by Max McCoy
“All right,” Gamble said.
“You’re not coming back, are you?”
“No.”
“Then I just want to know one thing,” Agnes said. She folded her legs beneath her, sat beside the tub, and put a hand on his forearm. “What did I do wrong?”
“Girl, you did nothing wrong,” Gamble said. “But I’m damned near thirty years older than you. It would be a special kind of sin if I stayed.”
“Not if I wanted you to.”
“Especially if you wanted me to,” Gamble said. “Find yourself a younger man, have kids or not, live a good life. Don’t waste yourself on me.”
She shook her head.
“Seems that should be my decision, not yours,” she said.
“You’ve been living in that soddie since your Daddy dragged you here in the run of 1890,” Gamble said. “He’ll be here forever—he’s buried out back. But you’re still walking and talking, and you can get out. But you won’t if I stick around. You’ll stay here and make a kind of living by growing potatoes and selling warm beer and weak whiskey to the odd cowboy.”
“Then take me with you.”
“So you can watch as they hunt me down and kill me?” he asked. “You might want to ask Edith Doolin about how that feels. No, Agnes, I’ll not let you play that role.”
“Then don’t play Bill Doolin,” she said. “You really are an old fool, aren’t you? Send that damned letter, get the pardon you were promised, and come back for me.”
“And what if there’s no pardon?”
Agnes hit the side of the tub with her fist, splashing water in Gamble’s face. She stared at him with narrowed eyes, seemingly on the verge of telling him something, then changed her mind and looked away.
“Then you rob the biggest fucking bank you can find,” she said, “and I’ll meet you in Mexico.”
TWELVE
The panhandle seemed to stretch forever in every direction that Jacob Gamble looked—except down. He walked at a steady pace, the shotgun slung over his left shoulder, a haversack riding on his right hip, the smoke-colored glasses shielding his eye from the wind and sun.
At about noon, he found a rock almost big enough to sit on, squatted down on it, and uncorked the stopper from the tin, canvas-covered canteen. The water was hot and metallic tasting. Then he unwrapped the ham sandwich that Agnes had packed him, removed half of it, and wrapped the rest back up in the brown paper and returned it to the haversack. He ate slowly, glancing idly at the dirt and scrub around him. There were clusters of buffalo bones scattered about, where twenty years before a buffalo hunter—for profit, for sport, or simply out of boredom—had pumped a few rounds into a herd. There were some scattered rocks embedded in the hard earth. One of the rocks, ten yards away, was bulbous and a dirty white color and had a jagged hole the size of a walnut on top.
Gamble realized it was not a rock, but a human skull.
He walked over to the skull and nudged it loose from the dirt with the toe of his boot. The skull rolled over to stare at him with blank eye sockets and a grin that was missing many teeth.
“Hello, old-timer,” Gamble said. “Been here long?”
Then the wind quieted and he could hear the thud of hooves, the rattle of trace chains, and the squeal of wood. He turned and saw a heavy wagon pulled by a team of oxen approaching from the east. The back of the wagon was heaped with a cargo of what from a distance looked like a jumble of broken up furniture, in white.
Five minute later, the wagon rattled to a stop beside Gamble’s rock. The driver was a weird-looking man with wild gray hair, a face with a low brow and a broad jaw, and limbs that seemed too long for him. On the right side of his forehead was a curious discolored patch, blue and brown, that was disturbingly ugly. His clothes were filthy and he appeared unarmed, except for an enormous knife with a brass hilt that was sheathed at his belt. He set the brake, dropped the reins, and jumped from the wagon to the ground.
“What are you after?” the bone hauler asked, his eyes threatening to pop from their sockets.
“What do you mean?” Gamble asked.
“The shotgun,” the man said, snatching up a buffalo rib and tossing it in the same motion. The bone clattered on the pile already in the back of the wagon. “What are you hunting?”
Gamble turned philosophical.
“Whatever comes along, I suppose.”
“Nothing will come along,” the bone hauler said, picking up another rib bone and giving it a toss over his shoulder. It missed the wagon by a yard. “Everything’s dead, all of it, just like the buffalo.”
“Well, not everything is dead,” Gamble said. “We’re walking and talking.”
“We’re dead all right.”
Then the bone hauler spotted the skull and scooped it into his freakishly long fingers. He examined it for a moment, then lobbed it like a ball into the bed of the wagon.
“What the hell?”
“Bones is bones,” the man said.
“That one was human.”
“Bones is getting scarce,” the bone hauler said. “Used to be, I wouldn’t have to go more than five or six miles outside Dodge and have a wagon full. I have no idea where the hell we are now. Do you know?”
“No Man’s Land,” Gamble said. “Old Cimarron Territory, the Seventh County, now Beaver County. The Panhandle. Dodge City is more than a hundred miles to the northeast.”
“No, I don’t think Dodge is that far,” the bone hauler said, then turned his attention again to the ground. “See any more of the old fellow? Usually, there’s more. Rib cage, vertebrae, long bones, fingers and toes. That noggin was pretty light—it’s been out here a long time. Maybe some poor Indian that got thwacked on the head with a stone axe and left here in the Cimarron desert and a coyote carried off the head.”
