Here by the Bloods (4 page)

We must make quite a picture—two grown men descending the foothills on horseback, mounts tied together, one man seated backward on a mule, trussed up like a Sunday roast, what with all the rope and cord lashed around him. The three feet of line I tied to each of his ankles and laced under the mule's belly eliminates any lingering thoughts of escape while my back is turned. If he tries to slip off Strawberry, tied to her like he is, that mule will trample him if the fall does not break his neck first. I glance back at him every few yards anyway. The eastern sky grows pale.

 

 

My canteen empties in three swallows and I bend down to refill it. The cool water from the stream dances over my fingertips. I splash a palmful onto my face and feel the sweat and dirt from a long and active night begin to melt away. A fine, clear morning breaks through the hills. Kneeling over the water, I am grateful that it moves too fast to send back my reflection. I would not want to see it now. It would be someone I might not recognize. Drying my face on the blanket, I feel his eyes on me. He lets out a little laugh. Ignoring him, I unwrap the biscuits and salt pork and set back down on the log. Buster laps at the stream. Strawberry is so tired she lies flat out on her side, snoring. The Snowman's eyes are still on me. He puts a little more air into his snickering so I will look up.

“Something funny?”

“If I was a betting man, and I am, I would wager that was your first time shooting a man. Tell me I am wrong.” He starts up giggling again before I even think about answering, which I will not. “I knew it! Well, fear not, son. It gets easier.” He sits there pleased with himself, watching me eat, and then adds, “Oh, it is not as though you kilt him. No sense in flogging yourself. Of course, old Finn will make it his life's work to hunt you down and kill you, but I suppose you will, for a day or two, get to enjoy being the fella what brung in the Snowman.”

I take another bite and wash it down with the cold water from the stream. The mayor's wife sure knows how to cure a ham.

“Look at me, son.” I level my eyes at him. “Nearly all the men what have looked at my face as long as you have are buried in the ground. You are swimming over your head, to be sure.”

“I am not the one tied to a tree.”

“I should be dead! You had the drop on me. And you should be sitting there with three corpses and a sack full of money what we stole. But for that, you would have to be a killer, and you are not. You also appear to be powerfully disinterested in the loot. Surely that sum, plus the bounty on three of our heads, would ensure your fortune, security, and longevity. As it stands, none of those three will transpire. So I am left scratching my head as to why they sent you.”

“I sent myself.”

“You venture up here alone, into the asshole of the world, to track down the most feared outlaw—and I do not overspeak here—the most feared outlaw in the country, with the intent of what? Extracting me from my men, clamping some nigger irons on me, and dragging me back to town—the triumvirate of which are dependent on the miracle that you yourself are not kilt in the process?”

“Something like that.”

The Snowman shakes his head, leans back against the tree, and looks at me. “You know,” he says thoughtfully, “as far as plans go, yours was noticeably lacking in forethought.”

“Was a good man you killed.”

“I have killed many. To which do you refer?”

“Sheriff by the name of David Pardell. You will do your part to remember it, or I will spare the rope and gun you down right here!” The pearl-handled Colt finds itself in my hand, balanced steadily at his chest.

“Your past behavior has already neutered that option.”

“Good day as any to start.” The words hang about for a thick moment, then the Snowman nods, making it known that he believes me. I holster the Colt.

“Is it also part of your plan to starve me to death?” I think about it, but not too hard, and stick the rest of the biscuit in my shirt pocket for later. Long miles lie ahead. I cross to him, his eyes never leaving me, and kneel beside him to start at the knots. He smells like a barn, a latrine, and a trash heap all at once.

“That sheriff. He your kin?”

“Nope.”

He takes a long look at me. “What are you anyway, some kind of Injun?”

“Only the half that tracked you down.”

His eyes cast up toward the heavens. “Well, if that does not beat all. Waylaid by some simpleton halfbreed.”

I snap from the hips and bring my fist up into his jaw.
Fwack!
The blow is clean, solid. I watch his eyes roll back into his head and then flutter back to consciousness. Hacking from deep in his throat, he spits a mouthful of blood into the dirt. The blow tore his teeth up into his tongue. That should cut down on the chatter.

“Damn, son,” he says, coughing out the words. “That is one hell of a punch.” Another slug of crimson streams from his rank maw. “Might be a killer in you yet.” He opens his jaw wide, stretching it. I shove the last of the biscuit into the opening.

“Eat up. Sooner I get you to town, sooner I hear your neck snap.” I leave him to choke down the biscuit. His blood will soften it for him.

The Chandler boys see us first. The older one, rolling a hoop down the back steps of the druggist's into the excited arms of his little brother, glances over at the sight of our arriving mule train and, after a pause of comprehension, drops the balancing stick from his slack fingers.

The little one catches the hoop clumsily and lets out a squeal of delight, but his older brother's gape-jawed stare causes him to look our way, and then fall over.

All at once, the boys spring to life, scampering up the steps and into their father's shop like desert mice vanishing into a burrow. A high-pitched voice squeaks from within the whitewashed building. “Pa! Pa! Come look. The half-breed got the Snowman!” Buster hears it too, smart boy. He perks his ears a bit and adds the slightest strut to his step. I keep my eyes straight ahead. Between the two of us, I will let him do the preening.

We come around the front of the druggist's and make the turn onto the top of Main Street. Otis Chandler himself bundles out the front door to get a peek. The boys, timid now that the corona of intimidation radiating from the Snowman has reclaimed their thoughts, peer out from behind their daddy's thighs.

The wide thoroughfare stretches out before us. Nearly noon, the big yellow eye glares straight down, keeping the shadows short and blanketing the Bend in a listless haze that crackles into vibrancy with every door we pass. Startled bootfalls clamor across the boardwalk—bodies crowd doorways and faces press against windows for a view of the spectacle. I pair each voice with its speaker without the faintest turn of my head.

The post office door jangles violently as Bertram Merriman bursts out of it. “Good Christ Almighty,” he says.

“Is that truly he?” Polly McPhee shouts to anyone within earshot of her window.

“It is, most certainly,” Bertram announces. “Jasper, go fetch the mayor. I will cable the governor's office directly.” The door jangles again as Bertram withdraws to his wires.

Jasper bounds down the steps and trots alongside me, pulling into my periphery. He stares agape at me, then to my captive, then back to me. “You . . . you got him? Holy Mary, you got him!” Jasper sprints off, a town crier. “The Snowman is captured! Harlan Two-Trees brung in the Snowman!”

The doors of the Jewel swing open, spewing forth a belch of tobacco smoke and stale beer. Jed Barnes, not fully to his drunk yet, pounds the railing and roars, “Lord mercy, half-breed! What you gone and done? Hell, even a broke clock is right twice a day.” He falls over himself laughing. He will not call me that again.

“Look upon it, folks. It is I!” The Snowman yells wearily from behind me. Then his voice lowers, tailored for my ears alone. “Enjoy it, son. I promise you, dark days lie ahead.”

“Murderer!” It sounds like Polly McPhee. “God have mercy on your soul!” Polly, for sure.

“Shit, he looks hardly dangerous now,” Merle announces from the Jewel. A clutch of children forming the tail of our procession brazenly inch toward the Snowman. One boy holds a branch, pokes the outlaw's leg to see if he is real. Another boy skips along beside me. He touches my boot, gazing back up at me. I throw back a shimmer of a nod that lights his face up, spreading a wide grin across his cheeks through a puzzle of missing teeth. The Snowman lets the little ones get right up on him, sitting nearly comatose as they squeak out their childish taunts. Then all at once he snaps out a fiendish bear growl. “Aaarrrrgh!” Those kids scatter like scared rabbits and oh, how that makes him laugh.

Elbert Pooley clamors up, licking his lips expectantly. “Did you get the money, boy?” When I offer no answer he glances back at the Snowman, then to me again. “How did you do it, Harlan? Is them others kilt?”

Half the town, it seems, trails behind us. Strawberry, never a mule to shy from attention, acknowledges the unmistakable significance of the rider with which she has been entrusted by trumpeting a glorious whinny and then emptying her bladder.

Big Jack Early appears to my left, his double-barrel twelve gamely clutched in his meaty fists. Merle takes up a similar position on our right, wielding his archaic, bolt-action ten with grim-faced officiousness. Elbert, damned if he will be left from the proceedings, draws both pistols and dashes out ahead of me, putting himself on point. The Negroes stoking the grill fire behind the hotel forsake their duties and stare in amazement.

Through it all, a curve of pale white skin draws my eye. Her raven hair tumbles down her bare shoulders and frames her chestnut eyes perfectly above lips that part with tacit approval. She is the new girl at Madam Brandywine's. Her eyes fix on me and do not let go. Carmelita, the well-seasoned professional, leans over to the young girl and says, nodding in my direction, “I would let him throw me down for free.” Noticing the unwavering gaze of her smitten charge, Carmelita adds, “Ay, Maria, put your eyes back in your head.”

Hezekiah Fay, the tailor's measure draped around his neck, stands in his doorway and begins to clap his hands. Soon a roar of applause swells from the throng behind us and makes no sign of abating. A second crowd clusters at the door of the sheriff's as the station comes into view. I pull back on Buster and he stops in front of the door.

“Where you want us, Harlan?” Big Jack says as I dismount. I head straight for Strawberry and set to work on the ropes. “Help with them lashings, Jasper.” Jasper Goodhope does as Big Jack commands, unraveling the bowlines that bind the Snowman's legs. Elbert moves over to the door and holds it open, still wielding the pistols unsteadily. The crowd pushes in. “Give them room, now,” Jack admonishes.

The ropes and leather straps drop to the dirt. I grab the killer, one hand on his collar, the other on his belt, and heft him off the mule onto his feet. Standing among them, a legend in shackles, the Snowman has an unnerving effect on the people. Grown men backpedal out of the way as we climb the steps. Women crinkle their faces and bury their noses into handkerchiefs as the stench of him takes hold. His clothes will have to be burned. Why that is the thought that enters my mind as I open the cell door and push him inside I cannot say. Perhaps it is the sudden, jittery silence of the crowd that makes me think of it. It is not until I step out of the cell, clang the heavy door shut, and deposit the key into my pocket that their vigor—in the form of an exultant, full-bodied cheer—returns.

I turn to face them and the first man I see, standing before me like Moses, is Mayor Boone. A wide smile reddens his cheeks. His thin fingers find my hand and press into my palm. “Well done, son. I never had a doubt.”

Outstretched hands descend on me, eager to shake mine. Ruddy, cheerful faces fill my vision. “Three cheers for Harlan Two-Trees!” cries a voice from somewhere in the packed station house, and three cheers from a grateful town obediently rattle the rafters. I shake every hand offered me. More questions come my way than have ever been asked me in my life, and I am too numb to answer any of them. No one seems to mind.

A fiddler's lively tune filters through the open window, accompanied by the long shadows of the waning day. “Tonight, very busy,” she says with a touch of trepidation. Drunken voices pass one another in merriment as I hear the saloon door bang for the hundredth time in an hour. Men piss in the alley below us into what, by the sound of it, must be a deepening puddle.

“I suspect so, with all the work the door of the Jewel is getting.”

Maria rolls over toward me, smiling, the undercurve of her breast landing gentle on my forearm. “You want to go again before you go?”

 

 

She glides the comb through her hair, watching me in the mirror as I work my way into my boots. Her thin white gown drapes open to her waist. I pull a ten-dollar gold piece from my pocket and set it on the edge of the vanity.

“I said you no pay. You catch the bandito.”

“You keep it. The next fella might not think you are worth it.” My finger graces her neck as I kiss the top of her head. “He would be wrong.” A little smile returns to her face, easing, for a moment, her worries of the night ahead.

“You ever scared?” she asks.

“If I were not, I would fear I was already dead.” I put on my hat and give a nod. The bathtub sits in the middle of her little room. An oily film clings to the surface of the cooling water, thickly browned by the sweat and filth of my previous ordeal. “Thanks for the bath,” I add.

“Thanks for washing,” she says.

“Sorry to bring up such business after what you have done for the town, Harlan, but circumstances being what they are . . .” Mayor Boone draws a sheaf of papers from his case and slides the lantern over a little closer.

“Sheriff did right by you, son,” Bennett Whitlock interjects from across the kitchen table. “This house, the acreage, all the livestock. He left it in your name.”

“Plus there was a small savings at Union Bank in Santa Fe,” continues Boone. “A few hundred dollars only, but that too will go to you.”

“Sheriff was my oldest friend,” says the rancher. “I know he wanted you provided for, but folks have been hit hard by this and . . .” Here Whitlock's eyes drift to the floor then back up to me. “With our money still out there, and with the safe company dragging their feet in Chicago—”

“The reward,” I say. “That why you come?”

“It is ten thousand dollars,” Whitlock says, almost embarrassed by the number.

“I need it not. That money should go to them what lost theirs at the bank. When it come in, that is what I want.”

“Sounds as if you had already decided this,” Boone suggests.

