Mojave (11 page)

Then another part of that conversation run through my memories, and I said, out loud, “Son of a bitch.”

I looked up, saw Klaus Wechsler giving me a cold, mean, arse-whupping stare, which Germans is good at giving. “Not you,” I said as meek as I could make it. He slid the boxes toward me, and I looked at all the money I still had. I pointed at the glass case. “That long-barreled Colt there?” I said. “It shoots the same rounds as the Winchester, ain't that right?”

His eyes still threatened an arse-whipping and he said, in that harsh Hun brogue: “If caliber of Winchester is forty-four-forty,
ja.
”

“How much?” I asked.

He told me thirty-eight dollars, which was practically double what a Colt cost anywhere outside of Calico, California. But Whip Watson had given me a passel of greenbacks.

“I'll take it. And that shell belt hanging on that rack.”

Now, I'd never thought much of men who packed two revolvers and fancied themselves as pistoleers, but I expected I might have need of as many pistols as I could carry, and a Colt Peacemaker sure seemed more reliable than a twenty-five-year old relic from the War of the Rebellion.

So I walked out of Wechsler's gun shop with two guns on my hips, a Winchester in my scabbard, and plenty of ammunition in my saddle bags. Mounted the horse I named Lucky and kicked him into a gallop over to Noel's fancy saloon.

Whip Watson would be in a hurry, and I wasn't gonna burn no more daylight. Because we both knowed what Rogers Canfield had said about Candy Crutchfield. She was bringing her own merchandise into Calico.

And she was planning on taking Whip Watson's, too.

We left Calico with extra canteens—two dollars for a full canteen, ain't that criminal?—grub and grain. Pushed our mounts hard, but Applewhite hadn't lied about Lucky's pluck, and Whip Watson's black mare come full of grit.

I don't think Whip and me exchanged more than a dozen words as we rode back into the Mojave to find our wagon train and Whip's “merchandise.” Then, early one morning, we reined in our already lathered mounts. While Whip stood in his stirrups to make sure he'd heard what he thought we'd both heard, I was already pulling the Winchester from the scabbard. More gunfire sounded beyond the next rise.

With a salty cussword, Whip spurred that mare into a gallop, filling his mouth with the reins and his hands with them two Colts. I was right behind him, slapping Lucky's side with the Winchester barrel.

Topping that knoll, we found Juan Pedro and the boys and them wagons and those four Conestogas, and we also found Candy Crutchfield and her killers and women-nappers.

Juan Pedro had made camp at the bottom. Nice place. Out of the wind. Apt to be a mite cooler. Good place to keep fires concealed, especially if you burned dry wood. On the other hand, it was a bad place to be if you happened to get attacked by thirty villains and one woman, armed with repeating rifles, which was happening when me and Whip rode down into the affray.

The boys I bunk with here at Folsom say that I'm full of horse apples, that this story I'm about to relate to you is something out of some blood-and-thunder, but I ain't writing no five-penny dreadful. This is bona fide. Happened exactly as I'm putting it down. More or less.

Candy Crutchfield's gang had come charging down the eastern side of the hill about the time Juan Pedro and the boys was finishing hitching up the teams. Me and Whip topped the ridge a few minutes later, then rode down the western slope.

Let me tell you about Whip Watson. He wasn't just good with a blacksnake whip, he knowed how to ride. I don't recommend charging down a hill with reins held by your teeth, and guns in both hands, into a fracas like that which had commenced. Man can get killed doing such a fool stunt.

Yet there I was, right off to his left, holding a heavy .44-40 repeating rifle. Granted, I had no intention of shooting from horseback, especially coming downhill, but when I seen some guy in buckskins shoot down one of our boys, and jump onto the lead ox pulling one of our Conestogas, I got riled.

Brung that Winchester to my shoulder, dropped the California-style reins over Lucky's neck, jacked a shell into the chamber, let a bullet fly. While riding downhill.

Missed, of course, and then I was cussing Bug Beard for more than he was worth, because that dumb idiot begun firing his pistol at me.

Not that I blame him none. After all, he knowed he was being attacked by some killers, and here come two guys riding like the devil's on our tails down toward the camp, guns blazing.

“Stop shooting, you damned fool!” I yelled at him, and levered another round. “It's me, you . . .” And I called him every word you won't find in Mr. Webster's book.

He shot at me again.

Then his pistol was empty, and he had to take time to reload, and I got out of his range, galloping toward that man who was getting those oxen to going, and taking one of those wagons right up the hill.

Next thing I knowed, I was flying.

