I could feel the hairs raise along the back of my neck as I walked over to where Hogan and Fargo were standing.
Fargo jabbed a finger against my chest. “That true, McKenna, what they say about Injuns?”
“No.”
“Must be,” Fargo insisted. “I’ve never heard you laugh.”
“I don’t have much to laugh about,” I replied, careful to keep the anger out of my voice.
“Well, now, that’s a fact,” Fargo agreed. “How about the crawling part? You done much of that?”
“No.”
“I heard Injuns was good liars, too,” Hogan interjected. “Let’s find ourselves a mud hole and put the ‘breed to the test.”
“You’re reading my mind,” Fargo said, grinning broadly. “Pigs is supposed to like mud, ain’t that right? Green! Rodriguez! Get some water over here, pronto!”
Green and Rodriguez scrambled to their feet like someone had lit a fire under their butts and hurried away while the remaining prisoners tried to look inconspicuous, desperately hoping that Fargo and Hogan would be content to harass me and leave them alone.
“You’d better strip down,” Hogan advised. “We wouldn’t want you to get them nice clothes dirty.”
Fargo laughed. “Good idea.”
I clenched my jaw as I shed my shoes, shirt and pants. Naked now, I stood in the hot Arizona sun, sheened with a fine layer of sweat that had nothing to do with the heat of the day. I could feel my nerves singing with tension as I waited to see how far Hogan and Fargo would push me.
Green and Rodriguez returned a short time later with four buckets of water, which they poured into a shallow depression, creating a pool of thick red mud.
Hogan threw me a disdainful grin. “Okay, pig, let’s see you wallow in it.”
With an effort, I choked back the flood of hot words that sprang to my lips, careful to keep my head bowed lest Fargo see the hatred that was surely reflected in my eyes.
“He’s not moving,” Fargo complained.
“Maybe he’s too dumb to understand,” Hogan suggested.
“Maybe,” Fargo agreed. “‘Breeds are pretty weak in the head. Anderson! Come show McKenna how it’s done.”
Earl Anderson was a thin man, maybe twenty-two years old, with a sallow complexion, lank brown hair, and scared eyes. He came forward as meek as a newborn lamb, his whole body trembling with fear.
“Sh…should I undress?” he stammered.
“Might as well,” Hogan said. “I ain’t had a good laugh all day.”
I guess Anderson did look laughable, standing naked next to me. I towered over him, broad-shouldered and well-muscled, with skin the color of old copper. Anderson was short, skinny as a marsh reed. Except for his forearms, his body was fish-belly white.
But the differences between us weren’t just physical. I wasn’t shy about being naked. I stood with my shoulders back, my head up, my hands balled into tight fists, every muscle taut with anger.
Not Anderson. He stood there blushing like a new bride, his shoulders hunched over while he tried to shield his manhood with his hands. A slow flush crept up Anderson’s neck as Hogan batted his hands away.
“Well, looky there,” Hogan sneered. “I believe that the poorest excuse for a man I ever did see.”
“Pitiful,” Fargo agreed. “Just pitiful. But one thing about old Earl, he knows how to crawl. Ain’t that right, Earl?”
“Yessir.”
“That’s a good boy,” Hogan said. “Now, you just show McKenna there, how it’s done.”
“Yessir,” Anderson squeaked, and obediently lowered himself to a sitting position in the mud hole.
“Let’s see you roll around in there, Earl,” Fargo called. “Don’t be afraid to have a little fun.”
Anderson was trembling like a leaf in a high wind, his face screwed up with distaste, as he stretched out in the mud and rolled from side to side until he was completely covered with the thick reddish-brown slush.
“See how easy it is, half-breed?” Fargo asked solicitously, and then his voice turned hard. “Now, let’s see you do it.”
My resolve to knuckle under melted like snow on a hot rock as I glanced at the frightened man groveling in the mud. My pride, which I had thought well and truly dead, proved to be alive and well, and I knew I couldn’t step into that puddle of mud, not even if it cost me another ten days in solitary.
