Doubtful Canon

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Ain’t no Presbyterian church. No Catholic. No Israelite temple.”

  “No God in Shakespeare, neither,” the second man was saying, and in a quick motion his rifle bore now trained on Whitey Grey’s gut.

  The silence that followed didn’t last long, for suddenly Whitey Grey let out a loud howl, and ran his rough fingers through Jasmine’s hair. “That was a good try, li’l’ girlie.” He patted her head, slapped his hat on his head, and nodded at the two railroaders. The Winchester, however, never moved.

  “Mister,” the first man said, “you best tell us the truth. What in the Sam Hill are you and these kids doing out here? No more lies. Max and me, we’re in a hurry to get to Lordsburg alive.”

  “Thought you might be Apaches,” said the man called Max. “You look like you run into some.”

  “Apaches?” Whitey Grey chuckled again, but he wet his lips and looked concerned more than irritated. “What you talkin’ ’bout?”

  “Great Scot, man,” said the first man. “You ain’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Heard about the ruction at San Carlos,” the first man answered. “Big fight at Cibecue Creek. Scouts turned on the Army, who was trying to arrest that dreamer holy man. Wiped out Carr’s entire command is what we’ve heard. Then a slew of them jumped the reservation. Max and me figger they aim to steal and murder their way to the border, join up with ol’ Nana in Sonora. So does the Army and the S.P. Be a bloodbath for sure.”

  Before the man finished, Whitey Grey, his face even paler, sank to his knees, and he just squatted there, shaking his head, struck dumb, his mouth open, eyes distant.

  “We come to repair the wire between here and Stein’s,” the man with the rifle called Max added. “Apaches. Now we aim to get back to Lordsburg.”

  Said the first man: “I sure feel sorry for that woman and her guide.”

  “Yeah,” the man called Max addressed the first man, “but Mister Sparks warned her that Doubtful Cañon’s no place to be.”

  Mention of that place brought the albino back to us.

  “What woman? What about Doubtful Cañon?”

  Max answered. “Some gal from Texas showed up at Lordsburg, hired Willie Spoon to take her to the cañon. Says her old man got killed by Apaches there twenty years ago, and she wants to find the place and put a marker on her pa’s grave. Blame foolishness from a fool petticoat.”

  “And her name?” Whitey asked. “Or her pa’s name?”

  “Giddings,” the first man replied. “I know that because I was in Giddings, Texas, when they hung Bloody Bill Longley two, three years back.”

  Now the albino fell onto his backside, shaking his head. “What about ol’ Whitey Grey, Lord?” he said, looking at the sky. “Can’t nothin’ go right for this tired soul? Twenty years. Twenty years I spend waitin’, come down from Detroit at long last, wait for Victorio to get kilt, wait for Nana to finish his bloody business, wait till there’s some sort of peace in this country. And once I get here, what do you give me, Lord? Ill-mannered chil’ren, the baddest luck I ever got dealt, then you set the Apaches on the prod and send that hard-rock Giddings’s daughter after my gold! ’Tain’t fair, Lord. It just ain’t fair!”

  Chapter Eight

  “What in blazes are you talking about?” the first man asked.

  Said the second, a little more urgently: “What gold?”

  “Forget him, Max.” The first man turned to mount the lead velocipede car. “He ain’t got no gold. He’s crazy as a loon. Let’s get out of this country while we’re still alive. I ain’t waiting for any Apache buck to come back and cut that wire again. Next time, it might be old Nana himself, and I got a belly full of him this summer.”

  Shaking his head with a sigh, the man named Max lowered his Winchester and followed the first man, but the moment he had slid the rifle into a scabbard behind the second velocipede’s seat, Whitey Grey revived and rose.

  “Wait!” the albino commanded.

  The man called Max turned, the rifle back in his arms.

  “We’re getting out of this country,” the first man said. “You made it this far. You want to go back to Lordsburg, it’s only seven, eight miles or so. Stein’s? Well, that’s about the same. Suit yourself.”

  “What about me?” Whitey Grey said. “There’s twenty-five dollars in it. For both you fellers.”

  “I don’t think you got twenty-five dollars,” the first man said.

  “There’s gold,” Whitey Grey said.