Here's something a rustler here in Folsom told me after I'd related my story of the attack to him. If you're standing in your stirrups and have your pony going at a gallop, he said, that pony is more apt to stumble. He didn't believe my story, neither, but I believe what he said because he is a rustler so he knows horses probably even better than me even though I've been knowed to appropriate other people's horses, and besides that, Lucky stumbled while I was standing in my stirrups and running that gelding at a full gallop, and I went sailing past Lucky's neck.

Luckily for me, I landed in a soft bit of sand, breaking my fall by landing hard on my right arm, but somehow didn't break that arm. Busted my bottom lip, though, and bruised that arm considerable. Come up spitting out gravel and seeing orange dots. When my vision cleared, I seen my Winchester lying a few rods from where I'd struck, and Lucky streaking up the eastern ridge.

Several other horses, a few mules, and one ox bolted after Lucky.

Came up to my knees, and crawled, stumbled, flew, and dived for the Winchester, which I taken up. One of the Conestogas was gone. Cleared the rise off to the north. The other one, the one with the guy on the ox I'd taken a shot at, was clambering. I was aiming at that guy, and figured I might have a chance at hitting him, even though it would be an uphill shot at a moving target and twenty orange dots still clouded my vision.

Didn't get to shoot that dude. A bullet, you see, spanged off a black rock near me, and I jerked away, fell to my side, and cussed Bug Beard again for shooting at me.

The next shot tore a gash in my already perforated fancy hat, which, by some stroke of miraculous intervention, was still fitted on my head. Which, ask me, is another reason you don't need stampede strings, just a hat that fits.

I came up, but my next cuss at Bug Beard died in my throat, because the body shooting at my person wasn't Bug Beard at all, but was a guy in duck trousers and a patch over his eye, and two bandoliers of cartridges crisscrossing his chest. Having never seen him before, I deduced, even under the stress of battle, that he was one of Candy Crutchfield's women-nappers and aimed to kill me.

The Winchester roared, and Bandolier grunted, gasped, and dropped his Spencer repeater, and gripped his belly, which was spraying blood like water from an artesian well. But only for a few moments, because then he wasn't bleeding at all on account that his heart had stopped pumping on account that he was dead.

Whirling back around, I cocked the rifle, but what I saw turned my stomach, and, transgressor that I was, I prayed.

The fellow that had been on the ox rolled down the incline, dead. The team of oxen moved over the hill, but not with the Conestoga wagon. It stood there on the edge of the hill, but just for a moment. Then it began toppling over, and from underneath that canvas cover, I heard those terrifying screams.

“Jingfei !” I shouted, though she couldn't hear me. Nobody could hear me, because there was a lot of shooting going on. I didn't think,
Poor Lucky Ben Wong.
I thought,
Poor Micah Bishop.
Then, despite bleeding lip and aching head and throbbing arm and the occasional orange dot still flashing in my eyes, I sprinted toward the wagon as it rolled over and over, the canvas top flattening, the water barrels rolling off, the tool box breaking open, spokes of the busted wheels flying here and there, and the body of a woman catapulting out of the back, like she'd gotten spit out by the great whale, Moby-Dick.

Was a horrible thing to see. Makes me sick even to write down these words.

As I run, I glimpsed the rest of Crutchfield's men lighting a shuck back over the ridge. One of the Conestogas was gone. Two more remained where they'd been parked. One hadn't moved on account the two lead oxen lay dead in their traces. The other hadn't moved on account that it had been protected by Zeke and Mr. Clark and Juan Pedro.

Dust rose from the wreckage of the last Conestoga as it settled against some rocks. Dreading what I'd find, I stopped a few rods from that shattered mess, and looked at the girl who'd gotten spit out. I seen her blue calico dress, and her yellow hair, and I knowed she wasn't Jingfei. And from how her legs was jutting out from the skirt, and how her head was tilted, I could tell she was dead.

I cussed. Hell, ain't ashamed to admit it, I cried. Turned back toward that mess of wood and axel grease and dirt, and I said, “Jingfei . . .”

“Here I am,” this voice called behind me. I turned and there she was. She'd come out of the Conestoga with the two dead oxen, lifting the bottom of her
changyi,
her feet not wrapped, but bare, her hair not bound but flying behind her like a horse's tail. Her eyes blazed with concern, and she dashed right past me, standing there stunned because I'd figured, the way my luck was going, that she'd be dead, but Jingfei exclaimed, “Help me, please!” She hurried right to that crushed wagon, and I dropped the Winchester and followed.

“Oh!” She stopped, bowed her head, turned her head even, then somehow mustered up all that courage it took, and moved closer. She was reaching down when I got to her, and gripped the muslin cloth we spied sticking out of the canvas. Together we dragged out a chubby redheaded gal with green eyes that was wide open, except the one that was covered with sand. A trail of sand-coated blood come from both nostrils and the corners of her mouth.

