by Peter Corris
Lincoln was in high spirits as he carried his bag and bedroll towards the railway station. It was a one-track railroad and patrons sometimes had to endure uncertain delays when waiting for a train. The service was subject to interruptions by bandits, landslides and locomotive breakdowns. The ticket office hours were another great uncertainty. But there was a cantina to drink and eat in, and travellers could pay the cantina owner a few pesos in rainy weather to sleep under a canvas awning at the back of the building until the train arrived.
'Hand on the bag stays there, Lincoln. Hand in the glove goes in the air a ways.'
Lincoln felt something hard dig into his back and then pull away. He tensed, trying to gauge where the man was. 'Suppose I tell you to go piss in your hat.'
'This is your nigger pal's cut-off shotgun I got here. I guess you know what it can do to your innards up this close. I want you to get into the alley. Just step sideways. I know you're a fancy dancer.'
Lincoln made the move into the gap between the two buildings that abutted the street. It was dark, but not too dark. He blinked, adjusting his eyes to the changed light. A crazy man would have triggered the shotgun by now, a Mexican thief would have separated his ribs. This was some kind of American lawman, way out of his jurisdiction. He cursed the crippled left hand; if he'd had the full use of it, this bushwacker'd be missing teeth. What the hell? He dropped the bag and spun around.
'That's enough, Lincoln. One more move and you're dead.'
The man, half-crouching, a bare two yards away, was thin with a pockmarked face. His small eyes looked close to being crossed and gave him a mean, dangerous cast. Lincoln had the feeling that one of them was going to be dead very soon, maybe both. One thing was sure—the shortened shotgun was Jubal Bass' weapon. 'What all's this?' he drawled.
'Where's the nigger?'
'What nigger?'
'Lincoln, I c'n get plenty for you. Just have to haul your carcass to a magistrate and get an affidavit. But I'm a greedy man. I want the nigger too.'
Lincoln moved his shoulders slightly to test his flexibility. It was a matter of knife or gun and the knife was closer 'I don't know what in hell you're talking about, mister. My name's Wiley, Abraham Wiley, and I … '
'Your name's Wesley Lincoln and you robbed the Gila mine payroll out of Tuscon. I tracked you here.'
Lincoln drew a deep breath, sensing the beginnings of an opportunity. The man was proud of what he'd done. Rightly so, maybe, but unwise to show it. 'I came from El Paso.'
'The hell you did! You crossed at San Luis and moved south through Sonora. You sold a horse and your horse got sick back a 'ways. How many Texians wearing a glove on the left hand you figure there's been moving through these parts lately?'
Lincoln nodded. The man had bad teeth and a stinking breath; there was also a rank odour from his clothes. 'Dead or alive, is it?'
'Your case, just dead. You signed your own name to the bill of sale for your horse and the stableman seen you go to the gunsmith. That was dumb. I had a good 'scription of this cut-off.'
'Guess so. Like to know the name of the man that kills me.'
'Aaron Nestor. I want the nigger.'
'He was a clever nigger, Aaron. Worked on that gun. Takes a strange kind of a pull to trip both those triggers. Which barrel you figure on using?'
Lincoln knew that Nestor's hesitation—a quick breath, a glance down, a flickering of the almost crossed eyes—was all the space he would ever get. His right hand flew to his hip as he dived sideways. The knife came into his hand and left it in two hard, decisive flicks. The point took Nestor in the throat before the pressure he fumblingly exerted was enough to fire the shotgun. He gasped as his windpipe was severed and the knife cut sinews and veins in his neck. His hands flew up to his throat and Lincoln caught the shotgun as it fell free.
'Go up against a man you don't know with a weapon you don't know. Who's dumb now, Aaron?'
Nestor's knees sagged and he fell forward into the slushy dirt of the alley. His breath was coming in harsh rasps, growing shorter, and his hands were scrabbling and his heels were drumming in the mud. Lincoln waited for him to die and then hauled him back further into the alley. He recovered his bag and laid the shotgun down beside it. He pulled the knife from Nestor's throat, wiped it on the dead man's shirt-front and replaced it in the scabbard.
