by Jory Sherman
“What about Cresswell? Who’s he?”
“Supposed to meet him at a saloon in town. Ollie said he’ll tell us what to do.”
“Steal rifles is what I heard.”
“I think they done been stole, Dick, was what Ollie told me.”
“Army rifles?”
“Yep.”
“Military?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I got a bad feelin’ about that, Army.”
“Why?”
“There’s a fort there. We’ll have soldiers down on us like chicken feathers stuck to hot tar.”
“Don’t you fret about that, Dick.”
“How come?”
“Cresswell.”
“Cresswell? I guess I don’t get it. He got a bigger pecker than me or you?”
“You’ll find out, I reckon.”
“Damn it, Army. You’re bein’ mighty mysterious. I got to drag this all out of you like pullin’ possums out of the sorghum jar. Who in hell is Cresswell?”
“Well, you’re gonna find out, so might as well tell you.”
“Go on then, damn it.”
“He’s Major Cresswell. And he’s in charge of the armory at Fort Laramie.”
Tanner let out a long whistle. It died in the evening air, in the silence.
They rode on as the moon rose, casting a pale light over the country. Eerie shapes appeared, changed form, then disappearedas if they were wandering through a desolate dream-scapewhere nothing was as it seemed and none of it made sense.
“Where are these rifles going to?” Tanner asked after a while.
“If I knew, Dick, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“You don’t know?”
“Nope.”
“Doesn’t seem like a big money deal to me. But Ollie wouldn’t be in it unless there was.”
“You’re smarter than you look, Dick.”
“Hell, I don’t give a damn. But army rifles ain’t gold.”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” Mandrake said.
“Now you’re bein’ mysterious again.”
“Somewhere in all this, you can bet your ass there’s gold, Dick. Or Ollie wouldn’t be ridin’ to meet us in Fort Laramie.”
Tanner’s horse dropped a few steps behind Mandrake’s. He whipped his mount’s shoulders with the rein tips and touched spurs to his flanks until the horse caught up.
“Well, that perks me up some,” Tanner said. “Gold. But I sure as hell don’t know who’d pay gold for some Spencer carbines.”
“Me, neither,” Mandrake said.
And so they rode on toward Fort Laramie, the mystery hovering between them, the speculation roiling in their minds like a floating stick caught in a whirlpool, submerging and emerging, going around and around and never getting anywhere.
The air turned chill and the moon painted the land with soft pewter as shadows and brush danced in and out of moonlight, silent as the wraiths that floated in their puzzled minds.
9
Ben and john made camp that night on the prairie, far enough from the road that their fire could not be seen. And, as Ben remarked, there was so much open space, they could see or hear anyone coming for some distance.
“I got hard bones in my butt I never knew were there before,” Ben said as he unsaddled Dynamite. “I’m plumb stove up, Johnny.”
“Well, you’ll work those kinks out of your rope when you finish gathering us some firewood.”
“You ain’t sore?” Ben wore a look of exasperation on his face, evident by the way his lips peeled back from his teeth and his forehead wrinkled up with four deep furrows.
“Some,” John said. “Neither of us is used to the saddle, I reckon.”
“Oh, I’m used to the saddle,” Ben said. “It’s Dynamite’s blamed stiff legs I can’t abide. I swear, it felt like I was getting hit with a pile driver every step that blamed horse took.”
“Sleep on your belly tonight, Ben.”
Ben stopped grumbling after John had a fire going. He sat on two folded-up horse blankets and kept shifting his weight from one buttock to the other as sparks rose skyward like golden fireflies and the skillet sizzled with bacon and the biscuitdough rose and browned, releasing heady aromas into the air.
They ate in silence. John never looked into the fire, but up at the stars or out onto the dark plain. The coffeepot burbled as the water boiled and Ben sniffed that scent, too, a contented smile on his face. He leaned close to the steam and caught the aroma in his nostrils. John listened to the horses chewing on the grain in their feedbags and watched a distant patch of winking stars.
He tried not to think about the dead woman, her husband, and her son, but he felt their presence as if their spirits were among the stars, sailing in a barque along the grand river of the Milky Way.
The fire began to burn down. Neither Ben nor John added any more fuel, so the burning wood would eventually die out and become embers.
“Ben, you said something back there at that wagon when I was looking at the—the dead woman.”
“Yeah? I might have.”
“You said I was looking at eternity.”
“Yeah, I reckon. Kind of.”
“What did you mean, exactly?”
“I dunno, Johnny. I reckon we feel most mortal when we see the body of someone who’s been livin’, breathin’, talkin’ and all the life and breath gone out of ’em.”
“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? I mean, we are mortal. We’re all going to die. Sooner or later.”
“Yep. Way I figger it, we go from eternity to eternity. Life is just a little rest stop on the wayside.”
“You mean . . . ?”
“Well, I didn’t mean it so serious back there. But yeah, I been thinkin’ on it for some time. Maybe more since Ollie and his bunch killed all of our friends and kinfolk right in front of our eyes. I figure we come from somewhere, maybe someplaceeternal, and when we die, we just go back there.”
“How? Why?”