Me and Jingfei pulled her body from the wreckage, carried her a few yards, and laid her down as gently as possible on the eastern slope of the hill, so the sun wouldn't shine in her eyes.

I rose, looked around me, saw and heard Whip Watson barking orders, cussing his boys as damned fools. Seen some fellows cutting the dead oxen from the harness. Seen others walking around in a daze, some bloody, some helping the wounded, a few dead.

When I turned back to Jingfei, she was folding the dead gal's arms over her ripped dress, pushing a lock of red hair off the forehead, then closing those green eyes, even the one full of sand.

A moment later, she turned to me. “Her name,” she whispered, “was Aibreann Halloran. She was to marry a miner named Conchobhar O'Flannagáin. She came all the way from New York City.”

I thought that I'd hate to hear what names they'd saddle with their kids, then I felt real bad because that was a terrible thing to think, and then I knowed that she'd never have no children, and that in Calico, Conchobhar O'Flannagáin would be devastated, and then I was wiping my eyes, and Jingfei was telling me, “Come. There is no time for tears. Perhaps someone is alive.”

But nobody was.

We hauled four other girls from that wrecked Conestoga—Annie Mercer, a widow from Liberty, Missouri; Darlene Gould, who had been married twice and had left two kids with her ma in Topeka and would send for them once she got settled with Husband No. III, who ramrodded a borax mine down in Mule Canyon; Chris McGover, who was trying to teach the girls in the Conestoga how to deal faro, which she'd learned from her late husband in Fort Worth, Texas, before he'd gotten shot dead at the White Elephant Saloon; and Molly Reid, jolly and blond and plain and coming from Terre Haute, Indiana, to find her betrothed who was, like her, interested in missionary work—and laid them all beside the late Aibreann Halloran while Whip Watson hollered at Mr. Clark to round up the horses that had scattered, and Juan Pedro barked orders in Spanish at the Mexicans in our bunch.

Finally, we brought down the body of Maud Fenstermacher, the blonde who'd gotten spit out of the wagon, and laid her beside the petite Darlene Gould. Maud's ma and pa had died in St. Louis, leaving her all alone at seventeen years old, and she was to marry a fellow who said he was the marshal of Calico and made three hundred dollars a month, and I thought:
Maybe it's for the best that Maud died here, and didn't get her heart broke because there ain't no marshal in Calico.
Then I got riled and promised to find this Jürgen Baader when I got back to Calico and whup him to a frazzle because if not for him and his lies, Maud Fenstermacher might still be alive in St. Louis.

“It is not fair.” Jingfei reached out her tiny, slender-fingered left hand, and I understood that she wanted me to take it, and I done that. And we bowed our heads, a Buddhist and a backslider, and she squeezed my hand, and she thanked me, and let go, and straightened, and looked real hard and real angry at Whip Watson, who was leading his black mare right toward us, flanked by six other men.

“Are they dead?” Whip shouted.

Didn't think my voice would work, so I just nodded.

Whip took the Lord's name and Candy Crutchfield's name in vain, whipped off his black hat and slammed it to the ground. “That bitch killed six of my girls, made off with six more!” He cussed some more, dropped the reins of the mare, shook his head, and walked over to inspect the dead.

Had his blacksnake whip not been fastened to the horn on his saddle, Whip might have flayed the skin off my back, or anyone else who was handy, just so he'd feel better.

“We have twelve ladies left,” Juan Pedro told Whip. Juan Pedro had been crossing himself and saying a prayer.

“Ladies!” Bug Beard snorted, and I give him a cold stare not for almost shooting me dead, but for being a rude, unclean son of a bitch.

“I want twenty-four!” Whip looked up with those freezing eyes, causing Bug Beard to stare at his dirty boots, then Whip glared at me. Suddenly, he was grinning, looking off to the north, the way Candy Crutchfield's gang had rode off. “No,” he was saying, “I want forty-two.” His head bobbed in agreement with hisself. “Candy's concubines. The six she stole. And the ones we have left.”

Which would actually make it forty-one, but that's because I had turned around and seen Jingfei. She'd moved right around the Whip's boys, who was staring at their boss, and she had gathered the reins to the black, found a handy rock so she was high enough to reach the stirrups, and then she'd swung into the saddle.

Tiny porcelain doll that she was, she give that tired mare a savage kick with her bare heels, and the black responded.

Whip's boys started cussing and scattering as the black mare like to have run over half of them, and even I was jumping off to one side. Zeke had retrieved my Winchester, and he was aiming right at Jingfei, and I stepped up, and caught the barrel with my already bruised right forearm. The rifle boomed, but the bullet went toward a cloud, and I cussed Zeke as a damned idiot.

“You might hit Jingfei!” I shouted.