“I’m waitin’,” Fargo growled impatiently. “And I don’t like to be kept waitin’.”
“Get used to it,” I replied amiably, and braced myself for the blow I saw coming.
The club in Fargo’s hand made a graceful arc as it swung through the air to land with a solid smack against my right shoulder.
“What was that you said?” Fargo asked pleasantly. He tapped the club against his meaty thigh in a silent threat, promising more of the same unless I did as I was told right quick.
“You heard me.” I flinched as Fargo brought the club down on my other shoulder.
“In the mud, half-breed,” Fargo said tersely.
The game was over. There was a fine edge of steel in his voice now, but I’d gone too far to back down and I shook my head, stubbornly refusing to obey.
Fargo smiled as he went to work on me with that club, and I knew then that he’d been hoping all along that I’d refuse so he’d have a good excuse to work me over.
He struck me again and again, the club moving with practiced ease over my arms, legs, shoulders, and back, until my flesh was swollen and red.
The other prisoners watched in complete silence. A few cringed every time the heavy club thudded against my flesh. They knew all too well the pain I was feeling, knew that, next time, it might be them.
“He ain’t gonna do it,” Hogan said after a while. “Let’s call it a day.”
“Suits me,” Fargo muttered, and swung his club one last time.
It caught me off-guard, and I gasped as he rammed the end of the club into my belly, driving the breath from my body. I doubled in half, my arms clutching my stomach, as bile rose in my throat. Somehow, I managed to stay on my feet.
“Mess call in thirty minutes,” Fargo said curtly. “Don’t be late.”
I watched Hogan and Fargo herd the other prisoners toward the compound. As soon as they were out of sight, I dropped to my hands and knees, retching.
“Was it worth it?”
I glanced up to find Earl Anderson regarding me with a faintly puzzled expression.
“What?” I sat back on my heels, one arm wrapped protectively around my stomach.
“Was it worth it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was worth it.”
With a groan, I sat down and began daubing a thin layer of mud over my arms and shoulders.
“You could have saved yourself a mess of trouble if you’d just done that in the first place,” Anderson ventured timidly.
“I suppose so,” I allowed as I spread a handful of mud over the long red welt across my belly. I sighed as the cool mud sucked some of the fire from my bruised flesh.
“What the hell are you doing in here, Anderson? You don’t look mean enough to be a killer, or tough enough to be robbing banks.”
“I know,” Earl acknowledged with some regret. “All my life, I’ve wanted to be a tiger, but I guess I’ll never be anything but a house cat. And a cowardly one, at that.”
He laughed with bitter self-contempt as he viewed his mud-splattered body. “I guess you’ve only got to look at me to see that.”
“I don’t know, Earl,” I muttered dryly, “right now, we look like two apples off the same tree.”
“On the outside, perhaps,” Anderson said flatly. “But I’ve never had the kind of nerve you’ve got. I’ve always been afraid of violence, of pain.”
“Nothing wrong with being afraid,” I said, rising slowly to my feet. “And nobody likes to get hurt.”
“It doesn’t seem to bother you,” Anderson pointed out with obvious envy. “You must be in a great deal of pai
n just now, but it doesn’t show at all.”
“You can learn to live with pain.”
“And cowardice? Can I learn to live with that, too?”
“I don’t know. But crawling in the mud doesn’t make you a coward, any more than taking a beating makes me a hero. A man does what he has to do.”
“I don’t suppose you think I’m much of a man.”
“Earl, why the hell are you in here?”
“I tried to rob a bank.”
“What for?”
“What for?” Anderson looked at me like I wasn’t very bright. “For the money, that’s what for.”
“Shit, I know that. What’d you want the money for?”
“My daughter. She was sick. I’d lost my job and the doc wouldn’t come out again unless I could pay him, and the damn bank wouldn’t lend me any more money, so I...” He shrugged, his expression sheepish. “I got caught before I made it out the door.”
