by Tripwire
After that there was an ugly little silence as Stryker came down the stairs to the deck. Boag saw it shaping up and thought about ways to handle it. He started to edge back into the deeper shadows but Gutierrez had fast eyes: “Come on, Boag.”
Wilstach said, “Hey …” because he suddenly saw it too.
Then the dark banks were rushing past on both sides of the ship and outlined against the sky at the head of the stairs was Mr. Pickett, his strong voice breaking the throbbing night: “Get it done, Ben.”
“Yes sir,” Stryker said. “All right now, you boys right over the side.”
Stryker hadn’t even showed his gun but there were a dozen of them up on the rail of the hurricane deck, watching.
“Aw you rotten bastards,” Wilstach said wearily.
Boag picked up sudden movement in a corner of his vision—Gutierrez whipping out a knife behind Wilstach. Boag tensed to move but Wilstach had seen it too; Wilstach wheeled, whipped his hand up and caught the knife descending: it razored into his palm but Wilstach twisted, snapped it out of Gutierrez’s fist, and took the hilt in his left hand to stab. Wilstach’s hand flashed with the knife and when Gutierrez swerved to parry the threat, Wilstach kicked him brutally in the crotch.
Stryker was bawling: “Hobble it! Hobble it!” in his twanging voice but nobody paid him any mind. A high reckless joy filled Boag’s chest and he waded in toward Gutierrez but then two of Pickett’s rawhiders were right in front of him with knives.
“Carve them up,” Pickett bellowed.
Boag knocked one of them aside backhanded and grabbed the second one and got the knife away and stuck it against the man’s throat.
Boag threw his head back. “Mr. Pickett.”
“What?”
“You want this little ballet to continue, Mr. Pickett, I’m going to have to kill this man here.”
“Well I wouldn’t do that Boag, because if you kill Sweeney you’ll get twenty men to sit heavy on you. Now you just turn loose of him.”
Sweeney struggled in Boag’s grip and Boag pricked the point of the knife against Sweeney’s Adam’s apple. It quieted him down. Boag backed slowly over to the rail. “Come on, John B.”
“You gon jump, Boag?”
“I am.”
“Without our shares?”
“How you gonna swim with gold bricks?”
“Well shit,” Wilstach complained, but he broke away from Gutierrez and came over to the rail. Gutierrez snarled a little and then cackled nervously again.
Sweeney stirred again and Boag let him feel the point of the knife. Sweeney was big enough to make a good shield. It was the only reason they weren’t shooting at him.
Mr. Pickett said, “Go on then, get over the side. I’m tired of looking at you.”
Boag reached around behind him left-handed and fumbled the revolver out of his belt but as soon as it came in sight, Mr. Pickett backed away from the hurricane rail, out of sight.
Boag glanced at Stryker at the foot of the stairs. Stryker had a gun out. Boag thought about shooting him but it wouldn’t change anything if he did. None of them cared that much about Sweeney’s hide; they’d sacrifice him. There just wasn’t any way to win this one. Finally Boag said, “Go on over, boys. Ain’t no choice.”
There were the two Yuma Indians and there was a new white hand who called himself Frailey. And there were Wilstach and Boag. These five were the ones Mr. Pickett had no further use for.
The white one, Frailey, climbed over the rail and Boag heard the splash when Frailey hit the water. Boag said, “Go on,” but the two Yumas shook their heads and Boag understood. They couldn’t swim.
That was when Sweeney kicked back hard. His bootheel caught Boag in the shin. Sweeney dived away and Boag was standing there right out on the bare-ass deck and there was nothing to do but flip himself back over the rail.
6
The guns started up before he hit the water. The pain in his shin and the shocking cold of the water made him lose his grip on the revolver; for a moment he was strangling in the foamy froth kicked up by the bucketing paddlewheels, a black swirl of panic; he kicked and heaved with his arms and none of it seemed to do any good, there wasn’t any up or down. He hadn’t got much of a breath in his chest when he went over; he didn’t even know if he’d been shot or not, but everything seemed to be in working order except his sense of direction. He was tumbling ass over teakettle in a marbled darkness of water which had no top and no bottom. Christ I don’t want to drown.
