Damnation Road

by Max McCoy

  “Do you have a rifle?” Gamble asked between pulls.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Back on the other bank. For all I know, the sonuvabitch is trying to kill me with my own—”

  Then a slug struck the ferryman in the back. He took a few steps away from the winch, arched his back, and twisted his left hand behind him like he was trying to reach a hard place to scratch, and shook his right hand at Gamble.

  “I want my three dollars when you come back.”

  The he fell over the side into the water.

  The horses were nervous, shuffling about, and the shifting weight made the ferry scud against the current with a hollow, booming sound.

  “Weathers,” Gamble called, still winching. Water was bursting over the upstream side. “Calm these animals or we’re all going under.”

  As Weathers ran in a half-crouch to the horses, another slug bored a hole in the deck next to his left boot. Gamble worked the lever furiously, his heart pounding, sweat pouring down his body. A round creased his shoulder, causing a trickle of blood down his back.

  “Sonuvabitch,” Gamble said. “Next time I go treasure hunting, remind me to bring a long gun.”

  Anise ran back and helped him winch.

  “What are you doing?” Gamble asked.

  “My part,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

  A slug skipped past over the water.

  “He’s losing the range,” Gamble said.

  A few feet from the bank, Weathers dropped the far gate and led the horses toward the water. As they passed, Gamble slipped the Model 97 from the saddle scabbard of the dappled gray.

  “Take the mules,” Gamble told Anise.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Making sure the sonuvabitch can’t cross after us,” Gamble said.

  As soon as Anise had lead the last mule into the shallow water and up the bank, Gamble aimed point-blank at the two-inch thick rope and fired. The buck shot frayed the rope. He fired three more times, destroying the winch mechanism and finally severing the rope. As the rope went slack the ferry pulled away from the bank, spun, and began drifting downstream.

  Gamble jumped in the water.

  It was over his head.

  His boots touched the bottom and he pushed off hard. He broke the surface, clutching the shotgun in his left hand, clawing at the water with the other. The smoke-colored glasses had been knocked away and lost in the river. He kicked as hard as he could, but he couldn’t keep his nose above water. Gasping, he inhaled some of the green stuff, and it was like somebody had hit him in the chest with a baseball bat. As the water closed over his head, he felt a hand grasp his wrist and pull him forward. Then he felt the gravel bottom beneath his boots, and soon he was wading up to the shore, Anise’s arm around him.

  He threw the shotgun aside and dropped to his hands and knees, coughing up a cupful of the river.

  “Come on,” Anise said, picking up the shotgun by the leather strap. Her wet blue skirt was plastered to her legs and her veil was gone. “That maniac is still lobbing lead our way, hoping for a lucky shot. Let’s not oblige him.”

  Gamble got to his feet and they climbed the bank. Weathers was waiting with the animals just on the other side of a sheltering ridge. There was the terrible screeching sound of tortured wood downstream, and they looked back in time to see the ferry flip and break apart.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jacob Gamble found a gray bib shirt in one of the packs and put it on. Then he fished the leather eye patch from the pocket of his wet jeans and tugged it over his head.

  “That’s better,” Anise called as she tucked her jeans into the tops of her boots. “I never liked those damned glasses anyway. Never could see what you were thinking.”

  “Maybe that was the idea,” Gamble muttered.

  “Do you think we should build a fire?” Weathers asked, handing Gamble the slouch hat they had retrieved from a bend in the river. “Dry your clothes, perhaps?”

  “Let’s put some miles between us and the Rio Grande before we make camp,” Gamble said. “Safer that way.”

  “But what about the ferryman?” Weathers asked. “We should make some kind of account. Surely he has a family, and they will want to know how he died. The authorities would be interested, I’m sure, in tracking down that maniac with the rifle.”

