Into the face of the devil: A love story from the California gold rush

by John Rose Putnam

  She turned and spread her hands wide, beckoning to me, waiting for me. I flew into her open arms and hugged her, happy, content. But the next thing I knew she’d disappeared, crumbled to pieces like a sugar cookie under a heavy boot.

  I grasped desperately at the empty air for any shred of her, but found nothing. Lacey had vanished. Gone! And I was falling, tumbling faster and faster. The ground rushed up to meet me, the field of flowers now hard, jagged rock. I smashed into it.

  My head hurt, bad. I moaned, long and low.

  “Tom, you awake?”

  Someone called me. It sounded like someone I knew. I smelled whiskey.

  “Take it easy, son, you’ll be all right.”

  How could I be all right? Lacey had disappeared. “Ooooh.” I groaned. Then something wet ran onto the top of my head. “Youch!” It stung! A lot! Whiskey! Someone poured whiskey on my head. My eyes popped open. “That hurts!” I whined.

  “Well, it’s about time you came around. I was worried.” Eban crouched over me with an open bottle and a bloody bandana in his hand.

  “Where’s Lacey?” I looked around for her but everything seemed blurred. I wiped the sweat from my eyes with the sleeve of my new blue shirt. It helped.

  “Take it easy,” Eban said. “Lacey’s fine. She’s back at the cabin with Maggie. But what happened to you? Do you remember? Did you see who shot you?” Worry oozed from his voice. I’d never heard him sound so fretful.

  “Shot me?” What Eban said dumbfounded me. Did someone shoot me? A recollection of Jeremiah running away popped into my mind. “Oh, no,” I moaned, something had happened. “I need to think.” I mumbled, groggy, my head still in a cloud. Why was I sitting under this pine tree on the trail to town? Did Jeremiah really shoot me? Why would he do that?

  “Maybe this will spur your remembering a bit.” Eban walked to the dun, grazing on tall grass just a few feet away. He pulled something from his bags and waved it at me. “Here’s your cap,” he said. “It was in the back of the wagon.” He stuck his finger through a hole in the top. “The shot went right through it. You’re lucky you ain’t dead.”

  He held the cap out. I took it and stared a while before I slowly put a hand on my head. I felt the scab forming where the ball had grazed my scalp. If I hadn’t ducked to whip the reins the shot would have hit me square in the face. I’d be dead. I gulped. It was the scariest thought I’d ever had.

  “It was Jeremiah Wiggins—least I think it was.” I pointed down the trail. “He was right there by the big gnarled pine. I saw him run off before I passed out.”

  Eban grimaced. “The mules came back to the stable,” he told me. “I saw the rig pass the freight office and went after it. Obadiah must’ve figured something was up. He had the dun saddled when I got there. There was a package on the wagon seat, shirts and trousers. They yours?”

  The news that I hadn’t lost my new pants was small comfort now. The whole stickler boiled down to why Jeremiah Wiggins wanted to shoot me over a bout of fisticuffs. Did he want Lacey enough to kill for her? That plain didn’t make sense. I hunkered down and clutched the cap tight to my chest, shivering like a spring sapling in a strong winter wind. “I don’t understand, Eban. Why would anybody shoot me?”

  Eban bent over and felt through my hair. I winced when he hit the wound. “You’re awful lucky,” he repeated. “But we need to get you back to town if you’re up to it.”

  Though I still felt a whole bunch under the weather I wanted to get out of here bad. “I guess I’m okay. Are we riding double?”

  “Yeah, but I want you sitting in the front so I can hang on to you. Getting hit in the head can do funny things to a man.” Eban took my arm, pulled me to my feet and helped me into the saddle.

  We crossed the creek and turned left on Main Street. Up at the Round Tent Saloon a couple of men come out of the tent flap bickering like folks do who know each other—Jeremiah Wiggins and the man in the red shirt. Even from two stores down the street I saw Jeremiah’s jaw drop when he noticed me. Right off he ducked back inside the saloon. But Red Shirt calmly lit a cigar and scowled while we rode by.

  I felt Eban turn back to look. He must have spotted Jeremiah with the red shirt guy too. I nudged the dun so he’d go faster. Seeing Jeremiah with the same fellow that eyeballed me up and down on the trail with an ice-cold glare and not even a simple how do you do caused me to break out in a bad case of the shudders.

