Doubtful Canon (6 page)

Two horses stood hobbled in the rear of the car, with sacks of something stacked two feet high in one corner, the floor covered with old hay. The place had a musky smell. “’Bout an hour or so, we’ll hit Stein’s, be that much closer to my gold,” Whitey Grey said. “Yes, sir, ol’ Whitey Grey knows….”

He sprang to his knees, still holding the burning paper, then he swore, passing the makeshift torch to Jasmine, who was nearer, and, gripping his left hand on the wall, he leaned out. The train lurched, and he let out a girlish shout, almost fell from the train, slowly picking up speed. He swore again.

At last, I heard it.

“Wait for me! Don’t leave me! It’s me, Ian Spencer Henry! Wait! Wait up!”

“Fool kid. He’ll wake up half the town. Hand me that fire.” He snatched the paper, waving it frantically outside. “Best hope nobody sees this but him. Here, boy! You see my li’l’ torch. Run to us. Run! Hurry!”

More speed, and then the paper flamed up, and out, but I could see the outline of Whitey Grey leaning out of the opening, his right hand stretching into the darkness.

The rhythm of the
clicking
wheels picked up tempo. The freight rocked as the train’s speed increased.

My heart pounded.

“Run, Ian Spencer Henry!” Jasmine yelled. “Run!”

“I can’t see y’all no more!”

“Run! Run!” I shouted.

“Hurry, boy! Watch them rails. Get run over, it’ll mangle you somethin’ fierce!”

“RUN!”

Clickety. Clickety. Clickety.

Faster. Faster. Faster.

Whitey Grey groaned, leaned forward. “Just one more….”

And…he was gone.

A crash sounded, faint above the metallic noises of the train, followed by a curse, then Ian Spencer Henry’s scream.

“Oh, no!” Jasmine yelled.

The freight rocked violently now, the wind blowing into the open car. In the darkness, cold wind numbed my face as I looked outside, but saw nothing.

“JACK! JASMINE!”

It was Ian Spencer Henry’s voice.

“Shut up, kid!” Whitey Grey yelled back. We could just hear them over the train. The whistle blared again.

Both still lived. I mouthed a quick prayer.

“What’ll we do, Jack?” Jasmine asked me, her voice so close, I was startled and almost fell off the rolling train.

The question took me by surprise.
What now? Indeed!

The train lurched, wobbled, sped.

“JUMP! GET OFF THAT TRAIN!” Whitey Grey screamed, ignoring his own admonishments for quiet, but his voice sounded fainter, growing farther and farther away.

While the train rolled faster, I felt Jasmine’s hand grab mine.

“Jack?” she asked.

I peered into the darkness, wind whooshing through my hair.

“JUMP!” the albino screamed. Ian Spencer Henry echoed his voice in a distant shout.

Jump.

I looked at Jasmine Allison, saw only a faint outline. I squeezed her hand, felt her return the action, and without a word, as the whistle blared somewhere ahead of us, we leaped into the nothingness.

Somewhere, during our brief flight, Jasmine and I had let go of one another. Probably a good thing, for I surmise we could have broken our arms, and it’s a miracle neither of us cracked our necks, or any bones, in the mêlée that followed. I landed on my feet. At least, I think I did, immediately ricocheting off the sand and brush, spinning head over heels in the air, to crash even harder on my back, tumbling here and there, a roaring in my ears—perhaps that sound came from the train, now speeding along at close to fifteen miles an hour—as I bounded, rolled, and ached my way near the rails. I seem to recall seeing the light from inside the caboose as it rolled on past. Maybe, though, I just saw stars.

In any event, I slid to a rest on my face, head pounding, ears ringing, nose and lips leaking blood and sand, both ankles throbbing. I pushed myself up on my arms, gasping for air, shaking my head, spitting out sand, then fell face down again.

“No time for that, boy. We gots to move out
muy pronto
on the ankle express.” The voice, Whitey Grey’s, sounded so far away, but the toe of his shabby boot felt all too near when it poked my aching ribs.

“Ups. Run, boy. All of you! Railroad curs is comin’!”

