Doubtful Canon

by Johnny D. Boggs

  It occurred to me that Whitey Grey had not answered the question I had posed, and I began to think of him as a liar, one of those miners full of braggadocio, or, another word I’d heard Mr. Shankin say when the mercantile owner was not around polite company.

  Maybe the albino had read my mind, or face, for he began nodding and leaned back on his throne. “I first come through Apache territory when I weren’t much older than you tots. Diff’rent country back then…like I done tol’ you I don’t recollect how many times. And, Master Jack Dunivan, you be right. You, too, li’l’ girlie. Apaches wasn’t prone to takin’ a scalp back then. Most of ’em won’t do it now, but some of ’em learnt from their wicked red vermin brothers.”

  “Wicked white men, too.” Jasmine came full alert. “Mexicans and Americans have paid bounties for Apache scalps!”

  “Don’t turn renegade on me, li’l’ girlie. Ain’t nothin’ ol’ Whitey Grey despises more than some Injun lover. Had you seen what ’em bad boys done to those folks at that stage station, seen how they cut down that gallant Mister Giddings, him with his best years left to live, you wouldn’t feel sorry for no dead Apache. Me? I taken me a few Apache scalps my own self and consider that bounty money well earned and well spent.” Another crooked, mirthless smile. “But, sure, sure, even Cherry Cows don’t care much for liftin’ hair, but they do other things that’d make a Comanch’ look like the biggest God-fearin’ sky pilot you ever laid your eyes on. Yeah, I knowed most Apaches don’t take scalps. Just a sayin’ mostly, young ’uns. You gots to remember that I growed up in Texas. And I seen many a white family missin’ their topknots from Comanche and Kiowa knifes. Even some Apache.”

  His explanation quieted my suspicions, although I imagine he could have said anything and I would have believed him, so strong burned my desire to find a reason to escape Shakespeare and my father, the cemetery, and my shame.

  “Luck.” Whitey Grey let out a long, sad sigh. His opaque eyes dropped, and for what seemed like minutes, though could have lasted only a few seconds, he seemingly stared at his battered, dusty mismatched boots. We waited, holding our breaths, as the white-skinned man’s head bobbed as if answering some silent question he had posed himself. “That’s what it was,” he said, looking up. “Nothin’ more’n luck. Oncet the sun set, things turned real quiet, even quieter than they had been right after that brave man got slaughtered right afore my eyes. It was over, for now, and I figured that this be my only chance. So shovin’ my Navy in my sash, I used that ol’ busted up Enfield of mine as a crutch, and I just walked, well, hobbled over to the far wall past Mister Giddings’s body. Carried one canteen with me. Then I just hugged real close to the cañon wall and eased my way eastward. That was the gamble, but I decided that oncet them bucks realized I had flowed the coop, they’d guess than I walked west, toward the San Simon and into that peaceful valley. Nothin’ back at Stein’s Peak station but a poisoned well and dead men and ruins. And you gots to recollect that most of ’em Apaches was between me and Stein’s Peak. But I limped out of there east, real careful-like. Because while it’s a knowed fact that Cherry Cows won’t attack nobody at night, I highly suspected that if some crippled up, starvin’, thirsty pale eyes was to stumble right into their camp, they’d swarm on me like flies on grizzly scat, yes, sir, knives and war clubs workin’. That’s what I done. I walked. Walked right past ’em and on toward that burnt out shell of a station.

  Fooled ’em, I did. Fooled ’em good. Took me a long time to cover only a few miles, but, come sunup, I was back at Stein’s Peak. Just collapsed against the tumblin’ walls. I guess I still expected the Cherry Cows to come back and finish the job, but for some reason they didn’t. A body can’t figure no Apache, that’s the truth. I don’t reckon I moved hardly a muscle all that day and into the next. Plumb tuckered out I was. Drank what was left in the canteen I had, but I didn’t have nothin’ to eat, not that my ol’ stomach could hold nothin’. Might’ve been slightly touched in the head by the sun, by all that I’d been through, but I was just sittin’ there, breathin’, when some boys’ drivin’ freight wagons come through. Must ’a’ been the next day, I guess. To be honest, I ain’t quite sure, but they come, give me some whiskey, took me into the back of one of their wagons. They say I was talkin’ clear out of my head, but, after they give me more whiskey and some coffee and just a li’l’ bit of soup and bacon, I come back to bein’ my old self. Tol’ ’em what had happened, and we went on westward. The freighters had a strong supply of muskets, and was ready for any attack, but we never seen no more Apaches. Redskins just disappeared, which is also their nature. We did come across the bodies of poor Sam Golden and the Mex. Picked to pieces, they’d been. Not by the Apaches, mind you, but other vermin…wolves and coyotes and ravens and vultures. Nothin’ left of ’em but their bones and some rags of clothin’. Buried ’em where we found ’em. Found the wrecked Concord coach just where it’d been left, too, shot to pieces, plundered. And, of course, more bones. All that was left of Bruce and the valiant Mister Giddings. We laid ’em to rest, too. And we lit a shuck out of Doubtful Cañon. I stuck with the wagon train till we reached Tucson, reported the missin’ gold and all that had happened to the superintendent of the Overland Mail there. And that was it.

