Liminal States

by Zack Parsons

  It was a gift from the same Austrians who’d sold him the wireworks, a fine bolt-action rifle of Bavarian manufacture and Austrian carving and inlay. The brass scope Gideon had attached was a bit of American ingenuity. Made, no doubt, somewhere east, where few men used such things but devised them anyway. The screeching of the train was loud, as if within Gideon’s skull.

  He sat on the bank and raised a knee. He laid the rifle across his leg in the method taught to him as a young man by the Voortrekker named Retief. The marksman was hired by Chatholm to teach manly pursuits to the sons of the wealthy. Retief was a hunter and warrior. He fought the Zulu. Gideon recalled the Boer’s advice, barked down his collar while he sat firing very similar rifles for days on end at the arsenal, and Gideon held his breath and aimed through the scope.

  Reckoning the dynamite to be too small a target, Gideon fired the rifle and struck one of the powder kegs. The wood splintered, and the bullet disappeared with a thump into the keg. Black powder spilled out from the wound.

  McClelland looked about, still standing in the creek with the fuse drawn tightly over his upturned palms, still not understanding his peril. Gideon released his held breath. He reached for another cartridge, then stopped, finger and thumb poised to grasp a fresh shot, as the immense black shape of the Pacific Southern loomed into view above the rim of Green Creek.

  The train’s brakes smoked from the friction, and its huge iron wheels turned so slowly, Gideon could count the individual spokes. The fireman and engineer turned and gazed the length of Green Creek almost at the same moment, and their eyes fell upon the many men sitting in wait. Gideon could see the alarm on their faces, and though he could not hear them over the noise of the train, he was certain they were calling out a warning.

  Although the train was very slow, it appeared to have enough speed to cross the bridge. A coal car was laid in behind the locomotive, and just visible behind that was the freight car.

  Without need for command the men began to fire upon the locomotive’s cab. Bullets sparked and penetrated the metal walls and scarred the red and gold livery of the Pacific Southern line. The engineer and fireman were either shot or escaped out the opposite side of the locomotive. The train continued forward, and the sound of the brakes eased. It was no longer slowing.

  The freight car was fully visible, and a passenger carriage came into view, rolling slowly behind it. The locomotive was nearly across the bridge.

  McClelland stood in the creek’s floodwaters, still holding the fuse, struck dumb by the sight of the train on the bridge above. For some reason he turned his head toward Gideon, and in that moment the bridge exploded.

  There was no puff of warning or sudden flash of burning powder. The bridge and all of the charges and the locomotive and the first three cars disappeared in an upheaval of earth and smoke and a deadly hail of shrapnel. The noise of the blast knocked against the men along the bank and rang in their ears. McClelland was thrown down the creek with such force that his body tore into several gory slabs, and these tumbled and separated and disappeared over the bank of the creek.

  The bridge’s iron trusses were deformed and flung in every direction by the blast. One piece of truss the size of a man smashed into the creek nearby and showered Gideon and Robert Broken Horse in water. Most fragments were carried high into the air and far away. The damaged masonry of the supporting abutments crumbled in on the creek and nearly dammed it up.

  The locomotive and its coal car rose highest into the air, the boiler bursting in a welter of steam and coal raining out of the tender. Gideon could now see the engineer and fireman, plainly dead, spinning high into the air amid stones and loosed rail wheels. The locomotive seemed to hang in the air before crashing down some beyond the bridge and on the far side of the bank. In an instant Gideon could only see the black cloud of coal dust that rose where the engine fell.

  The freight car, being directly above the explosion, was dealt the same fate as the bridge. Its pieces and contents were scattered across the plain and down into the creek. Burning clothing and papers and odd bits of baggage rained down for some time.

  The first passenger car, with only its forward portion exposed to the direct violence of the explosion, reared up like a threatened caterpillar, the walls of the car bending and twisting, its windows shattering. It came down out of alignment with the track and rolled down on its side away from the ambuscade. Gideon could see this car breaking open and spilling out men and women who were promptly dashed beneath a ruin of wheels and gears and burning wood.

