Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  The girl in the front row swooned. There was general whistling and applause. Drew stood up, dazed with relief. The judge beckoned him over.

  “Son, you and I have to talk in private. Go through there.”

  He indicated a door nearby. Before leaving the room, Drew noticed Middlebusher scowling in the direction of the judge. Drew waited less than a minute before he was joined in what appeared to be the hotel proprietor’s unused front parlor. The judge produced the reward poster Middlebusher had given him before the trial began.

  “Son,” said the judge, “is this you?”

  “It is, Your Honor.”

  “So you aren’t John Bones at all?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Well, now, Mr. Dugan, or Gentles, or whoever, that puts a whole different complexion on the case, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would.”

  “This crime you’re accused of, dismembering an individual in a gunfight—you did that?”

  “Not exactly, Your Honor. A surgeon took the fellow’s arm off after my bullet smashed the elbow to where it wouldn’t have worked again, and infection would’ve set in fast, so he took it off.”

  “Says here he’s related to the state’s congressman.”

  “Yessir, but he pulled his weapon first.”

  The judge studied the poster in his hands, then looked at Drew for a long moment. “I have to tell you I regard politicians as the lowest form of life. This congressman is a liar and a cheat and as crooked as a snake’s backbone, I know it for a fact. You shot in self-defense?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “Swear it.”

  “I swear he pulled his gun first.”

  “Son, you’re a good boy, I believe, but you’ve strayed from the straight and narrow path. I’m going to let you go, but before I do, I’m going to extract from you a promise. Will you keep the promise I ask you to make, in exchange for freedom?”

  “Yessir, I will.”

  “The minute you get back on your horse, you ride for wherever you were headed, which I presume is anywhere outside of Texas, but as soon as you get clear, you go to the nearest army post or recruiting office and get yourself enlisted. You serve your country for a few years, and this incident can be put behind you. Do you so swear?”

  “I so swear.”

  “God heard you, and I did too. You do it.”

  Drew saw Middlebusher once more, as he rode out of Croker Flats. Neither spoke.

  A urinating dog greeted the stranger at the outskirts of Poloma, Wyoming. The dog inspected its puddle, then turned to the rider and two horses approaching. Its barking attracted the eye of Poloma’s mayor, taking his ease on the porch of his brother-in-law’s general store. From the cane seat of his favorite chair the mayor could take note of anything that happened, since his view extended about a hundred yards in each direction, which effectively encompassed the entire town. A war veteran, he was used to unusual sights, and counted what he saw ambling along the town’s only street as worthy of attention.

  The rider looked like Abe Lincoln, so tall his legs were bent, even with the stirrups set at their lowest. His face was hollow, like Abe’s, and about as sorrowful. The mayor had seen Abe Lincoln up close at Gettysburg, so he knew. This rider coming along the street slow as Sunday even wore a shabby suit, like something Abe would have woken up in after a three-day drunk, but the illusion was spoiled by the hat; Abe habitually wore a tall stovepipe, and the long man coming nearer all the time had a hat wide as a wagon wheel. The rider was interesting stuff, but the load on his packhorse was even more so. The packhorse carried two dead men across its back.

  The mayor decided it was time to exercise his authority, and so lifted himself from the chair, stretched pleasurably and stepped down from the porch, planting himself alongside the rider’s projected path. He could see a sawed-off shotgun cradled in the man’s arms now, and deep craters or scars in both cheeks; it was these that had created the lean and hungry Abe Lincoln look from afar. This fellow was really nothing like Abe, now that he had arrived.

  The mayor raised his hand. “Afternoon to you.”

  The rider reined in his horse. “Law,” he said, or rather croaked. His face was dusty, his throat doubly so.

  “Pardon me?” asked the mayor.

  “Sheriff, marshal, either one. Deputy’ll do.”

  “Well, now, we’re a little on the small side, so we don’t have any of them. Got a mayor, though. That’s me.”

  “I’ve got two men here, wanted on federal charges made out in Denver. Bank theft, murder, also rape, one of them.”