  “Reckon Morgan is right. Can’t spend gold if I’m dead.” the red-bearded man called Max said. “And I don’t think you have any gold, neither. Like Morgan says, you’re loco. Some desert hermit with three rawhide kids. Now shuck that pistol of yours. I don’t fancy getting shot in the back, neither.”

  Ignoring the command, Whitey Grey motioned toward Jasmine, Ian Spencer Henry, and me. “You’d leave me. That I understand,” the white-skinned man said as he slowly approached the railroad conveyances. “But these here are chil’ren, not a one of ’em o’er ten years old.” Well, he had decreased our years by two, but the point he made put the railroaders in a moral dilemma. “Leave me, that’s all right, but you can’t leave these boys and li’l’ girlie behind. For if the Cherry Cows kill ’em, their blood’ll be on your hands.”

  Now standing face-to-face with red-bearded Max, the albino clasped his hands. “All I’m askin’,” he pleaded, “is for you to spare the chil’ren. Get ’em back to Lordsburg, send word to their kin in Hachita.”

  Hachita? Ian Spencer Henry and I shot each other a glance. Another mining camp, digging out silver, lead, copper, and even some turquoise, Hachita had sprung to life around 1875 and lay, from what I’d heard, more than twenty miles south of the Southern Pacific station at Separ, a long, dusty way from Shakespeare. Closer to Mexico than anywhere else.

  Yet the railroaders studied Whitey Grey, and, hesitating, Max looked toward the children.

  That’s all Whitey Grey needed.

  Never had the albino struck me as a quick man, and, despite all his threats and curses, I never thought of him as violent, but his right hand shot down for his ivory-handled Colt, while the left gripped the Winchester’s barrel and jerked savagely. Before Max knew what had happened, Whitey Grey had split his ear with the long barrel of the revolver, then stepped back, pulling the Winchester from Max’s grasp seconds before the railroader crumpled beside the velocipede car in a heap.

  He took another step back, lifting the Colt at the first man named Morgan, whose arms shot skyward as he leaped off the driver’s seat.

  “Don’t shoot!” the first man screamed.

  Whitey Grey shot him anyway.

  Bedlam followed. Ears ringing from the gunshot and the screams of Ian Spencer Henry, not Jasmine. Then he started running off into the desert in the general direction of Preacher Mountain. I just stood there, dazed, watching incredulously as Whitey Grey, his face animated and awful, walked around the metal vehicle toward the man named Morgan, who lay sprawled on the tracks. Ominously Whitey Grey thumbed back the Colt’s hammer and aimed at the man’s head.

  “Murder!” the man shouted weakly, extending his right hand in a futile defensive move. “Murder! Murder!”

  “You’re not killing him!” Jasmine yelled, and before I, or the albino, understood what was happening, she had flung herself across the wounded man’s body.

  “Get up!” Whitey Grey commanded. “Up, li’l’ girlie, or I’ll shoot you both.”

  The man named Max groaned, causing the albino to spin and make sure the man he had buffaloed posed no threat. An instant later, he spotted me, and, in a flash, I found myself staring down the bore of his large-caliber Colt.

  “Put that rock down, boy, or your brains’ll be splattered all over this country, you cussed li’l’ sneak.”

  “Jack!” Jasmine cried.

  Only then did I notice the rock in my right hand, held above my head. I must have been creeping toward the albino, bound to protect
Jasmine, although I didn’t remember picking up the stone, which now fell from my sore fingers.

  The man named Max groaned.

  Whitey Grey shook his head, turned back toward the man he had shot, when suddenly, from out of nowhere, charged Ian Spencer Henry, wailing like a pirate, leaping onto the albino’s back. The pistol roared. So did I.

  Like a bull I coursed, lowering my shoulder and crashing into Whitey Grey’s knees, wrapping my arms around his legs, knocking him to the ground while Ian Spencer Henry flailed about with his tiny fists. The albino screamed, cursed, hit. Jasmine, joining the affair, kicked, scratched, and bit. We rolled over rails and ties, gravel and sand, hitting the metal railroad vehicles and each other.

  “Ow!” Ian Spencer Henry yelled. “That’s me!”

  “Sorry.”

  Dust stung my eyes. My bent pinky finger throbbed in pain. My busted, bruised, banged nose began spilling blood once more. Someone kicked me in the chest. Ian Spencer Henry yelled something ridiculous from one of his five-penny dreadfuls. Jasmine yanked on the albino’s ragged curls.

