Death Valley Drifter, page 8
“Madam, we are searching for comrades who have gone missing. They would have been wearing gray uniforms, late of your Confederate Army. Like this gentleman.” He pointed to his left.
“Not my army, Captain.”
“My pardon,” the Frenchman said.
“There was one such, Captain Dupré. He called himself Lieutenant Goodman Martins.”
The name got a reaction from the man in gray. His eyes openly wandered the property, then the ground beneath their feet. From his expression, the man apparently just realized their careless approach had obscured any tracks.
“That is one of the men, yes,” the Frenchman said after doing his own visual check of just the cabin. “Was he alone?”
“He arrived without any companions.”
“But he is no longer here.”
“As you see,” she said.
The man in the uniform said something to the captain.
“How many horses did he bring?” Dupré inquired.
“Two,” she said.
“Can you tell us in which direction he headed?”
“North,” she answered.
The leader peered toward the distant horizon. “Did he mention why he was going that way?”
“We did not speak much,” she said. “He had a shotgun turned on my boy and myself.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to ask that when you catch up with him,” she said. “He has, I’d say, a three-hour jump on you.”
The man continued to study her. “May we talk to your boy?”
“About what? He’s ten.”
“Ten-year-olds have eyes . . . and ears. Perhaps he noticed something you did not? For instance, where Martins may have been headed? Did he say anything about his destination?”
“He mentioned the way station, I think.”
“Oak Ridge?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you not tell me that before?”
“You asked me what direction, not what destination,” Jane said.
The captain was not pleased. He looked like he wanted to charge her with a saber.
“I do not know what you are playing at, madam, but now I will speak with your son.”
Jane hesitated but only for a moment. The captain and his right-hand man were like bobcats on a ledge. It was not really a request.
“Douglas!”
“Yes, Ma?” came a muted voice from the dark interior.
“Come on out. There is a gentleman who wishes to ask you about the lieutenant.”
Her comment drew a lingering, knowing look from Dupré. She had been very specific, as though giving her son instructions. The captain smiled crookedly at her and then, more broadly, at the boy as he approached. The youngster was holding his bow and arrow. The shaft was loaded but pointed down. He was openmouthed as he walked toward the array of men. He had not seen so many horses or riders in one place in his life. He stopped when he reached his mother’s side. She slid her arm around his spindly shoulders. Jane could feel his heart drumming hard. He seemed so young and small to her just then.
And fearful.
“Hello, Douglas,” said the leader. “I am Captain Raoul Dupré of the French marines.”
“Oh!” the boy said, his mouth falling open.
The man had hoped, correctly, that the military rank and reference would impress the boy.
“Did someone make that for you?” the officer asked, indicating the bow and arrow.
“I made it myself, sir.”
“Very commendable. I would like to see you shoot it sometime. But first, Douglas, what can you tell me about the man who came to visit?”
“Hank.”
The word was like a small detonation, and it was as though the sudden gray smoke of cannon fire had settled on the captain, Jane, and Douglas, binding them in unpleasant union. Perhaps that had been the captain’s intention. Perhaps it was an accident. It did not matter; the damage was grave.
The boy recognized the sudden change in his mother, in the officer, but he did not understand it. He pulled at her blouse. “Ma?”
“It’s all right, son.” Jane pulled her son closer.
The captain considered the two now without expression. “Which of you is going to tell me about Hank?”
Jane said, “I’ll tell you what we know of the man, which isn’t much. We found him near to being naked and dead on the edge of the desert, at the pond. He had no memory of who he was. We took him in, fixed a considerable head wound he had suffered, and gave him clothes, and that was it. He left with Lieutenant Martins.”
“Why?”
“Lieutenant Martins forced him at gunpoint. That’s why,” Jane replied. “The lieutenant believed that Hank had taken something from him. But Hank had nothing on him.”
“Including his memory,” the captain said dubiously.
“That’s right. He struggled and couldn’t even recall his name. We gave him the one he used.”
“When did the lieutenant and this Hank leave?”
“Early morning—maybe three hours ago.”
“Headed?”
“Already told you,” she said, pointing to the north.
“I assume the lieutenant had a destination.”
“Your man did not confide in Hank, and he did not share any information with us.”
“I see. And did Hank leave on a horse taken from you?”
“We don’t own a horse. I already told you, the lieutenant brought a spare. I don’t know why.”
The captain looked at the boy. “Do you know why?”
The young man shook his head instantly and vigorously.
“Douglas,” said the captain, “are you telling me the truth?”
“I’m trying to, sir.”
“Do you know anything else about Hank or the lieutenant? Anything at all?”
Douglas looked at his mother, and she said, “Go on, son. You may tell him anything you recollect.”
The boy’s eyes returned to the officer. “A knife,” he said. “Lieutenant Martins—he said Hank was handy with a throwing knife.”