Ben snatched a clump of sage, pulled it from the ground, shook off the dirt, and tossed it on the smoldering fire. A fragrantaroma rose with the smoke.
“I don’t know how ner why, and nobody on this earth does, Johnny. It’s nothin’ to fret about, the way I see it. When I was a boy, down in Arkansas, my pa knowed an old Osage Injun. I used to go down by the creek and talk to this feller, name of Green Bow. He said his people believed that they come here from the Spirit World and when they die, they go back to that world.”
“You believe that, Ben?”
“I don’t know what I believe. I know when we went to the arbor church I kept listenin’ to see if any of the preachers agreed with old Green Bow.”
“And?”
“I reckon they didn’t, leastwise in them same words.”
John was silent for several moments. Ben kept adding sage to the fire. The heady scent was strong in their nostrils and the smoke was thick and gray.
“I’ve puzzled over it some, too,” John said after a time. “Ever since . . . since, you know . . .”
“Yep, I know. I think a man puzzles over death all his life, one way or t’other.”
“Doesn’t do any good, does it, Ben? We never find out. Never learn the answers.”
“Nope. Not until we come to that last door.”
“Last door?”
“The one we come in, I reckon. The one that leads us back to eternity.”
“Does that give you comfort, Ben?”
John stretched his legs and wriggled his toes inside his boots. He watched the smoke rise like a fakir’s rope and then disappear in the blackness of the sky.
“Way I figger it, John, it don’t make no difference what you believe. They’s some who says when we’re dead, we’re plumb dead and there ain’t no afterlife. If that’s so, then we don’t have no memory of this life and don’t go nowhere. We just was and that was that. But if there is somethin’ beyond that door, well, then the preachers was right all along and we’ll know the answer.Either w
ay, it don’t matter much right here and now.”
John drew a deep breath and let out a sigh.
“I’m sleepy as hell, Ben. You want to take the first watch?”
“Yeah. I’ll walk around and maybe them bones in my butt will soften up some. You get some shut-eye and ponder all this talk.”
John smiled.
“You know, Ben, for an old bird, you’re pretty smart sometimes.”
“Aw, Johnny. I was just talkin’. Nothin’ I said you need to take to heart.”
“I’m not so sure, Ben.”
John laid out his bedroll, unhitched his gunbelt, and rolled it up, setting it within easy reach. He loosened the pistol in its holster and set the holster at an angle where he could pull the gun out fast if need be.
Ben stood up and flexed his legs, twisted his body at the waist, and rolled his shoulders up and down. He pulled his rifle from its scabbard and began to walk away from the camp. He started his circle within sight of John and the smoking fire. He stopped every so often to look and listen. In the distance, he heard a coyote yap and then there was only a deep silence.
The moon sailed ever higher in the sky, and small, thin clouds floated between it and the earth, glowing ghostly as they drifted among the distant stars.
He thought of John Savage and his questions. He saw that as a good sign. Maybe he wouldn’t be so quick with that gun of his from now on. Maybe he would begin to take death as seriously as Ben did and give up trying to avenge the death of his parents.
But he knew that wasn’t true. John might question death in a philosophical sense, but his hatred for Ollie Hobart was stronger than any words of discouragement he might hear. No, Johnny was bound and determined to rub out Ollie Hobart, sending him back to eternity or straight to hell.
10
Ollie and rosa rode into the outskirts of cheyenne shortly before noon. They were both weary, horses and clothes coveredwith a patina of reddish dust, both reeking with sweat. Rosa began patting her hair and combing it with her fingers, trying to draw back the dangling strands that strayed downwardfrom beneath her hat.
“You’ve got some of the afternoon, Rosa, to clean up, buy yourself some duds, and sleep on a soft bed. We’ll leave Cheyenne before nightfall.”
“Where are we going now?” she asked.
“There’s a hotel and saloon right up the street where I alwaysstay. I’ll get us a room and then meet up with you later.”
“What are you going to do, Ollie?”
“Feller I want to see at the Frontier, right next to the hotel.”
“Are you not going to rest? Surely, we will take a lunch together.Does the hotel have a dining room?”
“No, you’ll have to eat by yourself. Yes, there’s a dining room in the Excelsior. Just don’t eat any of their pork.”
“I do not like pork. Puercos. Animales susios.”
Ollie laughed and they turned up a small street, then up another,the first nearly deserted, the second lined with small shops. Indians sat in front of some of the stores, surrounded by woven blankets, beaded bracelets, necklaces, and clay pottery.
At the end of the street, a clapboard hotel with the name Excelsior painted on its high front loomed taller than the other buildings. Next door to it was the Frontier Saloon, with the name Roscoe Bender, prop., painted beneath it.
“Not the Brown Palace,” Rosa remarked, fluffing her dusty black hair hanging down the back of her neck.
Ollie chuckled. “This ain’t Denver, neither. Smell the cowshit,Rosa?”
She sniffed and laughed. “I smell it.”
They pulled up in front of the hotel, dismounted, and looped their reins around the hitchrail out front.
