Death Valley Drifter, page 16
“No!” she half screamed, half sobbed. “Punish me! I told him to go! You would have killed him!”
“Whether or not that is true, madam, you have not improved his chances . . . or your own!”
“Devil!” she cried, her voice cracking. “Why are you doing this to us?”
“I? I am doing nothing! You are just an unfortunate figure in a larger maneuver.”
The man’s voice was cold and inhuman, as it had been when he spoke the last words Sheriff Russell would ever hear.
Jane screamed inarticulately but did not resist as she was dragged to the tree nearest the camp, a leafy young oak. The soldier thrust her there, hard, and left her when he went to get a rope from one of the few remaining horses.
Wriggling her fingers and palms, trying desperately to pull them through the leather strap, Jane whimpered and begged God and Nehemiah to protect her boy. Running blood wet her bonds, her flesh stung, and her heart both ached and burned. Tired and hungry, she felt this thing must have been a nightmare. She did not understand how an act of mercy shown to an injured man could have gone so murderously wrong.
Jane tried to rise and run but her strength fled quickly. She fell back as the soldier returned. He pulled her up by one arm, forcing her to stand, and wrapped her tightly to the rough bark, three turns around the chest with a knot in the back.
“My hands . . . please . . .” Jane wept. If she could have them free, she felt she could struggle against the ropes. Without that, her plight was hopeless.
The man did not understand, and without a word or a look of charity, he left to join his fellows in the hunt. Once again, now from a distance in all directions, Jane vaguely heard shouting as the men and half of their horses made their way through the dark.
Her ragged wrists dripped their wetness along the tree. She sobbed, she prayed, and despite her best efforts to stand, her trembling legs gave out, and she sagged against the restraint. Her insides hurt from where the rope pressed, but she simply could not rise.
As she hung there, crying, she heard something she had not been expecting. It was so soft that she thought, at first, it had been her imagination. Then it came again.
“Ma.”
Jane was instantly alert.
“Don’t be mad,” Douglas said very, very quietly. “I couldn’t make the river, so I climbed the tree.”
Jane inhaled so sharply, it stood her erect. She had not thought the situation could become worse. It had. Until now her only hope had been that her son was busy ducking and dodging his way through the hunting party, as she had seen him do chasing wild turkeys. Instead, he was up a tree on the fringe of the camp.
“I’m not mad,” Jane said exhaustedly.
“I didn’t want to leave you either.”
“Did you hear what the captain said?”
“I heard. But I’m not scared.”
“Oh, Douglas—he’s serious.”
“I know,” the boy said. “But I think I have an idea that can help us both.”
“What kind of idea?”
“One that will bring us closer to getting away together.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
QUINN WAS CERTAIN that he had felt deep grief in his life. He felt that in his bones, if not his memory. The experience was all too familiar.
In just the space of twenty-four hours, he had experienced the pain left by the parting of Nehemiah Smith, stepped fully into the void the man had left in his home, his family.
Now this.
The grief of Zebulon Moore was like a changing storm: now thundering, now raining, now fiercely destructive. After the men had placed the woman’s body on the table, Zebulon cried, wailing vengeance, and kicked the parts of the broken chair against walls, against the bed, until they were little more than splinters and he could barely stand. The one torch became many, propped here and there as the men improvised a wake. The dog pulled himself up by his forepaws to sniff at the woman’s cheek, then lowered himself to the floor and remained there.
As eager as Quinn was to get after the two men who had done this, he knew that he could not commit himself fully to pursuit while any part of him remained here. His mind, heart, and hands were bound to the service of Zebulon.
Since neither of them was destined to sleep, the two had left the woman’s side only long enough to dig a pair of graves by moonlight. Quinn opened one up behind the outhouse for Stevens, while Zebulon dug one near a well on the western side of the way station, near the fertile vegetable garden, not far from the root of an old cedar tree. In case the two villains decided to double back, the men were in earshot, if not eyeshot, of each other.
Quinn also finally recovered the box Zebulon had buried. He did not look at it; helping the widower was more important.
The activity did not mute Zebulon Moore. As Elizabeth lay on the table, even as he crashed through the room, he talked to his wife about their courtship, her mother—“that white-quilled porcupine” was just one of the epithets he used—but mostly about the heyday of the way station. Zebulon was mourning two deaths: a life and a life together. Quinn was also concerned for a third life, if Zebulon’s doleful moments were any indication.
“What am I gonna do without you?” the old man asked. “You did everything here, everything that mattered, all that people needed including me. Especially me. Hell, my bonny one, I’m just an old buffalo hunter.”
Quinn did not intrude. But he had quietly taken the guns and put them outside, behind the well. He must have seen men do impulsive, stupid things in his life.
It was the deepest black of night when the bodies were finally interred. Mrs. Moore had been wrapped in a bedsheet with the cushion of the broken chair beneath her head; Stevens had been placed in his grave without a shroud or a ceremony. Quinn had kicked dirt over the man’s trail of blood to keep from attracting flies.
