Retribution Road

by Antonin Varenne

  “I got here yesterday with a convoy of pioneers. They found him this morning.”

  Bowman had placed the Henry on his thighs, the barrel turned towards the preacher, who seemed not to notice.

  “He died last night?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did it happen last night?”

  “The cold preserved him, but he died a while ago. They were looking for him.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A foreman in the mine. Someone had stolen some gold. They thought it was him because he disappeared at the same time as the gold, about ten days ago.”

  Bowman looked around him at the deserted mine, barely visible in the mist and snow.

  “We have to get out of here. Have you got a horse?”

  The preacher said no.

  “You need one.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  Bowman took three five-dollar coins from his pocket.

  “Find something. We have to go.”

  “Sergeant?”

  “What?”

  “Were you here to kill me?”

  Bowman lowered his head.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

  The preacher stood up, took a few steps and turned around.

  “He was here too.”

  “Who?”

  “Penders. The miners saw an Englishman here. A blond man who said he’d been a soldier. He came through here not long before the foreman disappeared.”

  *

  For fifteen dollars, Peavish could not even find a donkey for sale. Animals were too precious at the mine and the workers did not want to be separated from them, no matter what the price. For ten dollars, he bought a flat cart in poor condition, and another two dollars got him a patched-up harness, the leather dry and cracked. They fitted it to Walden.

  As the snow fell harder and harder, Bowman and Peavish left the Gregory mine and set off into the fog.

  The cart was no more comfortable than his horse and Bowman suffered as it jolted over the stones on the track, though he tried not to let it show in front of the preacher. More than anything, without the warmth of Walden, he felt much colder. Peavish wore frayed clothes and no coat, a dog collar black with grime and a hat with holes in it, but he showed no reaction to the temperature. After a few mouthfuls, he even refused any more whiskey. Bowman had given him the reins, and he held his arms tight around his body to protect his ribs. His saddle and saddlebags were tied to the cart, along with the preacher’s battered old suitcase. Bowman had put the Henry between his legs, and in the chaos the barrel ended up pressed against his cheek.

  “It was Pastor Selby who told me you’d come over here to preach. In New York, I met Ryan, at the church on John Street. He told me you went through St Louis, and at the Methodist church there, they said you were out West.”

  Peavish turned towards the sergeant.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Bowman drank some whiskey and held the bottle tight in his arms.

  “In London, I saw an article about a murder in Texas.”

  “In Texas? What are you talking about, Sergeant?”

  Bowman looked at the preacher.

  “The man in the mine . . . where did they find him?”

  “In an abandoned tunnel. Why did you say there was another murder?”

  Bowman pressed his temple against the Henry’s barrel.

  “Was there anything else, apart from the corpse? Anything written?”

  The preacher started to tremble.

  “On a beam. In blood.”

  “Survive?”

  Peavish’s eyes widened. He stared at the track ahead of him. Snowflakes fell into his eyes, but he didn’t even blink.

  “When Selby told me that you’d gone over here . . .”

  “You thought it was me.”

  “You left just after my visit. I hadn’t found Penders, but you were in America, and there was a second murder.”

  “There have been others?”

  The two men listened to the noise of the horseshoes and the cart’s wheels, neither of them knowing how to fill the void that had opened between them.

  “I found his trail at Rio Rancho. He was travelling with a man who was killed. For a few days, I felt sure it was him. And then the manager of the Bent and St Vrain told me that you had passed through there, before they found the body of that man with a Russian name . . . Petrovitch. Peavish, why did you leave Plymouth after my visit?”

  The preacher pulled on the reins and lifted the cart’s brake, coming to a halt in the middle of the path.

  “I’d wanted to leave England for a long time, but I didn’t have the courage to do it. When you came to see me, and you told me about the list of the survivors, about Penders who had disappeared and the murder in the sewers, I made my decision. You had mentioned America, and our Church is well-established here. I think I was afraid after your visit, Sergeant, afraid that it would all start again, that the nightmares would return. I packed my suitcase and I took a boat.”

  He turned to Bowman.

  “Sergeant, I’ve been in America for nearly two years, but when I went through Bent’s Fort I knew nothing about all this. I was on my way back to St Louis. On the Independence track, I met a convoy of employees from the Bent. They were very upset and they asked me if I could say a prayer for them and listen to their story. They told me that some Indians had killed a man and they’d brought his body to the fort.”

  The preacher reached out and grabbed the bottle of whiskey.

  “I saw the corpse.”

  He drank a large mouthful.

  “For two days, I had a fever. I remembered what you’d said at the chapel, about the sewers. I knew it couldn’t be anything else. But for it to happen here, thousands of miles from England, when I thought I’d finally escaped it . . .”

  Peavish almost finished the bottle.

  “I’d heard all those horrible rumours on the road, but I thought they were exaggerations, superstitions. I couldn’t bring myself to believe them. After all this time, so far from London . . . When I was able to stand again, I did the same thing as you: I followed his tracks, trying to find him . . .”

  He tried to smile at the sergeant.