Barks and shouts penetrated my ringing ears. Opening my eyes, I made out a torch, then another, heard an Irish voice curse the Apaches, which startled me before I understood that the men from the Lordsburg depot thought
we
were the Apaches.

“Come, on,” a gentler voice whispered, and Ian Spencer Henry helped me to my feet. Weaving unsteadily, I took a few tentative steps before remembering something.

“Jasmine?”

“I’m all right,” she said a few rods up the tracks. “Think I am….”

The albino swore another oath, then his footsteps sounded as he ran westward into the night.

Savage barks. More shouts. The torches kept creeping closer. Swallowing blood and sand, I suggested that we follow the albino. “Can you run?” I called out to Jasmine.

Her footsteps answered me.

Dawn found us by the
playas
southwest of Lordsburg, where I saw, in addition to felt, just how hard a tumble I had taken. Dried blood, peppered with sand, caked the left side of my face, and the shape of my nose told me it had been broken. The pinky finger on my left hand seemed crooked, and I couldn’t bend it, the palm badly skinned, while my right shirt sleeve was torn into strips, arm and hand criss-crossed with scratches. My ankles still hurt, but if I had walked five or more miles, nothing had been busted.

Cool, alkaline water burned my hands as I dipped them into the water, shattering my reflection, and began to wash my face and slake my thirst.

“Fall rains, summer monsoons been good,” Whitey Grey said. “Water ain’t always so plentiful, but don’t drink too much of it.”

He didn’t have to warn me. The salty water burned more than relieved, but at least it reduced my swollen tongue’s size.

“Tolerable.” Ian Spencer Henry, acting like some savvy frontiersman in a Beadle and Adams half-dime tale, spit out a mouthful. “I’ve had worse.”

With a grunt, Whitey Grey opened a pewter flask, which contained something even stronger than the
playas
offering of water.

“We have to cross…
that?”
Jasmine’s face paled.

She hadn’t been banged up as much as I had. Oh, her sleeves were ripped, and bruises were beginning to form on her forehead and hands, and she walked gingerly, favoring her left leg. I followed her gaze, staring across the flat, hard land beyond the small pool of water. We stared off into
Valle de las Playas,
an infinity of nothing, the sand already reflecting the rising sun’s heat. Even in early October, crossing the old lake bed could be like stepping into a furnace. The water I had just drank no longer tasted so bad, but I remembered Whitey Grey’s warning, and knew he was right. Too much would make me sick.

When my father still dreamed and acted like a father, when we had first arrived in Shakespeare, he had told my mother, sisters, and me all about the great dead lakes between Shakespeare and Arizona Territory. Once, he had said, more than 12,000 years ago, these lakes had been as vast and full and magnificent as the Great Lakes of the north, filling much of the basin. Yet the climate had changed, warming and warming until southern New Mexico became an arid wasteland. Streams and lakes dried, leaving nothing but flat beds hard as nails, uncompromising, unforgiving. Water returned only during spring snow melt or from the violent thunderstorms, usually in late summer, and even then the liquid only lasted a brief while before disappearing into the desert.

Whitey Grey had been right. We were lucky to find water here.

He had led us—no, that’s not right. He had taken off, to save himself, and we had followed, to save ourselves. I thought back to that night. For some reason, the dog, or dogs, had kept their distance, as did our human pursuers. Whitey turned north from the rails, and Jasmine, Ian Spencer Henry, and I stumbled along after him, darting through cactus and brush, in and out of arroyos, eventually turning back south and west. We had stopped only once, and now our pursuers had given up their search and retired back to the comforts of Lordsburg. With the skies turning gray in the east, we had slaked our thirst slightly from Ian Spencer Henry’s canteen.

Jasmine had left her canteen in the freight car. Mine lay somewhere along the tracks of the Southern Pacific, along with my war bag of clean clothes, jerky, and sardines.

“Bet you’re glad I come along,” my friend had said. “Else, you’d be a mite parched.”

He reminded us of our luck now, sitting on the edge of the
playa,
holding up his canteen for Jasmine to see. “Don’t worry, girlie,” he said, imitating the white-skinned treasure hunter, “I got a canteen, and I’ll share.”

This led to a snort from Whitey Grey. “Hey, what happened to your gear? Your water? Y’all had it back in town. I knowed ’cause I heard it sloshin’ all night when we was walkin’ up from Shakespeare.”

When we informed him of our losses, he cursed and let the flask disappear into his pocket. “Well, by my boots and socks, that just ’bout tears it. Water’s life in this country, chil’ren.” His head shook savagely and he let out a mirthless laugh. “I can hear Scott McKenzie up in Detroit, sayin’ what a fool I am, and I’ve half a mind to agree with him. Ain’t nobody would blame me none if I let you fools fend for yourselves out here, just struck out on my own. Nobody would blame me. They’d say ol’ Whitey Grey finally showed good sense.”

“I got mine!” Ian Spencer Henry proudly held up his canvas bag and canteen.

Yeah,
I thought,
but what’s in that bag? Dime novels and nonsense?

Unimpressed, Whitey Grey spat. “What do I need you chil’ren for anyway?”

That’s a question I had always wondered. He stood, his knees popping, and slapped dust off his hat. He had taken quite a violent spill when he had slipped—or Ian Spencer Henry had pulled him—off the train, and his cuts and bruises looked much more fiendish against his deathly pale skin.

“One canteen. Well, you ain’t havin’ none of mine. That’s for certain sure. Nary a drop. You can fetch some for yourself when we reach Stein’s Peak or Doubtful Cañon. If we reach it…if you reach it…alive.”

Ian Spencer Henry hesitated, then topped off his canteen with the alkaline water of the lake.

“We ain’t crossin’ that country,” the albino said, his voice softer now, his wrath lessened. “Not all of it, nohow. We’ll cut south now, head back to the S.P. Maybe I’ll get lucky, for once.”

And, for once, luck shined on Whitey Grey. We had made it back to the Southern Pacific, began pushing our weary bodies westward along the tracks, benefiting from a cloudy day. Maybe we had walked another mile or two when the albino stopped, stared, rubbed his eyes, then gripped the butt of his revolver.

The sight took me by surprise, too, when I peered around Whitey Grey’s back and down the tracks lined with telegraph poles on one side, and nothing on the other. At first, I took it to be a mirage, some apparition, as my mouth hung open. Behind me, I felt Jasmine’s arm on my shoulder, then heard Ian Spencer Henry’s question.

“Should we hide?”

Two of the oddest conveyances I had ever seen came barreling down the tracks, straight for us. Understand, I had grown up around the railroads but had never spied anything like those two three-wheeled vehicles headed our way, one driven by a man in striped denim britches and an Irish woolen cap, the second by a red-bearded man wearing a dun-colored cap.

Not exactly bicycles. Certainly not the boxy handcars with pump handles often used by railroad construction crews. Oddly silent. The driver sat between the two-wheeled bicycle-like machine—it didn’t look comfortable—with an axle extending from just behind the front flanged wheel and across the tracks, where the third, much smaller, wheel, also flanged, rolled along the far rail, I presumed for balance. The only noise came from the drivers, grunting from the push-pull motions it took to run the fantastic devices.

The first man saw us and yelped at his trailing comrade, who stood up a bit on the pedals, then pulled a lever-action rifle from behind his seat. Their vehicles slowed, but the first man, still staring at us, said something else, and the red-bearded man nodded. On they came, slowing as they neared.

“Hide?” Finally Whitey Grey answered Ian Spencer Henry’s question with a sarcastic laugh. “From salvation?” He stepped forward, releasing his grip on his revolver, removed his battered hat, and waved it toward the men.

“Hallooooo!” he called out. “You’re a sight for God-fearin’ eyes.”

“I…how…what on earth?” The red-bearded man removed his cap and scratched his bald head. The man in the striped britches and woolen cap found himself equally at a loss for words.

They stepped off the vehicles as if dismounting a horse, the red-bearded man keeping his rifle ready, but never pointing it toward us. Whitey Grey laughed and slapped my back so hard, I almost fell to my knees. Next, he offered his right hand to both men, who reluctantly took it, if only briefly.