  The man named Max groaned.

  The other railroader, the man named Morgan with a bullet in his left shoulder, crawled toward the Colt Whitey Grey had dropped.

  A knee came up, and I rode with it, then a ragged boot rocketed me into the air. When I landed, the breath whooshed out of my lungs, and I lay there, stunned, spread-eagled, shaking my head a few moments later, trying to regain my faculties.

  “That tears it!”

  Slowly I sat up, watching Ian Spencer Henry go spinning down the tracks like a top, tottering, before tripping and toppling over the second velocipede car’s axle-rod. Jasmine sat a few feet away, legs stretched out before her, rubbing her temples slowly. Only Whitey Grey stood, and he turned, kicked the first man in the face, and sent him rolling across the rails, whining and bleeding. The albino reached down and picked up his Colt, blowing dust and sand from the cylinder before shoving it in his pants and grabbing the Winchester.

  “Mutinous li’l’ curs,” Whitey Grey said, his eyes falling on me first, then a dizzy Ian Spencer Henry, finally on poor Jasmine Allison. “I ramrod this outfit. Try that again and you’ll wish the Apaches had catched you alive.”

  He sucked on his left forefinger, spit, and kicked the groaning man named Max back into unconsciousness. After fishing out his flask and having a couple of swallows, he walked back to the man he had shot.

  “How bad you hurt?” he asked, his voice shockingly polite, suddenly calm.

  “I don’t know,” the railroader whined.

  “Well, serves you right. Let me look at that.”

  Slowly I pulled myself to my feet and staggered toward the voices.

  “You’ll live. Didn’t hit no bone. Stick that hand-kerchief in that hole. Stop the bleedin’.”

  The albino gave me only a glance, then pointed the Winchester’s barrel at the railroader’s throat.

  “Please….” The man began sobbing.

  “Shut up. And buck up. You railroad men gots no spine. Now I aim to ask you a few questions, and you better answer me. Gots a fiercesome temper. You seen that already, but I’ve cooled off a mite now. But if I gets riled again, I might just accidental-like pull on this.” His finger patted the trigger while his thumb eared back the hammer. “That would be plumb awful.”

  Ian Spencer Henry and Jasmine gathered around. We said nothing, fearing we might somehow fuel the albino’s rage.

  “What’s this ’bout the Apaches?”

  “They killed Colonel Carr and his entire command. Max read about it in a New York Times he’d found in one of the smoking cars. Late August. His scouts turned on him when they went up to arrest this holy man at San Carlos.”

  Whitey Grey’s dead eyes blinked, trying to fathom the news.

  “Just some of ’em Apache bucks the Army hired to scout?” he asked hopefully. “That what you mean?”

  The railroader shook his head meekly. “It’s a lot more than just a few renegade scouts. Mister Sparks, he’s my boss, he got the wire the other day.”

  “Uhn-huh.”

  “Late sometime on the night of September Thirtieth…that’s, what, three, four days back, about half the Chiricahuas at San Carlos pulled out, run off toward Mexico. Scared after what happened at Cibecue, what might happen to them. Army fears that they’ll join up with Nana down in Sonora, and come back across the border. One of those Apaches that left is named Geronimo, and he’s a mean one. Then the wire went dead. Yesterday, Mister Sparks sent Max and me out on the Sheffield cars to check the line.”

  “And?”

  “Found it. Fixed it. Took some time. They’d spliced it with a rubber band, made it hard for Max and me to spot. That’s an old Apache trick. Unshod pony and moccasin tracks all around, too. I remember Victorio….”

  Whitey Grey cut him off with an oath, then, sighing heavily, he closed his eyes and lowered the Winchester’s barrel.

  The railroader sat up a little, grimacing, one hand pressed against the bloody rag in his shoulder. “I…I…could use…some water.” He addressed Jasmine, who looked at me for an answer.

  Yet before I could suggest that Ian Spencer Henry share his canteen, Whitey Grey’s eyes opened and he jammed the rifle barrel underneath the railroader’s Adam’s apple.

  Nearby, the man named Max groaned.

  “And what’s this ’bout the Giddings gal?” Whitey Grey asked.

  “Water?” the man called Morgan begged.

  “After you answer me.”