“Way I see it, one man prospering while the rest of the town starves is in nobody's gain. Them with kids should get their fair shake or close to it, the rest parceled out accordingly.” They both sit stunned for a moment, as if a hill whose ascent they were dreading turned out to be a patch of flat ground.

“Well, as if you need any more goodwill thrown your way, God bless you, son. You do the sheriff proud.” Whitlock takes my hand as he rises and gives it a hearty squeeze.

“Who watches him now?” I ask.

“Big Jack has the honor. He and his twelve-gauge,” Boone says.

“Tell Jack I will spell him come midnight.”

“He will appreciate that,” the mayor says. “As for these papers, I know you are not a reader. I would be happy to keep them in my care.”

“Leave 'em,” I say.

“Are you sure? It is the sheriff's official will and testament. As executor—”

“For heaven's sake, Walter, let the boy have his papers,” Whitlock says. “You have mightier concerns. Like how on earth do you intend to get that sonofabitch to Heavendale to stand trial? I hardly think our young friend here is up for another mule train.”

“Yes, I have been thinking about that,” Boone says, turning his gaze toward the window and the rising moon over the pasture. “What if he never went to Heavendale?”

“What are you saying, Walter?” the rancher asks. “We have no magistrate.”

“We can send for one. This man committed his crimes in Caliche Bend. And it is in the Bend that justice should be served. Judge Haggerty is an old friend. I have no doubt he would agree to such a reasonable request. We can put him up at the hotel. Hell, he can stay at my place.”

“Well,” Whitlock says, rubbing his hands together, “I guess with Heavendale and the Bend being part of the same county, there would be no issue of jurisdiction.”

“Oh, it is all perfectly legal. I have already checked. But dammit, that scoundrel should swing!” Boone barks, his face reddening. “And I will be dammed if some freethinking jury in Heavendale should decide it any other way. We cannot leave it to chance.”

“This man killed our sheriff, my friend. You really think he could escape the gallows, even in Heavendale?” Whitlock asks.

“Ask yourself how you would feel if he did,” Boone says. The mayor turns from the window and slinks into a chummier tone. “You boys ever seen a hanging?”

“Cannot say as I have,” Whitlock frowns.

“How about you, son?” Boone says, fixing on me.

“Seen what was left of a lynching once, old Mexican fella. Caught stealing the wrong chicken. Couple farmers made example of him. Left him up in that tree nearly a week. Buzzards finished off what the coyotes could not reach.”

I figured Whitlock for a heartier man, but he goes a bit green around the gills at my story.

“Yes, well, we are not talking about vigilantism. We are going to keep everything aboveboard,” the mayor says.

“Are we?” I ask.

Boone settles back into his chair and folds his hands before him on the table. “I witnessed a hanging, couple years ago, down El Paso. Fellas, it was the darndest thing. A spectacle! Must have been in the hundreds, maybe thousand, Christian and heathen alike, shoulder to shoulder, like they were watching a prizefight. And the commerce! Drummers of every kind—cigars, ladies' dresses, potions and calmatives. I tell you, if it could be sold, some drummer had a stand set up to shill it.”

“Goodness, that must have been a sight,” Whitlock says, enraptured.

“Like the circus had come to town.” Boone continues. “The saloon was so packed with drinkers and gamblers the proprietor had to turn people away at the door.”

“Could you imagine our Merle doing such a thing? Ha! That would be the day.” The rancher is right about that. Merle would sooner lop off a toe than say no to a dollar.

“And the hotel? Not an empty bed to be had,” Boone says. “Why, I myself stretched out on a cot set up in the parlor and felt lucky to have it. Not that anyone did any sleeping that night, or the night after, for that matter. They were too busy celebrating and carrying on and spending money.”

And then, finally, it hits Whitlock. “Ho! Wait a minute. Imagine such a thing happening here. We could . . .”

“Make our money back. Tenfold.” Boone says.

“Oh, hang on, Walter,” Whitlock says. “Some folks would. Like Merle, the whorehouse, the hotel, even those with a spare room. But I'm a rancher. How would I share in the bounty?”

“You think a thousand mouths will not be hungry? How does a two-dollar steak sound?”

“Imagine. Two dollars for a steak. I could set up a grill tent right on Main Street! Oh, Walter. It is a fantastic idea. A stroke of genius. You must bring it to the town council tomorrow.”

“We do not need a council to tell us what common sense already approves. There is going to be a hanging in Caliche Bend. And a hanging is good for business.”