The Drop Edge of Yonder (27 page)

When a line of riders appeared in the far distance, moving in and out of rain squalls and shafts of milky light, they galloped in the opposite direction, ending up at a deserted farmhouse sheltered by a mournful stand of half-dead oak trees. Leading their horses through the front door, they squeezed into a narrow low-ceilinged room, thick with dust and straw from a collapsed roof. The dirt floor was covered with mice and weasel droppings, the cupboard empty except for a leftover slice of bread covered with blue mold.

"We'll pad our bellies, then rest up," Large Marge said, then walked outside. A few minutes later she returned holding a headless chicken.

Not wanting to advertise their presence with a line of chimney smoke, she plucked and cooked the chicken in a deep pit.

"I've had my run-ins with old man Sutter," she said, tearing into the half-cooked meat. "Rolled him biscuits, made dough for him, burned his grease, wet his whistle - you name it. I cooked for him one winter when no one else would. Pleasured him when he was too roostered to know I wasn't one of them San Francisco whores. Anyway you cut it, I comforted him better'n anyone had a right to."

She threw the chicken bones over her shoulder, wiping her lips on a sleeve of the Warden's jacket.

"Tell you what, Mister Shook. You go on alone to Sutter's, unless you prefer to head up to Oregon, just the two of us. I'm talkin' partners, not esposa, although that could change. We'd be a team. But count me out with Suttter. He's used up. Overrun and plowed under. A thousand Argonauts up there squattin' on his land, I guarantee you. A stampede. Time is money. That's what you'll hear up there.... Used to be the man had himself an empire, the biggest and best stretch of land from the Sierras to the Pacific: fruit trees, pastures like billiard tables, a thousand head of horses. The man would trade with anyone - Ruskies, Spanish, Mormons, all kinds of pilgrims. Gave 'em what they wanted and took what he needed. The biggest sawmill in California. Biggest parades. Biggest barbecues. Biggest fandangos. Slickest women. Made his Injuns wear uniforms and start a marchin' band. He was the biggest cock-a-doodle-doo from Mexico to the North Pole. Now look at him. You don't want to know"

She stood up. "So how about it, Mister Shook? Are you ready to stretch a blanket with me and plow a furrow all the way up to Oregon?"

Zebulon shook his head. "I'm on my own trail."

"Well of course you are," she said, more relieved than disappointed. "A famous outlaw like you. Not to mention that foreign whore you're stuck on, the one that everyone is flapped up about."

She mounted her horse. "Don't give me that look. People talk. I been around the dark side of the barn long enough to know when a man is pulled by his whizzle string."

"Call it any way you want," he said.

She thought it over. "I'll ride with you to Sutter's because maybe I owe you, having sprung me from that prison hulk. But then you're on your own."

They rode on until they topped a rise and Large Marge reined in her horse. Her arms crossed, she gazed at Sutter's Fort silhouetted against the granite peaks of the Sierras like a destroyed Crusader's castle.

"There's no way I'm haulin' my freight to that pile of stone. I don't care what we have goin' between us."

She dismounted and lay back in the tall grass, staring at a parade of black clouds drifting across the sky. "I'll take my preciosa carcass over to Sonoma. There's a saloonkeeper there who owes me favors, enough for a ticket back to where I used to be."

She looked over at him: "If you was smart, you'd ride with me. Sonoma's a pretty little town. On a boom right now"

When he didn't answer she mounted up.

"It's your loss, Mister Shook. Somethin' has gone to your head, maybe bein' hunted for and talked about so much. But I know better. I know who you are and who you ain't. And you ain't weaselshit. No matter what that wild witch might say or the lies that newspaper feller's always writin' about you."

After a snort and wave, she rode off towards Sonoma.

He hadn't gone more than a few miles when she galloped up beside him. "I remembered what it is about that saloon in Sonoma. The oily bastard that runs it is most likely six feet under feeding worms. Or if he ain't, he should be. Not only that, but it's me that owes him, and I ain't in no mood to settle up. Not with the way things are goin'. Maybe it's time for Sutter. It's not like he don't owe me a stake after all I done for him."

A mile later she changed her mind again, deciding on Hangtown, where an ex-lover had a brother who ran a feed store. "I can start something big up there. If not with him, someone. Hitch myself to some pilgrim or store-bought fiatlander, and if that rides south I'll turn into a shanty queen. Experience counts, Mister Shook. Twenty dollars a poke, plus extras. Hangtown is a favorable place. No one will recognize this old sow among all them busted bushwhackers and down-and-outers. I don't know what I was thinkin' about, throwin' in with you. 'Specially now that you have a fancy price on your head."

With another shout and wave, she galloped away.

Zebulon was relieved. He preferred to be alone. It was a condition that he had longed for ever since his days on The Rhinelander: to know that his feet were once again planted on the earth; to stare into his own campfire, or, if his mood shifted, ride back to Colorado or Mexico or some place off the map. He was finished with people and their wants, who says what, who's going where and why. It was enough to survive. The chasing and finding was for others. The problem was.... But the thought evaded him.

He rode past an Indian's severed head displayed on a stake beneath a faded sign:

BAD HOMBRES AND DOINS NOT TOLERATED PAST THIS POINT.

