No Less Than the Journey (17 page)

CHAPTER 29

The day after Wes’s first practice with his gift revolver, he received an unexpected and welcome surprise. Sheriff Marlin had been out of the house for some hours and when he returned he sought out Wes who was seated on the back porch with Old Charlie after yet another session with his new toy.

Seeing the holstered gun on the table in front of him, the sheriff said, ‘How’s the practice coming along, Wes?’

It was Charlie who replied, ‘We won’t be running out of cans just yet, but if we stay in your home much longer there’ll be enough bullets beyond the fence to open up a lead mine.’

‘Well, I just happen to have something here for Wes that will buy enough bullets to serve the Mexican army.’ With this, Sheriff Marlin placed a wad of notes on the table beside Wes’s revolver.

Startled, Wes demanded, ‘What’s this for?’

‘It’s a thousand and two hundred dollars, your share of the reward money that had been posted for the outlaws you put out of action, one way or another, on the Mississippi. Most were wanted in more than one State. Apparently when Marshal Berryman met up with the Arkansas US Marshal he
gave him a list of the outlaws and the names and addresses of those who had helped deal with them. The wheels were set in motion and authorisation given for the reward money to be paid out – or some of it. I believe there’s more to come, so make sure you let me know when you get to wherever you’re going from here.’

Wes was both surprised and relieved to receive the money. He had been concerned that if he did not soon find work he would need to start being careful how he spent the remaining money he had brought from Cornwall. He now felt he possessed a small fortune.

That evening, as Wes, Old Charlie and their hosts finished eating, Wes arrived at a decision. Addressing Nancy, who was seated at the table directly opposite to him, he said, ‘Nancy, you and Howard couldn’t have made me feel more welcome in your home had I been family and I really do appreciate it, but I think it’s time I moved on to find my uncle and get settled into my new life over here.’

Both Nancy and her husband were protesting that he was welcome to stay for as long as he wished, when Old Charlie interrupted them, saying, ‘You know, I was about to open my mouth to say exactly the same thing, when Wes beat me to it! It’s been good to see you again after all this time, Howard, you too, Nancy. There’ll be many a time when I’ll think about you both and be happy for you and what you’ve got here, together, but you’ve both known me long enough to understand how restless I get when I’m surrounded by folks with ways that ain’t mine. It’s time I moved on too. Besides, if I don’t give that mule of mine work to do real soon she’ll be so fat and lazy she’ll be no good to anyone.’

‘Now wait a minute…!’ This from Howard, ‘… Have you two been cooking this up between yourselves? If you have,
you can forget it. Nancy and I both enjoy having you here. You give us new things to talk about to keep us from growing old before our time.’

‘Good! Wes and I’ll write to you from wherever we happen to be and you can call in the neighbours to spend evenings talking about us and our news. No, Howard, like I just said, you and Nancy have given us everything a man could want from friends and I know Wes appreciates it every bit as much as I do … but it’s moving on time for both of us….’

Old Charlie was interrupted by a knocking at the front door of the house. When Nancy answered it, she called back that there was a query at the County Sheriff’s office for her husband.

When the Sheriff left the house with the caller, Nancy said to Wes and Charlie, ‘Howard shouldn’t be long. While he’s gone I’ll be clearing the table and washing up. You two take a couple of beers out on the porch and we’ll join you when he gets back.’

When the two friends had carried their beers to the porch and settled back in their seats, Wes said, ‘I’ve been thinking, Charlie … now I have a bit of money to see me along for a while, I think I might head for Abilene before going on to Denver.’

‘Well now, why aren’t I surprised? Mind you, if I had a woman in Abilene who looked at me the way I seen that half-Mexican girl look at you, maybe I’d be doing the same. Still, I’m a mite disappointed. I’ve been thinking too and I came up with an idea that could turn you into a tolerable gunman by the time you reach Colorado.’

‘What is this idea of yours?’