“I thought it was something like that. What I don’t understand is why in hell you give a damn about what I think of you.”
“I’ve always wanted to be like you,” he confessed. “When my daughter got sick and I didn’t have any money, and nowhere to turn for help, I asked myself what John Jacob McKenna would do, and I knew if you needed money, you’d just go out and take it.”
“Is that right? And just how the hell do you know who I am, or what I’d do?” I asked sharply.
“I was in New Mexico when you were there. I worked in one of the hotels, and I heard how men talked about you.” His mind blue eyes sparkled with excitement. “I heard how you killed three of Red Wade’s nightriders, and then killed the big man himself! Say, that was something!”
“Yeah, it was something, all right,” I muttered. “You strike me as a decent, hard-working kind of guy who hit a streak of bad luck and decided to play outlaw to get even.” I ignored the little voice in the back of my mind whispering that I had done the same thing. “I’ll bet you never even handled a gun until you decided to go out and play Jesse James.”
“I’ll get better,” he declared. “I’ll be as good as you are!”
“Is that your aim in life?” I asked quietly, “to be like me?”
“Why not? Your life is filled with excitement, adventure. Men respect you.”
“Yeah, this is really exciting,” I cut in, gesturing at the bleak prison yard and the high walls that surrounded us. “And as for men respecting me, hell, that’s not respect. It’s fear.”
“Then I’ll settle for that. It’s better than ridicule.”
“What happened to your daughter?”
“She got better, thank God.”
“What about your wife, is she waiting for you?”
Anderson nodded, his expression softening. “She took the baby and went to live with her folks when they sent me up. It’s been hard on her, but she’s a good woman.” He shrugged a little self-consciously. “And she loves me.”
“How much longer you in for?”
“Three weeks, five days. Why?”
“There’s a man over in Blue Valley by the name of Jed Cooper. He owes me three hundred dollars. When you get out of this hellhole, you go look him up. You tell him I sent you. You take that three hundred dollars he owes me and make a new start for yourself. You forget all about being like me. You savvy?”
“Sure, but...why would you want to help me?”
I mulled that over, then shook my head. I couldn’t tell him about Clarissa, and how much I missed her. I couldn’t tell him that I envied him because his wife and daughter were still alive. The hurt was still too fresh to share.
“Let’s just say I feel kind of responsible for your being in here and let it go at that,” I said. “Come on, let’s get dressed and get to the mess hall before Fargo comes looking for us.”
* * *
It was a make work day. Mounted guards marched us out into the open desert and there, under the merciless Arizona sun, we spread out, picked a spot, and began to dig. The ground was as hard and unyielding as rock, and we dug until we were in over our heads, then we climbed out and shoveled the displaced dirt back into the hole, and started over again.
It was hot, dirty, senseless work, but I looked forward to it. The other prisoners complained about the heat and the cactus, the snakes and the relentless sun, but I considered the desert a vast improvement over gray walls and iron bars.
Plunging my shovel into the resisting earth, I wondered how much longer I could bridle the frustration building within me. It was getting harder and harder to choke back the hot words that sprang to my lips when Fargo tried to provoke me; harder and harder to keep my hands clenched at my sides when I wanted nothing more than to bury my fist in Fargo’s mocking face.
I wondered how Earl Anderson was doing. He had been released three days ago. In the short time I had known him, we had become friends. Anderson was a good man. I hoped he’d take that three hundred dollars and settle down in Blue Valley. It was a pretty place, a good place, where a man could make a home for himself and his family...
Clarissa’s image rose up in my mind and I stared into the distance, wondering what she would think if she could see me now. I glanced down at my hands. They were worn and callused, toughened by four months of unceasing work with pick and shovel.
Four months. Damn.
It seemed like four years.