  “That maniac seemed pretty determined to kill us,” Anise said, rolling up the sleeves of her light blue cotton shirt. “If we stop to do the right thing, there’s no telling how long we’ll be held up answering questions. The days are passing, Uncle. We only have six left. And don’t forget, that maniac is still roaming the other side of the river. I agree with Lieutenant Dunbar, we’re safer if we press on.”

  “Don’t call me lieutenant,” Gamble said, unpinning the cavalry insignia from the hat and tossing it in the brush. “That part of my life is over.”

  “Then how would you like us to refer to you?” Weathers asked.

  “Jacob,” Gamble said, putting the slouch hat on.

  “Really?” Anise asked.

  “That’s the name my mother gave me,” Gamble said.

  “How strange,” Anise said.

  “What do you mean?” Gamble had broken down the Model 97 and was wiping the barrel and receiver dry. “It is a common name.”

  “The Pinkerton detective,” Anise said. “Back in Amarillo, when I caught him snooping around your room after you left, was talking to himself and mentioned a name—Jacob Gamble. He said it was a name that German parents use to scare their children. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  Gamble shrugged. He was pulling a cloth patch on the end of a string through the barrel.

  “As I said, it’s common as dirt.”

  “Yes,” Anise said. “It is a popular name. But for it to be spoken in the room you’d just left ...”

  “Sounds like a curse to me,” Weathers said. “You know, that Pinkerton chap may have simply been doing some hard cursing in German and not wanting to explain the full meaning to you, my dear.”

  Gamble reassembled the shotgun.

  “This Pinkerton,” Gamble said. “He was German?”

  “Why, yes,” Weathers said. “What was his name? Oh, I know it means ‘hunter’ in English. Anise, do you recall?”

  “Jaeger,” Anise said. “Max Jaeger, but everybody called him Dutch. Know him?”

  “Wouldn’t say that,” Gamble said, stuffing the magazine with dry shells.

  “Ever meet him?”

  “Once,” Gamble said. “In Guthrie.”

  “He must not have remembered the meeting,” Weathers said. “At least, he didn’t mention it. Surprising, considering the interest he showed in you at Amarillo. Seemed very disappointed that you had already gone. Was asking all sorts of questions—including if we had a photo of you.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Very little,” Anise said. “Just as you wished.”

  Gamble nodded.

  “Jacob, is there something we should know about you and this Pinkerton?” Anise asked. “Could it have been Jaeger on the other side of the river trying to kill us.”

  Gamble was silent.

  “He has no reason to trail you?” she pressed.

  “I can’t imagine it was Dutch Jaeger on the other side of the river, throwing lead all by himself,” he said. “That’s not Pinkerton style. When they’re ready to come after somebody, they never come alone.”

  Gamble slid the shotgun into the saddle scabbard, then put his boot in the left stirrup and swung up into the saddle of the dappled gray.

  “We’d better move,” he said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Jaeger swung down from the saddle of the black horse and onto the gravel of the riverbank. He had ridden downstream, scouting a place to cross, when he spied the body of the ferryman. The body had washed up on the lip of a sandbar, feet-first, and the man’s face was turned to the water, his wild white hair swaying with the current.

  Jaeger walked
out onto the sandbar, grasped the body by one shoeless foot, and dragged it out of the water. Then he grabbed a shoulder strap of the man’s overalls and turned the body over. The ferryman’s eyes were wide and milky in his blue face. His hands were locked, the palms open.

  “What a shame,” Jaeger said, removing the folding Kodak from his pocket. “These criminals have no regard for human life. This madman Gamble has killed the ferryman.”

  He opened the bellows and adjusted the exposure for the cloud-filled sky.

  “Gamble has kidnapped Lord Weathers and his pretty niece. He will kill them, too, after raping the girl. But an alert Pinkerton operative will chase Gamble down, and the criminal will die in a desperate shootout with the brave detective, no?”

  He leaned down and framed the dead man’s face in the viewfinder. Then he tripped the shutter.

  TWENTY-SIX

  They began to climb out of the basin, leaving the scrub and rocks and white sand behind. Anise was in the lead, on the strawberry roan, followed by Weathers on the chestnut. Jacob Gamble trailed behind, glancing behind him every so often, but seeing nothing.

  They were driving deep into the foothills of the Black Range, at the top of which was the Continental Divide. Had they gone a little north, they would have been on the road to the silver mining camp of Chloride, which boomed the decade before, but which had gone bust with the Panic of 1893; a little south, and they would have made the silver capital of Kingston, once the largest city in New Mexico Territory but now all but a ghost town.

  In an hour they stopped and passed around a canteen. When Weathers excused himself to take a necessary walk in the brush, Gamble asked Anise if they were going in the right direction.

  “Yes,” Anise said.

  “You’re sure? It’s been—”

  “I know how long it’s been,” she said. “And yes, I’m sure. I recognize all of this country. We’re headed for the Eye of the Needle, and we should make it by day after tomorrow. From there, we’re not far from the cave.”

  “And I get my other five hundred dollars.”

  “Yes, if we make it in time.”

  Gamble capped the canteen.

  “So what happens at dawn on the twentieth?”

  Anise smiled.

  “It’s the summer solstice, right? The longest day of the year,” Gamble said. “So, is it some kind of astronomical timing of light and shadow? A golden beam pointing the way to the treasure cave? Celestial fireworks? I’ve known a lot of treasure witches in my day, old folks who use willow switches and whatnot to look for gold, and they were all wild for this astronomical rubbish. There’s a Rider Haggard novel that uses this trick, I believe. Having lived in England for the past twelve years, I think you should be familiar with it.”

  “Do you doubt me, Jacob?”

  “I’m from Missouri.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It means I must see to believe.”

  “Ah,” Anise said. “My uncle can tell you that I do not read novels, or newspapers, for that matter. The affairs of others—imagined or otherwise—do not interest me.”

  “What does interest you, Miss Weathers?”

  “Fortune,” she said.

  “Your guardian seems to be well off,” Gamble said. “Neither of you seem to want for anything. You have an ample reserve of cash from which to buy supplies and hired guns. Why risk your neck out here in the wilderness? Don’t you have enough of what you want?”

  “Nobody ever has enough,” Anise said. “Whether it’s love, money, or power, it just creates an appetite for more. Don’t you find that’s true, Jacob?”

  “You’re asking the wrong man,” Gamble said.

  “Are you claiming you’ve never had love?”

  “Not that lasted.”

  “Money?”

  “Would I be here?”

  “Ah, but power. Don’t you thirst for more?”

  “Hearst has power,” Gamble said. “I’m just another piece on the chessboard. A pawn.”

  “Oh, you’re no pawn,” Anise said. “A knight, perhaps. What destructive masculine power you possess. How does that make you feel?”

  “Anybody can pull a trigger,” Gamble said.

  “That’s like Da Vinci saying anybody can wield a brush,” Anise said. “You are an artist, Jacob Dunbar—the artist of the terrible.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say.”

  Anise laughed. Her auburn hair fell over her eyes, and she brushed it away with the back of her hand.

  “I am glad you are no longer staring at my chin,” she said. “It is almost as annoying as staring at my chest. But not quite.”

  Weathers came back.

  “We should have bought some iron for you and your niece when we were back at Engle,” Gamble said, looking at the trail behind them.

  “That’s what we hired you for,” Weathers said. “I am a pretty fair shot when it comes to grouse, but not men. Besides, how were you to know we’d run into trouble?”

  “I always run into trouble.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They camped that night beside a stream that fell clear and cold from the high mountains, and although Jacob Gamble cautioned against building a fire, Weathers insisted.

  “Can’t make tea without a fire,” he said.

  “Makes us easy to spot.”

  “Still worried about your maniac?” Weathers asked. “I’m sure we’ve left him far behind on the other side of the Rio Grande. Besides, why on earth would he want to follow us?”

