“Looks deader than dirt to me!” Mr. Clark called out.
“Make damned sure,” came Whip Watson’s voice from the other side of the dune.
Which is when I figured how I was about to be real dead, because the horse’s snorting growed louder, and I heard that the sand sliding underneath the weight and pressure, the horse snorting, the rider saying, “Easy, boy, easy,” and then I figured if I opened my eyes, I would see Mr. Clark’s pistol, and then I’d see nothing else at all.
“Open your eyes,” Mr. Clark whispered.
That’s when I wished I had watched more actors die on stage.
I tasted blood in my mouth, figured I’d soon taste more. My eyes opened. Yep, there was Mr. Clark’s pistol.
Flame shot from the barrel, and I smelled brimstone, and felt sand kick into the side of my face that had already been stung from those splinters from the horse-bus. My ears rang. I sucked in a deep breath. The gun roared again, and I felt sand sting my cheek that hadn’t been stung by splinters.
Over the ringing in my ears, my eyes now closed, I heard Mr. Clark say, “You owe me one.”
His horse lunged back up the hill, and I realized that I had pissed in my pants—but since I’d done that already after the late Buster had beat the hell out of me, it wasn’t that bad. Like my ruined blue shirt, those striped pants was already ruined.
Yet . . . I was alive. Thanks to John Milton, who was either as good a liar and as bad a shot as I was, or had intentionally saved my life. And thanks to Mr. Clark, who had definitely saved my hide.
For the time being. If I run off, and Whip Watson or Bug Beard or somebody else come up to check my corpse, and didn’t find me, then Mr. Clark and John Milton would feel Whip’s whip, and, most likely, a few of Whip’s .45-caliber bullets. The way my back and arm felt, I didn’t wish that on nobody, excepting Whip Watson and Candy Crutchfield and that miserable cur Corbin who had almost got me hung in New Mexico and those sore losers from Fort Mojave who I held responsible for getting me in this fix. Besides, where was there to run to? Back across the dunes? Try to find Candy Crutchfield so we wouldn’t die of thirst alone in the Devil’s Playground? No, what I needed to do was stay put, for the time being.
So, closing my eyes, I lay still, and tried not to breathe too much just in case somebody else come up that hill to make sure I was indeed dead. I could hear that commotion on the far side of the dune, some cussing from Whip, sobs of girls, mules being harnessed. I tried to think of what Mr. Clark had done, tried to put some reason into it.
It couldn’t be that he liked me. I don’t think we’d said more than five-six words to each other in the short spell I’d knowed him. We hadn’t played cards together, because then there would be no damned way he would have wasted two shots on my account. Maybe he’d liked Peach Fuzz, who was a good kid. Maybe, like Peach Fuzz, he had started to fancy one of the women Whip was woman-napping.
Some bad men, I decided, ain’t all bad. I’d like to think people think the same of me. Maybe Mr. Clark had seen too much of Whip Watson, what he was doing to people. Bringing women who thought they was gonna get hitched only to learn at some point that they was to be forced into the tenderloin. That rankles . . . even the hardest soul.
Then another thought come to me, and that one was that maybe I didn’t owe Mr. Clark nothing, maybe he was as wicked as Whip Watson. I thought he might have left me alive in the Mojave so that the Devil’s Playground could torture and torment and eventually deal me a right hard death.
That’s what I was thinking when I passed out.
’Twas practically dusk when I woke up, my arm throbbing, but not bleeding, my back burning like somebody had poured coal oil on my hide. Strange sounds come from the other side of the dune, but it sure didn’t sound like teams being hitched and women crying and Whip Watson cussing.
No, even in my poor, wretched condition, I knew that Whip and his boys—and Jingfei and all those other poor girls—was long gone, bound for the Painted Hills and Calico, California. I got to my knees, head bent down, waiting to throw up, but nothing come up. Moved a bit on my knees, then tried to stand.
Fell the first time. Second. Even third. Fourth try, though, saw me make a few yards up that dune, which didn’t even look like it had ever been rained on. That’s something about this Mojave country. It can come up the biggest turd float a body ever seen, and a few hours later, the place had turned back to its original condition, which was drier than an old buffalo bone.
