“One of my brothers has ventured up the coastline,” Stewart replied. “He will trade for bullets, both thirty-eight and forty-five.”
The lawman nodded.
“We will pack you both well with jerked beef and flour,” Stewart added. “You will not be in want of something to eat along the way. It is three days travel to the station at Yaqui Gulch from here…”
Bardwell interrupted. “This station that you speak of?” he asked.
“The iron horse,” one of those nearby answered. “It uses a lot of water to make steam to propel it onward and over the mountains. Yaqui Gulch is the only source of that between here and Arroyo de las Vegas.”
“Right,” Stewart said.
“Mutants,” Bardwell asked.
“The folk out there do smoke the long grasses,” Stewart said. “But they’re just like us mostly? You will see some of Craft’s zombies and even a few mutants, but the drug use is frowned upon in the wilds.”
“They got stuff up there in the hills that will eat a man alive,” one of Stewart’s men added. “They can’t afford to be stoned solid.”
Everyone laughed. Curtis joined the party under the shade of the trees after having satisfied the woman of the house that he was well-fed.
“What did I miss?” the young lawman asked.
“What about the train?” Bardwell asked. “They’ll know we’re coming and have a warm reception ready for us?”
Stewart rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Craft only runs that machine of his once a week. If you can get underway before the daystar is very high over the range, no one will know to look for either of you?”
“What about those flying ships?” the lawman asked.
Stewart chuckled. “They can’t distill the oil fast enough to provide fuel for a flight of that length. They won’t risk taking the prized machines that far into no man’s land.”
“Would someone dispatch a courier?” Curtis asked.
“You saw the folk in the city,” a seated gentleman said, smiling. “Ain’t anyone there with a fire burning bright enough to find the place.”
Bardwell sat back in his chair satisfied that maybe he and the boy could still get a jump on the bandits that they trailed. He’d hoped at one time to have caught up with the Sacramento ruffians before they ever made it this far. Now only time would tell who would get the upper hand, but it looked as though luck might still be in their favor.
“From the station on,” Stewart said, in a more serious tone. “You lawmen will be on your own. I will instruct my men to return after escorting you as far as Yaqui Gulch and Yaqui Gulch only.”
Bardwell nodded his agreement and spit in the dirt near his boot.
“Why only that far?” Curtis wondered out loud. “I mean, we the law and all and we don’t depend on anyone but ourselves, but why turn them back at the station? Why even have them ride, that far?”
“As you can see,” Stewart said. “We have come up short on male babies in these parts. There hasn’t been a baby boy born here in ages. As much as we’d like to help, we just can’t afford the loss of even one man.”
“We understand, Sir,” Bardwell said. “And we appreciate all that you folk have done for us up till now. As officers of the law in the States of a United America, we do not wish to put an additional hardship on you. You have taken time to explain the route that we will travel and for this, we are thankful.”
Stewart smiled. “We have a little business that we’d like to tend out there, a score to settle if you will?”
“So be it,” Bardwell said, standing to stretch stiff, sore legs.
“Then the matter is settled,” Stewart replied. “You will be on your way before the daystar rises and good luck to you both on your journey.”
The lawmen went to see about their mounts and the spare horse in the corrals. The animals had been groomed and well-fed. Bardwell and Curtis walked under the scrub oaks and low-growing pines talking over their plans for the morrow and the coming days.
“What you thinking, boss?” Curtis asked, taking a seat on a low outcropping of granite that looked back over the mountain community and striking a sulfur match.
“I think that I’d like to know what these folk have planned,” Bardwell said. “I’d like to know what they have in mind for this Yaqui Gulch station and the folk there.”
“Unfinished business,” Curtis said. “Sounds like to me?”
Bardwell spat in the dirt and took a seat. It would be a few hours until supper as the sun set for the day. The lawmen were more than happy to be up here in the rocks and trees and away from the farming colony. Jeb Stewart and his group were stand-up gentleman, but something didn’t seem to fit and the lawman just could not put his finger on it.
***
Seated around the great table, Stewart and his clan treated the lawmen to another fine meal of roasted pork and good sweet corn.
“What’s this,” Curtis asked when someone handed him a long green vegetable.
“It’s a cucumber, Son,” one of the Stewart clan women answered.
“I have never seen one before,” he responded laughing. The others seated around the table laughed along.
The fast setting sun disappeared behind the low range. Stars streaked across a tormented, black sky. After supper was had and everyone had enough to eat, the men folk got up walking to a small fire burning in the door yard. The women gathered up the dishes and disappeared inside. Torches burned on poles driven into the ground lighting the way for all.
Stewart nodded to one of his men as he took a seat in the dirt. He tamped tobacco into his pipe and lit it with a stick set ablaze.
“I have good news for you, gentlemen,” Stewart said, drawing on his pipe. Blue smoke drifted skyward on unseen currents of still air. “My brother was able to trade for bullets to feed your weapons.”
“Where would he trade for bullets this far south of the border, Mister Stewart?” Curtis asked.
Bardwell smiled, spitting in the fire.
