He was looking at the wounded man when he heard the pound of hoofs coming. His pistol was belted on under his coat, the rifle stood by the door. He walked to it, started to step outside, and then did not. Why let them know he was alone? Or that he was there at all, till it came to the moment of necessity?
There were three; unshaven, dirty-looking men, one of them in an ill-fitting gray uniform coat like those that (Mick Shannon had told him) the Confederates had worn. They drew up a few yards off, seeing the faint smoke from the chimney. They looked at the dead buffalo in the space behind the station, and then one of the men rode a slow circle around the place. Mayo held himself out of sight, and waited.
Finally one called out, “Hallo, there!”
Mayo crouched near a window, watching them, but did not reply. They called again, and then one started forward, but another called him back.
“ … dying,” Cris caught the one word, and then, “ … you saw … got to be.”
There was more talk, of which he could distinguish nothing, and after a moment the three turned their horses and rode away to the east. He watched them go, and only when they had been gone for several minutes did he rise from his crouch.
He found a butcher knife and went outside to cut up a buffalo. Butchering was no new thing, for at home in Ireland they often slaughtered and dressed their own animals. Inside, he hung some of the meat, then began frying a steak.
He scowled, trying to think what he should do. These men who had nearly killed the telegrapher-agent would surely kill him and Cris both, if given the chance, and perhaps anyone who was on the train, too. He knew nothing of Sherman, but they’d no right to gang up on the man. What could Cris do?
A thought came to him, and he puzzled over it, considering all aspects. In the heap of tools he found a shovel and a scythe, and went out across the tracks and cleared a wide space in the dry grass. In the center of it he piled some of that grass, then took a chance and went to the cottonwoods for small branches, bark, and dried wood. With these he prepared the makings of a fire. From a stack nearby he dragged some railroad ties … sleepers, some called them. The roof of the shack had been covered with tar paper and there was some left, fragments and trimmings. He gathered this and took it inside, where it at least would remain dry if there were a sudden shower.
He lit several of the red lanterns, and kept them lit. The oil from one of the others he poured over his kindling, and some of the ties he placed near enough to throw on the fire once it started, if so be it that it ever started at all.
The place he had chosen for the fire was across the main line and the sidetrack from the shack—he did not wish to risk burning himself out—and upon slightly lower ground. From the window it was invisible.
He ate his buffalo steak and found it not at all bad. He went inside, but his patient was asleep. Cris Mayo sat down on the chair near the useless telegraph key and stared out at the empty plains, feeling lost and lonely. He was tired from nights with little sleep, worried about the hurt man and about the renegades. That they would come back he had no doubt.
Finally, bored with nothing to do, he pulled out the drawers of the desk and ruffled through the papers he found there. One of them was a map like none he had ever seen before, but finally he realized that it was a cross section of the roadbed, indicating, among other things, elevations. As he was about to push the map away, he saw something that stopped him.
East of the cottonwoods the railroad started to climb; and level as it looked, it actually had a definite grade. He recalled then that the locomotive had slowed some time before they reached the station, until when it passed the cottonwoods it was moving scarcely faster than a man could walk. From there on, according to the figures, the railroad levelled off for some distance.
If riders were going to catch up to a train and board it, that would be the place, where the train had slowed to a walk. He had no doubt they knew all about that and had planned for it.
There were soldiers to the east and to the west, and these renegades would know that once word reached them of General Sherman being taken from the train there would be pursuit, pursuit far beyond anything ever tried on the Western plains.
So what then? If they were desperate enough to attempt such a thing they must be prepared for a fight, but undoubtedly they also had planned an escape. That meant they would need time, and that meant first that the telegraph line be put out of action, and second that the train be unable to carry the news, because of the tracks being ruined or the crew killed. This would give them perhaps a few days of flight, in which they might scatter to reassemble elsewhere.
He butchered as much of the meat as he could, then tying a piece of rope to the carcass he tugged and pulled until he had hauled it away out of smelling range. The other was too heavy, so he had to let it lie there for a time until he could find some other means to be rid of it.
Crispin Mayo turned again to the plains and stopped, staring. A rider with a led horse was coming toward him. The led horse dragged something behind it.
He stood waiting, standing very still. The rider came on toward the station, and he saw it was an Indian woman, a woman with a small child. The led horse dragged two poles behind it, the ends trailing through the grass. She drew up when she saw him.
She looked from him to the buffalo. “Eat,” she said, indicating the child and herself.
“Sure,” Cris said. “I got some grub inside.”
For the first time he saw there was a man lying on a blanket across the poles, an Indian man. His eyes opened when Mayo came toward him and he made a slow move toward a tomahawk in his belt.
“Lay off,” Cris said, waving his hand, “you’ll not be needin’ that. We got one hurt man already.”
The woman had been watching him, and he turned to her. “One inside,” he said, “hurt.”
She took her baby from the saddle and dismounted. She started to build a fire and he shook his head, pointing inside. He waited while she went in; shortly she returned, cut meat from the second buffalo carcass, and went back inside. Cris got a dipper of water from the well and brought it to the injured Indian.
