Cape Hell

by Loren D. Estleman

  “He’s a savant, of sorts; we’re just not sure what: martial, literary, political, or scientific: I’m told he submitted a treatise on galvanization to one of those boards that finds such things of interest. After Juarez’s victory, he sent a letter to the U.S. State Department, recommending we exploit the peons’ near-worship of our civilization to annex Mexico.”

  “No wonder he went underground.”

  “No doubt his comments led to the assumption he’d been executed. He was already under suspicion for switching his allegiance from Emperor Maximilian to the revolutionists. His success in the field spared him punishment, but once he was no longer needed—”

  “That’s the problem with being a born general,” I said. “There isn’t much call for it once peace breaks out.”

  “Evidently he agrees. He appears to have spent the last eighteen years assembling his own private army, comprised of former revolutionists, the remnants of his original rebel force, and the Indians who inhabit the Sierra Madre Mountains twenty miles south of the Arizona border. That’s the report, in any case.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “A Pinkerton operative, posing as an aimless drifter. He sent a long coded wire to the agency’s headquarters in Chicago and hasn’t been heard from since. Numerous attempts to make contact through pre-arranged channels have failed.”

  “That’s two Americans that country’s misplaced. I didn’t know it was so careless.”

  He picked up the bottle, frowned, then set it back down and rammed in the cork. “The obvious answer is he was found out and eliminated. Now it’s up to us to confirm or disprove the report.”

  “Why us?”

  “I volunteered the services of this court, and Washington has generously accepted.”

  “That was white of them. How many men did Sweeney leave us with?”

  “Irrelevant. One man may succeed where a regiment would not.”

  “I’m supposed to comb all of Mexico looking for one Pinkerton?”

  “Just the Sierras; and that isn’t the mission. You’re to infiltrate Childress’ command and find out if there’s anything to the report. If it’s mistaken, or Childress is a harmless charlatan, or there’s no truth to it at all, come back and report to me in person.”

  “And if it turns out to be right?”

  “Must I express the obvious?”

  “You must. It might spare me from a firing squad if I can tell the federales I killed him on your orders.”

  “Very well. He committed high treason the moment he offered his services to a foreign power. The penalty is death. Especially if any part of that report can be verified. The part that concerns me most is the arms he’s supposed to have stockpiled: Gatlings, Napoleons, and a dozen cases of carbines. A shipment of that very number was reported missing from Winchester’s warehouse in Boston. Wars have been won with less.”

  I uncorked the bottle and refilled my glass without asking permission.

  “If I’m to start one all by myself, I’ll need some things up front, starting with a decent horse.”

  “Black Dan Stuart is holding a bay thoroughbred for you. I made the arrangements when I heard you were back.”

  “A good long-distance rifle.”

  “Draw one from the arsenal. The deputy in charge has all the paperwork.”

  “Two hundred dollars in gold.”

  “Absolutely not. Your salary covers all your responsibilities.”

  “I can’t bribe my way across Mexico on twenty a month.”

  “In lieu of receipts, I’ll need a detailed record of your expenses. It will be checked.”

  “And a case of this Scot’s courage.” I lifted my glass.

  “More bribery?”

  “I get thirsty in the desert.”

  “Anything else?”

  “If I think of it I’ll let you know.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting transportation?”

  “You said I had a horse coming.”

  “You’ll need it when the tracks end, but until then I’m giving you a train.”

  He puffed his cigar, pleased at my uncharacteristic silence.

  “We don’t know Childress’ timetable,” he said, “or even if he has one. In any case we can’t risk his plans going into effect while you’re crawling your way across the Sonoran Desert on horseback.”

  “Won’t he wonder how I got my hands on a train?”

  “You stole it, naturally. It’s your ticket into his camp. The revolutions travel by rail down there; no self-respecting insurgent would be caught dead without one.

  “Just return it when you’re through playing with it,” he said. “It’s on loan from President Diaz, Juarez’s successor. He has as much riding on this mission as we do. It’s waiting for you in the railyard.”

