Bushwhacked

by C. Courtney Joyner

  A ring of smoke drifted from behind the opulent green-lacquered coffin, before the scalped outlaw sat up. He glanced at the smoke and said, “You’re sounding like a yard boss I had, or an overseer. I never paid neither of them no never mind. Get ready to open your pockets, boss man.”

  Scalped Outlaw grabbed a sledgehammer and rolled away from the coffin. The barrel of Tucker’s rifle followed him as he went to the back of the workshop and swung the hammer from his shoulder, smashing a corner wall. Three heavy swings broke through the planking, revealing an open tunnel behind. Scalped Outlaw pounded with the sledge and kicked the pieces away until a man could pass through.

  Tomlinson said, “We know about the tunnel.”

  “That’s an access way to the old gold mine, vein lasted all of a month. I worked it, with an outhouse-crazy Sioux who gave me this haircut.” Scalped Outlaw jutted his head toward Tomlinson and Tucker, who had the rifle pointed directly at his skull.

  Tucker provided some information. “That’s when this place was actually supposed to be a paradise. You can’t tell me nothing.”

  “Yes, the very reason I hired you and gave you plans as to what was needed. There’s no secret here. I hired you.” Tomlinson emphasized the word to remind Scalped Outlaw of his position.

  “If there ain’t no secret, why’s the runt pointing that Henry at me?”

  Tucker said, “Try runt one more time.”

  Tomlinson put a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “The sheriff’s here because there’s a disruptive employee making threats.”

  Scalped Outlaw held the sledge with both hands, ready to swing as Tomlinson moved to the smashed wall and peered into the tunnel.

  It was thick with spiderwebs and the dust of rot. Globed oil lamps, smashed and hanging loose, had once been attached to wooden crossbeams supporting the tunnel’s opening, but a little deeper, the timbers were piled together with rubble from the falling-in sides and an unsupported roof.

  Tomlinson said, “Follow the plans.”

  “Want me to crawl in, shore that up, and build another entrance? I’ll need extra men. Drag in some of the teamsters who’re spending time in the pleasure houses, double my pay, and give me a taste. You might get what you want.”

  “A taste of what?”

  “The gold you’re pulling out of there. Half of every dollar sounds about fair. And that, I want in writing.”

  Tucker said, “Like you can read.”

  “Good enough. That tells me you’re serious about this.”

  Tomlinson wanted to see how far it would go. “Or?”

  Scalped Outlaw said, “These things collapse all the time. Would probably take a lot of your new street with it.” He leaned back next to the casket, taking a deep drag on his cigar. “Keep the runt away from me or I’ll hump him dead with that rifle.”

  Tomlinson watched Tucker for a beat, the purple tinge around his ears spreading with his anger. “Get him ready for work.” He walked back out into the sunlight and traffic.

  Tucker smashed the outlaw quickly in the neck with the rifle barrel, choking the smoke in his throat. Scalped Outlaw heaved onto the floor.

  Tucker shouted, “Suck on it! Like your mama and the field hands. C’mon!”

  Scalped Outlaw opened his lips, but not his teeth.

  Tucker smashed again, parting his jaws, and shoving the barrel of the Henry into the side of his mouth. “This is what a runt does. You’re going to get in there and start building, while they work out the details of your contract. Do it, or I’ll blow a hole in your cheek, or take it a step further than your Sioux friend. Ever seen a tongue split? How you think you’ll talk after that?” He took a deep breath. “Ready for work?”

  Scalped Outlaw nodded, the gun barrel knocking into his teeth.

  Tucker pulled back the Henry. “Only one rule in Paradise—respect the man with the badge.”

  * * *

  The girl held up large, udder-shaped breasts, so Widow Kate could see the two symbols tattooed just beneath them.

  Kate was trying to lean forward, eyes squinted, her own stomach blocking her, but read, “Feng kuang. That means crazy.” She brought her wheelchair back a few turns, letting the girl tuck herself back into the bodice that was barely holding her together, her pale-white curves fighting any restraint.