  “You left the gold?” Ian Spencer Henry asked in disbelief. “Why didn’t you stay after you had buried those men? Why not look for it then?”

  The albino dismissed the twelve-year-old’s question with a snort. “In Doubtful Cañon? After Apaches had just slaughtered dozens of men?”

  Ever the mathematician, my friend corrected Whitey Grey’s number, and Jasmine pointed out that the Apaches had vanished. The albino snorted and shook his head.

  “Yeah, ’em Cherry Cows had vamoosed, but that don’t mean they wasn’t ’bout to come back and kill the rest of us. Apaches can vanish, but they been knowed to un-vanish, too. ’Sides, those boys who had saved my bacon wasn’t interested in money, even had I tol’ ’em ’bout it. All they wanted was to get out of that deadly place in one piece. So did I. No, sir, I didn’t tell ’em ’bout the treasure we was packin’ in that stage. Didn’t tell nobody…wasn’t rightly sure I could trust ’em, you see…till I met with the boss man in Tucson.”

  He grinned, and leaned toward us, lowering his voice to a whisper. “But I’m trustin’ you three young ’uns. You be my pardners, bein’ orphans and all. You chil’ren game?”

  Chapter Five

  For a moment, no one spoke. Whitey Grey didn’t even blink, just glared, waiting. My first glance fell upon Ian Spencer Henry, who wet his lips, hopeful but anxious; next, I turned toward Jasmine Allison, who stared at me with her pretty, pleading dark eyes. Neither wanted to cast a vote, and they looked at me as the leader, a rank I desired not.

  “When do…?” I had to clear my throat to make myself heard as I faced Whitey Grey. “When do you need an answer?”

  The albino frowned. “Chil’ren,” he said, “I offered y’all five thousand dollars. That’s practically two thousand each for orphans barely knee-high to a sidewinder. It’s….”

  “Sixteen hundred,” Ian Spencer Henry interrupted.

  “What’s that?” said Whitey Grey, dumbfounded.

  “Sixteen hundred,” my friend repeated, “and sixty-six dollars. Not two thousand. And sixty-seven cents.” He grinned. “I did that in my head. One thousand six hundred sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents. Of course, one of us will get one less penny because of the division. Three’s not an even number, you see.”

  “Yeah, I see.” But, of course, the white-skinned man saw nothing. “I’m lightin’ a shuck for that treasure at ten o’ the clock tonight. Take us an hour or so to get to the Southern Pacific, where we’ll board the train and ride to Stein’s. Y’all want to join me, y’all come here right afore that time. And don’t tarry ’cause we gots to catch that westbound. But I wants all three of you. I ain’t one to leave no young ’un behind and have him, or her, spill my story and have ever’ high-grader and bushw
hacker between Tombstone and Mesilla chasin’ my gold. Y’all savvy that?”

  Our heads bobbed.

  “It’s a right smart of money I’ve offered to share,” the stranger continued. “I been generous, as be my nature. But if a one of you tells anybody, even the nearest priest, I’ll figger you done betrayed me, and I slits the throats of those who try to cheat Whitey Grey.”

  With that, he stood. “Ten tonight. All of you, or none of you.”

  He moved with surprisingly quickness through the Lady Macbeth’s entrance, turned the corner, and vanished.

  Ian Spencer Henry rose, peeked around the corner, and, with a shrug, turned to me. “I figure we’d give Jasmine two extra cents,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “If we go. Instead of one of us getting only sixty-six cents, I figured you and I would give up a penny. Sixteen hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents for you and me, Jack, but Jasmine gets sixty-eight cents. I did that in my head, too.”

