert said.
“I just would’ve appreciated a little more notice before you offered, that’s all,” Eli said.
“Didn’t think it would be a problem.”
And the argument began, on what the Bichems had done for them, and what would be fair compensation as well as a little extra to show their appreciation for being saved.
Nathan didn’t hear any of it. Any amount of money to the Bichems was a fair price, in his mind. What really interested him, however, was those little looks between the old couple and Jimmy Norquay.
Who looked like he’d just seen the white, sheet-covered ass of a ghost.
Henry Bichem wandered into the open barn door later that day. He stopped in the shade and inspected them all, as if wondering what to do with them. Three chickens kept close to his heels, picking at the pebbles and casting curious looks at the barn’s inhabitants.
“I’ll get you another bucket of water,” Henry Bichem said.
“You got a farm here, Mr. Bichem?” Mackenzie asked.
“We do. Small one. Does us fine.”
“Livestock?”
“Yep.”
With that, Henry Bichem walked out of the doorway, the chickens strutting behind him. He returned a few minutes later, carrying a single bucket, wet and sloshing, which he placed at the feet of Mackenzie. The chickens waited upon the threshold, as if not trusting the gang.
“There you go,” Henry said in that calm voice of his that reminded Nathan of Leland Baxter in a way he couldn’t identify.
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