I forced myself to stand back up, and head up the dune, my boots digging and slipping and sliding in the sand. Up I went, then flat on my face I fell. After two more falls, I just kept low on the ground, and climbed.
Climb up, slide down.
Climb up.
Slide down.
Climb up.
Slide down.
Every three feet I’d make it up that dune, I’d lose a foot, sometimes even two. Yet you ask any of the nuns who remember me from the Sisters of Charity orphanage in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, and they’ll swear in front of the Mother Superior and the archbishop from Lamy that Micah Bishop has the head of a mule.
As the moon rose, I reached the top of the dune, and looked down.
Went out of my head again. I started screaming, waving my arms over my head, yelling, cussing, then I was falling and rolling down the hill—all the way down, not stopping myself, and certain-sure not playacting no more.
I got up, everything around me still spinning, and tried to throw up, but there wasn’t nothing in my belly but air. And when you get those dry heaves, it sure plays havoc on bruised ribs, a flayed back, and a hole in your left forearm. Only thing to come up came out of my nose, and that was snot. But here’s how crazy I was. I still stood up, and kept waving my hands, and kept yelling, dizzy as I was, and somehow I managed to scare off all those critters.
Wolves or coyotes, I couldn’t tell. Ravens? Turkey buzzards. Things that lived off the dead, and there was plenty of dead things between those two dunes.
Can’t rightly recollect how much time passed. The moon and stars lighted the scene. All I knew was that the animals had all gone. Oh, I doubted if they’d gone far. Probably just sitting atop one of the dunes, watching, waiting for me to leave them to their supper.
Two of the omnibuses was missing. From the tracks I made out, I figured Whip had loaded the girls into them, rode off with all the mules and horses not killed. Left the dead where they’d fallen, including the three dead brides-to-be in the back of the horse-bus that had been riddled with bullets.
Sometimes, you find strength somewhere deep inside you that you never knowed you had. I could barely walk, yet I went up that next dune to the already bloating carcasses of two magnificent Percherons. I didn’t drag Bonnie Little. I scooped her into my arms, and carried her down the slope. Didn’t fall. Don’t even think I stumbled. I brung her to the remaining bus, and got her inside, putting her hands across her chest, folded, trying to make her look as peaceful as possible.
Turned away, then looked at her again. At her dress. I reached, pulled my hand back, cussed myself, reached again, but I just couldn’t do it. Peach Fuzz had told me she had a money belt underneath her corset. A five-hundred-dollar dowry. But I couldn’t rob the dead. Not her, at least.
That was something else I learned about me that night.
A few minutes later, I was back beside that ripped-up Columbus carriage, catching my breath, trying to find more of that strength. Which come. Just like that, it come, and I hadn’t prayed or begged or found some Manhattan rye whiskey to drink. Next, I was bringing poor Peach Fuzz back down the hill.
Him, I laid right beside precious Bonnie Little.
Folded his hands over his chest, then thought better of it. I brung his right arm down to his side. Taken Bonnie’s left arm, and let it drop. And clasped their hands together.
Never knowed how sentimental I was, neither, till that dreadful evening.
After that, it was sort of hit and miss. Tan Vest
was easy, since he had gotten killed right beside the wagon. The two Zekes, Candy Crutchfield’s and Whip Watson’s, I wasn’t so careful with, but got them into the bus, too, though I cussed both of their corpses for all the blood they got on my already ruined clothes. The Mexican pinned under the dead Arabian I couldn’t do nothing with. Horse was too heavy, and so was the dead rider, and the sand around them had hardened like adobe bricks.
“Hell,” I remember saying, “coyotes got to eat, too.”
So I moved to one of Candy’s vermin who’d gotten his head blowed off.
One guy I was dragging to the bus when I dropped his corpse, eased down to my knees, and bent over to look at him closer.
“You son of a bitch,” I told him. “That’s my gun.”