He was about to leave the alley at the other end when he saw a paper sticking out of Nestor's shirt pocket. He took it, unfolded it, and was shocked to see his name and a passable pen-and-ink drawing of himself. He quickly folded the sheet and rammed it into his bag, along with the shotgun. Ten long strides took him to the end of the alley, a quick look both ways and he was out, crossing the street and heading in the direction of the railway. He'd always assumed that the Indian he'd shot when he and Bass were being attacked had died, which meant that he'd just killed his second man. Both had been trying to kill him so that made it all right in his judgment, but the law might see it differently in the case of Nestor. What if Nestor had talked to someone? What if he had a partner? Lincoln's hand gripping the handle of the bag was sweating and he increased his pace.
He had calmed down somewhat by the time he reached the station. If Nestor had had a partner, he reasoned, he would have brought him to the alley. He didn't look like the sort of man to have a partner. Lincoln remembered the sour, unwashed smell of the man's body. No one could closely associate with an individual who smelled that bad. Nervousness returned as he enquired about the train schedule from a sleepy station attendant. The ticket office would be opening pronto—soon, but only the ticket-seller knew when the next train was due. The few people waiting around the station, smoking, squatting in the shade, fanning away flies, had no more information.
Lincoln went to the cantina and ordered a beer. The dark room with its sawdust-covered floor, greasy glasses and scarred furniture gave him the horrors. A couple of Mexicans were drinking at one end of the bar and a half-breed whore was climbing all over a fat man in a dark suit. The fat man was a happy drunk and mumbling in a language Lincoln didn't understand but thought might be German. Lincoln drank his beer quickly, contemplated ordering a whiskey but resisted. This was no time to be getting drunk. Suddenly he was acutely conscious of his height, of his gloved hand, of everything distinctive about him. He ordered another beer and when the barman brought it he took the stein to a table in the darkest corner of the room.
This is crazy, he thought. You're acting like a guilty man. Had the barman looked oddly at him? Did he have blood on his clothes? He touched the front of his jacket and nearly knocked over his glass. He forced himself to sip the beer quietly and fought to get a grip on himself. But his imagination was running wild. A ragtag bunch of federal soldiers was supposed to be responsible for law and order in Durango. Mostly they created more trouble than they prevented—by getting drunk, raping women, extorting money from shopkeepers. What would they do when they found the dead gringo? Rob the body first of course, but then? From what he'd heard about the federales, Lincoln judged that they were most likely to look for the killer to hang or blackmail him.
He drank his beer and moved towards the door. A creased, flyblown sheet of paper tacked to the wall took his attention and he smoothed it out in order to read it. The lettering was crude and ill-spelt but it appeared to be a timetable for a stagecoach service running weekly on Monday. There was no indication as to the time of day the service operated or in what direction. The paper had clearly been on the wall for years without amendment. Lincoln went back to the bar and laid a five peso piece on the murky surface.
'The coach, does it still run on Monday?'
'Si.'
'Today is Monday. Does the coach leave in the morning or the afternoon?'
A shrug.
'Where does it leave from?'
'Behind the cantina.' This answer evidently made the barman feel entitled to take the money. He flipped it towards him and Lincoln knew from experience that he would learn nothing more without paying. He pu
t down another coin, keeping his finger on it.
'Where do you buy a ticket?'
'From the driver.'
'Which way does the coach go?'
'West.'
Lincoln lifted his finger from the coin. 'Gracias.'
'De nada.'
Before leaving the cantina, Lincoln checked that his jacket was hanging down over the knife sheath. He checked the action of a boot derringer, two-shot .32 pistol he had found in one of the pouches of Bass' belt, a belt he still wore without the holstered Colt attached. That gun and his own pistol were in the carpetbag along with the shotgun. He pushed open the cantina doors and stepped out into the sun, adjusting his hat brim against the bright light. The bag was heavy and Lincoln carried it awkwardly in his left hand so as to keep the other hand free for use. Nothing had changed at the railway station. The intending travellers hadn't moved. The ticket office was still shut. The attendant was pulling up weeds sprouting between the tracks.