  “I can think of a reason,” Anise said. She was sitting beside the fire, her legs drawn up beneath her, watching Gamble as he fed the flames with some deadwood he had gathered.

  “And what reason is that?” Weathers asked.

  “We’re after treasure,” she said.

  “But nobody knows that, my dear.”

  “Oh, we haven’t told anyone,” she said. “But I’m sure they could smell it, just the same. People know. Isn’t that right, Jacob Dunbar?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “People know.”

  In the distance, a mountain lion screamed.

  “Good Lord,” Weathers said. “Was that a cat?”

  “Yes,” Anise said. “A big one.”

  Gamble took a pot and walked down to the stream. He knelt and dipped it full of water, then walked back and placed it over the fire.

  “You’ll have tea soon,” he said. “Then I think we should smother this fire and have a cold supper. We have bread and cheese. That will do me.”

  “If you think so,” Weathers said.

  “It’s best,” Gamble said. “This is the kind of country that attracts folks who don’t live by any rules.”

  “Would that include you?” Anise asked.

  “I have rules,” he said. “You just haven’t been watching.”

  After they had eaten, Weathers excused himself and went to his bedroll, saying the day’s excitement had done him in. Gamble and Anise remained by the ashes of the fire, talking in low tones.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have led him here,” she said. “I forget that he is nearing sixty-five. To me, he has always been the same.”

  “Hope I get around as well as he does when I’m sixty-five,” Gamble said. “But that isn’t as far off as it once was.”

  “We all get older, at the same rate, a day at a time,” Anise said. “Time is a very democratic thief. What I would not have given to have the years since my rescue back. Oh, do not give me that look. I am not being unkind. Never was there a more grateful niece. But civilization is the cruelest of man’s inventions. Oh, how even a silk collar does chafe. I might as well have been in a zoo because of all of the stares I have gotten.”

  “How is it that you have an English uncle?”

  “A family weakness,” she said. “My father, Udall Weathers—my uncle’s brother—was the previous Lord Weathers. It’s a manorial title, connected to a damp old house on the outskirts of London. With too much money and too little sense, my fath
er developed a taste for elephant hunting and made several trips to Africa in the late sixties. After he had slaughtered all of the big game the dark continent had to offer, he became interested in killing bison, so he brought his express rifle to America and shot them by the hundreds from a Union Pacific railway train. When he tired of that, he went to Omaha where he spent some of his nights with the prostitutes in the Burnt District and his days sleeping at the Hotel Fontenelle. My mother was a sixteen-year-old chambermaid at the hotel, a daughter of Irish immigrants, Catholic of course, and in every way unsuited, so of course my father married her. I was born nine months later, in April 1870.”

  “Of course,” Gamble said.

  “My sister came two years after that. My father remained in America, got involved in one failed scheme after another, and through a series of misadventures got himself and his wife killed on the banks of the Rio Colorado long after the Mohaves were assumed to be pacified, leaving their daughters to be taken captive. You know the rest about being traded to the Apaches.”

  “I know what you have told me.”

  “It is strange,” Anise said, “but when I try to recall my father’s face, the sound of his voice, I cannot. My mother remains vivid in my memory. But not my father. When I look at him in the old portraits and photographs, I am staring at a stranger. Does your father still live?”

  “I lost my father when I was a boy,” Gamble said. “It was during the war, in Missouri. My father had joined up with old Joe Porter to beat the Yankees but was wounded and captured damned quick. He and some others were put into jail at Palmyra, in Marion County, and were scheduled for execution as punishment for the disappearance and presumed murder of a Yankee informer by the name of Andy Allsman.”

  “So he helped kill this informer?”

  “My father didn’t have anything to do with it,” Gamble said. “Nobody knows who did. But the Yankee provost marshal, a devil by the name of Strachan, ordered my father and nine others shot by a firing squad to teach the rebels a lesson. My mother and I walked to Palmyra and she convinced the provost to release my father. He gave the order, but it was too late.”