The water was up in his nose like fire; he was strangling. He flailed in madness and there was a slow burst of white-hot agony in his chest.
Then his boots rammed something solid: the bottom, a rock. He let his knees sag and then he made a leap, shoving himself up from the bottom.
His head broke the surface instantly. The Colorado was a very shallow river.
He coughed and wheezed for breath. The turbulence of the boat’s passing afterwash wheeled him around. The moon spun crookedly and then he picked up the boat with his eyes, the ruby gunflashes from along the rails. He saw it clearly when Pickett’s men shot the two Yuma Indians and threw them over the rail.
Then he spotted Wilstach, swimming strongly toward him against the current. Bullets made spouts and creases in the water and Boag filled his lungs and coughed and finally shouted, “Get your head down!” before he dived under and fought the current toward the near bank.
He stayed under as long as he could. Came up for air and had a look around to get his bearings. He was a little closer to shore than he had been; the riverboat was farther away, a good hundred yards downstream now. The guns were still volleying in flashes. Wilstach’s knobby head broke water between Boag and the Uncle Sam; Boag shouted something and went back under.
His hand touched bottom and he started dragging himself along the sand bottom. The current skidded him along. He would get a fist into the sand and propel himself sideways across the current and then the river would push him downstream ten feet.
It was shallow enough to walk it now, but if he did that they’d target him against the pale clay of the sloping banks. He stayed under and crawled until his lungs caught fire.
When he put his head up for air he saw them shoot their last volley. Uncle Sam was disappearing around the bend. Boag got his feet under him and stood angled back against the current, and searched for Wilstach.
He saw arms flail the surface. It was Wilstach but he wasn’t swimming strongly any longer; he was batting the water weakly. It was due downstream and Boag just kicked his feet loose and let the current carry him along, breasting with his arms to add speed. But before he reached Wilstach the arms and head disappeared under.
Boag swam harder.
They must have put a bullet into Wilstach and if Wilstach let the current carry him around the bend they’d have him in sight again from the high deck; the moon was plenty good enough for shooting. Boag had to find him first.
Then he saw Wilstach come up for air, one arm flopping up. Boag reached him and grabbed the arm and dragged him in to shore.
But John B. was dead.
chapter two
1
He sat on the ground dripping, filled with agonies, out of breath. He was too spent to think, but when he heard footsteps in the brush he levered himself to his feet ready to face the next challenge.
It was Frailey, the one who had jumped overboard ahead of them. He was walking downstream, his feet squelching in his wet boots.
“Well then,” Frailey said. He seemed too tired to say anything else for a while. He sat down and put his eyes on John B. Wilstach who lay where Boag had dropped him on the bank. The river rushed by with a steady racket and bugs whined around Boag’s ears but he had no strength to bat them away.
“What happened to him?” Frailey asked stupidly. Boag didn’t bother to make any answer. Finally Frailey said, “You ain’t talking?”
What was there to talk about?
Frailey said, “Never knew a coon didn’t
go stupid-ass silent when it was convenient.”
“Shut your mouth.” Boag felt in his pockets. “You got a couple of copper pennies on you?”
“What for?”
“Put on his eyelids.”
“If I did I wouldn’t give them to no dead coon.”
“If I had a Book I’d read over him. You know the words?”
“No. If I did I might have to read over both of you.”
“What?”
Frailey said, “You caught one or two yourself, I see.”
Boag looked down where Frailey was looking. Against the matted wet darkness of his pants a couple of darker spots were starting to show up.
He’d thought it was just the lingering pain from where Sweeney had kicked him.
“Got a knife on you?”
“No,” Frailey said. “I got nothing but the clothes on my back. I’m as dirt-nigger poor as you, right now.”