  “I thought of Penders, of course, because you said that he might have come here. And I thought of you. The police in London believed you were the murderer. Erik or you, Sergeant . . . there was no other possibility. So I was looking for you, too.”

  Bowman got down from the cart and took a few steps. He had a hot flush and couldn’t breathe. He took off his hat, lifted his face to the sky and let the snow fall on it. Peavish joined him, putting a hand to his chapped lips.

  “So it’s true? It’s really him?”

  Bowman put his hat back on.

  “He’s the last one.”

  It was slightly less cold in Black Hawk. It was no longer snowing and the fog had dispersed. The town did not look like a mining camp. Quieter and better constructed, it had survived the gold fever and its end and it had managed to endure in another form. There were dwellings, a few shops. Lamps were being lit behind windows.

  Bowman was at the end of his strength. His wound burned his back and he swayed as the cart advanced, shivering and gripping tight on his rifle. Peavish came to a halt outside a house and knocked at the door. A man opened and, seeing the white collar, came out to shake his hand. Bowman heard them speak, then the preacher returned to pick up the reins and steer the cart into a neighbouring barn.

  “We can spend the night here.”

  Bowman stumbled as he descended from the cart. He walked over to a pile of feed and collapsed.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I was shot in Bent’s Fort?”

  “What?”

  “I tried to free the Comanches that they hanged.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were wounded?”

  “There’s medicine in the saddlebags.”

  Peavish b
rought him a flask.

  “Drink this. I have to go and bless our hosts’ dinner. I’ll come back to look after you. It won’t take long.”

  He ran off. Bowman levered open the Henry, put a bullet in the chamber, placed the rifle on his belly and waited for the preacher to return, trying to stay awake.

  *

  Walden was tied to a trough. Peavish had found the flax seeds, the bandages and the syrup. He stirred a steaming saucepan with a pocket knife and smiled at Bowman. The preacher did not have a single tooth left in his mouth.

  “It’s nearly ready, Sergeant. Can you take off your clothes or do you need me to help you?”

  Bowman wanted to undress himself, but the pain was too much. He managed to remove his jacket, but then the lamplight began to dance before his eyes. When the preacher reached out to move the rifle out of the way, Bowman gripped tight to the Henry and clambered backwards into the hay.

  “Sergeant, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  They looked at each other for a few seconds. Bowman put the rifle down next to him and Peavish, moving cautiously, started to unbutton his shirt.

  “I’m used to looking after the sick, Sergeant.”

  When he pulled on the sleeves, the preacher froze and closed his eyes. Bowman waited for him to continue.

  “It’s not the first time you’ve seen that.”

  Peavish began removing the bandages.

  “I haven’t seen them for a long time. I got used to washing myself in my underwear. People think it’s because I’m a preacher.”

  He tried to smile. So did Bowman.

  “It’s true that you smell worse than me.”

  “I shave, though. That makes me look cleaner.”

  Peavish threw the dirty bandages away and opened the bottle of alcohol.

  “For a long time, I couldn’t shave.”

  He soaked a strip of bandage and cleaned the wound. The flesh was yellow and swollen. He paused for a moment, examining it.

  “It was always more difficult seeing the others. I didn’t hear my own screams, only yours.”

  He finished bandaging Bowman and they ate some meat and soup given to them by the owners of the barn. The broth ran between the preacher’s lips and dripped down his chin when he drank from the plate. Peavish was younger than Bowman, but since the visit to the chapel in Plymouth, he seemed to have aged a hundred years.

  “Nice job you have there, preacher. Do you always eat for free in return for a prayer?”

  “Sergeant, no-one ever feels robbed.”

  “Soup isn’t expensive, though.”

  Bowman finished his plate and lay down on his side, one arm under his head, back turned to the preacher.

  “Peavish, it wasn’t you who killed them, was it?”

  “Sergeant, the men were afraid of you because you always knew when they were lying. Anyway, I never managed to make you believe anything.”

  Peavish laughed softly.

  “I wasn’t afraid of you because I don’t lie. I have not killed anyone since we fought under your command.”

  “We fought to stay alive.”

  “That doesn’t alter what we did.”

  Bowman stared at the rifle in his hands.

  “Preacher, I don’t hear my own screams in my nightmares either.”

  “I know, Sergeant.”

  Bowman lifted his head. Peavish, sitting next to him, knees up to his chest, was looking at him.

  “You’ve changed, preacher. You haven’t even tried to make me say confession or to convince me that I’m walking in God’s footsteps.”

  There was a silence between them. The first one, since the Gregory mine, that did not separate them.

  “Sergeant, I don’t know if you will understand this because you have always been solitary, but these last few weeks, I was alone for the first time. I mean that God was no longer with me. I almost went mad.”

  Bowman thought again about Thoreau’s book, about his interrupted reading in the desert of the chapter on solitude, about the last words he wrote to Alexandra Desmond.

  “Solitary isn’t solitude. Me too, I’ve gone crazy.”

  Bowman heard Peavish turning towards him.