Lincoln tramped along the street past stores just opening after the siesta, a livery stable and coal dump. He made his way down a narrow street to a large yard behind the cantina, where there was a hitching rail, a watering trough and an adobe shack. Two men sat sweating in the narrow band of shade cast by the shack's overhanging roof. This was encouraging. Lincoln was further encouraged by the sight of a boy walking from the direction of the livery stable carrying a bucket in each hand.
One of the waiting men tilted back his hat. 'She-it,' he said, and spat tobacco juice into the dust not far from Lincoln's feet.
Lincoln stopped in his tracks and dropped his bag. His fingers flipped open the pouch where the derringer nestled. 'Something bothering you, friend?'
The man, a fifty-year-old with a battered, weatherbeaten face, noted the swift, deft movement and the black glove, and shook his head. 'No offence, mister. Just sorry to see another body gettin' on the coach. It's a bad ride. Every li'l bit of seat space helps.'
'Well, I'm kinda skinny so I won't take up much room. When's the coach due?'
'Hour ago. The Father here's getting anxious-like. Can't figure out why, this bein' Mexico an' all.'
A plump priest, wearing a flat, floppy-brimmed hat, dressed too heavily for the weather and with a pale, indoors face, fingered the cross around his neck. Speaking Spanish, he said, 'My mother is dying. I must reach her. She has been a very bad woman.'
'His ma's dying,' Lincoln said. 'If he can get there in time he reckons to save her from hell.'
The man laughed harshly. 'Way too late for my ma, way too late. She's down there already for sure. You speak the lingo? I take back what I said before—right glad to have you along. I'm Zac Clayton.'
Lincoln shook the extended hand which was as hard and rough as a chunk of granite. A miner, no threat. 'Abraham Wiley.'
The boy put his buckets down beside the water trough. They contained an oat and bran mixture. Lincoln asked him when he expected the coach to arrive.
'Pronto.'
Clayton spat brown juice again, well clear of Lincoln's boots. 'What's he say?'
'He says soon, but that could mean around sundown or even later. I guess it means before dark.'
'Hell of a country,' Clayton said. 'I been down here mining, but I ain't had no luck. What about you?'
'No luck covers it,' Lincoln said. 'But look there, at least we've got a coach.'
The arrival of the coach was signalled by a cloud of dust, the clattering of hooves and the creaking of bodywork disturbing the quiet of the yard. The six-horse team hauled the vehicle up to the adobe shack and the driver jumped down, signalling to his assistant to take care of the horses. Then he slapped dust from his clothes and walked away.
'Where in hell's he going?' Lincoln said.
The boy shovelling oats and bran into deedbags grinned, 'La cantina.'
'Just what we need,' Clayton grumbled, 'a drunk driver.'
Two passengers got down—one in military uniform, the other in a dark suit—engaged in an animated conversation. They scarcely glanced at their future companions before following the driver. The steaming horses began to defecate and urinate where they stood in the traces. Soon the passengers were swatting at flies and moving away from the stink. Clayton chewed tobacco and the priest smoked a thin cigar. Lincoln paced impatiently, wondering if Nestor's body had been found and conscious of his anxious behaviour. Eventually he squatted by the wall with the driver's assistant who had collapsed his sombrero over his face and was snatching some sleep. The Mexican had a shotgun propped against the bricks and Lincoln noticed a rifle in a sling beside his seat on the coach. He wore crossed bandoliers and had a pistol on his hip. The army officer had carried a sidearm in a polished leather holster and Clayton's jacket pocket sagged with the weight of some kind of gun. Sure is a lot of weaponry along, Lincoln thought. Honest bandit wouldn't stand a chance.
After an hour the driver returned, collected money from the new passengers and all climbed aboard. The priest had a trunk which was strapped to the top of the coach along with Clayton's duffel. Lincoln took his carpetbag into the coach despite a frown of disapproval from the officer. The coach had seating for six and Lincoln stood aside to let the priest sit by the window but he shook his head, saying that he preferred to sit further inside. Lincoln shrugged and took the seat. He crammed his bag underneath the hard, lightly padded bench. The driver whipped up the horses and the coach rumbled out of the yard.