In the fading light, dozens of ghostly figures were floating around campfires in front of the Fort. "Like soldiers from a defeated army," the Count had said. He remembered Delilah on the steps of the Vera Cruz hotel, staring at him as if he was a ghost. Save me, her eyes had implored. And if you know what cgood for you, stay away.

mile from the fort, he joined a weary procession of Pennsylvania Quakers - the men walking beside half-dead oxen, the women sitting on battered Conestoga wagons, their heads bowed under bonnets, their shoulders covered with thick shawls. They had started their journey over two-hundred strong, and now they were reduced to less than fifty, having been decimated by Indian raids, a Platte River flood, and bouts of cholera and dysentery.

What was left of the fort's iron-studded gate lay on the ground, most of it having been used for firewood. The stench of sewage and rotting food made it almost impossible to breathe. In front of them, a sprawling cluster of shelters and tents had been thrown together from whatever was at hand: old blankets, pants and shirts, wagon slats, broken tables and chairs, and the usual strips of torn, mildewed canvas. The fort's three-foot-thick adobe walls were riddled with bullet holes. On the crumbling bastions, a row of dismantled cannons pointed blown-up muzzles towards an empty sky. Everything else was in motion: cursing women, banging dinner pots, howling dogs, tents raised and dismantled, wagons repaired, mules braying, horses and oxen unyoked and fed.

Further inside the compound, half-naked Indians, all that remained of Sutter's farmhands, knelt in front of a long wooden trough shoving feed and cornmeal into their mouths. On either side of them, drunken men rolled in the dirt, wrestling and slashing at each other with bowie knives and tomahawks. A gunshot was followed by a woman's scream and maniacal laughter. A naked man ran out of a barn waving a frying pan only to be clubbed to the ground by a Peruvian miner. A horse bucked out of a barn. Mormons sang hymns and shouted praises to the Lord, ignoring three prospectors dancing on top of a busted wagon, braying at the full moon.

Zebulon stopped at the edge of a crowd, where a one-armed man in an English top hat held up a shiny new shovel. "Only five of these fine beauties left! Never been used. Pure metal from Vulcan's forge. Can't dig for gold without a shovel, gentlemen. Thirty dollars! Do I hear more? It's good business, gentlemen. Forty to the handsome gent sitting underneath the wagon! You know what it takes to get a box of shovels overland or by sea? Fifty! Do I hear fifty? Who knows when one of these shovels will come this way again. Maybe a month! Maybe six! Maybe never! No shovel, no gold. No gold, and I guarantee it's a long way back to Tiperary. There! At the rear. Fifty dollars. Sold!"

For his next item, the hawker held up a painting of a lascivious ebony nude lying on a sofa surrounded by three Egyptian eunuchs. The roundness of her thighs and breasts reminded him of Delilah.

"The best for last, gentlemen! Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, in her most intimate lair. A welcome companion for the diggings, where a man can go for months without the sight of a woman. This beautiful vision of exotic lust and romance was owned by a Russian count murdered just last week in Calabasas Springs. Before him, she was the proud possession of an English lord. Before that, she was hung in the Queen of Spain's boudoir! We start at a hundred dollars. Over there! Under the wagon. The man in the leather vest. One-fifty...? Two...! Do I hear three?"

The hawker pointed at Zebulon. "You, Sir! In the fancy linen pants! You're obviously a gentleman who knows how to appreciate a great work of art!"

Zebulon kept going, heading towards Sutter's headquarters, the Casa Grande, a crumbling two-story adobe structure with its upstairs windows shot out. Approaching the twenty-foot oaken front door, he stumbled over a Mexican slumped against a wall.

`~Quien es?" The Mexican glanced up from underneath his sombrero, revealing a toothless face marked by an empty eye socket. "You ever get the feelin' that the faster you ride, the longer it takes to get there?"

The Mexican slapped his thigh, doubling over with laughter at Zebulon's startled expression. "You ain't sure if I'm that old Mex from the pueblo, or just another down and out greaser."

"You're Plaxico," Zebulon said.

"And you're Zebulon. The one that's so stuck inside his own nosebag that he can't figure out if he's comin' or goin'. That happens more than you think."

"Hatchet said that?"

"That and other things, like not knowin' the difference between a straight flush and a ditch full of frogs. Quien es? Know what I mean? Who's out there? And if you is out there, where are you headed? Maybe it's time to quit all those questions."

"Where's Hatchet now?" Zebulon asked.

"Most likely lookin' for you. Now that he's done his best to deal with your Pa, you're next in line."

"You're here for the gold?" Zebulon asked.

Plaxico laughed and stood up.

"I ain't here, and I ain't there. Ain't that how the song goes."

He slapped Zebulon on the back, then walked straight across the compound as if he knew where he was going.

Zebulon sat down against the wall. Around him, men and women were spreading out bedrolls, discussing a mudslide near Grizzly Flats, a mother lode on the Yuba, and a hanging at Morgans Flat. A small boy led a crippled horse into a livery stable. A door opened and slammed shut. Then silence, followed by a song drifting across the compound from the Casa Grande: