Mojave (5 page)

They were making a beeline for one of them Conestoga wagons.

Hopeful that I'd dream of Jingfei, I lay myself down to sleep, but my luck wasn't changing none, though I was alive and not dead. Nope, I didn't dream of that porcelain face and them long, slender, wonderful, flexible fingers. I dreamed of Whip Watson and Mojave rattlesnakes and getting my hide peeled off me by a blacksnake whip. That whip lashed me good, and pain blinded me, got me to screaming my head off. Dreams are funny things. Sometimes you know you're dreaming, especially if it's a real bad nightmare. This nightmare, I knowed that nothing wasn't real, that Whip Watson hadn't flayed off my hide, that I was dreaming, but I thought that I was screaming in my sleep, and that I'd wake up yelling and everybody in camp would know I'd been having a real bad nightmare, and then Bug Beard and Zeke would likely be mad as hell at me for waking them up.

That's when I jerked myself wide awake. Sitting up. Expecting to hear myself scream. Only I woke up in a cold sweat, certain-sure, but I wasn't yelling nothing, and I hadn't woken nobody up because it was already daylight.

Outside of that wagon, however, somebody was yelling. Real, real loud. Next, I heard something else. The sound of a blacksnake whip cracking in the morning air.

Grabbed my hat, pulled on my boots, fetched the Spiller & Burr, and climbed down out of that wagon. Didn't see Jingfei, and I didn't look over toward the Conestogas. I must have been the last one to wake in camp, because twenty-six hombres had made a wide loop around the camp. One of them was Juan Pedro, who grinned and motioned me to hurry and join the morning circle.

The whip spoke again. I caught a glimpse of it above the hats of the burly men.

A man screamed.

Juan Pedro motioned me and mouthed the words
Muy pronto
.

I didn't exactly run, but I stuck the .36 in my waistband, pulled down my hat tighter, and moved toward the men who wasn't saying nothing. Juan Pedro and Cigar Smoker made room for me.

Feet wide apart, hat lying on the ground, Whip Watson was retrieving the blacksnake.

Cigar Smoker wasn't smoking that morning. Nobody was. And nobody had started coffee or breakfast. Cigar Smoker whispered, “They don't call him Whip for nothin'.”

The whip had been gathered up again, and flew again.

The man lying beside the remnants of the fire shrieked.

The man? I hadn't gotten around to naming him. He was on his hands and knees, his hat off, blood and saliva dripping from his torn lips, pooling in the dust underneath him, him crawling around like a dog. The whip lashed out again. He yelped, collapsed, and brung his hands up to cover his head. His hands were bloody heaps. The whip struck again, and he flipped over, arms now stretched out in front of his sweat- and blood-drenched long blond hair. His fingers flexed, pulled at the sand. What fingers he had left anyway. By my count, three was missing, recently sliced off by that blacksnake whip.

“I warned y'all in Prescott that the merchandise is forbidden,” Whip Watson yelled. “Didn't I? I warned every single one of you sons of bitches what would happen. Don't you remember? Conrad here . . . he didn't listen. Didn't believe . . .
me
.”

The whip cut into Conrad's back. He got up, tried to crawl away, but he wasn't making much progress. Fell on his face once when his arms collapsed, and it taken the strength of Hercules for him to lift his bloody face back off the ground. His clothes? Well . . .

It's like this. The shirt he was wearing hung in shreds. Sleeves drug behind his wrists, dirt caking on the bloody cloth as he crawled. And . . . well . . . well . . . you couldn't really tell if what now hung from his back and side was the remnants of his shirt—or slices of flesh.

Again, the whip struck. The man, all screamed out, groaned and fell into the dirt, and rolled over, faceup, eyes closed.

His britches had been cut to pieces, too. They was dragging behind his boots, and his dirty underwear had gotten ripped apart and hung in bloody tatters. Thankfully, the man now seemed to be unconscious.

“Where am I, Mister Clark?” Whip Watson yelled out.

“Thirty-one,” Mr. Clark answered.

“Thirty-two,” Whip Watson said, and the whip ripped at the cloth covering Conrad's groin.