Old Charlie had fascinated Wes with his reminiscences of a way of life that, if not already gone forever, was fast disappearing. It would not be long before there were no men
like him left. He wanted to hear what he had intended suggesting.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Charlie replied. ‘You probably wouldn’t have gone along with it anyway.’

‘Tell me what you had planned and I’ll tell you what I think of the idea. I’m not tied to getting anywhere at a particular time, especially now I have a bit more money to help me last out.’

Old Charlie’s pleasure showed – and it made Wes feel guilty. He had pushed the old man into telling him what he had planned more out of curiosity than for any other reason. Now he saw it really mattered to him.

Wes realized that, despite his companion’s oft-expressed aversion to human company, he was a lonely old man. It was possibly the knowledge that he was growing old and the thought of dying alone somewhere …

‘You really want to know?’ His companion’s question jolted him out of his thoughts.

‘I wouldn’t have asked you otherwise,’ Wes lied.

Leaning forward in his seat eagerly, Old Charlie said, ‘You seem to be interested in the old days of the frontier, so I was going to give you a chance to learn about it for yourself. To see how we lived then … and at the same time get in some practice with that fancy six-shooter of yours.’

‘I don’t quite follow you, Charlie. How are you suggesting I might do all this?’

‘By going to Colorado
my
way. By forgetting all about railroads and riverboats and travelling across country, shooting our meat as we need it and perhaps buying another mule to carry whatever other supplies we might need – with perhaps a few trinkets as presents for any Indians we meet up with along the way.’

Wes had very real doubts about Old Charlie’s idea and the
two men were still discussing it when Howard returned, his business having taken less time than anticipated.

He asked what the two men were looking so serious about and when Wes told him, the sheriff shook his head. Addressing Old Charlie, he asked, ‘When was the last time you made a journey like that, old man?’

‘What’s it matter?’ Charlie retorted, stung by being called an “old man”. ‘It’s a journey I’ve made many times – or journeys like it.’

‘That’s not what I asked,’ Howard persisted. ‘Have you made that particular journey since the war ended?’

‘No, but …’

Interrupting him, Howard said, ‘When you went East with Buffalo Bill, did you travel with your eyes closed all the way?’

‘I didn’t need to, I travelled in a box car with Nellie – my mule.’

‘So you didn’t see very much of the country through which you were travelling?’

‘I saw enough to know I didn’t like it. Too many folk for my liking.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to say to you, Charlie. Times have changed – and they’ve changed fast. Dammit, old-timer, surely I don’t have to tell you that? You’ve brought old Nellie all the way from the East. Were you able to ride her cross-country?’

‘Not very often,’ Old Charlie admitted, ‘There were too many homesteaders sitting on a couple of hundred acres and making out they owned the whole blame country. I had to travel on their roads … but that was the East and it’s always been like that.’

‘That’s just it, Charlie, it
hasn’t
always been like it and it’s no longer just in the East that things are that way. The frontier’s been moving west so fast we haven’t been able to keep up with it. There are so many folk in Missouri now that a buffalo
couldn’t move ten paces without treading on someone.’

As he listened to Howard talking, Wes was watching Old Charlie’s changing expression. Now he asked the sheriff, ‘How far west would a man like Charlie need to travel before he got to the sort of country he’s looking for?’

The county sheriff thought for a while before replying. ‘Well now, Missouri’s pretty well settled, so too is East Kansas – and the Kansas Pacific railroad has hatched out a heap of homesteads clinging to it like a string of toad spawn almost all the way to the Smoky Hills.’

Wes had no idea where the Smoky Hills were but he was beginning to form a mental picture of the land that lay between the town where he now was and the mining area in Colorado to which Peter Rowse and the other Cornish miners had gone.

Speaking to Howard, he asked, ‘How far is it from here to Abilene?’

The question took the county sheriff by surprise but, after only a moment’s thought, he replied, ‘About four hundred and fifty miles, I reckon. Why…?’

Instead of replying, Wes asked him a second question, ‘How about the distance from Abilene to Colorado?’

‘To Denver, where your uncle has gone, must be much the same distance, I guess … but why do you ask?’