Within twenty minutes the priest had stopped moving his rosary beads and was dozing, the officer and his companion had fallen silent and Taylor's head was nodding. Lincoln tried to sleep but couldn't. The coach creaked and rattled and the wheels bounced on the uneven, rutted road. He opened his bag, hunched closer to the window for the light and looked at the paper he had taken from Nestor.
The handbill, dated only a few weeks previously, was headed 'WANTED FOR ROBBERY AND ASSAULT'. What assault? Lincoln thought. It went on to detail the robbery and the 'savage' attack on the mine employee, John Clancy. Lying bastard. The descriptions of Wesley Lincoln and 'Joe Bass' were accurate although the drawing of Bass was a nigger minstrel parody and Lincoln was shown without his beard. They were described as 'highly dangerous and heavily armed.' True enough now. A reward of $100 dollars for Lincoln and $25 for Bass was offered by the Governor and a similar amount by the Gila River Silver Mine Company. 'In the event of the recovery of part or all of the payroll, consideration will be given to the payment of an extra amount, generously calculated, comensurate with the sum retrieved.'
Lincoln sighed as he folded the handbill and put it in his pocket. He looked at the flat, dusty country with the rolling hills now purpling as the light died, and tried to count the number of men he'd met who would be willing to kill for $250, plus. The number was depressingly large. If Nestor could find him in Mexico others would find him in California. The hand was the problem. People noticed it. For the thousandth time, he cursed his uncle and the shoddy pinfire revolver and then himself for not having the wit to realise the gun was a piece of rubbish. It looked like it might be Guatemala or Nicaragua after all, even Brazil. What the hell kind of language did they talk down there? He had an idea it wasn't Spanish.
Lincoln was jolted awake when the coach stopped. He looked out to see a ramshackle way-station with a couple of faintly flickering lanterns strung along the porch.
'Where's this?' he asked.
'Don't know its name,' Clayton said. 'I been here a few times before. I call it Bedbug.'
Later, stretched on the hard straw pallet with two thin, scratchy blankets as protection against the sharp night air, he asked Clayton, who was sharing the room, about his travels.
'I've been moving around this old world for thirty years,' the miner said, 'but I'm done now. Heading back to Duluth, Minnesota.'
'What's there?'
'Not so much. Got a widowed sister runs some kind of store. Reckons I can be useful. I don't like to think about it. Where you headed?'
'South America, I guess—Brazil,
Argentina maybe.'
'Been to Argentina. Good enough country, but it don't compare to Australia.'
'Australia?'
'Goddamn these bugs. They got a natural liking for my hide. Yes, sure, Australia. I went down there in '52. Did all right, too. I should've stayed. White man's country, that one.'
'Why didn't you stay?'
'Aw, hell, it's a long way off and I had a good stake. Thought I'd try my luck in South Africa. Damn fool. Place is full of wild niggers and crazy Dutchmen. I spent every cent I had and didn't find a thing.'
'You liked Argentina you say?'
'Sure. Bit like California in some ways. So's Australia, parts of it. I'd go back there but I'm too old to work my passage now. Great country, but it's just so goddamned far away.'
20
Lincoln travelled about in Argentina, living on his capital and eventually feeling safe from pursuit and discovery. He found the Argentinians agreeable and learned that the internal political disputes had been settled some time before, allowing people to get on with making money and enjoying life. He discovered that there was constant conflict with Indians in the south but, although he was generally curious about the country, he steered clear of these trouble spots, considering that the close call with the Gila Apaches had cured him of Indians for life. He spent some time and a good deal of money in Buenos Aires and the other major centres and investigated the steamy jungles in the north, but was constantly drawn towards the pampas.
The vast grasslands with their huge, open-range cattle ranches, intrigued him. It was like Texas and yet different. The cattle were different, as were the mustering styles, branding methods and riding techniques. After two years of wandering, he took a job as a vacquero on a large ranch and for a year lived the rough life of the gaucho—a life that had no privileges or status, but very few restrictions. For three months the gauchos lived like animals—in the saddle, sleeping with horses and cattle and dogs, eating beef, rice and dust and drinking rainwater. Then, when the drives to the saleyards and slaughtering centres were over, they had three months in which to live like human beings. Most could not manage the transition and spent the three months drunk in places that were part cantina, part brothel.