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Pacific Mail Steamship Company, SS California.
18 September, 1858
I didn’t believe them until I was actually on board the boat and out at sea. Never could I have imagined that a ship of this size could move so fast. I walk on the main deck and the sea air reminds me of my first voyage on a Company vessel. But this time, I am not a soldier. Unlike Bowman, Collins and Bufford, I never was. It was normal that I ended up with the Company’s chains around my ankles. Now I am leaving them behind me. In four days, I will land in New York.
I like this city, but I am waiting for only one thing: getting on the road.
I’ve thought of something. A real job. I am trying to find contacts.
New York, 2 October, 1858
The newspaper editors I met seemed interested in my idea, particularly when I explained that it was time to describe this country in a different way to Cooper and Irving. My accounts might be of interest to readers on the coast and could appear in the form of a regular column, which I would send east from the road. I’ve been told that the mail is increasingly safe and takes only a month to cross the country from east to west.
In my pocket is a train ticket to New Orleans. I leave tomorrow morning. I can’t sleep.
The convoy had been gone for two hours when Bowman set off again. This time, he spared Penders’ mare, letting her go at walking pace. She was faster than cattle anyway, and would catch up to the carts before night. He finished the hooch and shoved the empty jug into a saddlebag. That night, he passed an inn without stopping or worrying. Arthur Bowman, the notorious killer, was dead, and he was Erik Penders, an Englishman who had come to America to remake his life, a wandering correspondent for New York newspapers, a happy man without nightmares.
The camp was located at the foot of some round, arid hills. There was no water, so the pioneers made their animals drink from the barrels. Bowman passed alongside the carts until he found the one belonging to the Fitzpatricks. The other travellers greeted him cautiously, recognising him as the lone horseman who had been following them for the last two days. The young wife said hello to him and Bowman noticed that she was pregnant. Her husband walked over to him, caressed the mare’s head, and led it to the barrel, where he let it drink, then filled Bowman’s flasks.
“My wife would like to invite you to dinner, Mr Penders. Would you care to join us?”
Bowman shook his head. From his pocket, he took the cloth that had covered the porridge and handed it to the man. The woman rushed over, took the cloth and brought it back after wrapping some more food inside it. Bowman took out his purse and put a one-dollar coin on the bench of the cart, next to the empty hooch jug. He climbed up the nearest hill and stopped a little closer to the camp than he had the previous day.
Fitzpatrick brought him the alcohol and a bucket of oats for his horse.
“Your horse is looking better. That’s a good mare you’ve got, really. I love horses. We used to have three on our farm in Cork. What’s her name?”
Bowman looked at the mare.
“I don’t know yet.”
New Orleans, 1 November, 1858
This town is the strangest I’ve ever seen. A colonial capital trying to pass for a European city, in a semi-tropical climate.
I am working for the Southern Traveller, which appears three times a week in Lafayette. I am their New Orleans correspondent. I sent my first article to New York, describing my train journey and I am awaiting a response.
New Orleans, 28 January, 1859
I think again about the sepoy revolt which brought the India Company down . . . generations of soldiers certain that giving food to slaves was too good for them and that those savages were grateful to learn their masters’ language. I am in New Orleans, amid colonists, and I feel worse and worse.
The commercial cynicism of the Americans is every bit as bad as that of the British. The plantation owners sell the children of their slaves to other rich owners as if they are horses or cattle. But behind this cruelty there is another logic than the market value of negroes. They separate their families to protect themselves from them. There are six times as many blacks as whites here. Even if the rich people in New Orleans think the place they have grown up is completely normal, they know that something is wrong. No guilt, no. But they do have doubts about the durability of their system, a formidable crucible of wealth. A flaw in their reasoning, which taints this hot, humid city with a sombre mood of menace. Just like London at the time of the Great Stink, the end of impunity seems inexorable. The city is beautiful. Here, the men speak softly, in even voices, and laugh in the same way. The madness shows beneath their laughter. They are as steeped in certainties as they are in fear.