  At the cafe I pulled up. Eban hopped to the ground first. I slid down off the saddle slow and easy so as to not aggravate the thumping in my head. I wobbled while crossing the plank walkway. At the cafe door I looked back at the dun.

  Eban had the reins in his hand. “Make sure both doors are latched,” he ordered. “Don’t let nobody in you don’t know. I’ll be back soon. Meantime you rest.”

  “Okay, Eban,” I waited until he rode off toward town before I went inside, threw the latch and walked to the kitchen where I crawled right onto the cot. Eban was right. I needed rest. Things had started to spin again, around and around.

  After a while the whirling slowed but I still had a throbbing ache that kept me from getting full at ease. I needed to sort out what happened today but couldn’t fix my thoughts on any one thing. My mind seemed like Maggie’s deer meat stew—a lot of little pieces of different stuff mixed together.

  Finally I tried to sleep. That didn’t work either but I found that if I lay quiet and only thought about breathing deep and slow I felt better, even the pounding in my head calmed down. I closed my eyes and managed to rest a while. Then a loud knock at the back door jarred me to the here and now.

  The rap came again, louder. The door pushed in. My head jerked up. I moaned.

  “Tom, I told you to latch both doors!” It was Eban, yelling, sounding awful mad. But I closed my eyes again and with a deep sigh eased back against the pillow. I’d forgotten to latch the back door but now I was glad. I didn’t want to get up.

  Eban rumbled around the kitchen. I heard a heavy thump on the table then a lighter one. “I reckon it’s my fault,” he said, his voice softer. “I know what can happen when a man gets hit in the head. I should’ve come in with you. But no harm done.”

  I heard his footsteps cross to the cot. I opened my eyes.

  He held out a hand with small pistol in it. “Put this in your pocket,” he said.

  I took the gun. “This is Maggie’s.” I blurted and looked up at him. “Why Maggie’s gun? Does she know?” I was in a world of trouble now but didn’t want Maggie to worry about me. She had enough to do with little Josie and all.

  He exhaled through his lips with a breathy whistle. “Well, it’s going to be hard to keep it from her, but for now I reckon we can say you fell off the wagon and hit your head. Sooner or later she’s bound to hear different. Anyhow, she gave the gun to Joshua, said she didn’t want it anymore.”

  I frowned. “I know there’s lots she don’t talk about, bad things must’ve happened to her, but I don’t want to add to that by bringing more trouble down on us.” I stuffed the small pistol into my pants pocket. I still didn’t like guns much and didn’t feel easy with the idea of shooting Jeremiah Wiggins, or anybody else, but having it handy was a comfort now.

  Eban pointed at the pocket, his face stern. “You know how to use it don’t you?”

  I gave him a tiny nod. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Remember, you only got one shot. Don’t waste it. You can’t shoot far and hit anything with this gun. It’s made for close up shooting. Best is to stick it right into somebody’s gut before you pull the trigger.” He turned back to the table. “I brought you this too.” He held it up a double-barreled shotgun. “There ain’t nothing that puts the fear of God into a varmint like a scattergun. A man don’t even have to be much of a shot to hit what he’s aiming at. You point this around and any right thinking polecat’s liable to back off.”

  I scrunched up my mouth, gloomy, worried. “I ain’t never shot nobody,” I said.

  “I underst
and, son. No decent man wants to shoot another one, but it’s best to be ready. There’s lots of folk around that ain’t decent. Looks like you ran into one.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did.” The whole thing scared me. I didn’t like the idea that somebody tried to kill me. I didn’t like it one bit.

  All at once Eban smiled, a genuine tooth flashing grin. “I got you one more thing,” he put the shotgun back on the table and picked up a wide-brimmed, Mexican straw sombrero. “I figured you needed some new head gear and this one might throw Jeremiah Wiggins off your scent at least once. The rascal might mistake you for one of them Mexican fellers.”

  I cracked a small smile for the first time since the shooting, swung my legs over the side so I could sit on edge of the cot, tossed the shot up army cap onto the table and put the sombrero on. “Arriba!” I said with a bit of spunk, and even circled a forefinger above my head like the Mexican vaqueros did.

  My reaction to the hat brought a chuckle from Eban. “I’m glad you like it, Tom. It looks good on you.” His face turned serious again. “Do you know the man in the red shirt who came out of the Round Tent Saloon with Jeremiah Wiggins?”