  It was a smart plan. I wouldn’t say it to his face. “Do I get to blow the whistle?”

  “That’s up to the engineer. It has a name, even if he doesn’t.” Blackthorne slid a fold of foolscap from an inside pocket and snapped it open. “El Espanto. I’m told it means ‘The Ghost’; ‘The Terror’; something along those lines. In some remote regions it makes sense to strike fear into the savages who’d oppose progress.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “I felt certain you’d assent eventually. I was prepared to offer to stock the saloon car with my entire cellar, had you demurred. You should have held out for more than just one case.”

  “I don’t mind. I want to talk to Childress. He promises better conversation than I’ve had in a spell.”

  He screwed out his cigar in a heavy brass tray. “From what I’ve heard, he’ll do all the talking.”

  “That’s grand, too. I never learned anything listening to myself.”

  Which was one thing I’d said that turned out to be truer than I knew; and something I’d have torn out along with my tongue when I got the truth of it.

  “Is there a settlement where I’m headed? The Sierras cover a lot of ground.”

  He hauled an atlas the size of a dining table from the slots where he kept his ledgers and made room to spread it on the desk.

  “The map is centuries out of date. We have the pillaging Spaniards to thank for its existence at all; but nothing’s come along to supplant it, and I doubt little has changed there since the death of Columbus. It’s the last wild place in North America.”

  He ran a finger down the coast to a ragged hangnail sticking into the Gulf of California across from the mountain range.

  “‘Cabo Falso,’” I read.

  “‘The Cape of Lies.’ It’s home to an anonymous fishing village, the only source of communication with the outside world for a hundred miles. Even a traitor needs a conduit: That’s where his alleged weaponry would have landed. If you should need to get in touch with this court, it’s two weeks in the saddle from his base of operations. There’s no railway spur. The only line crawls through the foothills of the Sierras; the blankest space on the map this side of darkest Africa, all craggy peaks, deep abyss, and dense jungle, teeming with mosquitoes, venomous snakes, and leeches the size of trout in Montana. I exaggerate, possibly; but better that than to underestimate the hazards. It’s a pity our modern cartographers have grown too sophisticated to make allowances for dragons. If the mystical beasts were to thrive anywhere, that would be the place.”

  “What about women?”

  “Savages, who’d mate with you and cut your throat in the moment of ecstasy; so I’m told.” He flushed a little, although over the bloodshed or the carnal implication, I couldn’t tell.

  “I could get the same at Chicago Joe’s, and save the expense of travel. Why Cape of Lies?”

  Here he was on more comfortable ground.

  “Legend says Cortes promised to deliver Montezuma to the natives who were rebelling against him, in return for directions to all the gold mines in the region. They delivered, he didn’t. You won’t find its other name on any map: Cabo Infierno; lyrical, don’t you agree?”

  “Cape H
ell. It’s practically a sonnet.”

  “In 1519, the disgruntled Aztecs captured several Conquistadors there and put them to death by pouring molten gold down their throats. Clearly, the concept of irony is as indigenous to the New World as the potato.”

  “Let’s hope it hasn’t survived as well. I can’t swallow even a jalapeno without regret.”

  “I rather think Captain Childress is at least partially responsible for the endurance of the name. The Pinkerton’s report cites rumors of soldiers beheaded for desertion and their bodies turned over to cannibals.”

  “He got into the tequila. Indians aren’t man-eaters.”

  “I suspect Childress circulated the stories himself. He’s established in the local cane sugar trade—that’s public record—and when it comes to discouraging competition there’s nothing quite as effective as tales of massacre.”

  “Planting sugar for profit makes sense, if he is raising an army. The kind of men he needs don’t fight for love of country.”

  “That isn’t all,” he said, helping himself to an unprecedented third helping of spirits; his Presbyterian leanings counseled against them, and he wasn’t a hypocrite in practice. “The federales say he grows poppies between the rows.”

  “Opium.”

  “The climate is ideal.”

  I emptied my glass a second time. “The Civil War’s starting to be the least interesting part of his biography.”