Memphis, 13 April, 1859
I found some temporary work in an office of the Butterfield Mail. My latest articles on the South were rejected in New York. Only one appeared in the New York Tribune. Since I left New Orleans, I have decided to buy a horse to explore the country. As soon as I have everything I need, and I have put some more money aside, I will get back on the road.
Memphis, 5 May, 1859
I am leaving. My mare is a magnificent beast and my only regret is her name, Trigger. She does not answer to any other and I do not share the enthusiasm of her former owner, who was proud to say that she set off at a gallop like a bullet from a gun. I also bought a Winchester rifle because I will need to go hunting. I have everything I need now, and I leave tomorrow at dawn.
Bowman looked up from the journal and watched the mare sleeping beside him.
“Trigger?”
The horse opened its eyes and turned its head.
Little Rock, Arkansas, 15 May, 1859
After these first weeks of travelling along the Butterfield road, I am staying just one day in Little Rock. I leave tomorrow for the Ouachita Mountains.
Ouachita Mountains, July 1859
I have lost track of the days. I have been in the mountains for more than two months. I have not written anything about the Indians and the fur traders I’ve met and with whom I have lived. I am going to stay here until the first snow. I want to see the autumn and another season in these mountains. Then I can leave in peace, because I know that this place exists. I do not need anything else.
Fort Worth, Texas, December 1859
How disappointing to be back on the track with all its agitation, to be in soulless towns like Fort Worth. I will continue heading west, but now I go forward thinking only of the distance that separates me from the Ouachita Mountains. The track is a toxic place, full of rumours and suspicion. In Fort Worth, everyone is talking about a murder in a small town a few dozen miles from here, and the chatterboxes go on and on about the sordid details to captivate their credulous listeners. I will leave as soon as Trigger has had enough rest and food.
Pe’cos, Texas, 2 January, 1860
The river is beautiful and after the dry plains I have found some good hunting and a bit of solitude. I will be in El Paso in a week and, because I have heard so many people talk about it, I think I will cross the Mexican border.
It was night. Bowman put down the journal, ate some dried meat with the porridge, then leaned back against the saddle and started drinking. The next day, he went on, riding behind the convoy like a shadow, and in the evening he camped close to their carts, paying them for water, food and alcohol.
Penders described the Indians, the villages and the mountains of Mexico, his mood wavering between euphoria and disappointment as he stopped in various places and continued on his journey. He wrote more than he had in the United States and Bowman guessed that he was growing bored, in spite of those repeated phrases: I feel good. I am going to stay here. He noted details and impressions that Bowman recognised but had never been able to express. Bowman remade his own journey through Penders’ eyes. The way he felt good in wide open spaces, the miles he travelled and the less and less often he thought about what he was leaving behind. Except that Penders was not yet travelling in pursuit of the
killer. His itinerary illuminated only part of what Bowman had been through.
The next evening, when they stopped, Bowman spent a few minutes with the Fitzpatricks. The couple were heading towards the San Francisco area to meet up with other Irish people – family members who were already established there – in order to work with them. The young man admitted that he dreamed of raising horses. They tried asking their guest questions. They just wanted to know more about him, because the other pioneers in their convoy were worried by his presence. Their curiosity and their kindness troubled Bowman, who wondered if it was the result of his new identity, if Penders was a man who inspired more trust than Sergeant Bowman.
Bowman let Trigger graze with the cattle and made his little camp about sixty feet from the carts, leaning against some rocks, from where he could keep an eye on the animals and the convoy. He read the journal, continuing with Penders as he visited mountains, followed rivers and spoke with Indians he met on his journey, until the date of 17 February, 1860, in the town of Chihuahua, where his handwriting suddenly became confused and full of crossings-out.
For four days I have not been able to get up and even now I can barely write.
I don’t know. It’s impossible.
There was a murder in the town.