“More likely the rest of him—or her—is buried in the dirt.”
“Right, good thinking,” the bone hauler said. He dropped to his knees and began digging with the blade of his knife.
“What are you doing? The remains of humanity can’t add much weight to your pile.”
“Bones is bones.”
The knife flashed, carving away dirt and sand.
“Aha!” he cried, picking a phalange from the hole. “A finger.”
“Surely that is too small to—”
The man flung it toward the wagon. It fell far short.
“Why are you wearing that ridiculous jacket?”
Gamble self-consciously rubbed the yellow trim on his cuff. The jacket was unbuttoned over a collarless undershirt. His blue jeans were stuffed into a pair of tan cowboy boots.
“It’s the only jacket I have,” he said. “We didn’t wear these in Cuba, we were given them just before we mustered out. In Cuba we had wool, not khaki.”
The man continued gathering and throwing buffalo bones at a furious pace.
“Cuba,” he said. “Cuba. Don’t recall hearing of that town before. What part of Oklahoma is that?”
“It’s an island,” Gamble said. “About a hundred miles off the coast of Florida. There was a war there last year. Hear of it?”
“No. Who won?”
“We did,” Gamble said.
The man grunted.
“You know who is president now?”
“Sure,” he said. “Hayes. No, Garfield.”
“You’re only four or five behind,” Gamble said. “It’s been William McKinley for a few years now.”
“Never heard of him.”
Gamble looked at the dark splotch on the man’s forehead.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Since sixty-nine or seventy, maybe.”
“That’s a long time to make your living beneath the sun.”
“I told you, we’re all dead,” he said. “Dead and don’t know it. We’re all corpses, and we just think we’re eating and drinking and fucking, but it’s all an illusion. The world has gone away and each and every one of us is but a shade upon the earth.”
“Of course,” the bone hauler said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
The bone hauler was on his knees, stabbing the ground savagely with the knife.
“Balls, I’ll never find all of him,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Now, what am I going to do?”
“Perhaps what you were doing before.”
The bone hauler’s face went slack, his eyes clouded, and his chin dropped to his chest. The knife fell from his fingers. His spidery fingers went up the side of his face to his forehead to probe the cancerous mass.
He threw his head back and let out an inhuman cry.
Then he snatched up the knife by the blade and brought it to his forehead and began scraping at the tumor. Blood flowed over his brow and into his eyes.
“Stop that,” Gamble said.
The bone hauler paused, the whites of his eyes flashing through a veil of blood. He dropped his hands and the knife slipped from his fingers.
“The cancer is killing me,” he said.
“But you can’t get it out that way,” Gamble said.
“Can’t get it out any way. I’ve consulted with surgeons. To remove it, they wanted to hack out a chunk of my brain as well. Not much of a choice, is it?”
The bone hauler tore a strip of dirty cloth from the tail of his shirt, mopped the blood from his eyes, and wound the cloth around his head.
“Would you kill me?”
Gamble didn’t answer.
“Just put that shotgun against my temple and blow my brains out,” the man pleaded. “I’ll fall right here, and my bones will mix with those of that old feller and make a complete set and then some.”
“I wouldn’t feel right about it.”
“Told you, we’re already dead. Where’s the sin?”
“I cannot do it,” Gamble said.
“Coward.”
“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”
“I don’t know.”
Gamble took the other half of the sandwich from the haversack and held it up.
“Here,” he said.
“I can’t. The thought of it makes me sick.”
The bone hauler got to his feet, picked up the knife, and returned it to its sheath. He walked over to the wagon, climbed up into the seat, and released the brake.
“Where you headed?” Gamble asked.
“Does it matter?”
The bone hauler flicked the reins and the mules surged forward. The wagon passed Gamble amid a cacophony of protesting metal, leather, and wood. He watched the tailgate as it drew farther and farther ahead, then looked up at the blazing sun high in the sky.
THIRTEEN
Jacob Gamble sat on the wooden bench outside the Sanford Switch depot, his arms crossed over his khaki uniform, the letter to Theodore Roosevelt in a breast pocket. His hat was low over his smoke-colored glasses. On the platform beside him was the haversack and the pump shotgun.
The railway agent was leaning against a post, sweating.
“You a Rough Rider?” the agent asked.
“I was,” Gamble said, wishing he had another jacket.
“What was it like?” the agent asked. “Cuba, I mean.”
“Hot,” Gamble said.
“Hell, this is hot.”
“Hotter than this,” Gamble said. “And damp. With crabs.”
“I thought about joining up,” the agent said, his bloodshot eyes darting about. “Would have, if it had lasted a little longer.”
“Sure.”
“How about that ride up San Juan Hill?”
“We didn’t ride,” Gamble said. “We walked.”
“You go in as a lieutenant?” the agent asked, looking at the insignia on the collar of the khaki jacket.
“No,” Gamble said.
“Then how’d you get those bars?”
“The Spanish shot all of the company’s officers.”
“Wish some of my bosses would goddamned die,” the agent said, nodding.
“How far do the tracks go?” Gamble asked.
“Damn near to Texas by now,” the agent said.