Four moonfaced Indian children rushed out into the street from the shadows between the buildings, their hands outstretchedand their faces dirty. The two girls wore shabby dresses made from burlap, while the boys had on torn trousers that appeared to have been sewn together from scraps of cloth. All were barefooted.
“Dinero, dinero,” they chorused. Both boys and girls flashed gap-toothed smiles.
“Give them some money, Ollie,” Rosa said, smiling at the children.
“Goddamned beggars,” Ollie said. “Get out of here, you kids. Shoo.”
He stepped toward them in a menacing manner and the children scattered like quail, scurrying away from the big man.
Rosa frowned. “You could have given them each a penny,” she said.
“I hate beggars, Rosa. ’Specially Injun ones.”
“They are poor,” she said.
“I got no use for poor Injuns ner beggars. They was old enough to work.”
She said something in Spanish under her breath about his parentage. Ollie ignored her, as she knew he would. He did not know much Spanish, mostly the curse words, the blasphemies,and those words that got him what he wanted. She knew he was not a very nice man, and the remark about Indianscaused a twinge in her heart.
She had Indian blood in her veins, Yaqui, and she knew the low status Mexicans held in the United States. Still, she cared for Ollie in a way she would have found hard to explain to anyone. She was drawn to him because of the power he held, the power over life and death, and the animal way he pursued money. She could understand the latter trait because she bore it herself. But the savagery of the man drew her to him like a fluttering moth to a flame. Perhaps, she thought, it was the animalin herself that made him attractive. Ollie lived with death, and her people knew death firsthand. The Mexican soil was soaked in it, and in her village in Jalisco, a man with blood on his hands stood taller than any other.
“I’ll give you some money now, Rosa,” Ollie said. “And get you a room. Then I got to tend to the horses, give ’em some water and feed, and see the man who owns the Frontier. Fifty dollars be enough?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice tight with a controlled rage. She felt like a whore at that moment. She had left her cantina with no money, no clothes, and he was treating her like the beggars he said that he hated. He had money on him, she knew, much more than the amount he stole from those pilgrims they had killed north of Fort Collins. Yes, he was a savage, and so was she. She had the sudden desire to see a priest and confess all her sins, but she knew that she would not. If she did, she would have to take up residence in the confessional for many hours.
Ollie reached in his pocket and withdrew some bills. He peeled off five sawbucks and handed them to her. Then he strode toward the hotel with Rosa in his wake.
After he checked Rosa in and asked if someone could rub down their horses and give them grain and water, he watched her walk back to the room with her key.
“I want the horses saddled and back at that hitchrail out front in two hours,” he told the clerk. “Think you can manage that?”
“Yes, sir, we have a reliable stable boy who can take care of all that.”
“How much?”
“Three dollars ought to do it.”
He gave the clerk three dollars, knowing most of it would go in his pocket. The stable boy would be lucky to get fifty cents of that money.
He walked out of the hotel and next door to the Frontier Saloon. There were no boardwalks on that street, but swampers, store owners, urchins, maybe, kept the dirt swept down. He stomped his boots to shake off some of the dust and entered the saloon, pushing aside the bat-wings, then stepping to one side until his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight pouring through the entryway. Ollie’s eyes narrowed and his right hand fell within reach of his pistol.
You just never know, he thought as he scanned the bar, the tables, watching for any odd movement or change of expressionon any of the faces. Hardly anyone noticed him except the barkeep, who, while he had seen his share of hard cases over the years, recognized Hobart the moment he stepped through the swinging doors. Ollie’s gaze swept the room twice, then settled on Sam Rafer, who nodded to him from behindthe bar.
Ollie strode over to the very end of the dogleg
and stood next to the wall. From there he could see the front door and the back hallways that led to Roscoe’s office and out to the back alley.
“Ollie,” Rafer said, striding to the end of the bar.
“Sam. Roscoe here?”
“Yeah, he’s smokin’ cigars and countin’ his money back in the office. He’ll be out directly.”
There were three men and an older woman at the other end of the bar. Two men flanked the woman, who looked as if she had opened the saloon early that morning. Her eyes were bleary; she had too much rouge on her cheeks and too much red lipstick on her lips. She wore a tattered hat that had seen better days and her facial wrinkles were covered with a whitish powder that almost matched her hair. The two men on either side of her were nearly as old, and both looked worn out. The rouge on their cheeks was painted there by hard rotgut liquor and the veins in their noses looked like baby-bluerunners frozen in putty.
Basque and Mexican sheepherders sat at the tables drinkingcheap tequila and beer, their voices liquid with rapid Spanish, their gesticulating hands carving arabesques in the air like fluttering birds attached to brawny, brown-skinned arms.
“You got a lot of road on you, Ollie,” Rafer said, looking at Hobart and the dust on his forehead and shirt.
“I got a lot of road in my throat, too, Sam. Need to wash some of it down.”
“I got some Old Taylor. You want some water with it?”
“Naw, just a shot of Old Taylor. I’ve tasted your water before.”
Rafer laughed and took a bottle from the well. He snatched a shot glass from the back counter on his way over, set it in front of Hobart. He poured the glass full.
“Want me to leave the bottle, Ollie?”
“Nope. This’ll do me.”