  FOUR

  The cashier in the Miner’s Bank read the draught signed by Judge Blackthorne, then rolled mud-colored eyes above his pinch-glasses to see if I wore a bandanna over my face. I got out the badge I carried in a pocket, showed him my appointment papers signed by U.S. Marshal J. S. Sweeney, waited while he retired behind a door with PRESIDENT painted in black letters on the pebbled glass, pasted on an angelic expression when the man who belonged to the office stuck his head out and studied me head to foot, and walked out a half-hour later, leaving behind my signature on a receipt and carrying two hundred dollars in double-eagles in a canvas sack. I could have robbed the place in half the time and gone off with ten times as much.

  Black Dan Stuart ran a stagecoach stop on the Bozeman, supplying the horses himself from his small (five hundred acres) ranch a mile outside Helena. He wasn’t any more black than I was: He claimed service with the Scots Highlanders, also called the Black Watch, in the Crimea. I had my doubts, and they were shared; but when he took it into his head to man the way station personally, he greeted dusty travelers in a kilt and tam-o’-shanter, warping their eardrums with a set of bagpipes.

  The costume wasn’t suited to the local climate in summer, and Marshal Whitsunday had offered to fine him the next time he squeezed his bag of wind within earshot of Helena, so I found him in ordinary canvas and blue flannel and the straw planter’s hat he wore when the sun hammered down. He had a mouth somewhere, but the only evidence of it was the almost unintelligible brogue that came out from behind his red muttonchop whiskers, stirring the silvered tips.

  “What’s that you’re r-r-r-riding, lad?” He stood on his rickrack porch, thumbs hooked inside the cinch he used to hold up his trousers. “It’s too big for a sporting girl and too pr-r-r-retty for a horse.”

  I stepped out of leather and smacked the pinto mare’s neck. It rolled an angry eye my way; I’d yet to make a good first impression on anything that burns hay. “It belongs to Judge Blackthorne’s wife. She’s too fat to ride it anymore, and too stubborn to sell it. It’s a loan until I take possession of that thoroughbred he says you’re holding.”

  “I hesitate to let go of it; but he pr-r-r-romised to let me play at the Independence Day dance.”

  I thanked God I’d be a thousand miles away by the Fourth.

  It was a sound enough beast, a bay with one white stocking and a crescent-shaped blaze. He’d named it after a character he said was in The Arabian Nights, but there were a lot of r’s in it and he was still rolling them when I left, leading the pinto. Chances were I’d have to shoot it sooner or later and I wasn’t about to take time to carve its name on a cross. I swear it: As I topped the first hill, I heard the old fraud serenading me with a wheezy interpretation of “Amazing Grace.”

  My next stop was the Montana Central yard, and my home-on-rails for the foreseeable future.

  At first glance, El Espanto disappointed; on a siding near one of Broadwater and Hills’ two-story-high locomotives, the engine looked small and quaint, although shiny as bootblack with red trim and its name painted in italics on the wooden cab just beneath the opening where the engineer propped his elbow. It hauled four cars only: the tender heaped with wood, a Pullman parlor car, a stock car, and caboose. No sign of the saloon car Blackthorne had teased me with; he jibed as he ruled in court, without fear of consequences.

  At second glance the outfit passed muster. It was short but sturdy, mounted on wheels disproportionate to its size, built to churn their way through floods of muck and mud and blizzards above the tree line, with wicked-looking iron spikes on the cowcatcher, stout enough to impale a buffalo bull and carry it along with all the ease of blown chaff. The Ghost it was called, but the name was the only ethereal thing about that outfit.

  A caterpillar scampered up my spine then. I was riding the rails into a place called Cape Hell, aboard a train equipped to enter the original.

  A squat Indian sat on the edge of the cab with his feet dangling, eating a sandwich and washing it down with something from a canteen; I’ll call it water. His hair was cut short, mission-style, and he wore overalls and a checked shirt with a filthy bandanna around his neck, but there was nothing European about his black eyes or blunt features, which looked as if they’d been hacked out by a sculptor who hadn’t gotten around to smoothing the edges. I never saw him wear a hat, come driving rain or pounding sun, in all the time I knew him; and as it turned out, I knew him longer than most of the men I called my friends.