Funny. I'm what most folks call a pagan, an unholy lout, a backslider, but even after running away from the Sisters of Charity and running away from the law for quite a spell, all those years in that orphanage in Santa Fe had an effect on me. Out here in the Mojave Desert, surrounded by strangers, and watching a man whip another fellow to death with a whip meant for oxen, I could hear Sister Rocío reading Second Corinthians to us wayfaring, abandoned young'uns. So right then I prayed—I mean I prayed—that this punishment was “forty stripes less one.” And I hoped Conrad wouldn't get beaten with rods and stoned after those thirty-nine lashes.

“Back in my youth,” Whip Watson said as he brought up the whip, “everybody bragged—only it wasn't brag, but fact—that I could knock a horsefly off an ox's ear without touching the ear.” He leaned back, smiling, focusing on Conrad's exposed privates. “And the
cajones
on a
cabrón?
” The whip flew.

My head turned away.

“You watch this, damn you!” Whip Watson roared. “You watch, Mister Clark! All of you! Watch and learn!”

I spit out the gall rising from my gut, and somehow managed to turn back to the ugly scene. Wasn't the only one who had looked away. Even Juan Pedro wasn't smiling no more, but biting his lower lip and balling his hands into shaking fists. One fellow—no, it was two—had dropped to their knees and was heaving up last night's supper and Tennessee sour mash.

Six stripes later, it all ended. Whip Watson began calmly coiling his whip, then picked up his hat. Nobody else moved, especially Conrad. By my reckoning, he had breathed his last after the thirty-fourth lash.

“All right.” Whip's voice seemed calm as he adjusted the Boss of the Plains on his white hair. “No breakfast this morning.”

That meant one prayer got answered. I didn't even want coffee. Nobody could eat after that scene, excepting, possibly, Whip Watson.

“Hitch the wagons, and let's ride.”

The men departed, excepting Conrad, who had already departed this world. Standing like a lummox, I watched Whip Watson, now grinning, walk to me.

“How'd you sleep?” he asked.

“Oh.” Had to wait to make sure I wouldn't vomit into my new boss's face. “Fine. I reckon.”

“Good.” He stepped to his side, pointing at one of the Columbus carriages. “You'll take Conrad's buggy. You know how to hitch a team?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Juan Pedro will tell you which horses are yours.”

 

 

I had been right about the livestock. Oxen pulled the Conestogas, big mules got hitched to the other wagons, except for one that got pulled by two bay Oldenburgs, and matched sets of fine horses were for the Columbus carriages.

My buggy had two short-legged Holsteins, brown, better than sixteen hands tall with deep girths and strong shoulders. Spent my time focusing on hitching the two geldings to the carriage, but every now and then I'd glance at one of the Conestogas. Didn't see Jingfei. Didn't spot nobody but Zeke and Mr. Clark as they busied themselves getting four ugly oxen into harness.

Beside me, a young whippersnapper who'd already hitched his two gray Percherons, pulled a rag from his pants pocket, opened a can setting on the front seat's passenger floor, and dipped the rag in that can. He looked at me and said, “Better hurry, mister, get that leather buffed so you can see your reflection.”

Which is when I learned what a hard rock Whip Watson was for keeping his carriages clean.

Rubbing one of the Holsteins' neck, I said, “But we're in the middle of nowhere.”

The fellow was already scrubbing. Kept right on working that greasy rag, but he lifted his head. He had startling blue eyes, reddish hair, and a fuzzy mustache that you could probably wipe off without a razor. I doubted if he was out of his teens. I decided to name him Peach Fuzz.

“Don't matter,” Peach Fuzz told me. The head dropped and he kept on working.

Which is what I was doing about ten minutes later when Whip Watson rode a black mare up beside my wagon. I glanced his way, seen the whip coiled around his saddle horn, and got busier buffing.

“That's fine,” he told me. “Looks real fine. But let's save some of that wax for later.” I stuck the rag in the can and closed the lid, staring up at my boss, and wiping the excess wax off my fingertips and on my trousers.

Juan Pedro galloped over. He rode a nice palomino mustang.

“We ready?” Whip asked.

“
Sí, patrón
.”

“All right.” Whip was leading his black behind my buggy, and I stepped back to see him tethering that fine animal to the late Conrad's rig. “Go steady, but not slow. You know what to do, Juan Pedro.”

“Sí.”

“If anyone gets out of line, kill him.”