“The train goes all the way to the end of track, to drop off passengers and supply the work crew, then backs up all the way to Liberal. Helluva way to run a railroad.”
The agent pulled a bag of tobacco out of his pocket and began rolling a cigarette. When he had the thing assembled to his satisfaction, he stuck it in the corner of his mouth and struck a match on the post. He took a long drag, coughed, and picked a fleck of tobacco from the tip of his tongue.
“Where’re you from?”
“Indian Territory.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dunbar.”
The agent nodded.
“Sure you don’t want to leave that letter with me?” the agent asked, exhaling smoke. “I’ll make sure it gets on the express car. I’ve already sold you the 10-cent Special Delivery stamp.”
“I’ll wait,” Gamble said.
“Suit yourself,” the agent said, taking out his pocket watch and popping open the lid. “But you’ll be sitting on that bench for more than three hours.”
“I’ve sat places longer.”
The agent shrugged and walked back inside the depot.
Gamble crossed his legs and rested his head on the back of the bench. He was nearly asleep when he heard boots on the platform. Fearing that it was the agent come back to make more small talk, he kept his eyes closed.
“I grew kind of fond of the beef and beans and cornbread at the jail in Guthrie,” a familiar voice said. “How about you, fiddler?”
“Mickey Dray,” Gamble said, then opened his eyes.
“In the flesh,” the boy said. “Boy, howdy, look at you. All fine and military and an officer, to boot. Love the glasses. You made the folks in Guthrie hopping mad with your escape, I tell you what.”
“Keep your voice down,” Gamble said. “The station agent is a curious sort. How’d you get out?”
“Acquitted,” Dray said. “Don’t you love our American system of justice? Seems that star witness against me turned up dead along Cotton Creek, and they had no choice but to release me—after all, I was safe in jail when the poor wretch threw himself off the bridge and dashed his brains out on a rock below.”
“I’m sure he had some encouragement.”
“Dynamite Dick wasn’t supposed to kill him,” the boy lamented, shaking his head. “Just scare him enough to keep him from testifying. I feel kind of bad about it.”
“So you’re back to stealing horses?”
“Naw,” Dray said, sitting down on the bench and brushing his long hair out of his eyes. “I’ve moved on to bigger things. Matter of fact, the next job I pull is going to involve a certain Rock Island payroll.”
“You mean, the next job you and Dynamite Dick pull.”
“No, I mean just me,” Dray said. “And I’m looking for a partner.”
“I don’t do banks or trains,” Gamble said. “It attracts the Pinkertons.”
Then Gamble thought of Agnes and of living the rest of his life in peace in Mexico. What would it take? Five thousand? He turned his head and looked through the window into the depot. He could see the agent sitting at his desk, pouring a tin cup of whiskey from a bottle he had taken from the bottom drawer of his desk.
“All right, horse thief,” Gamble said. “Just for chuckles you tell me what you have in mind.”
The boy grinned.
“Well, you know the Rock Island is driving south to the Texas line,” he said. “They’re five or ten miles from the Texas line and they’ve got a crew of Irishmen laying rail.”
“Big work crew?”
“A couple of hundred,” he said. “And they get paid, in cash money, the second Friday of each month.”
Gamble was doing some mental calculations. A month’s wages for two hundred workers would be fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, maybe more.
“How do you know all
of this about the payroll?” Gamble asked.
“Because I was down at the mick’s camp at the end of last month when the payroll arrived,” he said. “It was hell on wheels, let me tell you. As long as the Irish have money in their pocket, the booze will flow. And when they drink, they start running their mouths. I was playing cards with four of them and heard it all.”
Gamble looked over his shoulder to make sure the agent was still at his desk. He was, refilling the tin cup with more whiskey.
“So, what’s your plan?” Gamble asked. “You’re going to have to get the train stopped, somehow. In the old days, they used to pile up logs or tear up the tracks. Jesse and Frank James pried up the rails at Adair, Iowa, and ended up derailing the entire damned train and killing the engineer by accident. It’s a touchy business.”
“You’re going to love this,” the boy said, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a metal device that was about the size of a deck of cards, but with four lead ribbons running from the top and bottom.
Gamble picked it up. It was unexpectedly heavy and he nearly dropped it.
“Careful,” Dray said. “It’ll blow your hand off.”
“What is it?”
“A torpedo,” Dray said. “This is what the railroad uses when they want to stop a train to warn them of danger up ahead. Three or four of these are hooked to the rail with these lead straps, and they explode—bang, bang, bang!—when the locomotive passes over. The explosions are loud enough for the engineer to hear over the noise of the train, so he brings the train to a stop double quick.”
“Clever,” Gamble said. “How many of these do you have?”
“Three,” he said. “Stole ’em when I was in the railroad camp.”
“Okay,” Gamble said, handing the torpedo back. “You get the train stopped without killing anybody.”
“Reckon to stop the train about halfway between here and the end of the line, where there is a whole lot of nothing. And we’ve got our choice of state lines to cross after—they won’t know whether we slipped down into Texas, up to Kansas or Colorado, or over to New Mexico.”
“All right, but you haven’t told me how you’re going to rob the train.”