  “Your pardon, Chief,” I said. “Where’s the fellow who runs this train?”

  “I’m not a chief, Chief. Just the fireman.” His English was as good as anyone’s, drenched though it was in Spanish pronunciation. “He’s in town, getting drunk on anything but mescal, and a bite if there’s time.”

  “I’m your next passenger.” I showed him the scrap of tin, which based on his expression had all the effect of Monday turning into Tuesday. “Mind if I look around inside?”

  “I’m not paid to mind anything but the firebox.”

  “Page Murdock,” I said, since it looked as if we’d be in close association for a while. “What should I call you?”

  He showed me his eyeteeth. “Call me your next of kin.”

  His name, as it happened, was Joseph. He said he’d snatched it at random from an open book of Scripture when he’d been asked to sign it to a manifest.

  The parlor car was as plush as the bedrooms in Chicago Joe’s, paneled in sweet-scented cedar (I can’t abide the smell to this day) with lace curtains on the windows and armchairs upholstered in supple pigskin. You could lose a boot in the figured carpet. Just for safety’s sake I moved the most inviting chair out from under a crystal chandelier, but decided not to get used to it until we were under way; I had enemies in town, and too much comfort tended to dull the fine edge. Behind a gnurled cabinet door I found a dozen bottles of Blackthorne’s own label secured by leather straps, with all the accouterments in leaded glass; the old man could be as hard to take as Dr. Pfister’s Spirits of Castor Bean, but he was as good as his word.

  A dry-sink mounted a mahogany pedestal, lined in mother-of-pearl, equipped with a badger brush, pink Parisian soap, and a pearl-handed razor with a Sheffield-steel blade. Bay Rum to lay the skin to rest. I pulled the cork from the bottle. The contents smelled like an explosion in a field of lime; my eyes watered.

  It was my brand, to take the edge off the trail. The Judge had done his homework. In any other case I’d have been flattered.

  Another cabinet contained a gun rack stocked with a .45-70 Whitney rifle, a
British Bulldog revolver, and a Springfield trap-door shotgun. The first was a dandy long-range weapon, and the belly gun sufficient for close-up work when my Deane-Adams wasn’t handy, but the Springfield was available only in 20 gauge, enough to annihilate a jackrabbit but not enough to stop a determined man beyond a hundred feet. I saw Ed Whitsunday’s hand in that; town law seldom had to engage the enemy more than the length of a barroom. Worse, the scattergun had only one barrel, which doubled the odds against the man behind it. But since I hadn’t even brought up the subject of a scattergun, I didn’t plan to kick.

  A drawer contained all the ammo I’d need to conquer Mexico, for whatever that was worth. Every time we took it, we seemed compelled to give it back.

  Not that I cared for the food. You can do only so much with beans and ground corn, and I’d sampled it all a hundred times over before I traded my lariat for the badge in my pocket.

  With that in mind, I flipped up the lid on the zinc larder, and looked at tins of tomatoes, peaches, shredded beef, sweet peas, and baby potatoes. I saw Mrs. Blackthorne’s hand in that. She was a good enough cook to recognize that importing beans to the Halls of Montezuma was like shipping Studebaker wagons to Detroit. She didn’t care for me any more than she did the rest of her husband’s crazy-quilt crew, but she was as good a Christian as they came.

  More tins, big square ones of coal-oil, lashed inside a cabinet lined in lead. They’d have lit the lamps of China through the next dynasty.

  I snatched open other doors. Dozens of jugs of water, drawn from Montana wells, proof against parasites; laudanum, in quantities that would ease the pain of hundreds; yards of gauze, enough to patch the wounds of a regiment; a gallon of iodine, another of alcohol. A leather case, glittering with scalpels, forceps, syringes, and bone saws: bone saws. Cold Harbor had been less prepared for casualties. I’d been there, and seen the tent.