  “Mister, you’re in the wrong place. Denver’s about two hundred miles due south.”

  “I know where I am. I can’t take them anywhere near the Colorado line, let alone Denver. They’re two days dead already, and ripening nicely. You have a boneyard hereabouts I can plant them in?”

  “Got one, but it’ll cost you three dollars apiece.”

  “That can come out of the reward money, two hundred for each man.”

  “I’d do that, I sure would, but I don’t see the actual money in front of me.”

  Clay suppressed a sigh. His teeth hurt him, every single one of them, it felt like, and he was not in the mood for bargaining and explanations, but the smell of his quarry made such things necessary.

  “Here’s how it’ll be, Mr. Mayor. You see to it that these flyblown sons of bitches get buried at county expense in your pleasant little town here, but first you verify they’re who I say they are, which won’t be any kind of a difficulty seeing as I’ve got official descriptions, right down to the scars and tattoos. You write a letter stating they’re the ones, all right, and you sign it and put the mayoral seal or some such on it, and I go to the federal marshal’s office in Cheyenne and collect my cash money for apprehending and disposing of these aforementioned dead fellows. When it’s in my hand, sir, I’ll mail the burial fee, plus twenty dollars for you personally, as my way of appreciating your trouble in this matter.”

  “What you’re saying is, you want me to trust you.”

  Clay nodded.

  “Well, I might,” said the mayor. “Let’s see the descriptions.”

  Clay dismounted, pulled some much-folded reward fliers from his saddlebags and handed them over. The mayor gave them a cursory reading, and attempted to match the drawings on paper with the upside-down faces of the men tied to the packhorse. They were swollen and blue, their eye sockets infested with flies, tongues protruding from blackened lips. They smelled so bad the mayor cut short his inspection and stepped back.

  “Peel back the big one’s sleeve,” Clay told him. “There’s a tattoo in bad taste on his arm, same as in the description.”

  The mayor decided to accept this bounty hunter’s word. If he didn’t, the man would simply dump his kill somewhere out in the wilderness, and the mayor would get nothing. If he allowed a double burial and corroborated the hunter’s claims to the identities of the dead men, there was a chance for reimbursement, if he was dealing with an honest man.

  “All right, sir, you’ll get your burial.”

  “I thank you. Any place in this town I might find a drink of water?”

  “Step right inside here. Water and a little something else to cut the dust, on the house. You can tell me how it was you came upon these outlaws and got the drop on them.”

  Clay took his water, and watered whiskey besides, but the mayor couldn’t get him to elaborate on his success beyond a terse “Tracked them, warned them to give up, had to kill them when they wouldn’t.”

  Put out by this churlish display, the mayor rounded up two volunteers for the gravedigging and, when they were done, suggested to Clay that he hand each of them three dollars.

  “Burial fee?” asked Clay. “I’ll be sending that to you, like we arranged.”

  “Diggers’ fee,” corrected the mayor.

  “I guess I can’t just add it to the bill?”

  “Nossir. These boys have already gone and done half their
work under the noonday sun and need their payment now, in hard cash. That’s right, ain’t it, boys?”

  “Worked for it,” said the first man.

  “Worked damn hard,” said the second.

  Clay decided he didn’t like the mayor after all, but if he didn’t do as requested, the letter of certification he needed would likely not be forthcoming. He dug in his pockets and produced a five-dollar bill.

  “Gentlemen, my worldly wealth, and I don’t lie. Take it, and be happy in the taking. The other dollar will have to wait until your leading citizen here collects from his Uncle Sam.”

  “Sounds like a righteous deal to me, boys,” said the mayor, and the bill was plucked from Clay’s fingers.

  The dead men were hastily rolled into their graves and covered with dry soil. Clay asked for, and received, a note of certification from the mayor:

  To whom it may consern,

  Owner of this note, Clay Dugan, did bury in Poloma semetery Wyoming Teritory two dead outlaws, Jerome Deidsheimer & Bob Zweig which are wanted by law and are the same, with obsene tatoo on one and horse on other as per federil flyer for same. I sertify this is a true statemant of actuel fact this day, septembr 21 1880

  Douglas Onderdonk

  Mayor, Poloma Wyoming T.