  “No, I never saw him till today. He tore up behind me on the trail from Coloma, slowed to a walk and glared at me a while before galloping off like I had the cholera or something.”

  “Ain’t many who ride fast on that trail—unless it’s life or death important. But nobody I talked to in town knew him either, nobody but Jeremiah Wiggins, I reckon.”

  “There’s something else funny, Eban.” I replied. “I talked to a fellow named Frank Barney in Coloma. He’s Reid Harrison’s partner. He said he doesn’t know Lacey’s pa either, but he said it so fast, without pondering on it, that I’d bet they both know him.”

  Worry lines wrinkled across Eban’s forehead. He pulled a chair from the table and sat down with his arms folded on top of the backrest and faced me. “Let’s say you’re right and there’s some bad blood between Webster Lawson and them two varmints. Suppose the one in Coloma knew you were looking for Lacey’s pa and sent the guy in the red shirt back to tell this Reid Harrison feller.”

  Eban made sense, but a lot of stuff that I couldn’t wrap my mind around still needed answers. I hoped Eban could help. “Maybe so,” I said. “But the guy in the red shirt wasn’t with Reid Harrison. He was with Jeremiah and Jeremiah did the shooting.”

  “Well, to me it looked like those two were squabbling. They might’ve just met in the saloon and got under each other’s skin is all. Jeremiah likely shot at you on account of Lacey. Folks say he’s laid his claim to her and you’re in his way.”

  “Ain’t shooting somebody just to get a girl going way too far?” I barked the words, loud, mean. The sudden rage caught me short. It had come out of the blue.

  Eban’s eyebrows rose. His jaw dropped. He grabbed his chin like he did when he pondered things. “For sure it’s going too far,” he agreed, sounding real understanding. “But Jeremiah’s been hitting the likker hard lately.”

  I shrugged and shook my head. “I don’t know. Something ain’t adding up like it ought to.” I’d calmed down a little. Yelling made my head hurt.

  “Right now the important thing is to keep you safe,” Eban said. “I’ll take the wagon to Coloma in the morning, check on things. Maggie’s talking about coming back to work here tomorrow. With Lacey helping out she thinks she can handle it. You take a day off. Stay at the cabin and let that head settle down.”

  A loud pounding came from the front door. “Tom, I know you’re in there. Let me in. Right now!” Lacey sounded as mad as a cat in the rain.

  Eban broke into another toothy grin. “Hold your horses, Lacey. I’m coming,” he hollered. He picked up the shotgun and leaned it against the wall by the cot, all the while looking right into my eyes. “And if you was thinking getting shot at was the worst thing that ever happened to you, you was wrong. You’re about to get a taste of the most perplexing vexation a man can have. Welcome to woman trouble, son. I think you got a big portion coming.”

  While Eban walked to the door, I reflected back on Lacey, and how I’d bought the new pants earlier in Coloma for her. I remembered how much I wanted to please her, but that was before Jeremiah shot at me. That seemed a long time ago now. I took off the sombrero and eased back onto the cot.

  The bell over the door jingled and somebody talked in low tones. I took a deep breath. She’d be here in no time.

  Then Lacey yelled, louder than I’d ever heard her. “Tom fell out of the wagon! Oh Lord! Is he hurt?”

  “Lacey, calm down, he’s okay.” Eban said.

  She stopped in the doorway, wearing her yellow dress, her hair in pigtails. “Tom Marsh, how dare you get yourself hurt and not tell me.” The corners of her mouth drooped so low I thought they might fall off her face. She looked all out of sorts and it seemed to me she thought it my fault she felt so miserable.

  I wanted to explain so she would feel better. “I didn’t want to bother you—”

  “Bother me! How could you ever think such a thing?” She sniffled and dabbed her eye with a handkerchief.

  “But I was dizzy and—”

  “Dizzy! You mean you hit your head when you fell?”

  “Well, yeah.” I said without thinking. She was the second person I’d lied to today. Lying was becoming a bad habit, but I just couldn’t tell her I’d been shot.

  “Oh, you poor man!” She rushed toward me like a hungry calf after its ma.

  Behind her I could see Eban, framed by the door and grinning like a fox that caught a baby chick. The woman trouble Eban warned me about had hit me full bore. First Lacey got mad at me. Now she wanted to take care of me. Holy Moses, I thought, what will happen next?