So I unbuckled the rig holding Spiller & Burr that I’d won in a game of chance at Beal’s Crossing and then had loaned to Peach Fuzz. Strapped the belt across my waist, put the holster in a comfortable position, and left that guy where I’d dropped him. Hell, the vultures had already picked out . . . oh, never mind. Still makes me sick just thinking about it.
Kept at it, calling myself Micah Bishop, Undertaker of The Devil’s Playground. Just . . . well, I wasn’t thinking clearly, till I’d discovered another dead body by another dead horse. What I also found was a canteen.
Whip Watson hadn’t been too careful hisself, but you can’t blame him. He was in a valley in the Devil’s Playground between two sand dunes, and all around him was dead men, dead women, dead animals. Quick as he could, he left. I stayed. With the moon up. And coyotes and wolves and ravens crying out their impatience. I stayed. Done my duty. That’s something else I learned about Micah Bishop.
When I had loaded the last body into the omnibus, I taken a swallow from the flask I found in the inside vest pocket of Tan Vest, toasted the dead, and poured the rest of the forty-rod on the floor.
Other things I’d discovered was Doctor John Milton’s black bag, some cash and coin, a Hamilton pocket watch, a deck of cards that was so badly marked it wouldn’t have even fooled Sister Rocío. Several canteens, though most of them was empty.
Tan Vest has also had some Lucifers in another one of his pockets, so I struck the end on the iron rim of the wheel, stepped back, and tossed the match into the coach.
The rotgut whiskey caught, and flames began lapping across the floor. The bus wasn’t as finely waxed as the Columbus carriages Whip Watson had bought in Prescott, but they’d been out in the desert sun a long time. Went up like a tinderbox. That’s all I needed to see, all I could stomach, and I started staggering away, fast as I could make myself go, up the hill, hearing the coyotes or wolves yipping at the building fire.
“Shut up!” I yelled. Those animals still had plenty of dead horses and mules, and three or four bodies I just didn’t have the strength to move.
The animals didn’t listen. I kept walking, though now all my muscles began to ache, and I had to use the Marlin rifle as a crutch to make it up that final dune.
Odd. The night was beautiful, all the clouds having moved on, and the desert sky is always so majestic after a thunderstorm. Stars lighted a path across the midnight sky. Looked like a painting you might find in a storybook.
Behind me, down below, however, was no storybook.
Stopping at the summit, I turned. Made myself look down at the coach, now engulfed in a roaring waves of orange.
I didn’t worry about nobody seeing the fire, or even smoke. By this point, I was too tired to care about anything.
Flames lit up the valley of sand. I didn’t smell anything—likely a real good thing—and I watched for several minutes.
A Spiller & Burr was strapped to my hip. I had a Marlin repeating rifle with I don’t know how many bullets remaining. I had one canteen full of water, another one half-full, and a flask containing maybe three or four shots of Mad Dog John Milton’s gin. I knowed where I was going, but had no idea how I’d ever fine Calico.
Had to be forty or fifty miles from where I stood.
Odds was, I’d never make it.
Even from the top of the ridge, I could feel the warmth of the flames below.
Here’s where things get real strange. I was speaking, sounding like I was in Henry IV, Part I. Sounding like I was reading a book of poetry to Sister Rocío back at the Sisters of Charity orphanage. Maybe that’s where I’d first heard it. Maybe that blind nun had recited the poem to me. Maybe I was being touched by the hand of God.
Staring at the fire, I said:
“Thus, in short,
into eternity the most just sequence of all things
shall proceed,
until the final flame shall devastate the world, far
and wide
encompassing the poles and the summits of the
deserted sky;
and the frame of the universe shall burn up in a
vast funeral pyre.”
Then I turned and walked down the last dune.
After that, the country flattened, more or less. Well, there wasn’t no more shifting sand dunes I had to climb. I dropped down into a wash, following it along a southerly basis. Came to one fork, and taken one, but when it turned north and west, I went back. The next fork also proved to be a dead end.