The gentleman that Stewart had sent on the errand, returned with a canvas sack. Its contents he laid out on a cut log the clan used as a table. Six paper boxes of cartridges, along with a few bottles of whiskey and tobacco.
The lawman got up walking to the barn where their saddles had been left as the sun rose earlier in the day. He returned with a pair of worn leather saddlebags and retook his place with the others around the fire.
“The cost to you is nothing,” Stewart said. “It has been our pleasure to know you both, lawmen from Sacramento.”
Bardwell reached into one of the bags removing a cloth sack containing various bits of silver. He poured its contents slowly out onto the table. “You should find fifty pieces of silver here, some large. There must be two hundred pieces of copper also. I hope this will be enough to pay you for your troubles?”
Curtis sat up looking at the coinage before him. He had never known Bardwell to carry so much money in all of the years that he had known the man.
Stewart drew from his pipe exhaling the smoke slowly over his shoulder. He nodded his agreement but said nothing. No one seated around the fire did.
“If our payment is acceptable,” the lawman said. “I suggest that we open a bottle of that whiskey and have us a good taste?”
One of Stewart’s clan obliged, by removing the cork and having a good long pull from the clear glass bottle.
Before long, all involved sat making merry and passing the bottle. The lawmen stuffed their bags with bullets, whiskey, jerked meat, and flour.
Stars continued to streak the midnight sky as the little fire burned itself down. Here and there, one from the seated clan got up to join his woman at his adobe dwelling. In time, only Stewart and the lawmen were left passing what was left of the bottle.
“We’d better get some shut-eye?” the host announced. “The daystar will be upon us before we know it and you both have a long way to travel.”
“That we do,” Bardwell said spitting into the dying embers.
“That we do.”
***
Long before the daystar that Jeb Stewart had spoken of just hours before the sun had come to rise, the little colony was a beehive of activity. Torches had been lit and the horses readied. The women folk had boiled coffee and left cooked meat and biscuits on the great table along with every sort of fruit they could get their hands on.
Stewart and his clan handed up cloth sacks to the lawmen as they readied for a long day in the saddle.
“You’ll both find biscuits and bacon in these,” Stewart said. “It will get you through the day.”
“Thank you, again,” Bardwell said. “Thank you all. It’s good to know there are still good folk this far south of the borderland.”
Other than the ash plume to the north, the early morning sky was cloudless, haunted-looking, and icy gray. The first golden rays of the daystar lit the undersides of the volcanic charge in orange and pink.
No one from the party said a thing as they departed from the safety and comforts the mountain villa offered. Stewart’s men led the way down from the low hills in single file. The lawmen did the same with Bardwell leading the unsaddled spare.
In the course of an hour, the daystar was high overhead and destined to punish anyone or thing that dared travel across the hot blowing sand.
It was rumored that one of the lead riders would turn back once the sun was at high median. He would accompany the party only as far as the turning point to the south and then east and return home from there.
Several rods directly south across the dry valley stood ruined, abandoned, and ghostlike––structures of the once great city. Some of this, Craft and his mindless souls had fortified with discarded junk and rubble.
Although distant, nothing stirred in the land once called Los Angeles. The lawman figured that by high median, the first of the mutants and zombies would stir in search of their next fix. Opium and cocaine from a thousand rods further south across the great Bay of Mexico fueled crime-ridden cities such as this. Minds were wasted and deals with the devil made just to feel the effects of the poppy and cocoa once more.
A halt was called with the daystar high overhead. The men stood close under the little shade a lone scrub tree offered.
“Take water,” one of Stewart’s men said. The horses grazed in the short grass the desert valley floor offered.
The lawman removed a cloth package containing cold bacon and biscuits, this he unwrapped for a small meal. The boy—Curtis—sat in the sand doing the same. The others talked close by in low voices.
Curtis looked to Bardwell with a raised eyebrow as he ate. Bardwell nodded his agreement.
“From here on,” Stewart’s man said—his name was Sid. “We will be only four as our brother will turn back before we travel too far from the villa.”
The lawman nodded, wrapping what remained of the food and stuffing it back into his saddlebags.
Sid continued so everyone involved would know of the plan. “The four of us will mount up and ride across the sand in the direction of the range east and south. In one hour, our brother will begin his journey home.”
“Why the delay,” Curtis asked. “Do you believe they have eyes on us?”
“I believe that they do,” Sid said. “Defenders of the city are known to use the looking glass.”
“Can they see us out here?” Curtis asked. “Can they see us this far away, across the valley?”
“Not well,” the gentleman said. “But they will know that we are here. Once we start forward, our little caravan will hold their attention. Our brother will be able to elude their notice.”
“That sounds good,” Bardwell said. “Thank you again, Sir, for all that you have done for us.” The lawman mounted his horse. “Let’s ride,” he said.
Sid continued to huddle away from a relentless sun in what little shade the desert provided. Overhead, great white cumulus clouds teased, taunted, and threatened rain that the parched valley floor needed desperately. The rain would never come—not this day—nor the next.