“Well I ain’t gonna die from that,” Boag said. He got both hands on the pants cuff and ripped it up to the knee and rolled the cloth back gently; it was already starting to stick to the wounds.
They’d put two bullets through his right calf. Not through the bone. The blood was a slow ooze so it was vein blood. The bullets must have gone straight through. He twisted his leg around and saw where they’d come out the back in the soft fleshy part of the calf. Probably cut some muscles up. The exit holes were wider than the others and the two had coursed together into one ragged bleeding wound.
“You maybe ain’t going to die from it,” Frailey said, “but you sure as hell ain’t going to walk very far on it for a while.”
Boag untied the bandanna from around his neck and wrung water out of it and tied it around his calf. He’d seen enough battle injuries to know you had to keep it clean and you had to keep quiet until the scabs built up. If you did those things there wasn’t much danger in it.
He sat and brooded on John B. Wilstach for a while. Finally Frailey said, “Tell you what, I’ll get a stick, scratch a hole for him.”
“That’s mighty kind.”
“No. He’s liable to start to stink in the morning. Bring a lot of buzzards down. Draw everybody in Hardyville down here to find out what’s happening. I can’t get far enough on foot if they start a search.”
Boag lay on his side listening to the river and the bugs. The leg throbbed and he watched Frailey make a trench grave for Wilstach. There was a great deal of dried blood in the palm of Wilstach’s hand where he’d twisted the knife away from Gutierrez. Wilstach didn’t look dead, he looked calm and pleased with himself; a couple of teeth showed where his lips were open a little, and he looked as if that rowdy grin was about to flash.
Boag said, “Hey.”
Frailey paused in his labors. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Pickett said he knew where he could sell that gold in Mexico.”
“Did he?”
“You got any idea where in Mexico?”
“Naw. I wasn’t even with them as long as you was.” Frailey started to dig again but then he stopped and straightened up and looked at Boag. “Shit, you ain’t thinking of going after them?”
“They owe me.”
Frailey let out a bark of laughter. Then he went back to his digging.
Boag said, “How much did you have coming?”
“Twenty-five hundred, same as you.”
“Then they owe you too.”
“Coon, when you’ve played enough cards you know when it’s time to take your losses and go look for another card table to swill at.”
“Well maybe.”
“Old Frailey’s just going to move on, give some other place a potshot at me.” Frailey stopped digging and looked up across the river. “California over there. Maybe find me a stake and a card game.”
Frailey seemed to judge he’d dug deep enough. He threw the stick aside and walked over to Wilstach. Boag said, “If you’re thinking about stripping that dead man you can forget it. He ain’t got nothing on him.”
“I wish he had a hat. I could sure use a hat.” Frailey picked up Wilstach’s bootheels and dragged him over toward the grave. “Boots are a lot too small for you or me.” He rolled the body into the hole and picked up dirt in his cupped hands and gradually Wilstach disappeared from view under the mound of soil.
Afterward Frailey went down to the river and washed his hands off, took a drink and stood a while looking at the far bank. “California,” he said, and the word barely reached Boag’s ears over the tumble of the river. In the end Frailey said, mostly to himself, “Well my boots are still wet anyway,” and walked out into the river until it was up to his neck.
The river was about a quarter-mile wide. Boag watched Frailey swim across, the current carrying him ten feet down-stream for every two feet headway he made; he was almost out of sight beyond the bend when he waded up on the far shore, a small figure in the moonlight. He didn’t turn or wave or anything. He just walked up into the bush willows and disappeared.
2
He slid himself down to the river. There was no hurry. He soaked the bandanna to get it as clean as he could and then he had a closer look at the wounds. He picked a few small pieces of grit out of them. They were still-bleeding a little and he made compresses out of ripped pieces of his shirt-tail, washed them and fitted them into the wounds and tied the bandanna around them, tight but not tourniquet-tight. He left the compresses in place fifteen or twenty minutes and then he removed them and was satisfied to see the bleeding had stopped, at least on the surface. He tore off a few bits of frayed skin and then lapped the openings together as well as he could while he brought the bandanna up around his leg again and tied it firmly.