‘Because I’ve just had an idea,’ Wes replied.

Turning to Old Charlie, he said, ‘You want to go overland to Colorado and I’ve decided to go by train. Now, why don’t we meet each other halfway, Charlie? Why not travel by train to Abilene together – through the country that’s already settled and fenced off – then, once we’ve reached Abilene and I’ve had a chance to talk to Anabelita we could go on to Colorado – but this time travelling the way you say you want to? Along the way you could teach me what you think I ought to know about
using a handgun.’

Old Charlie’s immediate reaction was to turn down the suggestion outright. Shaking his head vigorously, he said, ‘Me and Nellie travel across Missouri on a train? No, boy, it would be more than either of us could bear. You take the train to wherever you want to go, me and Nellie’ll take our own time getting to Denver and I’ll look you up when we get there.’

Sheriff Howard Marlin now came into the discussion on Wes’s side, saying, ‘Wes’s suggestion makes a whole lot of sense, Charlie – as you’d agree if only you’d think about it. Missouri’s a settled State now, with sheriffs, town marshals, deputies and policemen every way you turn. You come through their territory trying to live the way you did forty, thirty – or even twenty – years ago and you’ll get yourself arrested. It wouldn’t matter to them that you’ve been a trapper, a scout for the army, or a mountain man. To them you’d be a hobo, someone with no work and no home and they’d throw you in gaol. Is that how you want to end up, Charlie? Getting yourself arrested because you don’t belong any more to the world in which folks like them are living?’

Sheriff Marlin shook his head, ‘I don’t think so. You just put your mind to what Wes has suggested and you’ll see that it makes a whole lot of sense. He’s giving you an opportunity to do what it is you want to do for perhaps a last time – and enjoy his company while you’re doing it. Given the choice, I know what I’d do.’

CHAPTER 30

‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into travelling on this damned contraption! If the Good Lord had meant us to get around like this he’d have made us with wheels instead of feet and laid rails all over his earth.’

Wes grinned at the grumbling of his companion, ‘Having wheels for feet and going around on rails would have been all right for bandy-legged old timers like you, Charlie, you’d have been quite comfortable going around with a wheel on each rail, but it might have proved hard on the rest of us.’

The two men were talking on the ore-train that ran from Iron Mountain, as it rattled and swayed its way along the track that would take it to St Louis.

The attack on the Union Bank in Potosi had produced the result predicted by Sheriff Howard Marlin. Faced with the prospect of having no money to sustain their families, the miners had gone back to work, ignoring the exhortations of Kauffmann and the other union leaders.

Whoever had planned and executed the bank robbery, the result had certainly done a great favour to the mine owners.
The miners’ union had suffered a humiliating defeat and it would be many years before they regained the absolute power they once held over their members.

There were very few miners on the train, but the ride was no more comfortable for passengers than it had been on Wes’s previous journey.

‘How much longer do we have to put up with this misery?’ Old Charlie was grumbling once more.

‘We should arrive in St Louis in another fifteen minutes, or so. We’ll then have a couple of hours on our hands to get to the Kansas Pacific station, buy a ticket and get the train to Abilene. You’ll find it more comfortable once we’re on board a proper train.’

Wes’s hopes that boarding a main line passenger train would satisfy his travelling companion were soon shattered. The Kansas Pacific line was popular with settlers heading west and the long carriages were packed with men, women and children – a great many children. Most were immigrants to the United States, with their belongings. These new arrivals to the country were particularly excited to be coming towards the end of the greatest adventure of their lives.

Even Wes, inured by virtue of his sea voyage to America to the chatter and presence of a surfeit of fellow beings, found so much loud and unintelligible conversation difficult to endure. Old Charlie declared it to be intolerable.

Taking his bedroll, the old mountain-man decamped at the first stop, announcing that he would spend the thirty hour journey with Nellie, his mule, in the boxcar at the rear of the train.

Unfortunately, Nellie was even less enamoured than her owner with the accommodation offered by the Kansas Pacific
railroad – and with the equines brought on board the train at Jefferson City to share her accommodation.