  The remaining passenger cars drove on into the churning smoke where the bridge was not, fell into the creek, and telescoped into one another. Despite the cloud of dust and smoke Gideon could glimpse the passengers through the breaking windows, ghostlike and contorted in panic, as the cars smashed one into the other and cored out the life dwelling in each.

  By the time the train had spent its momentum, only a single passenger car remained to be saved by the pile of wreckage; rebounding from the previous car to plunge into the creek, it rolled to a halt on the stump of the ruined bridge. A red caboose car remained clinging to the track behind it. Every other bit of the train was a smoking ruin.

  The water of the creek turned immediately black with lubricants and coal dust. Pieces of bodies floated out from the piled cars.

  A swarm of insects—wasps—emerged from beneath the crumbled stonework of the bridge’s western abutment. An enormous section of papered hive was laid open by the bridge’s collapse. Pale hunks tumbled into the floodwater. The geometric arrangements of the hundreds of papered cells filled Gideon with disgust.

  Their horrid civilization destroyed, the swarm of wasps took wing above the carnage as if to survey the extent of the disaster. The droning, formless cloud circled once, breaking and reforming around the smoke from the burning locomotive, and the angry wasps descended upon the men trapped, injured, and crying out for help in the train cars.

  Gideon stood and pulled his black kerchief up over his nose and mouth. He was nearly run to the ground as the Apaches whooped and rode for the train. Their faces were painted for war. All around, the disorganized ambush was waked from its stupor by the sight of the easy prey, and men began to cheer and brandish weapons and rush headlong toward the smoking wreckage.

  Sheriff Groves rolled his spurs along his rabicano’s flanks and leaned down against the wind. The men riding by his sides howled blood at the sight of the exploding train. Sheriff Groves was silent, and his jaw was set. He drove on through the shrapnel that whistled and snapped through the brush. The posse galloped without fear through the rain of debris and out into the open desert parallel to the track.

  Men emerged from the bed of Green Creek to commence their lawless assault. A battle was underway at the last rail car before the caboose. Smoke shot from windows and rifles and pistols crackled within. Sheriff Groves turned the horses and rode across the track and formed a line in the manner of a cavalry charge. Without undue hesitation he wished the men luck and said to them, “Take those alive you can.”

  The posse bore down on the flanks of the ambushers. The Indians on the backs of their ponies saw the move and turned off down the creek to avoid the charge. John Vargas was caught staggering up out of Green Creek, and his fat vaquero friend was slitting the throat of a Pinkerton. Sheriff Groves drew on them from his saddle and opened fire. The Mexican swatted at his throat as if stung and pitched into the tangle of the ruined bridge. The lean bandit John Vargas folded up and lay with his face in the dirt and did not move again.

  The lawmen’s horse charge tore through the ambushers and turned them. Some of the bandits broke and began to run. The posse split rather than drive down into the flooded creek. Shots were crackling in all directions and some from within the train car were being directed at the deputies.

  Sheriff Groves reined his horse in a tight circle. Two men appeared over the ridge of the wash with kerchiefs tied over their faces. One was an Indian with dark skin and a white man’s clot
hes. The other was an Anglo with wild black hair and dark eyes that gazed at Warren Groves first with shock and then with hatred.

  Sheriff Groves fired and might have hit one of the men only they ducked back down into the creek bed. His pistols were emptied so he took out his rifle from the saddle and heeled down after them. He took the ridge and saw them running for their horses. They turned and opened fire at close range and Sheriff Groves shot without taking aim. The white man was struck in the belly. He dropped and curled up on the ground and the Indian threw down his gun and ran for his horse.

  Sheriff Groves brought his rifle up and took aim at the fleeing Indian. It was an easy shot but he was thrown from his saddle by an unexpected blow. His mouth filled with dust and the pain convulsed his lower back. His horse stomped and turned in confusion without a rider and the sheriff rolled to avoid being crushed. When he came up he saw the Apache Indian sheathed his lance and leaped from his horse hung with scalps. The savage came at Sheriff Groves with a war knife.

  The Indian said in Spanish, “Go away easy.”

  Sheriff Groves could see the knife clear as a silver dollar. It was a black tooth of chapped blade and a handle of stag horn held so tightly by the Indian that his knuckles turned yellow. Warren kicked at the Indian as he came. The blade slashed and tore a strip from his pants and hot pain carved into the side of his leg.

  Sheriff Groves kicked again and his heel caught the Indian in the chest. The Indian fell back and Sheriff Groves was able to get hold of his own rifle. Without the time to fire he struck the Indian’s face with the butt and got up on his knees. He was above the fallen Indian who was then spitting blood and some jagged pieces of teeth.

  He hit the Indian again and dazed him and Sheriff Groves got up onto his feet and picked up the Indian’s war knife. He put the blade into the Indian’s side easily—ran it right through his hide coat and stuck him again and again until the Indian quit moving and breathing and the ground was rich with his blood. Sheriff Groves left the blade sticking out and went and found his horse.

  The Indian dressed as a white man was on horseback and was too far distant to be easily shot. The man Sheriff Groves had shot in the belly was still rolling along the creek and painting green rocks red. Sheriff Groves wanted to either tie him down or finish him off but a fearful cry was going up from the train car. More of the savage Indians had fought their way inside and were killing the passengers and so he settled for shooting the wounded man’s horse.

  Men’s bodies and dead horses lay scattered across the desert on both sides of the track. The locomotive was burning across the creek and gave off a roiling awning of black smoke to shade the battlefield. Felix Arguello crouched beside his young brother Marcos and Sheriff Groves could see that the younger man was shot through the heart and yet still alive and that with each beat of his heart new blood spit out and down his shirt. The old lawman Ben Reed was still in his saddle but stuck through the belly with an Indian lance and he fidgeted and tried to snap it off so that he could move better.

  Sheriff Groves rode past them and with Turk and two other men rode along the face of the passenger car and fired in at the Indians who were killing off the passengers and looting their bodies. They rode to the ragged edge of the rail bridge and as they did a contingent of Americans and Mexicans too afraid to cross the flooded creek came up from the wash with their hands raised in surrender. Their appearance startled Turk and he mistakenly shot one man through the head. The others immediately fled back down into the wash.

  The sheriff and his men leaped from their horses and kicked in the door of the passenger car and commenced firing with little opportunity for concern for the passengers. Turk unloaded both barrels of his shotgun and felled an Apache who was bent over to take the coat from a uniformed soldier. There were two other Indians nearer the back of the car. One attempted to escape out the far end with arms full of bags and fine coats. The bloody bodies filling the car tripped him up and Sheriff Groves fired and shot him dead.

  The last of the savages was intent upon using the black blade of his knife to finish off a screaming Anglo. The Indian was dark and wore a Mexican cavalry uniform defaced by pelts and grisly trophies. The Anglo was a small man with bulging eyes and thick spectacles that further magnified his terror. He was pressed with his back against the wall of the train with a package tucked beneath one arm and his shielding hand and cotton suit drenched in blood from the Indian’s knife. There was no shooting the Indian without also shooting the Anglo.

  The black tooth of the Indian’s blade plunged past the man’s guard and his pleading became a gurgle. He slid down the wall and clutched at his chest and the Indian tore something from the dying man’s grasp. The savage at last saw his predicament and fled. Turk fired after him but the car lurched and the shot clattered into the metal of the train. The Indian escaped and fled to his horse. Sheriff Groves fired through the windows but did not seem to hit him.

  Several of the passengers were still alive and wounded and begging for help. Black wasps swarmed and added their menace to the air. The deputies wanted to cover their faces with their kerchiefs but the sheriff would not allow it on the grounds that if they came across an armed passenger they might be mistaken for bandits.