  “Without you, Sergeant, no-one would have survived. The reason we are not all dead is that you never gave up. Even . . . even if it was you they treated most harshly. But without you, we wouldn’t have been in that situation. After the village was burned, we would have rebelled if you hadn’t been there. We would never have gone that far upriver. We owe you our lives, Sergeant, but you are our worst nightmare.”

  Bowman, hidden under his blanket, did not move.

  “I think you’ve changed a great deal too, Sergeant.”

  Bowman let go of the rifle, pushed it away, and closed his eyes.

  “Peavish, even if it was you I was looking for, I’m glad not to be alone anymore. I need to sleep now, so if you have to do it, kill me quickly and don’t screw it up.”

  The preacher laughed softly, but Bowman remained silent.

  Peavish stood up, blew out the lamp and lay back down on the hay.

  “Good night, Sergeant.”

  “Good night, preacher.”

  *

  The news spread that a man of God was in town. They could not leave Black Hawk before Peavish had given a sermon, standing on the steps of a grocery store, in front of half the town’s inhabitants. The others – whether because they belonged to a rival faith, or because God did not interest them enough to spend an hour in the rain with their feet in the mud – had stayed at home. The audience for the sermon was a motley crew. Deaf old men, curious children, dutiful bigwigs, unforgiving bigots, Chinamen with flexible beliefs or who did not understand a word he was saying and were waiting to see what this man in rags was selling. A few prospectors and drunkards were also waiting around for the doors of the grocery store to be opened so they could do their shopping.

  Bowman had harnessed Walden. Sitting on the bench of the cart, sheltered from the rain outside the barn, he listened to the preacher’s sermon. Within a few minutes, Peavish had metamorphosed, transforming himself from a sickly scarecrow to a black-and-white flame moving wildly from one side of the steps to the other. His voice grew clearer and more powerful. Never had Bowman seen anything like it. The women crossed themselves and sighed with dread when Peavish mentioned the hell hidden beneath their feet, the temptations and debaucheries, the terrible sins that God would judge pitilessly if they did not repent in time. There were a few laughs when he talked about alcohol, but silence fell again when he roared against greed, the lure of profit and wealth that drew us away from mercy. And his entire audience – mostly good people who had come to the Rocky Mountains to make their fortune – chorused their heartfelt amens.

  “Our difficulties are the tests of our faith.”

  “Amen.”

  “Forgive and you shall be forgiven.”

  But the apotheosis came when Peavish explained that, while this country had as yet no government worthy of the name, and while perhaps, deep down, free Christians like them did not really need to be governed, God had already taken America in the palm of His hand. Under His divine governance, the nation of pioneers would find its path and its most perfect fulfilment.

  Peavish knew his audience.

  We must never despair.

  Amen.

  We will never be alone.

  Amen.

  “And remember, my brothers, that if God did not live in our hearts but in a house, there would be a portrait of each one of you on the wall of His living room!”

  “Amen.”

  A drunkard, realising that the preacher was about to come down the steps, fired a shot into the air and shouted hurrah. The women, with rouge on their cheeks, lined up in front of the toothless former soldier, hoping for a minute of privacy with this great man, pressing coins and banknotes into his hands. Peavish made the sign of the cross above each person’s forehead and moved on to the next one.

  Bowman waited
for another quarter of an hour while the preacher freed himself from his admirers and came over to join him. He rolled up the collar of his jacket, snapped the reins, and Walden ran through the mud. People waved to them all the way to the outskirts of the town.

  “How much did you get?”

  The preacher waved and smiled at a small child perched on his father’s shoulders.

  “I don’t count it.”

  Still smiling, Peavish turned to Sergeant Bowman.

  “Not until we’re out of town.”

  *

  The Denver track was wider and in better condition. Bowman urged Walden into a trot and they made good progress. The sun grew warmer and they re-entered the forest. For a moment, exhilarated by the wind, they said nothing, content simply to breathe, and then finally the preacher pronounced the first words: “How are we going to find him?”

  Bowman felt irritated by this pointless question, by the end of the silence that he wanted to enjoy a little longer.

  “Same way I found you. Providence.”

  Peavish did not rise to the bait.

  “We can’t just follow leads and wait for another death.”

  “That’s all I’ve done since I left London.”

  Bowman glanced over at Peavish, as if in apology for his aggressive tone.

  “After Pueblo, I followed the path to the gold mines. But that makes no sense, after what happened at the last mine.”

  “You think he’ll continue heading west?”

  “Or go north. Or make a U-turn and go to Mexico. There was a murder down there. He could also head back east.”

  The speed at which they were travelling suddenly seemed futile. Bowman pulled on the reins to slow Walden down.

  “But there’s something else.”

  The preacher turned towards him.

  “What?”

  “The victims.”

  Peavish’s shoulders tensed, a nervous tic.

  “I only know about two. Petrovitch and the foreman of the Gregory mine.”

  “The one in London was never identified. We also don’t know if there were any others before that.”

  Peavish’s shoulders spasmed again. Bowman pursued the train of his thought.

  “But the important thing is what happened here. As with London, we don’t know if it’s the first murder, but the man in Reunion – Kramer – was an engineer.”