by Robert Knott
Virgil and I had spent some time in San Cristóbal a few years back dealing with a bank robbery, and were familiar with the stately community. San Cristóbal now supported a turntable for the Santa Fe and the Transcontinental. The rail direction table that handled twice the amount of travel was something San Cristóbal didn’t have when we were previously in the town. But it was obvious that with that addition, San Cristóbal was a good size bigger than it used to be.
Virgil and I bought tickets for the train to Appaloosa that would depart the following morning. We stabled our horses at the livery and checked into the hotel. It was the same hotel we stayed at when we were previously in San Cristóbal, the Holly House. We got some food and drank a beer, then walked back to the Western Union office.
The operator saw us through the window as we walked up the boardwalk to the office and opened the door to greet us. He was an overgrown young man with a wide face and rosy cheeks.
“Good timing, just got a reply,” the operator said excitedly. “Just this instant it came in.”
He held out the note.
“Everett,” Virgil said, nodding to the note.
I took the note from the operator, read it quickly, then looked to Virgil.
“We got a problem,” I said.
“Driggs?”
I shook my head.
“The other one,” I said. “Degraw.”
“What about him?”
“Sheriff Stringer and his posse tracked Degraw and cornered him in a mine just outside of Bridgewater. It says here that the posse attempted to apprehend Degraw in the mine when Degraw or somebody dynamited the shaft. The fate of the posse and Degraw himself remains uncertain.”
“That from Chastain?”
“Is,” I said. “He says this information was received here in Appaloosa from Bridgewater.”
“Who in Bridgewater?”
“Doesn’t say, just states the telegram was intended for us, the U.S. Marshals. Signed the Bridgewater Emergency Department.”
“Say anything about Sheriff Stringer?”
“No,” I said.
“Goddamn,” Virgil said, shaking his head.
We responded to Chastain, trying to gather more details about Stringer, and his reply told us that the telegram simply originated from the Bridgewater Emergency Department. There were no additional details regarding Stringer or his posse.
Virgil told Chastain to stay put and we contacted Bridgewater. Within a short time the sounder clicked and Bridgewater wrote back.
The operator copied the note, then handed it to me.
I read it and looked to Virgil.
“They don’t have any more information to offer other than they believe the posse and the escapee they were after were all trapped in the shaft. There is no sign of Sheriff Stringer. They all could be alive and they all could be dead. At this point and time they do not know. This, too, signed the Bridgewater Emergency Department.”
The sounder clicked and the rosy-faced operator copied the next incoming telegram, then turned again to me with the note.
“Chastain says he understands your orders regarding Driggs and the woman. Says he will stick to your directions exactly as you detailed them. He will only make moves to arrest Driggs and the woman if in fact the two of them are indeed still there and make an attempt to depart Appaloosa.”
Virgil shook his head and looked to the floor.
“Seeing how there is no telling what is happening with Driggs, if he is even still in Appaloosa,” I said, “we might want to get to Bridgewater first . . . don’t you imagine?”
Virgil nodded, then looked up to the operator.
“You got a territorial map?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
The operator retrieved a rolled-up map from atop a cabinet and handed it to Virgil. We rolled it out on the desk. Virgil pointed to the spot.
“We could get there before day’s end tomorrow,” I said. “Take the train to Phoenix Junction and ride on from there.”
Virgil nodded.
51
In the morning we loaded the horses and took the train from San Cristóbal up to Phoenix Junction. There we saddled up and rode from the Junction directly to Bridgewater. The ride was an easy one, but it took up the afternoon and we arrived close to sunset.
We had made arrangements to meet with the Bridgewater Emergency Department. We had determined after a few more telegrams that the emergency department was comprised of local off-shift miners from the area. When there was a problem they banded together to deal with whatever arose within the mining community.
When we arrived we were met by a group of miners gathered around a long table inside the general store. One of the miners, a smaller older fella sitting at the head of the table, introduced himself.
“Name’s Cotton Horton,” he said. “I’m the off-shift foreman here.”
Cotton went around the table and introduced the other men. Then he pointed to a spot on a map he had laid out on the table in front of him.
“This is number forty-two,” Cotton said. “This is where the explosion occurred.”
“How is it you know the posse and the Yaqui sheriff, Stringer, were inside?” Virgil said.
Cotton looked to a younger man with dark hair and bright silvery-blue eyes. “This is Jeff. Tell ’em what happened.”
“We were coming out of one of the lower shafts,” Jeff said as he pointed one of his big, rough hands toward the north, “and me and another fella, Bobby, we was on the road coming back to town when we run into a big mean sonofabitch wanting to know how to get to forty-two.”
“Why forty-two?” I said.
“It cuts across the mountain all the way to the other side,” Jeff said. “Pretty straight shot . . . well, it used to be, till it got closed up.”
“How is it he knew to look for forty-two?” I said.
“That I couldn’t tell you,” Jeff said.
“Thing is,” Cotton said, “forty-two is not active, has not been active for a long time, but we have used it for storage as well as a thoroughfare to the other side.”
“A tunnel across,” Jeff said.
“Who all uses it?”
“Just us,” Jeff said, then looked to Cotton.
Cotton nodded.
“We let a few locals use it from time to time to pass through. Otherwise it’s a long way around.”
“And this fella, the mean sonofabitch you are talking about, he went into forty-two.”
“Far as I know,” Jeff said.
“What about the posse,” Virgil said. “How do you know they were here, you see them?”
Jeff nodded.
“The posse came through ’bout a half-hour after,” Jeff said. “They asked me if I had seen the man and I told them I did and I told them about forty-two and they hurried up the road after him.”
“And you know for a fact they went inside of forty-two?” I said. “Did you or someone follow them there?”
“No,” Jeff said. “But they did.”
“How do you know for certain the posse and the escapee were caught inside. Did someone else actually see them enter and not come out?” I said.
“We did not see them go in but after the blast, after Bobby and me heard the explosion we hurried up there and . . . the horses were there but none of the men, I’m afraid.”
“We can take burros through and we do, so do the other few locals I was talking about, but no horse can get through there. It’s the biggest widest shaft we have and the only one that goes to the other side, but it’s damn sure not tall enough for a horse.”
Virgil looked to me and shook his head slightly.
“We got their horses here,” Cotton said. “We gathered them up and they are in the corral across the way here . . . Anyway, we don’t know what happened, we did not see it, but there are horses here, and a shaft that has damn sure been dynamited.”
“Tillary told us Degraw had blown shit up before,” I said.
Virgil nodded.
/> “Train safes,” Virgil said.
“So he’s no stranger to this sort of thing,” I said.
“Have you or anyone else gone to the other side of the mountain?” Virgil said.
“No. Hell, that’s a long way around the mountain,” Cotton said. “And there is no reason for none of us to get mixed up in poking our nose into some escaped convicts’ business. Like to do what we can to help the good men of the law, but I hope you understand our business is hard enough. The last thing we need to do is confront some convict, or convicts. But the fact of the matter is, it’s hard to say if him or any of the lawmen are even alive.”
“How many saddle horses did you find at the mine?” Virgil said.
“Six altogether,” Cotton said.
Virgil looked to me and I nodded.
“Stringer’s horse, his three deputies, and Locky his Kiowa tracker, that’s five horses,” I said. “Then Ed Degraw . . . that’s it, that’s six.”
Virgil leaned over to look at the mining map.
“How deep,” Virgil said. “How far back was this explosion?”
“Right at the portal,” Cotton said. “At least that is what it appears to be, but we won’t know for certain. That is all we can see.”
Jeff nodded in agreement.
“No telling how deep,” he said.
“Assuming it was the escaped man that blew the shaft up,” I said, “where would he have found the dynamite to do this?”
Cotton pointed.
“On the main road up top we have a storage facility up there, near forty-two. He broke in there.”
“How much was removed?” I said. “Do you know?”
“Not exactly,” Cotton said.
“Don’t think he got that much,” Jeff said.
“There were no complete cases taken, that we know,” Cotton said.
“But he got enough to do what he did,” Jeff said.
The other miners around the table nodded.
Virgil looked to his watch.
“What can we do?” he said.
“Open it back up,” Cotton said.
Jeff nodded.
“Need to dynamite the shaft back open,” he said.
“How long, you figure?” Virgil said.
“Not sure how much it’s blocked, won’t know till we know,” Cotton said. “We will eventually have to, no matter what. Like I said, it is a passage to other mines that we have on the other side. So we’ll have to do it sooner than later.”
He looked to his hands resting on the table, then looked back to Virgil and me and said, “We would have done it by now . . . but like I said, we don’t have any idea what might happen. For all we know there is nothing but trouble on the other side. Fact is, Jeff had no real evidence the men they saw were who they said they were.”
Jeff nodded.
“It was early and it happened kind of quick,” Jeff said. “Them men following the other fella kind of gave me and Bobby a start, and they just hurried on . . . and, well, Bobby and me we didn’t ever see no badges. I don’t know, like I said, happened fast and they moved on and so I just told Cotton here what we saw, what happened.”
Cotton nodded.
“I told Jeff and Bobby I needed to contact authorities, let this be what it is, a matter of law, and now that you are here we will do what we can to help you open forty-two back up.”
“Can we be ready to do that at sunup?”
Cotton looked to the other miners and they nodded.
“Sure,” Cotton said. “But we can do it now, too.”
Virgil looked to me.
“Tonight?” I said.
“Sure,” Cotton said. “We work in darkness . . . It’s what we do.”
52
Driggs insisted Allie and Margie join the princess and him for dinner at the Boston House. Allie felt some apprehension and Driggs sensed it. He possessed a keen sense for others’ dispositions. He felt half the time that he knew what someone was thinking. He sensed Allie was titillated by his presence, his manliness, and it unnerved her. Made her more vulnerable and uncomfortable. Margie, on the other hand, seemed to be more dubious of him. That, too, he sensed. He was uncertain just why exactly; he had been careful not to show all his cards. He was good at that, too, that was his trademark, doling out only what was necessary for the given situation. Driggs looked at Margie the same way he looked at his princess and Allie, and at all women. He knew the effect of his attention, it was constant, but Margie was almost indifferent.