  He coughed, grunted. His head bobbed. “She got off the train at Lordsburg on Friday…no, reckon it was Thursday, right before the Apaches lit a shuck. Comely woman, barely in her twenties. Said her pa was killed by Apaches in April of ’Sixty-One at Doubtful Cañon. She never knew him, but wanted to see that he got a good Christian grave. Mister Sparks, he warned her that Doubtful Cañon’s no place for a woman.”

  The railroader coughed and winced, and Whitey Grey relented, offering him the flask of whiskey. That led to a few more savage coughs after the man swallowed.

  “You were sayin’?” the albino prodded with lessening patience.

  “That brew’s wickeder than Taos Lightning,” the railroader said, but he took another swallow from the flask just the same.

  Whitey Grey tapped the trigger with his finger.

  “All right, all right,” the man named Morgan said. “Mister Sparks said she shouldn’t go, that just a few months ago old Nana was killing and maiming, and, even when he wasn’t, that cañon is always full of snakes, those with two legs and those that just crawl.”

  “But she went?”

  “Yeah. Lady’s got grit. Willie Spoon crawled out of Pegleg Murphey’s tent saloon, said he’d take Miss Giddings to her pa’s grave for ten dollars.”

  “How’d he know where that grave is?” Whitey Grey asked. “Been twenty years, and there’s been plenty of buryin’ done at Doubtful Cañon afore and since.”

  “Yeah, but Willie, he’s a fixture in the territory like wind and dust. Says he was freighting then, and come across the ruins of Stein’s Peak station right after the fight. Remembered the stagecoach, everything, even recalled the girl’s daddy being full of arrows. And…that the animals that had gotten to him after the Apaches had done their dirty work.”

  “She believed him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This Spoon gent, he mention any survivor from that fracas?”

  “Said they found some Overland gunman at what was left of Stein’s. Took him on to Tucson. That’s all. Anyhow, Spoon’s story sounded gospel to Miss Giddings. So, come first light, they left.”

  The albino pondered this. “Should be back by now,” he said.

  “If the Apaches or bandits haven’t killed them,” the railroader said.

  “Or….” Whitey Grey lowered the rifle, pushed back his hat brim, and slowly stood. “Or iffen they’re lookin’ for somethin’ other than a grave.”

  The man cleared his t
hroat. “I sure could use some water,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “Yeah.” Whitey Grey slammed the rifle barrel against the railroader’s head. He fell hard onto the tracks, and the albino brought the stock of the rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the unconscious man’s head.

  “You’re a mean, mean man!” Jasmine yelled. “And if you kill him, I’ll…I’ll….”

  “Yeah,” Ian Spencer Henry said.

  The white-skinned man glared at my friends.

  “We said we’d go with you.” I had found my voice. “But we won’t be part of any murder. If you kill these men, you’ll have to kill us.”

  “Jack!” Ian Spencer Henry glared at me.

  I don’t know why I said that. I’d never been one to gamble, and I really had no idea why the albino wanted us along on this adventure, an adventure rapidly becoming a nightmare, but he did seem to value us.

  “I tol’ you chil’ren I ramrod this outfit,” the wild man said. “Tol’ you that a hunnert times.”

  “Yes,” I answered, “but we’re not murderers. Not for five thousand dollars. Not for thirty thousand.”

  He swung the rifle toward me, grinning wickedly. “Last chance, Jack Dunivan,” he said.

  I closed my eyes. “No, sir.” My voice came out as a choked whisper.

  Next, I heard the albino’s crazy laugh, and, when I forced my eyelids up, the Winchester rested on his shoulder, the hammer lowered, and he motioned toward the railroader on the tracks. “Drag his carcass off the tracks. Don’t want him gettin’ runned over by no S.P. train, chil’ren. They can walk back to Lordsburg when they come to.”

  Jasmine and Ian Spencer Henry ran to their chore before the albino could change his mind. I couldn’t move. To be honest, shaking so badly, I felt amazed that I could still stand.

  “And when you’re finished with him, haul this other gent away from the rails.” Whitey Grey slid the rifle into the scabbard, thought of something, and walked back to the red-bearded man, going through his clothes, coming away with a half-used plug of tobacco, a piece of jerky, a few dollars and change in coin, and an open-faced, silver watch. Next, as Ian Spencer Henry and Jasmine Allison dragged Max a safe distance from the rails, Whitey Grey robbed Morgan.