  On his way out of town in the afternoon, Clay passed by a picket fence overgrown with milkweed. The desiccated brown pods had split to reveal the white seed-bearing spores within. Clay thought he was looking at a flock of headless sparrows with fluffy white chests, until he was close enough to make out the pods.

  He had been aware for some time that his eyesight was deteriorating, along with his teeth. A world in which a hunter of men could mistake milkweed for decapitated birds was a dangerous one; he would have to eat his pride and get himself a pair of eyeglasses, like some spinster schoolmarm. His body’s betrayal of its youth made Clay angry, and anger made his teeth hurt even more.

  The mayor watched him leave. Poloma’s first visit from a bounty man had left two more bodies in the graveyard, and a lingering smell of death in the air.

  22

  The El Dorado Engineers were Leo Brannan, who had hired Zoe; his cousin Lewis, and John Chadbourne and Sell Yost. All four were from California, and all were educated men with considerable experience in mining, although to Zoe’s eye they looked too smooth, too clean to be miners. Leo told her, as they trekked uphill to Glory Hole, leading their pack mules laden with equipment and supplies, “The day of the grizzled forty-niner with his lowly pan is gone, Mrs. Dugan. The esteemed Gumpe, who has sent us scurrying to his discovery, is likely to be the last of the breed. Science, not the blessings of Lady Luck, is the way of the future. My colleagues and I will use our combined learning to make our fortune.”

  “You seem very confident, Mr. Brannan.”

  “And I am what I seem. You’ve heard of the Little Dollar mine?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “The third-most-successful operation in California. We have all worked there in one capacity or another. Now we have the opportunity to find our own Little Dollar.”

  Zoe admired the zeal of the El Dorado Engineers, but could not bring herself to trust their leader. Leo’s mismatched eyes were a source of confusion and doubt. Zoe had taken Omie aside and asked her if this man with the eye of blue and eye of brown was the man in her vision of the loss of Zoe’s money on their first evening in Leadville, the thief Omie had indicated was somewhere inside Gods of the Dance, but now Omie had no clear memory of what it was she had seen, let alone said. “I think he’s very handsome,” was her only confirmable opinion. Zoe was left with her suspicions. Leo seemed an unlikely robber, equally unlikely as a habitué of such low places as dance halls. His implausibility in these roles made Omie’s assertions at the time of the theft appear less credible, but Zoe could not forget the precision with which she had delineated the gravestones yet-to-be in Pueblo.

  All in all, Zoe’s feelings toward her employer were confused. The man’s companions comported themselves as earnest, no-nonsense types who, if far too shy in their dealings with Zoe and her daughter (a typical day’s conversation consisted of a morning greeting and a “Thank you, ma’am” for each meal Zoe dished up), were certainly courteous and uncomplaining. If an individual could be judged by the company he kept, it seemed likely that Leo Brannan was honest and true blue. Still, she wondered.

  Many hopeful souls had preceded them up the arduous mountain trail, and many more followed behind. Glory Hole was the nation’s newest mining Mecca, word of its riches already inflated beyond the realm of the possible, already causing upheaval among the restless of the planet. Anything was possible if a body could just get to the fabulous camp in the clouds and plunge fingers into the gold-laden soil, kick over those few worthless rocks hiding the wealth mere inches beneath, and scoop an instant fortune into one’s shabby pockets. Glory Hole’s allure lay in the color of its bounty; whereas Leadville was mined for its namesake and for silver, Glory Hole was a repository of the earth’s most favored metal, and so shone more brightly in the minds of men.

  The journey required four days. As the crow flies, the party traveled fewer than twenty-five miles, but those miles were elongated by the Rocky Mountains to a number approaching fifty, most of them a series of thigh-torturing ascents that seemed endless. The groves of aspen at that altitude already were turning to their own kind of gold, and the nights were chilly enough to set teeth chattering well before dawn.