“Thank you, but I really must get home,” Margie said.
“Nonsense,” the princess said. “Please.”
Margie looked to Allie.
“Allie?” she said. “There are a few important things that need attending to before the grand opening.”
Allie smiled, a slightly nervous smile while Driggs’s eyes bored into her. “Thank you, Margie. But I think we’ve all done enough for one day.” Then she nodded some as she looked up to Driggs.
“All right,” Allie said. “We’ll join you, but I must warn you that I eat a great deal.”
“That’s what I like,” Driggs said as he opened the door of Allie’s shop. “A beautiful woman with an appetite.”
—
It was just past sunset as Allie locked up the shop and the four of them strolled up Vandervoort Avenue.
“All these bricks,” Driggs said.
“Yes,” Allie said. “New York in the making.”
“How did all this come about?” he said. “Why did this Vandervoort fellow decide on bringing his business here to Appaloosa?”
“Well, I am not sure,” Allie said. “You’d have to ask him.”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Never thought we’d be walking down a street—an avenue, no less,” Allie said. “Right here in Appaloosa.”
Driggs stopped walking and looked up at the carved stone above the stately office constructed in the center of the avenue.
“Vandervoort,” Driggs read on the stone above the office.
Then Driggs looked up the block, then down the opposite direction, taking it all in.
“It’s quite the accomplishment,” he said.
“It is,” Allie said. “Mr. Vandervoort came to Appaloosa a few years back, and, well, he has singlehandedly changed the face of this place.”
“Where did he come from?”
“New York, I believe,” Allie said.
“Well, of course, I should have guessed,” he said, looking around at the buildings. “Well, I’ll be . . .”
He looked to Allie.
“Have you been?”
“New York?” Allie said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why, no,” Allie said. “I have not.”
Driggs looked to Margie.
“How about you?” Driggs said.
“No,” she said. “I’m just a simple girl from Nebraska.”
“No?” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yet you have the sophistication of a young woman of culture and taste,” he said.
“That’s nice of you to recognize my developed interest,” she said. “But rest assured I’m as Midwest as a girl can be.”
“What city do you come from?”
“Lincoln,” she said.
“Ah, a wonderful city,” he said. “Are you familiar with the Hanrahans?”
“No,” she said. “I am not.”
“Wonderful family, the Hanrahans,” he said. “You must have been in the square in the Haymarket named after the great Henry Hanrahan?”
“The square?” said Margie. “Yes, how could I have forgotten? With the wisteria-covered gazebos? So beautiful in the springtime.”
“No one could forget those . . . And you, Mrs. French, where do you come from?” said Driggs.
“Oh,” Allie said. “I’m from a little bit of everywhere.”
“And how about you,” Margie said. “Where are you from?”
Margie stopped walking and looked to the
three, who stopped and looked back to her.
“After all this time,” Margie said. “We have yet to be properly introduced.”
Driggs removed his hat.
“How rude of me,” he said. “I have a tendency of going about my day as if I’m in another world. I do apologize.”
He looked to the princess. “This is Mrs. Gloria Bedford, and I’m Lucas Bedford.”
“Mrs. Bedford,” Margie said. “Mr. Bedford . . . Margie Witherspoon. It’s a pleasure.”
“The pleasure is all ours,” he said. “I assure you. And the promise of more to come.”
53
Driggs considered the dinner a success and enjoyable for the women. He could be entertaining and charming when he needed to. He’d learned that from his father, and during all those years at West Point. Those lessons have finally paid off, he thought. West Point taught him discipline. His father taught him the importance of intelligence. He remembered his father telling him: Intelligence was made for men like us, men who are destined for greatness.
After dinner the women and Driggs sat at the corner table and sipped tea. Through the evening, Driggs learned a lot about dressmaking from Margie and Allie. Mainly Margie.
“For a young lady out of Nebraska,” Driggs said, “you sure know your business when it comes to fabric and patterns and stitches.”
“Yes,” the princess said. “She sure does.”
Allie reached over and took Margie’s hand.
“I’m lucky,” Allie said. “To have such a good seamstress, friend, and confidante.”
“Confidante,” Driggs said. “Why, that is wonderful to have a place to share your darkest secrets . . .”
“Well, yes, it is,” Allie said with a nod.
Driggs studied Margie, then said, “How did you two meet?”
“Oh,” Margie said. “How was it, exactly? I saw her, Allie, at the shop and one thing led to another.”
“Yes,” Allie said. “That’s right, and I’m very glad.”
“I see,” he said. “So you are new friends?”
“Yes,” Margie said.
“And you are new to Appaloosa?”
“Why, yes,” Margie said. “I arrived here on family business and stayed.”