Damnation Road (14 page)
Authors: Max Mccoy
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Apache Indians, #Western Stories, #Westerns, #Treasure Troves, #Large Type Books, #Cultural Heritage
“I'll allow that,” Gamble said. “What's my role in all of this?”
“Troubleshooter,” Weathers said.
“Hired gun,” Anise added.
“A fortnight from now, we expect to have recovered the lost Confederate gold from the Apache treasure cave and to have returned to civilization. We will pay a thousand dollars for two weeks of work.”
“I'd like that in advance.”
“You'll get half now,” Anise said. “The other half when we recover the gold.”
“No,” Gamble said. “The full thousand, no matter what, because I'm not convinced you can find that cave again. And if you do recover any gold, I want a share.”
“We will not pay the full amount now,” Anise said. “Half now, as I said. The other half upon reaching the cliffs below the cave by the twentieth of June, no matter if the gold is recovered or not.”
“Why June twentieth?”
Anise smiled.
“Is this acceptable or no?”
“I still want a share, should this fairy tale come true.”
“All right, Jacob Dunbar, you may have a share, but that thousand dollars that you've been paid for your services as a gunslinger is deducted from your share. There, you have the best of both worldsâyou are paid for your time if there is no gold, and you become a partner if there is.”
“How much of a partner would I be?”
“Ten percent,” Anise said.
“A third,” Gamble said.
“Out of the question,” Weathers said.
“Twenty percent,” Anise said.
“A third.”
Weathers shook his head.
“Dash doesn't come cheap,” Gamble said. “If I'm going to put my neck on the line in the
Jornada,
then I get a full share or I don't go.”
Jornada,
then I get a full share or I don't go.”
“You seem to be forgetting that there would be no chance of recovering this hoard if I hadn't suffered years of humiliation by savages,” Anise said. “If not for me, none of this would be possible. You may be a hero, Lieutenant Dunbar, but you are a greedy one.”
Gamble smiled.
“We will not give you a full third and a guarantee of a thousand dollars for your services as a hired gun if our campaign fails,” Anise said.
“Your campaign will fail,” Gamble said. “It all sounds too good to be true, some type of classic con, although I don't understand your angle yet.”
“There's no angle,” Anise said. “You get rich or go bust just like us.”
“I'm already bust,” Gamble said, his head swimming from the bourbon and buzzing from the absinthe. “What do I have to lose?”
“Just your life,” Anise said under her breath. “Or worse.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Anise said.
Gamble finished his drink.
“We leave tomorrow, early,” he said. “We have only ten days to get you to this mysterious place before the twentieth day of June. Do you have a map I can study?”
“Of course,” Weathers said. “But what about the Pinkerton man coming to see us?”
Gamble shrugged.
“To hell with the Pinkerton,” Gamble said.
Then he called for the waiter to bring him another bourbon.
S
EVENTEEN
EVENTEEN
Jaeger knelt in the remains of the ruined express car and shook his head. The interior smelled of burned wood and smoke and dried blood. Flies buzzed in the stifling heat.
“Amateurs,” he said.
He picked a letter from the pile, one with a heavy rust-colored smear, and glanced at the address. San Antonio. He let it fall back to the floor. The wind had spilled some of the mail outside the car, onto the side of the tracks.
“What are you looking for?” the new express messenger asked. He had come with Jaeger on the train from Liberal.
“A letter,” Jaeger said. “Addressed to the governor of New York. It will have a special delivery stamp.”
“That would make it United States property,” the messenger said. “It's a felony to tamper with the mail.”
The messenger waited a moment, then couldn't control his laughter.
“Sorry, I can't hold a poker face,” he said, slapping his thigh. I'll see what I can find.”
“Good,” Jaeger said, annoyed.
While the messenger and his assistant started going through the bag, he took his field glasses from the leather case slung around his neck. He began to scan the landscape, and most of what he saw was sand and scrub. The glasses passed over the old soddie on the south ridge, then came back to it. He had seen something flick out from behind a ruined mud wall. He waited, and in ten seconds he saw it again, and this time he was sure that it was the swish of a horse's tail.
“Ah, that's where you hid them.”
He climbed down from the car and started hiking across the prairie. Halfway to the soddie, he removed his jacket and flung it over his shoulder. When he reached the broken mud house, his shirt was heavy with sweat.
He rounded the corner of the soddie's longest wall and stared for a moment at the three horses, all saddled, and tied to a stake driven in the ground.
“Of course,” Jaeger said.
They were fine horses, a dun and two sorrels, and they were undoubtedly stolen. He reached out to touch the saddle of the dun, but the horse snorted and thrust its head back, nipping Jaeger on the back of the hand.
“Schiesse,”
Jaeger muttered.
Jaeger muttered.