Zebulon used some of the broken chair to form a cross, marking the final resting place of Elizabeth Hopkins Moore.
“It’s fitting, see,” Zebulon said, weeping as he used a vine to fix the crosspiece and addressing Quinn directly for the first time since her death. “This was her favorite chair. She let guests sit in it, though she always took away the cushion her considerate head now rests on. It was the only selfish thing she ever in her life did.”
“I don’t think that’s selfish.”
“Me neither, but she did. It was a gift from her sister, who died as a pretty young girl. But it was my wife’s only keepsake.”
Quinn seemed to recall that words were spoken over graves, though he could not remember any. Zebulon did not seem of a mind to borrow phrases—or to linger. Once the cross was placed, the dog came out and lay there, and Zebulon walked toward the back door.
“I know how to make coffee and eggs,” he said. “You want some?”
“Sure, but—”
“And there’s blood.” Zebulon stopped in the doorway and looked at the spots where his wife and Stevens had lain. “What did she used to do . . . ? Soak it in hot water, I think. I’ll heat the water, pour it on, and then we’ll eat.” He sniffed. “Not much I can do about the smell of gunpowder. Winds will chase that out once the sun stirs them.”
Quinn followed the man inside. Behind him, Zebulon trailed clouds of grief that Quinn could actually feel—empty, without joy or life or sound.
“Zebulon, let me take care of the stains,” Quinn said.
The man stopped hard and turned. “Nobody touches where my wife”—he choked a little on the word—“where my wife fell. You take the other.”
Quinn nodded and collected the two basins while Zebulon stirred the fireplace embers to life with a poker. He put the torches and the rest of the chair in, then fetched water from a cistern out back. While that boiled in a hearth kettle, he looked for the coffeepot. It was on a shelf, clean, the ground beans in a tin beside it. Only when he got there, with his back to the room—and to Quinn—did Zebulon Moore begin to sob as he had not to this point, his shoulders heaving so hard that he was forced to brace himself against the wall. The dog heard, came to the doorway, and flopped down there to be near both his masters.
Quinn went out front. The moon was behind the house and threw the shadow of the station across the fence. Beyond, to the south, was darkness. An owl hooted from somewhere in that blackness, the only creature he heard.
Standing there, Quinn could think of nothing to say or do that would help the other man. Especially not when he had been the cause of all this. If Quinn had chosen to go somewhere else, the woman would have still been alive—
“Where else could I have gone?” Quinn asked himself. It was a real question, without self-reproach.
It was expected, even intended that he be here, or his belongings would not have been left in the barn. And then maybe everything would have happened just as it had. Those men might have found the satchel when they went to get their horses in the morning. They might well have done who knew what to Zebulon and his wife to learn more about the man who had left it.
A man did not avoid his fate. That notion was in his head. He must have believed it.
The matter of William Beaudine was something Quinn had not gotten to broach with Zebulon—who the man was, what he had said. There was a strangeness about this man who had left him in the desert, then brought his belongings here.
“Why didn’t he leave them with the Smiths?” Quinn wondered. Their home was on the way.
The horse, he decided. The Smiths had nowhere to keep one. It would have drawn trouble.
He would press the man later. Right now Zebulon needed to mourn. And Quinn had not decided what he was going to do next. Pursue those men, of course. But to where? To what end? Had Beaudine planned for those two to be caught between them, north and south?
Did he tell me that was the plan?
That might have worked if the enemies had followed recklessly into the dark, but they had not. They had waited until it was light. Clearly, they did not know this country the way Beaudine did.
The sky was still slate black but there was a sense that dawn was nigh. Bugs were headed home like ghosts to their graves. Night birds were falling silent as morning birds began their songs. The chickens were waking in their coop, gossiping in the way that poultry did.
How is it that I remember all of that? Quinn wondered. What things were chosen to survive a knock on the head and which ones got clubbed away?
Tired, dirty, and thirsty, he went to the cistern, filled a ladle, and used it to wash his hands of the dried blood that had once flowed through the veins of Private Paul Stevens.
“I made that fatal cut with some competence,” he told himself as he thought back to the struggle. It was not a point of pride, cutting a man’s throat. But it was also not something you did for the first time and felt it had no more significance than kicking a bad dog. Without question he had killed men before, most likely with that very knife.
That silent killing skill was likely why he was on a “mission.” And yet, if the returned memory was correct, he had been told not to kill those men.
Quinn washed his face and thought back to the confrontation with Voight and Stevens. He dried his eyes with his sleeve, closed his eyes to enjoy the last cool sensation he was likely to feel for many hours. As he looked at the dark behind his eyelids, he turned inward, seeking details from his brain. He tried to visualize the face he had seen before. He tried to see and feel himself sitting on the back of—
Snowcap. That was the name of his blond stallion. Keep going, he thought.
“Snowcap,” he said. “Whoa, Snowcap. Giddyap, Snowcap.”
He said the words softly several times. He visualized the mane before him. The plains he had ridden today.
But it was all a creation, not memory. He recalled nothing. He opened his eyes, and they wandered, landing on the barn. He thought about the satchel, put his hand on his sheath.