Juan Pedro grinned. He hooked a thumb toward the late Conrad's corpse. “I think we will have no more problems of that nature,
patrón
.”

“I hope so.”

Three mule skinners brought four-five sacks from one of the farm wagons, and another had a big bladder of water. These got dropped on the back floor of my buggy which had once belonged to the late Conrad. The skinners weren't thanked, weren't dismissed, just did that chore and skedaddled.

Whip started to get into the carriage, but then he stepped back, back a right far piece, and he cupped his hands over his mouth and hollered, “You men!”

Didn't take no time at all for all them men to finish what they was doing real quick to line up beside their wagons. I took a glance at the Conestogas, but Jingfei did not poke her head out of the canvas. Well, Whip had said,
You men.

“That peckerwood”—Whip gestured wildly toward the late Conrad's body—“was to have been paid two hundred dollars upon reaching Calico. Since he's no longer with us, I will divide the wages I promised him among you. Two hundred dollars divided twenty-eight ways.”

Since there was no abacus in camp, I couldn't quite figure that out—less than ten dollars for certain—and while it wouldn't go far, these men, even Peach Fuzz, had probably killed men for less than that.

One guy called out, “Wouldn't that be twenty-seven ? Since that pecker wood's dead?”

Damned mathematicians.

With an ugly grin, Whip Watson extended a long arm and long finger right at me. “Micah Bishop has joined us,” he said. “He gets the same wages as all of you rowdies.”

Now, if you was to ask me, since Whip Watson had just killed Conrad, it would have made sense just to pay me the dead guy's wages, and not provoke feelings of ill will among my fellow workers.

Whip grinned, and said to me and Juan Pedro: “That should keep them occupied.”

“How so?” asked Juan Pedro.

“Trying to figure out the difference between two hundred dollars divided by twenty-eight and two hundred dollars divided by twenty-seven.” Whip jutted his freshly shaved jaw at me. “That's how much you just cost them.”

I didn't bother trying to cipher that equation. It couldn't be more than a few cents, but this crew appeared greedy.

“Get in,” Whip Watson said to me, and I was happy to oblige. “You drive.”

“Guttersnipe!” Climbing into the driver's spot, I saw the fancy-silk-hat-wearing fellow step from behind one of the Conestogas. He pulled his hat off and made a beeline for my Columbus beauty.

Got me a better look at that tall dude with the beaded headband as he hurried our way, and then crawled into the seat right next to me. He had to duck to keep his head from poking through the canopy, and he had already removed his Abe Lincoln hat—though our late president never wore no headband quite as fancy as the one Guttersnipe had. I figured him to stand six-foot-five without the hat. He was shaped like a telegraph pole, just a regular string bean, hard as juniper and full of knots. Had a thick brown mustache and goatee like the one on Buffalo Bill Cody's chin. Wore a green evening frock coat with red velvet patches on the elbows and outer pockets, tall boots with mule-ear pulls, and two holsters on shell belts strapped across his waist. Since one Colt stuck out one way and the other Colt stuck out the other, I guessed him to be a left-hander.

He settled in beside me and said, “Name's Guttersnipe Gary. But you can call me Guttersnipe Gary.”

“Micah Bishop,” I told him. “You can call me anything you fancy.”

He grunted, pulled a pouch of chewing tobacco from one of the green pockets, and stuffed one cheek.

“Drive over the body,” Whip Watson said from the backseat.

“What?”

“Drive over Conrad's body.” His tone told me he wouldn't answer any more questions.

It was a mean-spirited thing to do, but, well, I had seen my boss work that whip, and I figured he knew how to use his revolvers, and he was behind me and I never fancied getting shot in the back. I released the brake, clucked my tongue, and turned those Holsteins right toward camp.

They weren't keen about the job, those fine horses, what with the blood all fresh and all, but they did it just the same. The carriage tilted a bit, but nobody was for the worser, and them high-stepping horses just went right along out of camp and into the desert with the sun on our backs.

“That'll show them boys that I mean business,” Whip Watson said from behind me and Guttersnipe Gary.

To my way of thinking, whipping the clothes off one of the men, peeling off his flesh, then castrating him before he expired would have showed everybody his definition of business. But what did I know?

“Where we going?” I asked.