  At midmorning on the fifth day, the party was able to overlook the high valley enfolding along its single stream the antlike activity of Glory Hole. All timber adjacent to the water was gone, stripped away to build cabins and to reinforce the shafts boring down through rock and soil in search of a golden seam. The much-used trail leading down to the camp was of the same reddish mud that scarred both sides of the creek and polluted its waters. Even at a distance, the enterprise below appeared excessive, so many men crammed together along so short a stretch of land, jostling for nearness to the site of Gumpe’s original strike. Each hundred-foot-long claim had already been divided into subclaims and leased for a percentage of the profits to come, in order to finance the firstcomers” own continuing efforts to duplicate Gumpe’s phenomenal success.

  The Engineers set up camp at some distance from the stream, their object being to locate a likely claim by way of their professional expertise well in advance of the general run of miner, whose method consisted for the most part in working as close to a confirmed strike as possible, on the assumption that where gold had already been found, there was sure to be more gold nearby.

  Leo instructed Zoe and Omie not to mention anything of the Engineers’ occupational history, for fear of alerting their competition for whatever gold remained to be found in the vicinity. “One wrong word and none of us will be able to take two steps without being shadowed,” he warned.

  “I understand.”

  “You’ll certainly be questioned. I haven’t seen another female in the entire camp. My partners have agreed to spread the mistruth that we are all former shipping clerks from San Francisco, come to try our luck like all the rest. I hesitate to ask that you propagate this lie, but it may be crucial to our success.”

  “I have no qualms, Mr. Brannan.”

  “I have to tell you, it’s also been decided that you are my sister. I feel it’s necessary to keep tongues from wagging.”

  “Thank you for informing me.”

  “I believe we should begin addressing each other on first-name terms, to maintain the fiction of our relationship. One never knows who is listening.”

  “Very well, Leo.”

  “Can I too?” asked Omie, when she learned of the arrangement.

  “Certainly you may,” said Leo, “in that you’re my niece, so to say.”

  “Why are your eyes that way, Leo?”

  “Because my mother and father couldn’t decide which color they should be, so in the end I was given one of each.”

  “Oh.�
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  Leo picked up his equipment; his three partners were waiting. “We’ll return before sundown,” he said. “Please have a substantial meal prepared.”

  “I will, Leo,” said Zoe. She could tell he was unsettled by her immediate and casual adoption of his name.

  “Until then,” Leo said.

  The men left, and Zoe began arranging their supplies inside the two small tents that had been erected in a clearing among the pines. “Which one will be ours?” Omie asked.

  “I don’t know; perhaps neither.”

  “I want a tent. It’s too cold at night.”

  “The decision belongs to Leo and the others. You and I are hired help, nothing more. We must do as we’re told, like it or not.”

  “Well, I don’t, not if we don’t have a tent. I’ll tell Leo we want one, then he’ll give us one.”

  “And why should he do that, just because you want it so?”

  “He talks to me all the time. Well, sometimes.”

  “I haven’t noticed the two of you conversing.”

  “He’s the one that talks. I just listen. He doesn’t really talk to me, it’s more like he’s talking to himself.”

  “Leo doesn’t strike me as being that kind.”

  “Not talking out loud. Talking inside his head. Thinking.”

  “You know what he’s thinking?”

  “Sometimes. Once he thought it was sad about my blue mark, but he thinks I’m pretty anyway. He thinks about you too.”

  “Me?”

  “He thinks you’re very brave for never looking down, even if Papa is dead. You fibbed to him about that, Mama. He likes the way you hold your head up so high. He thinks you’re pretty too.”

  Zoe considered this, then asked, “Can you see the things in my thoughts?”

  “Only sometimes. When we were on the train you were hating Papa for what he did that made us go away like that.”

  “Is that the only thing you’ve seen inside my thoughts?”