After a cautious moment the Indian accepted it and drank thirstily, so Cris went for another dipper, and the Indian drank that too. There was a trough at the well and Cris led the horses to it. One of them had a bullet-burn across its shoulder.
The woman came out with some meat and gave a piece to the Indian. Cris did not know how to talk to her, so he simply said, “It is no good here. Bad white men come.” She looked at Cris, and he said, “Bad white man shoot him,” he pointed toward the shack, “leave him for dead.”
She indicated the Indian man. “Shoot him, too. We do nothing. Shoot him, shoot at me.”
“How’d you get away?”
“Run … hide.”
“How far away?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Not far. Many men, many guns. They camp.”
He sat down on the back stoop and mopped the sweat from his face. “They will come here, stop the train. They want to kill general … chief,” he said. And then he added, as she seemed to understand, “The chief comes on the train.”
The Indian man ate slowly, methodically, chewing every bite with care. The small Indian chewed in the same fashion, staring at Cris with great serious black eyes.
“You go?” Cris asked, pleading. “You tell white man what happened? You go west?”
She said something to the Indian and he replied in a rough, harsh-sounding tone. She shook her head then, and pointed to herself and the Indian and then south.
“West?” he begged again. “You tell the railroad men. The steam-wagon men. You tell the soldiers.” He reached in his pocket and took out three silver dollars. “I give … you take word?”
She looked at the silver, then at the Indian. The warrior looked up at Mayo. “No take,” he said. “You keep.” He gestured the money away.
“You take it,” Cris said despondently. “You buy present for little one.” H
e handed the three silver dollars to the woman, then stepped inside. He was tired and hot and scared, and he wanted to be away from there. Why was there no train? Wasn’t anybody even wondering about the wires that were down? What sort of daft country was this?
He took off his coat and hung it over the back of a chair, and hitched the six-shooter to an easier place on his belt. The Indian woman was taking more meat from the buffalo, and he found himself wishing they would take it all. He wished … ah, he wished he was back in Cork!
The day dragged slowly by. He went out finally and wrestled some of the railroad ties over and piled a rampart of them against the walls on two sides. The walls of the shack were no protection, for a bullet would go through them as through paper. The railroad ties were another thing. He worked for several hours, stacking ties, and then he was tired, and sat down, soaked with sweat, his hands raw from the rough, slivery wood.
Sometime during his working period the Indian woman had gone, taking her man and child with her. He wished he had tried to trade her out of a horse. He could ride well enough. He’d once had a job helping the groom on an estate near his home. He had ridden a lot on those big, handsome Irish jumpers they had fancied.
He fixed himself a supper of buffalo meat, bacon and beans. Then he made broth for the wounded man, who was awake but in bad shape. He fed him a few spoons of the broth and the man waved it away.
Suddenly Cris had a hunch. They had tried to kill the telegrapher, and when he seemed to be still alive they had started a stampede of buffalo, and now time was running out for them. If a train was to come at all, it must be soon. So they would try to destroy the place that night.
He cleaned up the dishes and settled down for the fight. If he had been alone he would have walked out of there, even if he’d known he’d die on the prairie. But he wasn’t alone.
He waited, and nobody came. He took the rifle as soon as it was dark and scouted outside. He put his tar paper near where his fire was laid.
Cris Mayo was standing in the door of the little red station when a train whistle blew.
Chapter 3
HE GRIPPED HIS rifle and stared eastward. Far away, he heard the whistle again. Running across the tracks, he dropped his rifle and struck a match. It broke. He tried again, and this one fizzled out. He swore bitterly and struck the third match and thrust it into the dry grass.
The flame caught, leaped up, and hastily he added the tar paper. The flames curled around it and it began to smoke. The flames caught, crackled, leaped up, and the tar paper burned, sending up a column of black smoke into the night, visible in the early moonlight. He threw on the rest of it and then, snatching up his rifle, ran for the shack. Somewhere to the east he heard a pound of hoofs: east, but from behind the station. A bullet struck a rail as he was leaping across it and he heard its angry whine. At the same instant two horsemen swept around the building.
Cris threw himself behind the small embankment of the railroad, ready to shoot; but the riders circled the house as though intent on it rather than on him. Suddenly he heard a feeble yell from within, then a shot. He lifted the rifle but, not trusting his aim against a moving target, held his fire, hoping for a better shot.
He heard a door slam open, an angry shout, another shot. Then the horsemen came charging toward the track. Shifting sideways behind some brush and a pile of ties, he lay quiet. They rode up and one man leaped from his horse to put out the fire.
Frightened but desperate, Cris Mayo took dead aim at the man, who was not over twenty yards off, and squeezed off his shot. He felt the gun leap in his hands, saw the man knocked forward, falling to his hands and knees in the flames. The man screamed, and Mayo shot again … missed … and worked the lever on his rifle and held his hand, watching.
The wounded man rolled out of the fire, aflame and screaming, thrashing over and over in the grass. The other rider circled, gun up ready to shoot, but uncertain where the attacker was hidden.