After what might have been an hour had passed, the lawman removed an antiquated timepiece from his pocket. He looked back. Although nothing more than a lone black figure against a dry desert backdrop, Stewart’s man was moving in the opposite direction and toward the adobe villa in the mountains, unmolested.
Hours passed under the heat of the unforgiving sun as did the rods and miles of old. The road ahead would pass as near to the fortified city as they would travel, five rods, the lawman reckoned.
Sid led the caravan off into a steep ravine. A few trees grew to twice the height of a man.
“We will rest here,” Sid said, stepping to the ground and leading his mount further under the canopy of green foliage. A small, slow running stream cut through the bottom of the ravine and grass grew hidden from the scorching sun overhead.
The lawmen dismounted, leading their horses also. Stewart’s men unsaddled the animals, turning them loose to graze and drink their fill.
“How long will we wait here?” the young lawman asked, squatting on his heels and going through his dusty saddlebags.
“Until the daystar has passed,” Stewart’s man said, removing a cork from a bottle of whiskey he carried. “From here,” he said. “We will travel under the cover of night. Their looking glass will not see us out here.”
All through the hot afternoon, the men gathered under the shade, ate and talked over the coming journey quietly. This far from the city there was no need to throw out a guard. No one would venture this far from its wall while the daystar made its presence known to all.
Taking a cue from Stewart’s men, the lawmen rested with all drifting off to grab a few hours’ sleep before nightfall.
A pack of wild dogs or coyotes signaled to all that it was time. The animals were gathered and saddled for the coming journey. The men took the time to eat something to hold them over for a few hours as the night passed. As they would travel close to the heavily defended city walls, it might be their last chance for some time.
“From here,” Sid said. “We travel as quiet as possible, one following the other. In five rods, we will be out of immediate danger.”
The lawmen followed, leading their saddled mounts. Once out on the dry valley floor, they all stopped for a moment to take in the panorama.
Bright electric light flooded the perimeter of the fortified city on this eastern flank. Every half rod—maybe—the beam moved scanning the desert floor for any sign of intruders or those that didn’t belong within.
“This is why we travel by night,” Stewart’s man said, climbing aboard for the ride across the unforgiving desert landscape. No one said a word.
For two rods, they traveled in silence. Curtis pointed far across the valley to the western perimeter of the great city. The lights there came on full force illuminating the far western desert floor in white-hot light.
Bardwell nodded. Stewart’s man dismounted holding his mount and watching the distant nighttime scene unfold. The others gathered close.
“It is my brothers,” he said.
“Are they brave enough to try another sortie into the city after doing so just a night previous?” Bardwell asked, spitting at his feet.
“They will not venture into the city as we did before,” Sid replied. “They will employ the hit and run tactics of our fathers, strike hard in one place before moving quickly to another.”
“And drawing the defenders from the eastern flank in doing so?” Bardwell questioned, watching as the bright light—seen here only moments ago—was dimmed or turned down altogether.
“Yes,” Sid said. “That is the plan. We should mount and be moving toward the south now as the militia will be looking the other way for a time?”
The horsemen moved quietly across the dark desert floor watching as fireballs and flashes erupted along the far western wall of the city.
One of the flying ships started from a rooftop in the center of the fortifications. Its electric light scanned the rolling sand for sign
s of trouble. For now, the smaller gunships stood off, but the lights from a few carriages were seen darting about near the base of the rubble fortifications.
“Godspeed, my friends,” Bardwell said, under his breath.
“What’s that?” Curtis—following—asked.
“Nothing,” Bardwell said.
Chapter Nine
Through the night, the horsemen traveled across the desert floor unmolested. It seemed the residents of the fortified city had their hands full with rebels attacking their westernmost flank on the far side of the valley. The electric light on the eastern wall had been taken down along the perimeter other than where the iron rails ran into the city through a large gate and rerouted across the grid. One of the buggies that the militia used passed back and forth at regular intervals, but dared no further than a few paces from the safety of the protective wall.
“Look at that,” Curtis said, in a low voice, pointing to the far side of the city.
The two smaller gunships were airborne now and firing the long rockets into the surrounding hillsides in brilliant flashes of fire.
“How much further,” Curtis asked.
Sid spoke up, “We will turn in an easterly direction shortly and have the city at our back soon.”
“Fuck, I hope so,” Curtis said. “That place gives me the creeps to no end.”
The young lawman had brought up a point that each of the mounted horsemen could well understand. None of them could begin to contemplate the evil that went on well behind those walls.
“Here,” Sid said, stopping at the edge of a rise. Below a black ribbon of forgotten macadam played out before them like a funeral ribbon on the desert floor. “This is where we turn for the eastern range.”
The horsemen rode away from the bright lights of the fortified city. For hours it seemed, the lawmen—riding at the back—turned to look back over their shoulders for anyone coming up from that direction.
Bright stars—some natural and some man-made—streaked across the night sky. The higher they climbed into the mountains, the taller the trees became.
Ain't No Law in California Page 6