  “I’m not sure any of us will get any money.” Rising slowly, I tested the ankle Ian Spencer Henry had kicked.

  “You don’t believe his story?” Jasmine leaned forward, gathering the remnants and trash from the albino’s meal.

  “I have some investigating to do,” I explained and started to leave the mine.

  “But I want to go!” Jasmine cried out. “Don’t stop us.”

  “Yeah,” Ian Spencer Henry said. “You’ll ruin everything, Jack. Get our throats cut or something. That ghostly man is right. Sixteen hundred dollars, that’s more money than we’ll ever see around here.”

  I whirled back toward my friends. “Why does he want three kids with him?” That question had troubled me since hearing the albino’s proposition.

  “Because,” my two comrades sang out in unison.

  “Because why?”

  “Because…is all.” Ian Spencer Henry stared at his feet. Arithmetic problems he could solve with ease, but this proved a different type of equation.

  “Likely, he thinks he can cheat us,” Jasmine said after a moment’s reflection. “And for some reason, he needs us.”

  “Nobody needs a twelve-year-old,” I said, and thought of my father. Plagued by doubt. That kept proving to be my undoing, the way I saw things. Earlier, I had been so mesmerized by the stranger’s story, I would have done anything to believe him, would have gone with him in an instant, but now he was gone, and with it had departed my resolve to follow him. Perhaps some form of sanity, or reason, had rooted itself in me.

  “You’re a ’fraidy cat,” Ian Spencer Henry taunted.

  “Yeah,” Jasmine agreed, both of them sounding like the children they were. The children we were.

  I let out a long sigh, peered around the corner to make sure Whitey Grey had indeed gone, and shook my head. “No, I’m not. I want to go more than any of you, but I’m not going into that desert blind. I just think things through is all. You know that, the both of you. You want to get left behind in Doubtful Cañon? You want to die of thirst? Killed by bandits? And have you thought about how we can explain our disappearance? We can’t just walk out of here with that man.” I jabbed a finger at Ian Spencer Henry’s chest. “Your pa will come looking for you!”

  He snorted and spat in contempt. “My pa still thinks I’m attending the subscription school, Jack. He don’t know nothing except rocks and figures.”

  “Doesn’t know anything,” I corrected, ever the teacher.

  “And my ma doesn’t care a fip for me. She’s too busy.” Jasmine put both hands on her hips, glaring, daring.

  “And your pa….” Ian Spencer Henry stopped, and studied his shoes again.

  My stomach roiled. I felt my body tremble.

  “Sorry, Jack,” my best friend whispered when he finally looked up.

  “It’s just a way out, Jack,” Jasmine said. “Please….”

  Somewhere outside, a dog barked and a cat snarled. I fought to regain my composure, and, without looking at my friends, I said: “I just want to make sure everything is all right. I want to get out of here, get away from this place more than you know. But…. Let’s meet back here before supper. I’ll let you know then.”

  It’s hard to find a man you can trust in Shakespeare.

  Mr. Shankin had said that to my father before our family tragedy—although I can’t place the context of that conversation—back when Pa had been saving money to open his newspaper shop. I always remembered those words, especially once the bottle laid Pa low, and, whenever I found a troublesome puzzle, I sought out the mercantile owner. He had proved to be the father, the teacher, I had lost.

  Never had Shakespeare lured a population of philanthropists. When miners first found silver ore in the nearby hills back around 1870, the mining camp went by the name Ralston, after some California banker. Ralston’s men controlled the camp, controlled the stagecoaches, and just about every business in town. More miners flocked to the desert, searching for their own mother lode, but Ralston’s backers had hired a vigilance committee made up of Texians, and these gunmen—The Hired Fighting Men—pretty much kept the newcomers from making any claims, at least, good claims. The first veins played out quickly, but before Ralston could die, stories sprang up about diamonds being discovered at Lee’s Peak. So Ralston, and The Hired Fighting Men, survived for a few more months—until revelations that the diamond mines were a hoax, nothing more, just a way for Ralston’s men to pluck more money from the pokes of honest miners.

  Upon discovery of that deceit, the Ralston men fled back to California, Texas, and points unknown, and the mining camp quickly died until the second legitimate silver strike drew more fortune-seekers to the desert, and brought a new name, Shakespeare, to the settlement.

