Death Valley Drifter, page 3
And in this part of Southern California, it was wise to have that protection at the northern end of the desert. People coming over from Mexico were usually affable enough, looking for work; there was nothing here for anyone to steal. Travelers heading south across the border were typically traders or former soldiers, not bandits. But she and Douglas were alone here, and that was reason enough to keep the firearm near.
This morning, when she first heard the voice of someone who was not her son, the woman immediately took to the nearest shelter and covered the boy. He had seen her there when he turned, and known he was safe if the man splashed through the pond to reach him. Douglas knew that it was his job to find out whether the two of them were in danger.
He thought they were. Alone, unarmed, injured, and nearly naked, the man did not seem like much of a threat.
Jane had confirmed this as she listened from concealment, her right eye behind the Springfield, which lay on a rock. Now she watched with an eagle-sharp left eye as her son came forward with the stranger. The man was tall, well over six feet, around thirty-five years of age, with brown hair nearly to his shoulders. He had a lithe build, a narrow face, and deep-set eyes that reminded her of the Texas Rangers she had grown up around—very still but very alert, like a wild horse.
Which made her wonder: How had a man like that come to lose most of his clothing and most likely his horse? Surprise attacked, most likely. He turned sideways as he crossed round the pond; it was then she saw the gash on the side of his head. Either he had trusted the wrong person, or he had been careless in the lower country, the south side of the desert, which was crisscrossed by bandits and revolutionaries.
Her boy kept a careful distance to one side. When Jane was certain that the man did not represent a threat, she stood—still with the stock hugged to her shoulder, ready and willing to fire in a moment.
The man was still about a dozen feet away and watching her. He stopped and raised his hands shoulder high.
“Good morning,” he said with a crooked smile.
“Morning.” The woman spoke to her son without taking her eyes from the man. “That was a fine kill, Douglas.”
“Thank you, Ma. I did okay with this.” He jerked a shoulder to indicate the crude bow. He looked back at the man. “I want to get a real one. And a Bowie knife for skinning.”
The man’s smile remained as it was. But that name Bowie, he knew.
The boy turned back to his mother. “Ma, this man says he don’t know his name.”
“I heard, son. And the word is ‘doesn’t.’”
“Sorry.”
“I’d like to have a few words with the gentleman. Why don’t you go home and skin your catch?”
“Can’t I listen?”
“If I’d wanted that, I would have said so,” the boy’s mother said sternly.
Douglas turned his face down and ran off to the northeast, into the low hills, the rabbit held upright so it did not become dislodged. Jane did not lower her rifle until he was gone. She snuggled it under her arm and regarded the man with a careful gaze, the two of them standing like pillars of salt at the edge of the desert.
“Did you tell the boy the truth?” she asked. “About your memory?”
“Every word is true. I woke a few hours ago in the desert, like you see—for which, madam, I apologize.”
“I have seen men and their underwear,” she said without embarrassment. “But thank you. Whoever you were, you must have had manners.”
As he lowered his arms, he took the opportunity to frankly admire the woman. She was a head shorter than he, dressed in a faded blue skirt and a blue blouse with the sleeves rolled high. She had sandy blond hair tucked beneath a scarf and strong cheekbones. Like her son, she was red from the eternal sunlight.
The man started forward.
“About manners,” he said. “I don’t know. I keep trying and hoping that something new will spring up in my mind and I’ll remember more things. But right now, everything’s like that sky behind you—big and empty but without the sun.”
“Maybe you were a painter,” she said with an encouraging smile.
He shrugged, then looked at his hands, flexed his fingers. “I don’t feel anything that seems to fit. But my fingers want to—not a paintbrush, but they want to hold something.”
“Did you look around for clues where you woke up?”
“Second thing I did, the first being to get off the ground. There were no tracks. No bloody rock or stick. Nothing.”
“Well, there is a fire in the sky,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said your recollections have no sunshine. But it’s there, maybe behind a mountain or cloud. Your memory may return.”
He liked that notion, and the woman’s optimism. He wondered if he had a woman in his life.
“You may put your hands down,” she said.
“Thank you. You and your boy, you live out here?”
“We have a cabin nearby. We should probably start for it before we both melt.”
The two set out, over ground that was harder but slightly cooler against the man’s bare soles than the scorching sands he had left.
“The cabin,” he asked, “it was built by you, your husband?”
“If you can call it ‘built.’ We used what materials we could find out here. It’s more patchwork than original stones and wood. We planned it as an emergency station for the stage. It was a rough, long stretch between Carrizo in the south and Oak Ridge. We saw a need. And there was until the railroad came through last year. Now we live off the land and our small pension.”
“Your husband’s? From the military?”
“No, the Butterfield Overland Stage. Nehemiah drove for them.”
“Is that a well-known name?”
“Very,” she said. “Nothing?”
The man shook his head.
“Nehemiah died on his last run—an accident. Maybe . . .”
“Ma’am?”