I saw a corpse pass by me on a cart, pulled by wailing men. All I remember is collapsing in the street. I woke up in the room of a guesthouse.
The screams and the visions have returned. I think I am mad. I thought I was healed. I saw a corpse pass like the ones in the forest. In Chihuahua, Mexico.
I do not have enough strength to keep writing.
I still can’t stand up and I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I tried to ask the owners of the guesthouse, but they speak only Spanish and don’t understand me. I still don’t know what happened and I still doubt that I really saw what I saw. My hallucinations are a daily event. I see them all again. They file past my bed at night, the Burmese sailors and the English soldiers.
Some Mexican soldiers came to interrogate me. One of them spoke English but they didn’t understand anything I said to them. What I said made no more sense to them than it did to me. I do not let anyone approach me. They must not see my scars. The nightmare has started again. The murder really did happen. In the same way. The local authorities are clueless. My presence, and what I told them, have made me a suspect. I am not mad and I must get away from this place.
The border is only one day’s ride away.
El Paso, 19 February, 1860
Physically, I feel a little better, but I dare not sleep anymore because I wake up screaming. I spend my nights trying to understand and the less I want to believe it, the more I am forced to surrender to the evidence. I saw the corpse in Mexico. I am not the only one to have come this way. There were ten of us. One of the others must have crossed the Atlantic.
This was followed by a list of ten names.
Bowman’s was at the top of it, underlined. Below were those of Collins and Bufford, also underlined. At the bottom, he had added: “One of those three.” And again written down the names of Bowman, Collins and Bufford. Strangely enough, Penders had written his name among those of his former fellow prisoners, as if he too were a possible suspect. He didn’t know that Collins and Bufford were dead.
Penders had stayed in El Paso for a week. He was still there in late February. Bowman remembered that he had been hired at the Paterson ranch back then. It was not until three weeks later that he had heard about the murder in Las Cruces, whereas Penders, living close by, had heard the news almost immediately. When Penders went to Las Cruces, Bowman was going back and forth between the Paterson ranch and Reunion, where he was visiting Alexandra.
He read one last entry before the letters started getting mixed up with the night. Penders’ handwriting was tightly spaced and regular once again.
The Santa Fe track, March 1860
They killed another man in Las Cruces and now I am on the northern road. I have only one hope now, the last thing keeping me going: to find the killer and put an end to the slaughter that is starting again. I cannot presume anything. Nine other men survived along with me. Collins and Bufford were already capable of this before our captivity, that’s for sure, but I can’t imagine them travelling alone across the world.
Who else could it be but Bowman?
Tonight, I am thinking again about Edmund Peavish, the one they called the preacher. Of all the men I knew, he is the one I would like beside me now.
That’s not true.
There is another.
Peavish could comfort me, but in my situation the presence of only one other man could really reassure me – Sergeant Arthur Bowman himself.
I must find his courage within myself. So I can find him.
The next morning, Bowman saddled up Trigger as the pioneers were breaking camp. When the carts set off, he rode alongside the convoy, caught up to the Fitzpatricks’ equipage and let his horse walk next to them. They looked at him: the pregnant young woman blushed and placed her hands over her belly, while her husband smiled and touched his hat before turning back to the road, sitting up a little taller.
Penders had explained it to him, so Bowman understood what they wanted from him. The Fitzpatricks were scared. The presence of this man reassured them. Having the strength to pretend, Penders wrote, was the beginning of remission.
2
Colorado, April 1860
I am two men.
One flees his nightmares and at the same time chases them away. The other, hidden, pursues his dreams in silence and does not want to give up.
I pass through towns with reasons to be fragile, temporary camps in the mountains. I do not pass through them, I pass above or below them. I am the flood of pioneers, without being able to tell anyone where I am going.