The wounded man lunged to his feet, then sprawled headlong, the flames from his clothes catching the dried grass. The other rider’s horse threw up its head and began to rear, then to pitch.
The rider was busy, too busy to shoot, and moving too wildly to offer a good target for Cris Mayo’s doubtful aim. He wheeled and tried to come back to the fire, but the horse refused. The grass was now crackling with flames, leaping high. The wind was blowing them toward the railroad and around the small cleared area where Cris had built his own fire, and then along the track.
The column of black smoke was mounting now, and the railroad train was whistling as it came up the grade.
The rider at last steadied his horse. Very carefully, Cris fired. He saw the man jerk sharply, then race away. Not killed certainly, but scratched at least and wanting no more of what was happening at the station, he rode toward the cottonwoods and what lay beyond.
Cris got to his feet, fed three shells into the rifle, and walked back to the station.
As he stepped inside he saw his patient sprawled on the floor, arms flung out, half his head blown away. In his right hand he held a small derringer. Evidently he had opened the door and tried to help, and they had killed him from out there in the night.
Cris walked outside and looked down the track. He could see the train coming. He thought he also saw a flurry of movement around the rear cars. The train came on, whistling again. Slowly it puffed and wheezed into the station. The engineer leaned out. “What’s wrong? Is the fire a signal?”
“It is that,” Cris Mayo shouted, “and you’d best be looking to your train. You’ve lost a passenger, I think, taken from you while the train moved.”
“A passenger?” The engineer was startled. “What do you mean?”
“The man who was here, who operated the instrument, was killed that he could send no warning, and I am thinking they may have torn up the track for you ahead there, as well as cutting the wires.”
The conductor was coming forward. “Here! What’s wrong?”
The engineer explained and the conductor turned and said sharply, “I don’t believe a word of it. Who are you?”
“I am Crispin Mayo, from County Cork, left here by accident, and I give not a curse whether you believe it or not. If you’ll haul your disbelief back into the train you’ll find they’ve taken a man from you, and perhaps more than one. If you do not believe me, then be damned to you.”
The conductor stared at him, his face reddening. “You’re an impudent rascal. If I had the time, I’d—”
“I will await your time,” Mayo hitched his pants, “be it today or a year from now. If you’re of a mind to get your face punched bloody and black, do you be keeping the meeting. I’ll not disappoint you.”
“You’d best not talk that way,” the engineer advised. “Sam here is a noted fighting man.”
Cris said coolly. “Then I’ll use two fists to beat him instead of the one I’d been minded to. Now, if you have finished your talk, you can see to the dead man in yonder, and to your passenger. You were carrying General Sherman?”
“Sherman? How would you know that?”
“They knew it. Or they assumed it. The operator in this place had a thought they were Southern renegades, planning to kill the general.”
“Nobody stopped my train!” Sam said angrily. “And I’ll be damned if anybody could!”
“They had no need,” Cris said, irritated. “You were moving slowly enough for them to take him without your stopping.”
For an instant the conductor stared, then he wheeled and started toward the train. At the same moment there was a cry from the last car, shouts, and running feet.
Cris Mayo turned his back on them. “He’s a stubborn man, your Sam there, and a fool,” he told the engineer, and walked beside him into the station.
The dead man sprawled on the floor, and Cris showed the engineer the signs of the head beating, the first wounds, then the last one. “I cared for him, though I’m no doctor. I sent an Indian that those devils shot to tell the railroad
men west of here, but the renegades are a hard lot, and in force. They may attack your train.”
“They’d be fools then. We’ve nearly a dozen armed men aboard.”
“And they’ve several times that many, by what the Indian’s woman said.”
Men came running up, several of them in uniform, and Cris Mayo waited for them, feet apart, hands on his hips. An officer was first to reach the platform. “Quick! We must telegraph!” He caught the engineer by the arm. “Where’s the operator?”
“Dead … and the wire is cut.” The engineer was cool. “Ask him.”
The officer turned sharply around to Cris Mayo. “I am Major Andrews. What’s happened here?”
“They murdered the operator, and they cut the wires, and more.”
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I am Crispin Mayo, headed west to work on the tracks. They came back again tonight. There was some shooting. I killed one of them.”
“You did? Where is he?”
Cris led them across the tracks to the still-smoking fire. The dead man lay on his back, his hands and knees badly burned, his face scorched.
A soldier who had followed them spoke up. “I know this man, sir. He’s Eph Caldwell from Georgia, but he rode with the guerrillas … a bad one, sir.”
Andrews stared down at the body, faintly curious. He offered no comment, nor had he needed identification. The man’s surname was not Caldwell, but he had been from Georgia. Their families had been neighbors; Eph had been a bad lot, always in trouble, always a regret to his family. “Sergeant,” he said, “get a burial detail. I want this man buried and a marker put on his grave.”
He turned to Mayo. “What else can you tell me?”
Cris repeated the little he knew, then added, “They must have a camp close by, for they could not have ridden far, to come here with their horses as fresh and unsweated as they were.”
“They would not be at their camp now,” the major objected.
Novel 1973 - The Man From Skibbereen (v5.0) Page 3