He drew the Reichsrevolver, shoved the barrel toward the horse's skull, and pulled the trigger. The horse staggered, but did not fall. Jaeger shot again, and this time the animal collapsed.
The sorrels cried and backed away, straining against the tether. Jaeger pointed the revolver at the closest horse and had nearly fired another round when he checked himself. He held the barrel up, the blood running from the back of his hand and staining his shirt cuff. Finally, he put the gun back in the flap holster.
He knelt, using his knife to cut away the saddle and other tack from the dead horse. He found nothing of value, not even a name on the saddle. He drew the brand on the flank of the horse in his notebookâa Rocking Kâbut expected it to confirm that it was a stolen animal.
Jaeger took the leads of the sorrels and led them down the hill to the train, where he handed them off to one of the train crew. He told them to unsaddle the horses so that he could inspect those rigs as well.
“What were the shots?” the messenger asked. “Rattlesnake?”
“Jaâyes, snake,” Jaeger said, not wanting the messenger to know he had shot a horse for biting him. In the West, Americans took abuse of horses almost as badly as they took mistreatment of children. Germans serve horses in Sauerbraten.
“Damned rattlers are thick this year,” the messenger said. “He didn't get you, did he?”
“No,” Jaeger said. “Scraped my hand against the wall.”
“Good,” the messenger said. “These rattlers wouldn't kill you, but will make you damned sick. Now, the rattlers down in the Arizona and New Mexican territories, some of those will kill you deader than Julius Caesar. Oh, we found your letter.”
Jaeger took the envelope and slit the end with his knife. He shook out the letter, sat down in the shade of the express car, and spent the next twenty minutes reading and re-reading the pages. When he was done, he folded the pages and slipped them back into the envelope, which he tapped against his knee while he pondered his options.
“Can't kill a war hero,” he muttered. “That would make the agency look bad. But if I bring the bastard in to stand trial, he's likely to get acquitted or receive some kind of pardon because of his uniform.”
“What's that you say?” the messenger asked.
“Not a thing,” Jaeger said.
“Anything useful in that letter?”
“No, not really. Do you smoke?”
“Hell, who doesn't?”
“Then lend me a match.”
Jaeger struck the match against his heel, then held it to the bottom of the envelope. He held it until the bright orange flames nipped his fingers, then flung it away.
E
IGHTEEN
IGHTEEN
Jacob Gamble was quite drunk by the time he fell into bed in his room on the second floor of the Texas House. Between bolting the door and actually pitching headfirst onto the mattress, he had managed to do a kind of staggering pirouette in which he shed every stitch of clothing except his right sock. He fell instantly and deeply asleep.
In his dreams, his mother was waiting.
He was seven years old and she stood behind him, her hands clasped over his eyes, pressing his head back against her waist. Her fingers felt cool on his eyelids.
“Don't open your eyes, Jacob,” she murmured. “Don't open your eyes.”
“But I can't see,” he protested.
“Don't open your eyes.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Don't open your eyes, Jacob.”
“But how will I know what to do if I can't look?”
He reached up and grasped her wrists and pried them, one at a time, from his eyes. They were standing in their cabin of forty years ago in Missouri and it was the depth of a summer night. The only light came from the open window. Outside, a full moon had turned the yard into a weird monochrome landscapeâthe rail fence and the woodpile and the maple tree were rendered in the silver tones of a tintype. There was a breeze from the south, and the curtains made from flour sacks rippled inward.
On a pair of sawhorses in the middle of the room rested a coffin of unvarnished white oak. The lid was on the floor, but Jacob was too short to see into the coffin.
“Mother,” Gamble said, over his shoulder. “Who is in the casket?”
She put a finger to her lips to shush him. She was dressed all in black, but her veil was pulled up to reveal her face. Her eyes glittered in the darkness.
He turned back. Gradually, he became aware of other figures in the dark corners of the room, human figures in frayed black robes but with the beaks of buzzards for faces. Fighting the fear rising in his chest, he asked:
“What are those things?”
“This is a wake,” she said.
“But those are monsters.”
“I told you not to look, Jacob” she said, shaking her head sadly. “I told you not to look.”
“Who's in the coffin?”
His mother was suddenly at the table, shuffling a deck of cards. The leather-bound family Bible was open in front of her. The breeze blew stronger, riffling the thin pages of the Bible and scattering most of the cards on the floor. She dealt what she had left in her hand, one at a time, placing them under the edge of the Bible. She clasped a hand to her mouth.
“What is it?” he asked. “What will happen in the future?”
“All things,” she said.
He knew he must look inside the coffin. He took two steps forward, and the bird creatures began hissing and shaking their heads.
“Don't, Jacob. Stay here with me until morning. Come to bed and I will keep you warm.”
“I'm not cold.”
He took another step forward.