  Soiled Dove, in a finely appointed purple dress and dangling earrings, kept an arm around the girl, gently stroking her shoulder and lifting her chin so her eyes would meet Kate’s when she spoke.

  Kate said, “You worked in San Francisco. Got that mark for killing a customer.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The girl looked to Dove, then said, “He couldn’t be pleased, and I’d tried for sure. He broke some of my personal things. A turtle comb and a hand mirror. I used one of the pieces to protect myself.”

  “It’s good you told me.”

  The girl lowered her chin again as Kate wheeled behind a massive desk that had once belonged to the captain of the Pacific ship Siberia. She didn’t look up, waiting for Kate’s verdict. Dove’s touch never left her shoulder.

  Kate ran her hands across the plush fabric of dragons carved into the chair’s armrests and drummed her fingers as her Chinese cook silently set out a luncheon tray.

  The cook retreated on bound feet, and Kate still hadn’t said a word. She shifted her massive weight in the wheelchair, its upholstered back automatically adjusting for her comfort with a quick clicking of small gears. It was an elaborate mechanism, but elegant and imposing. Perfect for her.

  Soiled Dove said, “I was thinking of the new house.”

  With swollen fingers, Kate picked up a ceramic spoon shaped like a duck and dipped it into a bowl of bird’s nest soup. Holding the spoon was a chore. Bringing it to her mouth, even more of an effort. She swallowed. “You won’t be working here in this house. I have a new house just down the street, and I need one like you there. I’ve had difficult johnnies in the past, but there’ll be nothing like them in my places, so forget about that tattoo.”

  The girl glanced up with her eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Dove will tell you what I expect in your behavior.”

  Dove whispered in the girl’s ear, “No worries,” before opening the office door and letting her out.

  Tomlinson was standing in the hallway. She shut the door on him, turning to Kate. “You’ll want me here for this, won’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “This is about our future . . . business.”

  “Tell Mr. Tomlinson to wait a few minutes, then he may knock.”

  Soiled Dove seemed frozen in her spot, unblinking, as Kate sipped some more soup and read the newspaper that had been laid out neatly next to her luncheon tray.

  Dove said, “I’ve another ten girls coming in this week. Do you want to see each? Or I can find them spots.”

  Kate adjusted the light of the ornate jade lamp on her desk to look closer at the photographs of John Bishop standing among a mountain of dead Fire Riders. “Do what I ask.”

  Soiled Dove stepped out of the office, shutting the door behind her.

  Kate gave herself a moment, fixed on Bishop. “Oh, Goddamn you, Doctor,” she said with a shake of the head that was disbelief and admiration together.

  She was counting the bodies, her finger making a dent in the newspaper as she spotted each one, when Tomlinson’s knock came three times. She took another spoonful of soup before allowing him entrance. He wasn’t fully in the room when she said, “So what happens now?”

  “I’m not understanding the question.”

  Kate rolled quickly to where he was standing, his hands in his pockets in near-rude defiance. “Your new demeanor doesn’t suit you . . . or me.”

  “I just solved a labor problem.”

  “It’s an insult to imagine I’m not completely aware of everything that happens in Paradise. I’m not worried about the backs needed for work. I’m talking about money.”

  Tomlinson’s shoulders were curving inward. “Well, ask again. Jus
t be specific.”

  Kate said, “John Bishop killed a cadre of your riders, and not for the first time—”

  “I’ve seen the photographs, read the exaggerations.”

  “He’s a hero in these papers that show him with one of yours as a prisoner, which means he’ll take the war right to you.”

  Tomlinson said, “I don’t disagree with a thing said.”

  Kate pushed herself a few feet closer to Tomlinson, making him take a stumbled step back as she stubbed a short finger into his chest. “I want to know about the money. Are the deposits going to be there? You’ve had a setback, but I’m making Paradise new again.”

  Tomlinson said, “I know what we invested in. I approved it.”

  “You can do that from a shallow grave?”

  Tomlinson’s voice dropped, his confidence draining out in front of Kate. “I’d ask that you control your famous temper.”