Still, nothing came.
Quinn refilled the ladle, poured water over his injury, then filled it again, and drank slowly while he watched the sun begin to rise. And not just the sun glowed brilliantly: All the plain with its patches of trees, cacti, and scrub brightened from far to near, the rounded glow throwing light on the birds that had already taken flight. How could the same God who made all that make men like Martins?
Quinn turned when he heard shuffling footsteps behind him.
“Mr. Quinn? I want to go with you.”
Zebulon Moore’s voice was raw and quiet. His face was without life or luster. His head was bent forward, looking like it weighed a good ten pounds.
“Don’t you have work here?”
“More important work lies out there,” he said, pointing with his forehead. “Anyone comes, they can help themselves. I can’t sit around here. Food’s on the table. I only cleaned the blood from there. The rest of it can wait.”
“Been a long night,” Quinn said. “Let’s get you sitting down, at least.”
Quinn started toward the door. Zebulon grabbed his arm.
“I can help you. I want to help you. I used to hunt buffalo—a long time ago, but some skills don’t leave you.”
“No, they don’t.”
“I can hunt men if I have to.”
“Zebulon, I appreciate your sentiments, but I’m not sure where my own search is going to take me. This may be bigger than those two.”
The sun threw first light on the cowhide crags of Zebulon’s face, the creases on his cheek still damp.
“Let me say this a different way,” Zebulon said. “I’m going to put my dog in the barn, and also the chickens, and let them figure things out. I already packed some provisions, and I got my rifle and two six-shooters. Once we eat, I’m off after those two assassins, who I will see join John Wilkes Booth in hell. You can join me or not.”
Quinn did not have to think about the proposal. Even if he were inclined to go on his own, it would not do to have both men bumping into each other as they pursued the same target.
Quinn extended his hand, which Zebulon enfolded in both of his own. The proprietor turned then, his eyes catching the light of the early sun as it fell on his wife’s resting place.
“I was married to that girl for over forty years, Mr. Quinn. Except when I was hunting, we have never been apart.”
“I expect she will always be at your side, Zebulon. I can’t imagine that God would make any other kind of arrangement.”
“No,” Zebulon agreed. “If I was God, that’s how I would set things up. With all the misfortunes that are the devil’s doing, it has to be the plan. The reward for good and honest behavior.”
Quinn gave the man a tight-lipped smile, and they walked inside to where the smells of the night had been replaced by the coffee, eggs, and warmed biscuits that sat on the table.
* * *
* * *
LIEUTENANT MARTINS AND Colonel Voight had ridden northwest without cease, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Quinn before dawn. Martins had decided not to make a stand because, with two against two, in the dark, with himself weakened, dumb luck was as valuable as experience. As much as he wanted Quinn’s blood, catching Beaudine was more important than stopping the knife fighter or Zebulon Moore.
It was also more important than mourning their lost member. They had not even collected Stevens’ remains to give it a frontier burial. What the men had taken was his horse in case they needed a replacement. Out here that was always a possibility. It seemed to both men as though the moonlight would shine on the man or his spirit in that familiar saddle.
The men moved assertively though not recklessly through the dark. Martins felt well enough to ride, but the terrain was awkward and uneven in the dark. He had actually regained consciousness about the time of Quinn’s arrival but felt it prudent to feign insensibility. That had been a common tactic during the War. Officers walking through medical tents tended to be taciturn. But once they got outside, they talked openly. And it was outside that many casualties had been collected after great engagements, there being too many to keep under canvas. Lieutenant Martins had been taken prisoner with a leg wound inflicted by a charge into a Union picket at the siege of Petersburg. He was found by Southern troops and, in an overcrowded outdoor infirmary, heard their plans for retreat. Had he been mobile, he would have snuck away and communicated what he had learned to General Grant.
Lieutenant Martins did not feel in any way pleased about what had happened to Mrs. Moore. He was reminded of that every waking moment because of the expert nursing she had given to his head wound. He had not intended to kill her, only to stab her thigh and get the gun. But he could not see her well the way he had been spread on the table. He had lunged too high. Regrettably, the mission had to take priority. If they failed, other wives would die; others would mourn—the wives of Captain Dupré’s men among them.
Besides, he thought, we paid for her life with the death of our own man. Martins did not believe in heavenly scales, though they always seemed to balance in the end.
It was not until sunrise that the men were sure Quinn had not immediately pursued them. There was no sign of activity on the southeastern horizon. Martins was looking at maps in his head and considering options.
“You holding up okay, Lieutenant?” Voight asked. “You seem kinda distant.”
“Physically? Yeah. I was just thinking about Stevens and Sergeant Pendleton. I think the sergeant would’ve been amused that a woman was wearing his uniform.”
“Way he liked women? No doubt.”
The late Nathan Pendleton had been with a woman shortly before he died, ambushed by the Mexicans whose sister it was. He should have known better, and his companions had no regrets. He died fighting, something he loved almost as much as what put him in the fight.