“Never seen nothin’ like ’em things afore,” Whitey Grey said.

“New,” the first man said. “From the George S. Sheffield and Company of Three Rivers, Michigan. They call it a velocipede car.”

The brace connecting the third wheel, less than a foot in diameter, held the velocipede, with its 24-inch wheels, upright. Ball bearings, a driving chain and gears, handlebars, cranks, and pedals. Progress amazed me. The first man patted his ride. The second looked more interested in keeping the rifle handy, ready.

“’Tain’t no mule or horse,” Whitey Grey said, still staring at the velocipedes. “Michigan, eh? I was up in Michigan a spell. Detroit. Too cold for my likin’.”

“Mister,” the red-bearded man said, his voice on the surly side, “what are you-all doing out here?”

“Caught these here runaways,” the white-skinned man lied. “Run off from the orphanage in Shakespeare. I’m supposed to deliver ’em to this nun or her hired boy at Stein’s Peak.”

“Orphanage?” the striped-britches man said in astonishment. “Shakespeare?”

The man with the rifle said: “Stein’s?”

“Yeah,” Whitey Grey said, and his ability at telling lies, his embellishments, and fast-thinking astonished me. “I wasn’t sure when or where I’d catch up with these here chil’ren. I tell you, boys, they was a-footin’ it. Almost made it to Silver City afore I slicked ’em. That’s why I’m supposed to meet that sister at the station in Stein’s. Lost my horse ’bout ten miles north of here. I’d be grateful if you could let us borrow ’em centipede cars and deliver ’em. That nun, I mean she’s worried sick. Frail thing. Must be nigh eighty year old.”

“Shakespeare?” the first man repeated.

The second man’s finger slipped inside the Winchester’s trigger guard.

“They’s a reward,” Whitey Grey said. “Hunnert dollars. I be of a mind to split it with you, say give you each twenty-five.” He slapped his hand on his dusty britches. “Or even just rent ’em things…I’ll need both of ’em with these chil’ren…for fifty and give you a little rye whiskey for the walk home. Either way you fancy it.”

The second man put his thumb on the rifle’s hammer.

The first man said: “Mister, there ain’t no orphanage in Shakespeare.”

“Not a real one,” Jasmine fired off. “Not officially. It’s part of the church.” She kept adding to her lies, and I found her pretty skilled at it, too. Ian Spencer Henry’s mouth fell open in wonderment. I watched the two strangers, their eyes full of suspicion.

“They just started in within the last month,” Jasmine said. “To help all the kids who lost their parents. Big cave-in, you know. And a diphtheria epidemic. You-all haven’t heard?”

Even Whitey Grey looked puzzled.

“I don’t want to go back,” Jasmine added. “They beat me. See.” She showed her bruises and the cuts on her hands.

The first man asked Jasmine: “What church?”

“Methodist.” She answered too fast, without thinking, and I cringed. My friend’s newfound ability at lying had limits.
A nun at an orphanage run by Methodists?
I thought angrily.
Come on, Jasmine. Think!

“Little sister,” said the first man, “there ain’t no Methodist church in Shakespeare.”

“It just started,” Jasmine tried.

“Ain’t no Presbyterian church. No Catholic. No Israelite temple.”

“No God in Shakespeare, neither,” the second man was saying, and in a quick motion his rifle bore now trained on Whitey Grey’s gut.

The silence that followed didn’t last long, for suddenly Whitey Grey let out a loud howl, and ran his rough fingers through Jasmine’s hair. “That was a good try, li’l’ girlie.” He patted her head, slapped his hat on his head, and nodded at the two railroaders. The Winchester, however, never moved.

“Mister,” the first man said, “you best tell us the truth. What in the Sam Hill are you and these kids doing out here? No more lies. Max and me, we’re in a hurry to get to Lordsburg alive.”

“Thought you might be Apaches,” said the man called Max. “You look like you run into some.”

“Apaches?” Whitey Grey chuckled again, but he wet his lips and looked concerned more than irritated. “What you talkin’ ’bout?”