“Did he throw one at the lieutenant?”
“I—I think so. Not when he was here. The lieutenant, he said there were four of them sitting at a campfire when he threw it.”
“The lieutenant and three others?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Does either of you know where these others are?”
“They spread out,” Douglas said. “I think that’s what Lieutenant Martins said.”
The captain looked at Jane. She nodded.
The boy looked up at his mother for reassurance. She looked down at him with a benign, reassuring smile that said he was doing fine.
The captain kicked his horse forward several paces, stopping just a few feet from the Smiths.
“You were listening very closely, weren’t you, Douglas?”
The boy nodded.
“You liked Hank?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think he liked you?”
“He said he was going to give me a knife, once he found his and remembered who he was.”
After a moment, the officer’s eyes slid back to Jane.
“It seems your son remembers a good deal. Perhaps you have something to add?”
“I do not, except that a boy’s hopes do not always align with the facts. Whatever is going on with Hank, Lieutenant Martins, and you has no purchase here.”
“Sadly, madam, as in any war civilians are called upon to serve. It is possible that you know nothing more. It is also possible that Hank has some affection for you both. That might discourage hostile action, if such he has in mind.”
“He was here less than an hour,” Jane said.
“Long enough, it seems,” the officer said, looking at the boy. “You will come with us.”
“Where?”
“To find Lieutenant Martins and this ‘Hank.’ Room will be made for you on horseback. Bring clothing for nighttime.”
“You intend to—abduct us?”
“Say, rather, that I insist you both join us. At least until we know more about this gentleman.”
“I tell you, we barely know him, or he us.”
“Then you will have nothing more unpleasant than an outing, perhaps broaden the boy’s experience with the world.” The captain gestured ahead grandly.
“You have no authority here,” she protested.
“Our numbers say otherwise.” He glared down at the woman. “Get your things, please.”
Jane stood as stiff as the rifle leaning against the carving table, unsure whether to cooperate or to run. If it were just herself—
But it isn’t.
Douglas was looking from his mother to the captain, waiting for guidance. She touched his head and once more looked smilingly down.
“Would you like to take a trip?” she asked him.
“Sure, Ma. It could be exciting,” he confessed. “You could still learn me writing and reading when we stop. I could practice shooting rabbits.”
“A wonderful and very practical attitude,” the captain cheered.
“Then let’s get some things we’ll need,” she said, coaxing the boy along. There were no tears, no wavering in her voice. She faced this as she did unexpected danger every day.
“Only clothes,” the officer said to her back. “We have food . . . and weapons.”
“This?” the boy asked, holding up the bow and arrow.
The captain did not want to appear afraid of something that was little more than a toy, not before his men.
“Of course.”
“And his reading book,” the woman said.
“All right.”
“We also have to douse the hearth.”
“One of my men will do that,” he said, looking at the man behind him and snapping his eyes toward the house. One of the French marines dismounted, looked around, and headed for the water bucket.
Even before the captain had ordered a man inside, Jane had already considered and dismissed the idea of taking a firearm from the chest and concealing it in her wrap. They would be killed or taken anyway, and most likely treated harshly. One thing she had learned living in this unforgiving land was that nature was inexorable—you moved with it; you sought refuge; you did not fight it. With men, the only difference was that you picked your time to fight. Here and now was not it.
She entered, followed by the soldier and Douglas. The boy watched while the man began to extinguish the blaze as though it were a campfire—pouring water on it.
“Sir, not like that,” Douglas said.
The man froze.
“He may not understand you,” his mother said.
“Like this,” Douglas persisted, flicking his fingers as if they had water on them.
The man snorted and finished what he was doing, exactly as he had been doing it.
“That’s not very nice,” Douglas mumbled.
“Come here, son,” Jane insisted. “Now.”
The woman was kneeling beside the bed; she had stiffened during the encounter but relaxed when Douglas stalked over, the exchange ended.
“We have to be careful around these men,” she said quietly.
“I know. But this is our house. That’s my fire.”
“True enough. Let’s see if we can get them away from it without further incident.”
The boy nodded and stood beside her as she pulled a small, flat wooden drawer from under the mattress stand. It had belonged to a dresser that had been used for firewood during a long rainy spell.
Jane removed a heavy shawl for herself and an Indian blanket for Douglas. It was a gift from a small band of Pechanga Indians who had been traveling from the west and to whom she had given water. It was disheartening, as she thought back over the years: Most of the men she had known over the years, those who had leaned toward savagery, were white skinned.
Jane took a pair of kerchiefs from the box, returned it to its place, then waited until the soldier had left. She stood and paused to take a look around the dark cabin. She had rarely been away from here herself, this home in which her son had been born and her husband had died. A place where, just a few hours before, she had met a man who had brought a moment of real fellowship to her life for the first time in years.