“Maybe it was an accident. The wagon tipped over on a shortcut Nehemiah had always warned the driver not to take. He went with them to show them the way. You see, I don’t know if my husband could have lived without the stage. I don’t know if the boy and I could have lived without the death pension.”
“To leave the two of you for that—?”
“I know, which is why I say ‘maybe’ it was an accident.”
“You don’t have to say any more—”
“I want to. I think it so very much, it’s good to hear it out loud. You see, the wagon fell on him, was righted, and they carried him back. It was such a blow to the boy. Douglas looked up to him, a scout and hunter, then meeting and riding in with the big team of horses. Nehemiah was nearly fifty. I don’t think he had an idea how to fill that. Not by adding to the cabin or”—she looked after Douglas—“shooting hares.”
“My condolences, ma’am,” he said. “I understand the pain of not knowing.”
“You may call me by name—Jane. Jane Smith. And thank you.” She regarded him, squinting into the sun. “What should we call you for now?”
“I do not have a mortal, foggy notion. What would you prefer?”
“Well, our favorite coach driver was Henry Carey, so how about Hank?”
“That suits me fine.”
“Good.” She glanced up at his head. “When we reach the cabin, I’ll take care of that gash in your scalp and see what we have of Nehemiah’s that might fit you. And, Hank? I’m a trusting woman and a good Christian. God organizes things His own way, and I go along with them. I hope you will do nothing to make me sorry for showing you hospitality.”
“Ma’am—Jane—I don’t know who I was, but I believe I must have been something like what you just described.”
“Oh? How do you figure that?”
“I trusted someone, too, and that apparently got me left for dead.”
Jane gave him a long, serious look. “That’s likely a fact, though it’s strange.”
“What is?”
“I’m the only one crazy enough to live out here, raising a boy. How do you know it wasn’t me who attacked you?”
Hank shrugged. “See what I mean? I must be trusting.”
The woman smiled and the two continued along side by side. The walk was mercifully brief, as the invigorating effects of the water wore off and Hank found his stamina wavering.
The cabin was no less than what she had described: a confusion of materials that had the shape if not the certainty of a home. It was made of rocks of different sizes, a thatched roof—which bulged here and there with newly harvested tumbleweed—window frames with traces of bark still present, and a patchwork of repairs consisting of parts of a stagecoach, the colors faded but still red. Like the carcass of a long-dead bison, the remains of the conveyance itself lay a dozen or so yards to the east.
To the east was a small, fenced-in plot surrounding a grave with a cross. The marker had the initials NS branded where the beams crossed. It was propped upright in a mound of rocks, a few leaves spread around it, but the surrounding slats were slanting this way and that, windblown and sunblasted of all color. Ten or so paces nearer to the cabin was a modest garden, fenced a little sturdier, the slats lashed with hemp. A few paces nearer to the cabin was a well. The walls had been constructed from whatever odd stones had been excavated from around the cabin, most likely roped and dragged over by horse.
“You must have had a time lifting those,” Hank observed.
“That driver, Henry, was a bear of a man. We couldn’t have done it without him.”
“That’s the same underground water that feeds the pond?”
“That’s right. Came near enough to the surface to make mud here. My husband originally thought to build by the pond, but it was hotter out there, of course, and there were also varmints coming and going to the water, day and night.”
“Pipes,” he muttered.
“I don’t understand?”
“Neither do I, but I somehow know that you use them to separate the water from the surrounding earth, to keep from drinking dirt.”
“That’s a strange memory to have back.”
“I wasn’t a laborer. I must have watched—”
“It will come,” she said encouragingly. “But you’re right. Nehemiah listened to all the folks who came through, and he loved all kinds of inventions. This was different from when I was a little girl, and you had to strain drinking water through a cloth.”
Hank continued to flex his hands, trying to remember what he held. He noticed then that Jane still wore a wedding band. He looked at his own finger where a ring would have been. It had not been stolen along with everything else. There was no discoloration; he had not worn one.
The man’s curiosity remained frustrated as they entered the cabin. Relief from the blazing sun was undermined by the greater heat inside. There were two doors north and south and two windows east and west. Both were open. The small, hot breeze they admitted did little to relieve the stove-hot air. Through the back door, Hank could see a wood block table out back. Douglas was using a small knife to carefully cut the pelt from his catch. A large bucket sat beside the table. Insects of all sizes flitted around the rim and in great number. That was where the innards would go.
“We put the table outside because the smell inside— Well, it would have been awful,” Jane said. “Along with the flies and ants. We still have to wash it down thoroughly after each using so the blood doesn’t draw scavengers.”
Hank was looking around the flat expanse. “Not even any flat rocks you could’ve used as a cutting board.”
“This was not a place created by a generous God for human habitation. I think He put water here to teach us to appreciate the essential comforts of creation.”
“Your garden seems healthy.”
“There you have it—water, sun. Plus, Nehemiah still provides. When we get too hot at night, we sleep in the coach. As long as there are still walls, it protects us from predators.”
Hank was frustrated that the mention of a father and a son brought nothing from his own rattled memory. He took a moment to smell the powdery dryness of the desert home, the pelts that hung on the eastern-facing windows, drawn to block the morning light.