  He sent Turk off to catch any of the men he could down on the riverbank and in particular to go after the white man he had wounded and left rolling in the dirt. The sheriff and the deputies Henry Dubois and the Spaniard called the Duke, whom the sheriff did not well know, began to drag the wounded passengers out of the car. They were bedeviled by the wasps, which darted at their faces and stung their necks, and the train car was overwhelmed by the shambles stink of blood and shit. They slipped and slid in the gore and tried to hold their sick, and when it was through, they were badly stung by wasps and covered in filth so that only their eyes showed white.

  Only after they had finished that awful work did two armed clerks emerge from the caboose, which was revealed to be the money car, and it had scarcely been touched in the attack. The armed men refused to help with the wounded or leave the car. One of them demanded that Sheriff Groves send a rider to the cavalry post at Jessup. Sheriff Groves told the man that the Army post at Red Stem had been informed of the robbery.

  The man persisted and received for an answer several open-handed blows to his face, and when he fell to the ground, Sheriff Groves followed him down and beat him with his fists and kicked him until his men pulled him away. The beaten train guard and his companion retreated into the money car and barred the door.

  Sheriff Groves sat down on a box of peaches some poor soul was taking west, and he reached behind him and felt the long gouge above his kidney. It was fouled with blood and dust, so he got his water from his horse and poured some down his back. He was still cleaning the wound when Turk rode slowly out of the wash with a file of men staggering behind him. The prisoners were tied to a swaying length of tarry rope that was knotted to Turk’s saddle.

  “Did you get the one I belly shot?” asked Sheriff Groves.

  “Must have run off,” said Turk. “Won’t get far. I can go after him.”

  Sheriff Groves made a fist with his sore knuckles and squinted at the sun peeking between rolling clouds of black smoke. The skies were otherwise clear, and the storm was long passed. He kicked at the flies that came after his wounds.

  “Rain water’ll dry up, and he’ll be dead if nobody finds him by tomorrow,” said Sheriff Groves. He surveyed the carnage and made up his mind. “Let the son of a bitch feed the vultures,” he said, and he spit into the dirt.

  Turk tipped his hat and rode on to the shade of the rail car to tie the prisoners down. When Sheriff Groves was sure that all the men were occupied in their labors, he sat back on the box of peaches and took out from his coat pocket a small and wrinkled book that was bound in black hide. He found the stub of a pencil in its pages and opened the book and hesitated as he read the first name once again.

  The name of Abraham Nunn was written in stolen ink by the han
d of a child, and as for names to write down in that book, only a few could be worse. Sheriff Groves did not linger or allow himself to recall the details. He turned the pages past other names and found a fresh page where none were written. On this page he wrote down the date as he reckoned it to be, March the fourth of 1874, and he wrote below that Mexican bandit and white man John Vargas and Apache Indian on horse and Apache Indian on train. He left a space below each name to later add details and closed the book, the stub of the pencil locked once more in its pages.

  Having confessed the killing done to the pages of this particular book, he felt some weight lift from his conscience. It was not the full weight of the deeds but only small and measured ingots of everything that had gone before.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gideon considered death, which he had not often contemplated, and wondered how, when his blood had finished running out of his shot belly, death would suit him. He decided it would feel like rising underdressed to a cold morning, and he thought, upon trying to decipher the strange shapes in his eyes when he looked up at the sky, that he would like to depart as a cloud. To dissipate and be carried away on the wind. To be breathed in and out and experience the world as the emptiness of the air.

  Gideon held out some hope that the craven bastard Robert Broken Horse would recall his duty and come riding to save him. He was not certain how long he walked north—his gold pocket watch was ruined by water and no longer turned, and he was never a good judge of the trail—so he continued aimlessly and in a state of constant exhaustion.

  For a time Gideon leaned against a sandstone boulder, unshackled his leg from the ruin of its brace, and tried to get at his wound with the thought of cauterizing it. He moaned when he saw the extent of his injury—the neat hole made by the bullet that had passed through him and left his body as a ragged, flapping wound—and the way the sticky blood filled his trousers and dribbled out in his footprints. He knew by the foul smell of the wound that his guts had been rent by the bullet.