Now it was best not to move for a while. You had to leave the wounds alone for the raw edges to start to knit together.
He heard an owl talking in the cactus somewhere uphill of him. That made him feel a little better because it suggested a way to get food but right now it was sleep he needed and he lay flat seeking it.
But sleep was hard to come by. There was thinking to do, there was emotion to accommodate.
He spent a long time remembering John B. Wilstach whom he had known six years and partnered with for three, in the army, and half another year since mustering out.
Then he was thinking about Gutierrez and Sweeney and Ben Stryker, and mostly about Mr. Jed Pickett with his big voice and his stiff blond mustache. Of course they hadn’t planned to cut Boag and Wilstach and the other new hands in at all. They’d just wanted strong backs to move the gold for them while they used their rifles and shotguns to keep the town of Hardyville at bay. Boag and Wilstach and Frailey and those two Yumas and the rest of them had Been pack animals to Mr. Pickett, nothing more than pack animals. When you were done using a pack animal you turned him in or turned him out. Mr. Pickett had left half his pack animals in Hardyville for the citizens to play with and he’d thrown the other half overboard after shooting the two Yuma Indians to death and trying to kill Boag and succeeding in killing John B. Wilstach. There were white men who did that kind of thing for sport. Nobody had shot Frailey; Frailey was white and Frailey took a white man’s view of it—a bad turn of the cards so Frailey would forget it and move on.
So they’d been shooting at Wilstach and Boag in the water not because there was any real reason to kill them but just because it was fun to shoot at moving targets.
Falling off to sleep Boag wondered if Mr. Pickett knew what it was like to be a moving target that somebody was shooting at for fun.
3
By daylight the gunshot ugliness in his leg was annoying: there was no point putting his weight on it yet because that would bunch the muscles and tear the things open again. He dragged himself around slowly doing what had to be done: a drink from the river first, and then up the bank until he came to a game trail in the brush where animals came down to drink. That took more than an hour although he found the game trail within a half mile of John B.’s grave. He spent two hours breaking sticks and honing them ag
ainst rocks to make a figure-four trigger of branches on top of which he balanced the biggest stone he could claw out of the ground and roll up the bank on his knees. If a deer came along first it would be bad luck because the deadfall wasn’t tall enough off the ground and the deer would just knock the thing over. He had to hope the first drinkers after dark would be maybe badgers or a ’possum.
If it didn’t work there was always that owl he’d heard in the night. The owl would hunt in its own bailiwick and when Boag heard it make its kill he would scare the owl off its meal and steal his supper. There was also the river but Boag didn’t like fish much.
The banks were crowded with arrowweed and rushes and the occasional stunted scrub willow. It was a long day’s work breaking branches but by sundown he had a pile big enough to suit him. Then he crawled back to the grave and exhumed John B. Wilstach.
The smell was bad. Boag stripped the clothes and belt off his friend and left John B. in the grave with nothing but his boots on, and covered him up again.
He tore the clothes in strips and used most of the strips to tie the bundles of branches into something that approximated a raft. Then on one knee he lugged himself back up to the game trail to find out what his deadfall had snared.
He didn’t expect much of anything and he was ready to go around following that owl half the night, but he ran into a little luck. The deadfall had killed a small porcupine.
You used a lot of care with porcupine. He rolled it over onto its back after he got the rock off it, and jabbed a broken twig into its throat and laid it out along the bank with its head downhill. He worked the twig in and out until he had severed all the main arteries.
While the blood drained he spent twenty minutes honing the steel edge of Wilstach’s U.S.A. belt buckle against the flat side of a rock until he had a blade on it. He slit the porc’s belly from chin to tail and peeled the flesh back, removed the innards and used the buckle-knife to separate the meat from the pincushion hide. He only got three or four quill pricks in his hands.