The families, about thirty people in all, were travelling without a guide, and they had accepted his presence. After riding beside the Fitzpatricks for one day, Bowman had moved towards the front of the convoy. The pioneers were neither lost nor incapable, but this horseman was of another kind altogether, armed with a good rifle and scanning the horizon with a sentry’s concentration that made them feel safe. At night, Bowman continued to sleep at a distance from the camp. They brought him food and drink and looked after his mare. In the mornings, he went back to the head of the convoy, riding a hundred yards ahead of the others, choosing the best paths, looking for places to camp for the night. When they encountered other travellers, it was to him that the travellers spoke. Some of the pioneers avoided looking at him or speaking to him, but they all accepted his new position. The anxiety he inspired went hand in hand with his usefulness. And he did not ask for any money.
Whenever the environment was conducive, young Fitzpatrick borrowed a horse and went off hunting with Bowman. He was a good shot and had an old American army Springfield, a percussion-cap rifle, more modern than the muskets Bowman had used in India but rudimentary compared to Penders’ Winchester. They saw packs of wild horses on the plains and the young man pursued them for the thrill of galloping with them. He explained to Bowman how to capture them, how to recognise a well-built foal and choose the best females. He watched the packs and amused himself by matchmaking the horses, choosing the stallions and mares and describing what their foals would be like, then selecting from among these imaginary horses, constructing genealogical trees in order to produce, from fifty horses seen in a little valley, the best animal that the pack could possibly produce.
“That would be a magnificent beast, Mr Penders. The rich people in the east and the west would pay a fortune for it.”
Bowman listened to him. Fitzpatrick smiled, joking about his wife and their future child, his very own foal. They brought back antelope. The pioneers cooked and shared it in the evenings, taking Bowman his ration, which he ate alone.
Wyoming, April 1860
The beauty of these places is cruel. I cannot stay here or look at them for too long without being overcome by the
desire to give up. And yet I am the only one forcing myself to go on. This country would not change any more if a murderer died than if a man decided to live in one of these deserted forests.
The road to the Ouachita Mountains is forbidden to me now.
Damn you, Bowman. I exist only for you now.
The dark line of the Sierra Nevada barred the convoy’s horizon now. After leaving St Louis three months before, the pioneers’ savings were dwindling. At inns, the families began to trade their possessions – clothes, tools, sometimes a piece of jewellery – for a few rations of vegetables, a packsaddle, or the repair of a cart. When they stopped, Bowman remained apart and sent Fitzpatrick to buy alcohol for him, adding a few extra coins.
“If you find something nice for your wife.”
Aileen Fitzpatrick was increasingly tired and in the daytime she rested in the shade of the cart, swayed and shaken by the bumps and holes of the track. Her husband worried about her and began to suggest that they should maybe stop in Carson City, the next big stopover at the foot of the Sierra. Maybe they should even let the convoy go without them, give his wife time to recover, then wait for another convoy before they started on their way again. Maybe even wait for the baby to be born before they continued . . . But for the others, their savings did not allow them to stop for very long. His wife repeated that she was fine, that it was just the heat, and that they must keep going, that the cool mountain air would get her back on her feet. And yet every day she grew weaker. The child was due in two months. Other women from the convoy looked after her during the stopovers, but their skills would soon not be enough. As the Fitzpatricks sadly admitted, their journey was in jeopardy.
I crossed over the last pass in the Rockies. Now I am heading west as if into the void. Along the path, I find traces of his passage. No new corpses, but the vague memory of a blond-haired Englishman travelling alone. Sometimes behind me, sometimes ahead. Perhaps we have already passed each other several times. His itinerary makes no sense. He slows down and I pass him, then he leaps ahead and I suddenly learn that I am several days behind. Soon I will be in Salt Lake City and I wonder where he will stop. What event or place will decide that his voyage is over? He will go to the Pacific and I sometimes think that Bowman is a giant, that he will dive into the ocean and swim all the way to Japan, China, India, going all around the world back to our forest, and that only there will I find him. What force can oppose Bowman? Who is capable of stopping him?
Retribution Road Page 44