  Kate’s eyes narrowed in the round folds of her face, making them almost disappear: “I know Dr. John Bishop . . . well. He’s done me a good turn before, and I repaid in kind.”

  “Me as well.”

  “Would you like to see my scars?”

  Tomlinson said, “Bishop truly helped my youngest daughter. He was kind.”

  “Think that makes a difference? You work for his brother, and he’ll put down anyone who stands between him and that killing. It’s what tears him apart, what drives him. I know this man.”

  “But, we have an army.”

  “Nothing but targets.”

  “That’s foolish thinking. We have an organization spread across the Southwest to control all outlawry.”

  Kate snorted. “That’s a hell of a term.”

  “That’s why you came to us. To build our town.”

  “My town.”

  “Correction. Our investment.”

  Kate said, “Partial, and maybe your best one. You’d do well to remember who set this all in motion.”

  “You and your fleshpots are to be admired, ma’am.” Tomlinson held out the three telegrams. “Devlin Bishop is authorizing another hundred thousand dollars. He believes in your City of Paid-for Sin, and these . . . family issues . . . won’t stop business. I won’t allow it.”

  Kate said, “I doubt it will make any difference. Paradise is my dream, and I expect to die here, even have a coffin built just for me.”

  “Yes, I believe I’ve seen it. Stylish.”

  “I expect to have one death. John Bishop’s had a dozen. So far.”

  Tomlinson said, “You’re taking that trash too seriously.”

  “You won’t stop him, sir. If I had the Texas Rangers, the army, and John Bishop coming for me, I’d worry about Bishop.” Kate rolled back to her desk and took a small opium pipe from an ivory box, which also held the penny dreadful with Bishop on the cover. “What the hell. If anything does happen to your Fire Riders, I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who wants in on this.”

  She dropped a small bead into the bowl as Tomlinson said, “You won’t need anyone else. If I drank, I’d say we should toast to a . . . secure partnership.”

  Kate lit the pipe and drew it in deep, then stabbed a finger at the photograph of all the dead Riders and said, “I can’t do that, because you, sir, are not secured.”

  * * *

  The creek was rain-swollen, water running fast and just reaching the belly of Bishop’s horse. He glanced over to see Hunk, feet dangling in the current about an inch, his wrists loosely bound, but the rigged tourniquet holding.

  They reached the other shore, which was the edge of a carpet of sweetgrass that stretched open for miles toward the Rockies, the creek weaving alongside. Bishop swung off his saddle, keeping the rig against his shoulder and letting the bay drink as he freed the knot that tethered Hunk’s horse to his own.

  Hunk, who hadn’t said a word for more than twenty miles, managed to say, “Set the horse free, because now you’re to kill me?”

  “Get down off there. I want to check that knee.”

  Hunk sat up straight, bringing his one good leg around, and balling his massive fists in case Bishop pulled him from the saddle again.

  “You need help.” Bishop offered a shoulder and Hunk took it.

  Bishop attended to the knee, cleaning and adding another stitch. Hunk jolted back when Bishop touched some swelling on the outer side of the leg. He gave Hunk a piece of leather to bite on as he tweezed a last fragment of buckshot from the edge of the tissue.

  “When you get shot, often it’s not loss of blood that kills. It’s the germs on the bullet. The infection does it.”

  Hunk spit out the leather. “Still, your gun.”

  “You’re damn lucky to be alive anyway, with that ear.”

  “We don’t have a good doctor.”

  “Where?”

  “Nowhere.” Hunk shook his head. “He’s what they called a field butcher. You know what that is?”

  “It means he’s done a lot of amputations. So have I.”

  “But not this time.”

  Bishop said, “You have information I need. I don’t even know if a one-armed man can perform an amputation. I mean, do it clean. That’s a funny problem, isn’t it?”

  Hunk chose his words carefully. “Yes. Funny.”

  Bishop daubed the stitches before rewrapping the leg. “I might have to do you, the way they did me. Do you know what happened to my arm?”

  Hunk was holding the handle of the saber with the two inches of broken blade. “They would read about you at the fort. Everything.”

  Bishop took the saber, twisted the blade through the tourniquet strap, and turned it, keeping it taut.