She threw a tantrum.

Soon after the train arrived at Sedalia, the conductor came through the carriage calling for ‘Wesley Curnow’.

When Wes identified himself, the conductor asked, ‘Are you a friend of that cantankerous old-timer who’s dressed up like a “squaw-man”?’

Wes did not know what constituted a ‘squaw-man’, but he thought he recognized the description of a ‘cantankerous old-timer’.

‘If you’re talking about Charlie Quinnell, yes, I’m a friend. We’re travelling to Abilene together, but he decided to spend the journey with his mule in the boxcar at the rear of the train.’

‘You might be travelling to Abilene, but your partner isn’t … leastways, not on this train – unless he agrees to shoot that mule of his!’

‘Shoot Nellie?’ Wes was aghast. ‘He’d shoot you – or even me before he’d do that. But what has Charlie, or his mule, done to upset you?’

‘The old-timer’s done nothing – apart from giving me a lot of lip – but that mule of his…! The Kansas Pacific spent a lot of money fitting out a boxcar with stalls to accommodate horses in damn near as much comfort as the passengers. It’s worked out well for as long as I’ve been conducting on this line – until that mule came on board. The brute has kicked out one side of its stall, bit the ear off a deputy marshal’s horse and lamed a top rodeo horse that’s on its way to perform at the Kansas City fair. It’s a good thing your partner has agreed to leave the train here, at Sedalia. If he hadn’t, the railroad would have taken him – and his mule – before the court in Kansas City.’

Wes was appalled, but his primary concern was not with
the rodeo horse, or the Kansas Pacific railroad.

‘How far are we from Abilene?’ He asked the question as he began gathering belongings from the rack above his head.

Shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly, the conductor replied, casually, ‘Somewhere about two hundred miles or so, do you have a horse in the boxcar?’

When Wes shook his head, the conductor said, ‘Then I guess you’ve got a long walk ahead of you.’

By the time the cattle town of Sedalia was behind them, Old Charlie’s mood had undergone a dramatic change. From being angry and resentful of the threats made against Nellie and being thrown off the Kansas Pacific train, he now looked about him appreciatively. ‘This is the way a man should travel in America, Wes. Sniffing God-given air and admiring what the country has to offer, not shut up in some prison-on-wheels with a crowd of strangers who have no appreciation of the country they’re travelling through and who just want to get to where they’re going so they can make it exactly like the place they’ve been in such a goddam hurry to get out of!’

Wes shifted his bulk in a bid to make himself more comfortable on the unfamiliar cowboy saddle, which was all that had been available at the Sedalia stables from which he had purchased the mare he was riding.

Advice on the purchase had been given by Charlie who succeeded in driving a hard bargain with the stable owner. The old man was well pleased with the beast, telling Wes he now owned as fine an animal as any he was likely to come across during his travels in the Territories.

Settling down in his saddle once more, Wes asked, ‘How long is it going to take us to reach Abilene, Charlie?’

‘We’ll be there in about a week,’ the old man replied.

‘A week!’ Wes repeated bitterly, ‘I’ll arrive to see Anabelita,
dirty, tired out and …’ shifting his weight again, ‘… most probably saddle-sore. The train would have got us there in another fifteen hours, or so.’

‘So? What’s a week out of a lifetime? By the time you reach Abilene now you’ll be more suited to life in the West than when you started out – and if you travel on to Colorado with me you’ll be able to hold your own among the best – or the worst – of the gunmen you’re likely to come up against there.’

‘I’ve no intention of “coming up against” anyone, Charlie, certainly not with a gun in my hand.’

‘Then I suggest you turn right around now and go back East. Where you’re heading a man needs to prove himself and earn respect from others if he’s to survive. Aaron says you have guts and are a good man to have around when there’s trouble. He knows men, so I’m happy to go along with that, but out in the Territories you’ll need to prove it to men who ain’t so easy to convince – and unless I can teach you how to do it you’ll not live very long.’