Nothing triggered a memory. No smell, no sight, no action. He wondered if that meant, by elimination, that he had never lived in or near the desert where he had found himself.
Jane pulled back the pelt shades to admit light at both sides. Then she led the man to a chest stuck against the rear wall, to the left of the door. It, a two-person bed, and a small wooden table and chairs, with unlit lanterns, were the only furnishings. A tall stack of pelts sat in the corner, and there was a peg with bundles of snake skins hanging from it. On the opposite side of the room, near a large washbasin, were two shelves with kitchen supplies and sundries, and a third with utensils. A few tools leaned against the wall below—a saw, an ax, and a hammer. Beside the shelves, a row of pegs supported leather bags. Probably dried vegetables and meat, the man guessed—though why he should, he did not know. Beside the northern window was a fireplace with a large kettle suspended above it by two strong chains.
“I’ve seen one of those before,” Hank said, pointing toward the big pot. “Does it have a name?”
“The Dutch oven?”
“Dutch . . . oven,” he repeated as though he were just learning the language. He considered the words for a moment before shaking his head. “Dutch are people. I know that much. But I also know I’ve seen a fireplace with a pot like that.”
“Let all that rest,” the woman advised. “I always find that when I stop thinking of a thing, I remember it.”
“But it’s maddening,” he said. “I know words. I can picture things—but not specific things that have to do with me.”
She looked down at the chest. “Be grateful for your life, Hank, even with its challenges. Be that.”
The wistful quality in her voice did not go unnoticed. He felt suddenly ungrateful for his incessant complaining.
Jane set her rifle against the wall and raised the lid. There was a pair of Colts in an old, worn holster on top of carefully folded clothes. She moved the guns aside and fingered through garments. They belonged to a succession of boyhood ages. When Jane reached a second set of clothes, she grabbed an armful of the guns and small garments and set them on the floor.
She rose. “Take your pick of whatever suits you. After we see to your injury, I can fix them to fit. I don’t think they’ll need much. You and Nehemiah are mostly the same size.”
“This is very generous of you,” Hank said.
“God does not make mistakes. As I said, I trust in His works.”
Hank was not sure whether he did or did not do the same. It seemed to him that a woman who had lost what she had needed an explanation. God was as good a one as any.
While the woman retrieved bandages, a bottle of whiskey, and a washcloth from the shelf of sundries, Hank bent his tired knees and knelt before the chest. He moved a little so his shadow cast by the lantern would not fall on the inside. There were denim trousers, a pair of white shirts, and a buckskin jacket with gray bare patches. A pair of old boots lay on their sides. There was a white Stetson, partly flattened, beside them, with a leather band that bore the owner’s name, N. Smith. Below were other clothes, mostly, it looked, having to do with life and work on the range.
“We buried Nehemiah in his Sunday clothes,” Jane explained when she returned. “It was only the third time he wore them, the first being our wedding, the second when he met Mr. John Butterfield in Sacramento. Nehemiah was devoted to that man and his coach line.”
Hank removed the trousers, shirt, and boots. He left the hat, figuring Jane would want that keepsake; he would not need a jacket out here. Like everything else, the feel of the clothes triggered nothing. Nor did the pleasant odor.
“What is that?” Hank asked, sniffing.
Jane smiled like a girl caught staring at a soldier. “I used to launder my husband’s clothes in mint. Shotgun rider used to tease him, but it reminded him I was always a part of him. I still grow it in the garden.”
“The leaves on the grave,” he said.
She nodded.
Moved, Hank set the clothes on the table. Then he replaced the other items, carefully shut the lid, which was loose on its hinges, and stood.
“Come outside for doctoring so I can see what I’m doing,” Jane said, her arms full of healing.
The two went through the back door, where Douglas was just finishing with the rabbit’s feet. A final tug and the pelt was free, in one piece.
“This can go on the pile for Sheriff Russell!” he enthused.
“Mighty fine,” Jane said as her son proudly held up the carcass. “You want to do the innards?”
“You mean it?”
“You’ve seen me do it enough.”
The boy nodded enthusiastically.
“Fine. I’m going to take care of Hank—”
“You remembered your name?” the boy asked.
“Not exactly,” the man replied. “Your mother picked it for me.”
“Hank,” he said. “I like it.”
“If you two are finished, Douglas—after I dress Hank’s injury, I’ll pick the vegetables. You hang the pelt and get the fire going.”
“I can start the fire? Alone?”
She nodded. “You may start the fire. The gutting won’t take long.”
“Yes, ma’am!” the boy said. He smiled at the man. “Hank. I like it!”
Douglas hung the pelt on a peg on a table leg. Whatever the pests ate from it were remains that had to come off anyway. Then he strode to a patch of dirt that looked well churned. He dug it up with his hands and put the meal inside. That would keep it from attracting varmints until he was ready for it. Then he ran off, spindly arms chugging, to the broken-down stagecoach. He pulled branches and sticks from inside and bundled them to his chest.