“God would not have done that without a reason,” she said in a prayerlike manner.
“Done what, Ma?” her son asked.
“Just thinking out loud,” she said, hugging the garments to her as they walked back into the sunlight. A rigid and seemingly impatient Dupré gestured sharply, directing them to a pair of horses at the rear of the line. There was a rider midway up the line pulling a sledge behind him. He dismounted and handed both Jane and Douglas their own canteens. The two riders in back had also dismounted to help them up. Despite the woman’s very real concerns about this adventure, Douglas smiled when they approached the horses, and he was beaming as he was raised to his horse’s back.
“I haven’t been on a horse since Fury died,” he said. “This one feels different.”
“That’s because he’s a military horse, not a nag,” Jane said, raising her voice and looking ahead at the captain.
There was accusation in her tone, bite in the word “military.” It held more contempt than when she talked about wildfires and dust storms. Nature was mighty and at times destructive, but it was not malicious. It did not want to do harm to anyone.
Jane handed her son one of the kerchiefs and told him to tie it behind his head, over his mouth. Then she climbed onto her own horse, helped up with a hoist from the soldier, and covered her own mouth. As soon as the two men had mounted behind them, the column moved out. Their departure stirred dust as well as memories old and recent—of stagecoaches and Nehemiah, of lost pilgrims and wanderers like Hank. The memories hovered in her memory, shifting and colliding, until they had reached a stretch where the cabin was no longer visible. Only the mountains on the distant horizon looked familiar to her.
Jane watched ahead and to both sides, carefully marking their passage across the plain just as she did each time she ventured into the desert. The terrain, even landmarks changed with the light. A traveler who failed to notice that could well become lost and perish. However far they went, and by a means she had not yet conceived, Jane vowed that she and Douglas would make their way back.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY WILL BE sorry they shut it down.”
Tall and rangy, the speaker was looking at a barren plain, an expanse that had once teemed with anticipation, promise—and people.
The man shook his head, sending bugs flying from his long graying hair and from his woolly white mustache. He absently brushed it back with a big leathery hand.
“They’ll be damned, damned sorry when the plains out here ain’t nothing but those iron herds and the daytime is like a thousand war party Indians sending smoke signals, nothing but black with teeny spots of blue. And the population—dear, sweet Lord, what will that be? Not the finest and hardiest folks who ever crossed mountains but all of them. People will come from everywhere, funneling through the high rock and snow in a metal contraption. They won’t be tough. They’ll just be here. And not coming for a visit with Grandpa but to stay. To stay, y’hear?”
The speaker turned to the only other man in the room. That other man continued to eat his meal without looking up. Having stared so long into the daylight, the speaker could barely make out anything inside the log cabin. He turned back outside.
“Some of them will come to take a job that wasn’t needed before the train: working in stores that wasn’t here before the rails, raising horses and fixing wagons and selling new fashions that don’t belong out here. And cattle! Train, I hear, will need ten times what gets cattle-drove now. Kansas will be chin deep in cattle patties and will stink for the next hundred years. Then these folks’ll be sending for their kinfolk, causing clutter, angering more Indians—like a human plague of locusts that will, dear God, eat what grains we have and meat we raise down to the root and bone. Then we’re all in trouble.”
Zebulon Moore paused but remained standing by the back door, breathing air that did not come from inside the dark, musty room, which was once the dining hall of this formerly illustrious and crucial Butterfield way station. He was in his sixties, fancied himself in his forties, and looked like he was in his eighties. Like his bent frame and stiff fingers that he now and then flexed or wriggled or rolled, his social skills had seen happier times.
The other occupant of the room imagined that this was the same speech Zebulon had made to himself many times over the course of many days, spoken aloud to whoever stopped by, just as he was doing now. The man continued to eat, still only half listening when the first man resumed. There was a job to finish but a delay was also necessary not just for food but for safety.
“Oak Ridge,” the grizzled man went on in a voice that frequently broke like snapping bark, and his crooked smile showed mostly gums. “I can say it in three languages, Spanish, Chinese, and Chumash. I learned all of them from living and working here. You happen to notice, friend, that on my out-front sign, the chains are rusted? I used to have a hand who worked for me, Pedro, who put a shine on them every day. Every day. You could see each link bounce the sun a good half mile off, like the chains that bound— Who was that old fella? The one brought fire to men and was tied to rock?”
“Prometheus!” said the man’s wife, who was doing laundry outside, just within earshot because the shade happened to be nearest the house just now.
“That’s the one. Thank you, Lizzie!” he shouted. “Well, got no cause to buff them now or replace them. Just let the windblown dirt have them. Down with the old iron, up with the new. Is that why we all fought a war, to pitch everything that was?” He nodded thoughtfully. “I bet Mr. Lincoln would’ve done things different. Old Andrew Johnson—the bankers controlled that Southern boy.”