Eventually, the wash ended, and I climbed out. Kept walking, hardly even stopping to slake my thirst. Crossed an alkali playa, moved into rougher country of creosote and yucca. Kept walking.
At some point, with the graying sky behind me telling me that dawn was nigh, I come to a water hole, and I stopped, dropped to my knees, and thought about drinking. Now, I had one canteen full of water, and I had another which still held enough to get me through maybe one more day. Yet here was water, smelled fresh from that big thunderclap we’d had. I dipped my fingers in it, felt the coolness, wondered if I should drink, if I should fill my second canteen.
Wondered, also, if this was an alkali hole, or pure poison and would kill me dead.
That’s a tough thing to endure, and my body, by now in complete torment from all I’d been through, just couldn’t take no more. I scooped up a handful of that water, and drunk it down. My empty belly roiled, and I fell onto the ground, staring up at the stars, seeing Jingfei’s face in the night.
“Bless me, Father,” I said, “for I have sinned,” but didn’t get around to telling the stars all of the sinning that I had done. I closed my eyes, and for the second time that day, I, Micah Bishop, died.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The sun blazed high overhead when I woke up, the muscles in my arms screaming from all the heavy lifting I’d done back in the dunes. Usually, the only lifting I do is cards and beer steins and whiskey bottles, and the occasional saddle when I’m too broke to tip the kid at the livery stable to do it for me. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I slid up against the rocks by the pool of water. Found the hat I’d slept on, put it on my head, and said, my voice raw, “Water wasn’t poison. I ain’t dead.”
“You will be soon,” a voice said, and I turned to see some wretched creature with an evil grin on its monstrous face. It spit venom between my legs, and I reached for my Spiller & Burr, but it wasn’t there. The creature held it. Cocked it. Pointed it at my private area.
“You burned my bus, Micah Bishop. That rig cost me a bunch of horses I’d stole in Utah.”
The monster moved around, till its big head blocked the sun. I could see clearly now, and my mind hadn’t been playing tricks on me. I wasn’t suffering sunstroke. Indeed, it was a monster.
“Crutchfield,” I whispered.
The sun had burned Candy Crutchfield’s face to the point it looked blistered. She’d lost her hat, and you sure needed something on your head in this furnace. The .36 trembled in her right hand, she could barely keep it aimed at me, and a Spiller & Burr ain’t no heavy Walker or Dragoon. She hadn’t yet even cocked the hammer, and, betting man that I am, I’d give good odds that she didn’t have the strength to do it.
“That horse-bus was ruined,” I told he
r, “thanks to Whip Watson.”
The revolver lowered, and she snarled and cussed and practically foamed up in her mouth like a hydrophoby dog. “I’ll kill that peckerwood,” she said. “Kill him dead.”
“That’s the best way to kill a person.” I watched her try to steady the pistol with which she seemed intent to kill me dead.
“You followed me,” I said.
Her head tilted a bit in affirmation, but she didn’t lower her—my—gun.
“I had to burn the wagon,” I said.
“Cremation.” She nodded.
“Couldn’t leave them to the buzzards and coyot’s,” I told her.
“You left Emilio.”
I give her a look of bewilderment.
“Emilio,” she snapped. “Emilio Aldana y Narváez. You left him under Yago.”
Yago would be the dead Arabian. I shrugged. “He was stuck.”
“Wolves managed to dig him out,” she said. “Others, too.”
The water in my belly got churned to butter.
“Well, you could have come help me,” I told her. “Instead of stayed atop those dunes watching me.”
She didn’t have nothing to say to that. I’d guessed right. She had come back, waited on the dunes, then followed me. Which meant the sun had clearly touched her bad because no sane person would have followed me.
Tiring of this conversation, I decided to do something else to torment her. I drank. Just reached over, cupped my hands, filled it with some water, brought it to my lips.
Now, the way I figured it, she had likely drunk some water when she reached this spot. I don’t think she just taken my .36. She had likely filled her belly, but she’d still been out in that sun all of yesterday, and without water since Whip Watson’s ambush. The sun was already fairly high up in the sky, and it had turned hot, dry, and miserable.
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