A commotion a few feet down the line drew my attention and I glanced over my shoulder to see an elderly con sprawled face down in the dirt, wheezing like a blown bronco. Hogan sauntered over and kicked the old man in the ribs.
“You, grampus, get up.”
“I can’t,” the old man protested weakly.
“Well, you’d better.”
“Water,” the old man croaked. “I need water.”
“Water wagon don’t come till noon,” Hogan replied coldly. “You, McKenna, how deep is that hole you’re working on?”
I shrugged. “Three, four feet.”
“Deep enough,” Hogan decided. Stooping, he grabbed the old man and slung him over his shoulder.
Fear twisted the old con’s face as he realized what Hogan meant to do.
“Put me down,” he begged.
Hogan laughed. “Sure,” he said obligingly, and dumped the old man into the hole at my feet. “Cover him up, half-breed.”
“What?”
“You heard me, rootstock, cover him up.”
“Let me out!” the old timer hollered, struggling to his hands and knees. “I can work!”
“See that you do,” Hogan warned, and turned away, laughing.
Smothering an oath, I helped the old man out of the hole.
He staggered back to his own place, winced as he picked up his shovel and began to dig in the hard ground. His movements were slow and jerky, his breathing was labored. A half-hour later, he fell again, twitched once, and lay still.
Hogan nudged the old man in the ribs, then grunted. “Looks like there’s gonna be one less for dinner,” he remarked callously. “How deep’s that hole, McKenna?”
“Six feet.”
“Bury him.”
“Just like that?” I asked incredulously.
“Just like that,” Hogan retorted caustically. “What’d you expect, a midnight mass and candles?”
“How about a pine box?”
“You can bury him, or join him, gut-eater,” Hogan warned. “It’s up to you.”
Stifling a sharp retort, I picked up the frail old man and lowered him into the hole as gently and reverently as I could.
The Plains Indians had more respect for their dead than to dump them unceremoniously into the ground as if they were so much unwanted garbage. When a Cheyenne warrior died, his family prepared the body for burial. They dressed him in his finest clothes, then wrapped the body in a fine robe or blanket and tied it securely. The body was then lashed to a travois and taken to the burial site where it was placed on a high scaffold or in the fork of a tree. A man’s weapons were buried with him,
also his pipe and tobacco and anything else that he especially valued. Often, a favorite horse was killed at the burial site so that the deceased might ride in comfort to the next life. Any belongings not buried with the deceased were given away.
When a warrior died on the field of battle, his body was often left behind, unburied. Men considered it a good thing for the wolves and coyotes, eagles and buzzards, to eat their flesh and scatter their bodies across the prairie.
The spirits of the dead were believed to follow the path of spirits to the Milky Way and thus to the campground in the stars, where he would be welcomed by his friends and relatives.
I stared at the mound of earth that covered the old man’s body, ashamed to have taken part in such a callous undertaking.
But I kept my anger locked inside. To protest would only bring the whip singing down over my back, and I’d had enough whippings to last a lifetime.
Chapter 15
I was sweating in the hot sun a month later, making little rocks out of big ones, when one of the guards hollered for me to run my butt up to the Warden’s Office. I took my time crossing the yard, figuring I was in trouble again. What kind, I didn’t know, but I could already feel the lash whistling over my back.
With no little trepidation, I knocked on the door of the Warden’s Office.
“Come in.”
I took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.
“McKenna, you have a visitor,” Warden Sheets said curtly.
I frowned. “A visitor?”
Sheets nodded at the woman seated in front of his desk. I hadn’t noticed her before, but now she glanced over her shoulder, and I found myself looking down into my mother’s face.
Always the cool one, she greeted me with a polite hello, as if visiting her son in prison was something she did every day of the week.
My manners had never been much and now they failed me completely. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Mind your tongue!” Sheets said curtly. “She’s come to take you home. Go get your gear and check out. And don’t come back.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” I retorted, and cheerfully went to do what I’d been told for the first time in five months.
In the Shadow of the Hills Page 18