Buzzard heads were cocked and beaks were snapping, confused, threatening. He was close enough now that he could nearly peer over the side of the coffin. He could hear curious wet clicking sounds coming from inside.
“Father?”
“Don't look, Jacob,” his mother called.
He took one more step and looked into the coffin.
It was a mass of thingsâland crabsâswarming over a corpse. The stench of rotten flesh was overpowering, but Jacob forced himself to look closer. The crabs had stripped most of the flesh from the face of the dead man, revealing a grinning skull. One eye socket was empty. An eyeball dangled from the other socket, but it was soon plucked by a voracious claw.
“Is it father?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said. “Your father had no death watch, no funeral. You have already looked onceâyou had better look again.”
Jacob looked back.
The skeletal hands were crossed over the stomach, and in one hand was a revolverâa cap-and-ball revolver with a brass frame, the Manhattan.
Jacob backed away, shivering.
“How do I die?”
“Like all men,” his mother said. “With a final breath, a last look, a dying thought. All men are finite, Jacob. Each has a limited number of heartbeats. It is a kindness that the number is a mystery, least the knowledge drive them mad.”
“But you know,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, inspecting the cards. “The dead know.”
“Tell me.”
“Ask me something else.”
“Did you truly love me?”
She handed him two cardsâthe seven and three of spades.
“You will live seventy-three years beyond the age when your father died.”
“That is nonsense.”
“Close your eyes, then.”
“I'd be more than a hundred years old.”
“You are nearly halfway there,” she said.
“No, I'm seven.”
There was a knocking on the cabin door.
“Tell me why my father is haunting me.”
The knocking was louder.
“You said the dead know. Tell me.”
“I must go,” she said. “My sister has come.”
Gamble woke, turned onto his back, and ran a hand over his face, which was moist with sweat. He sat up, disoriented, burning with thirst. There was just enough light coming in from the window to see that he was still in the room at the Texas House. He swung his feet to the floor, walked over to the nightstand, and poured a glass of water from the pitcher there. He drank it, then poured himself another.
There was a tap at the door.
“Sonuvabitch,” he muttered.
The tap came again.
He snatched up the shotgun from where it leaned against the nightstand, crossed to the hinge side of the door, and asked who was there.
“Anise.”
“Wormwood,” he said. “You alone?”
“Yes.”
“Just a minute.”
He put the shotgun on the bed. Then he found his jeans, pulled them on, and unbolted the door. She stepped inside, and Gamble locked the door behind her.
She was wearing a robe over a chemise.
“What time is it?”
“Just after four.”
His head was throbbing.
“Look,” he said. “I don't think I'm your man. Your treasure hunt is either a half-baked scheme or a truly imaginative con, I don't know whichâbut I was drunk last night. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Shut up and listen,” Anise said. “The Pinkerton man is here, at the front desk. He has roused the night manager for a room, and is asking questions.”
“How do you know?”
“I had to go to the water closet down the hall, and I saw him from the landing,” she said. “I know he's the Pinkerton, because he's asking a lot of questions about you.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Description,” he said. “Whether you had one eye or two, your hair color, your ageâand how many weapons you had. Lieutenant Dunbar, is there something you haven't told us?”
“Damn Pinkerton,” he said. “I didn't expect him until noon.”
“He's not here to congratulate you, is he?”
Gamble was gathering up his clothes and stuffing them into the haversack.
“Do you see my other sock?”
“No,” she said.
“To hell with it.”
He sat on the bed and began pulling on his boots.
“You're like me, aren't you?”
“How's that?”
“Not what you appear to be.”
“Act like you haven't seen me since last night, that I had plans to leave before dawn, but that I didn't say where I was going,” he said.
Anise reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a sheaf of bills.
“Here's the five hundred,” she said, putting it in his hand. “The other half when we get to the treasure cave by the twentieth.”
“How do you know I'm not going out that window and jump down to the sidewalk and you'll never see me again?”
“Because we have a deal,” she said. “Because you weren't that drunk. Because you want to see the treasure cave with me, even though I scare the hell out of you.”
“All right,” Gamble said. “But only because I'm out of ideas. Don't be in a hurry in the morning. Talk to the Pinkerton, be polite, but don't mention the gold coin.”
“Do I really look that stupid?”
“When you get a chance, get yourselves to the depot across town and take the first westbound train. Change trains at Santa Fe. Go south. I'll meet you in Engle at noon the day after tomorrow.”
“Engle,” she said. “Day after tomorrow.”
He folded the map Weathers had given him and put it in the haversack. Then he threw the haversack over his shoulder, picked up the shotgun from the bed, and started for the window.
“Haven't you forgotten something?”
“I don't think so.”
She walked over, took his free hand, and guided it beneath her robe. Then she kissed him, her tongue darting into this mouth, her body pressing against his.
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