  Those Hired Fighting Men—couldn’t the vigilantes have come up with a better name than that?—had been Texians, and it would not have surprised me to learn that Whitey Grey had been one of those scoundrels. I merely suspected this, but wanted to learn from Mr. Shankin if he had ever heard of Whitey Grey or a stagecoach being attacked by Apaches in Doubtful Cañon back in 1861.

  I found him busy with two gentleman customers when I darted through the door. Not miners, not the way they dressed, a stark contrast to the soiled, mismatched duds Whitey Grey donned. One man stood, chewing on a peppermint stick like a cigar, with striped britches stuck into handsome boots equipped with musical, big-rowel spurs, and a blue shield-front shirt trimmed in yellow piping with a flowery B stitched in the center of the bib. He twirled a black Stetson in his left hand while his right rested on the ivory handle of a .44 Russian that rested butt forward in a dark holster on his left hip.

  This man I remembered. It hadn’t been that long ago that I’d seen Curly Bill Brocious use that revolver on a cardsharp not far from here.

  The second man, also dark-haired, although his lacked the waves of Brocious’s locks, sat in his stocking feet, the legs of his gray trousers pulled up to his knees. He twiddled his thumbs, waiting patiently for Mr. Shankin to bring over a pair of fancy tan boots with long mule-ear pulls. His black hat had been pushed back, and he wore a red, billowy shirt, black cravat, and a fine waistcoat that matched his pants. His shell belt held two holsters, something I’d never seen except on the covers of the half-dime novels Mr. Shankin and Ian Spencer Henry peddled. From the way the revolver butts faced, I assumed this man to be left-handed.

  “Hello, Jack,” Mr. Shankin greeted me warmly. “How are you faring today?” Before I could answer, he placed the boots beside the two-gun man’s feet. “Try these on, sir,” he told his customer and looked back at me. “You need anything, son?”

  “I can come back.” I started to go.

  “No need to run off, kid. It’ll take Dutch here half the day to get them boots over his stinkin’ socks.” The last time I’d heard that voice, Brocious had been screaming at those Mexicans to bury the gambler he had killed.

  “What do you need, Jack?” Mr. Shankin asked kindly.

  “Just wondering.”
Slowly I turned back around. “It’s nothing important.”

  The first boot went on with a grunt, and Brocious slammed the hat on his head, grabbing the candy with his free hand as his teeth crunched the stick in half. The second man pulled his left boot on with a soft whoosh, and rose slowly, then walked to the far end of the store, testing the new footwear.

  “What’s on your mind, Jack?” Mr. Shankin asked again.

  With Brocious chomping on his candy and the other gunman testing out the new pair of boots, I asked the mercantile owner if he had ever heard of Apaches attacking a stagecoach in Doubtful Cañon back in 1861.

  “Jack Dunivan here is bound to be a newspaper editor,” Mr. Shankin told Brocious with a beaming smile. “He’s….” He never finished, likely remembering my father’s troubles, and looked away from me, asking Brocious’s pal how the boots fit.

  “Kind of big,” the man said in a quiet voice.

  “Pour some water in them,” Brocious said. “Walk around with them wet all day. Leather’ll shrink. Fit fine after that bit of doctoring.”

  “I’m not one to waste water like that, Curly.”

  Shrugging, Brocious wiped sticky fingers on his bib front. “Well, buy them or take them off. We need to ride soon.”

  “That’s the only size I have in that style, sir,” Mr. Shankin said. “I could order you a pair, but that would take at least six or eight weeks.”

  “No cobbler in Shakespeare?” the man asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, let me walk around a minute more. I do like the way they look, and the fit isn’t that bad.”

  “The water treatment does work,” Mr. Shankin said.

  As the gunman walked back toward the bolts of cotton, Mr. Shankin turned back toward me. “That’s a little before my time, Jack, to answer your inquiry,” he said. “Back in ’Sixty-One I hung my hat in Terre Haute before joining the Thirty-Second Regiment to save the Union. Yet I have heard of many dreadful things happening in Doubtful Cañon. You might ask John Eversen. He re-opened the stage station after the rebellion when the Kerens and Mitchell Company ran stages from San Diego. Granted, I don’t think John ever worked the Butterfield lines, but if anyone remembers about the time you ask about, it would be him.”