  She reached the cot and loomed over me like a mother duck. I scrunched back into the bed and wondered how somebody so soft and gentle looking could seem so fearful sometimes. She fluffed up a pillow, slipped her hand behind my neck and pulled up, stuffing the pillow beneath my head.

  “Yeee-ooow!” I yelled. The pain pounded through my shot-up noggin.

  Her hand flew up to cover her wide-open mouth. “I’m sorry! Did I hurt you much?” she whimpered from under her fingers.

  My eyes closed. The throbbing thumped hard behind them. I breathed slow and steady like I had earlier and the pounding eased pretty quick. Lacey sounded real sorry that she hurt me. I knew she wanted to help, but wished she wouldn’t be so darn rambunctious.

  I opened my eyes again to see her chewing on her lower lip and looking like she’d been caught swiping eggs at somebody else’s hen house. “I’m okay,” I said calm and easy like. “Why don’t you drag a chair over here so we can talk?”

  Eban coughed. He’d walked to the back corner of the kitchen. “Lacey, while you’re at it, will you throw the latch down for me after I go?” he asked.

  She turned toward him. “Of course, Eban, are you leaving?”

  “I’ve got a few chores to do yet. I’ll see you two at supper.” He opened the door.

  I knew I didn’t want to go the cabin for supper. I wasn’t up to facing Maggie right now. And besides, Lacey was with me. “I’m going to stay here, Eban. Smooth things over for me will you?” I said it softly so to not jar my head.

  He took a quick glance at Lacey and grinned. “I’ll take care of it, son,” he said.

  But she looked back to me, her blue eyes locked into mine. “Oh no! You need your supper,” she said, sounding like a mother duck now. “I’ll cook something for you. I owe you that anyway.” She glanced over at Eban. “Will you apologize for me too?”

  He gave her a nod. “Sure! And Tom, you get as much rest as you can,” he ordered.

  I closed my eyes and began to breathe deep and slow again. The door slammed shut and the latch clicked down. I heard her walk to the table and rustle around a bit. Next a scraping sound came from dragging a chair across the floor.

  It creaked as she sat. “This is my fault,” she said softly but with a tiny shive
r in her tone. “If I hadn’t come here you wouldn’t be hurt. I’m so sorry.”

  It seemed like she wanted to cry and right now that seemed more frightful than getting shot. “No! It’s not your fault, Lacey. I just fell, that’s all.” There, I did it again. Once you start lying you can’t stop. That’s what Pa had told me. Pa was right.

  “You got some new britches and shirts. They look nice,” she cooed.

  “Thanks.” She’d changed the subject on me. I was glad. Her voice sounded stronger and sweeter, a lot more like it usually did. She liked my new pants. That made me feel some better.

  “You got a new hat, too,” she went on. “A sombrero, I like it.”

  I couldn’t put a finger on it but something in her tone sounded serious now, like she had a point to make. “Eban brought it. I like it too,” I said.

  “Did he bring you the shotgun at the same time?” she asked with a bite to her words.

  Now I knew she had a point to make. I opened my eyes. She sat facing me near the edge of the cot. In her lap she held my blue army cap, a finger wiggling through the hole in the top. I gulped. “It tore when I fell,” I knew she was on to me but I still had to keep to my story.

  She turned the cap around and stuck a finger through another hole in the back where the ball came out. “Did it tear here when you fell too?” she went on, her voice soft again but her eyes rock hard.

  I was tired of lying and Lacey knew anyway. I decided to come clean but I still couldn’t tell her everything. “It was Jeremiah Wiggins. He shot at me outside town,” I admitted.

  “Who’s Jeremiah Wiggins and why would he shoot at you?” she wailed. “You’re the sweetest person I know.”

  It was hard for me to believe she didn’t know Jeremiah. “Don’t you remember? Him and his brother Jed were the first two customers you met the day you got here. He says you’re his girl. He claims you, and wants me to leave you alone.”

  “No!” she yelled. Her face wrinkled, the corners of her mouth sagged. “It’s my fault. I knew it. It’s my fault.” She was blubbering now. She hopped out of the chair, flopped onto the cot beside me and buried her head across my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whimpered. The words came out splattered with deep sighs and sobs. Her tears fell like winter rain.