  Hunk said, “I don’t understand you. Are you going to kill me or not?”

  “Gangrene might still do it for me. If I lose patience or think you’re used up, I might.” He started for the creek. “Or maybe I’ll get you back to your wife and kids.”

  Hunk said, “That won’t happen.”

  Bishop dropped on the bank, splashed water into his eyes with his one palm. He kept it there, feeling the cool of the water, but the double barrels were swivel-aimed from his hip, always on Hunk. “When you die is up to you. Twenty years from now . . . or twenty minutes.”

  Hunk’s face was locked.

  Bishop said, “My brother. You’re taking me to him. You said the ‘fort.’”

  “You still don’t even know everyone that you’re fighting. . . or what.”

  “You’ll show me or that leg will pain you till you’re begging me to take it off.”

  “There are two men in you. Fighting all the time, I think.”

  Bishop said, “Then you have good reason to be afraid.”

  * * *

  Linus pumped the bellows of the smith’s furnace, heating the coals, before edging in the new horseshoe. He drew the air for extra heat, then turned the shoe, the iron-black giving way to molten yellow. He had the iron on the anvil, hammering it around the horn, forcing a turn, when Claude Ray came to the open door, watching him work to the center of the shoe, hot sparks flailing.

  Claude Ray stepped into the stable. “New ones for Hurricane?”

  “I imagine Mr. Chisum will want all new after we get her washed down.”

  Claude Ray hung on the side of the workbench, the artificial leg Bishop had designed for him, right where it had always been since Linus built it. Linus turned the hot iron, heating the other quarter as Claude picked up the prosthetic, working the knee back and forth.

  Linus said, “You ready for that now?”

  “You did real good, fine work.”

  Linus punched the shoe’s nail holes, sweat washing his face and arms. “Chisum showed us Garrett’s message. Rose has been to the doc and is coming back to you to heal herself up.” He dropped the shoe in the cooling bucket. “She really went through the storm, so maybe it’d be nice if there was a different man waiting for her at home.”

  * * *

  Coming up the Chisum road, the brown and white stal
lion walked easy, protecting Rose and her injury as she sat up straight in the saddle on her own. Garrett was alongside on his hammerhead, keeping in step, keeping an eye.

  Behind them, McCarty and the outriders broke off, riding across the open stretch beyond the stables and corral. McCarty whistled before galloping toward the pasture where the remaining herd was being gathered.

  John Chisum was on the porch, the maids and staff milling around him. There was excited chatter, but he stood alone by the railing, waiting for Rose and Garrett to get to his lawn before taking the front steps and meeting them with an outstretched hand.

  Garrett got off his horse before Linus and a stable boy led it off. Chisum eyed the animal, patted its neck, and then said to Garrett, “Where’s Farrow?”

  “He’s gone, Mr. Chisum, along with your prize horse. That’s after he tried to get us all killed and shot Rose. But we’re here . . . and most of your men and most of the herd.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Patrick.” Chisum took hold of Rose’s horse and helped her down. “You don’t know how glad I am that you’re back safe.”

  Rose said, “Me too, sir. I got some back. I did that.”

  “So I heard.” Chisum helped Rose into the arms of the youngest maid, her belly swollen by weeks. The maid shouldered Rose toward the main house, the other maids coming up to briefly hug her.

  Garrett said, “This shouldn’t be a victory dance, Mr. Chisum. There’s a lot dead left in Myrtle. We beat the Fire Riders, but we’re told that wasn’t the plan, that Farrow had something else in mind.”

  Chisum said, “I don’t know a damn thing about that, but there was a . . . negotiation.”

  Garrett’s laugh was ironic and someplace deep. “There always is.”

  The Chisum cowboys brought their horses in, got handshakes and slaps on the back.

  Chisum tipped his hat to them, shook a few hands, then said to Garrett, “They wanted Dr. Bishop. You knew that straightaway.”

  “Uh-huh. So did he, but couldn’t figure why.”

  Somebody handed Garrett a glass of whiskey. “But, they got him all right.”