Sudden Country (6 page)

"Come back," she said.

She added nothing, for she was never effusive about those things that counted highest with her. I noticed then, standing very close to her, that we were the same height.

The fact had not occurred to me before, although it has many times since; and when I think of her now I see her as she appeared that day, with her hair up and ringed in sunlight and her eyes dark and dry in the high color of her face.

Presently Cousin Gertrude came out to kiss Mother and then envelop and slobber over me. I carried the bags inside, endured more of the same, and returned to the trap, too polite to wipe my face until we were away down the street. Mr. Knox, clucking at the team and watching me out of the corner of his eye, took the wrong meaning.

"The homecoming will be sweeter for the bitterness of departure," he said.

We found Judge Blod holding court in a wingback chair in the foyer of the Palo Duro Hotel, illustrating with the tip of his cane a bloodcurdling story for a bored clerk behind the desk and a pair of loiterers who had evidently come in just to use the cuspidor. The Judge was decked out in his clawhammer and waistcoat, with a straw planter's hat whose wide brim made his face look like wicker when the light shone through it. His eyes were as bright as steel bearings.

"And that, gentlemen," he concluded, "is the story you did not read in the journals of how Deputy Marshal Murdock brought the Mercy brothers singlehandedly to their end."

"Horseshit, Judge. They was all three backshot. I seen it in Jack Rimfire 's Own." One of the loiterers gonged the cuspidor. That reminded me of Nazarene Pike; but it was not his voice.

"Believe what you will. Posterity will have it different. And now I must take my leave of your august company, for my associates have arrived."

"What have you been doing besides stretching blankets?" Mr. Knox asked, when the Judge struggled to his feet to shake hands. The loiterers had wandered toward the staircase, most likely in hopes of glimpsing a petticoat descending.

"You catch me at rest for the first time since my arrival," said the Judge. "I've been these three days seeking volunteers. It seems no one is eager to visit the Black Hills as long as this Ghost Dance travesty continues, and I am determined not to mention gold lest we share it with half of Texas." His tone was uncharacteristically low.

"Why not wait until we reach Cheyenne?" asked Mr. Knox.

"I hope to enlist a guide and men seasoned to the country there. However, the picking will be better if we are not merely two middle-aged men and a boy when we arrive. We require men of iron to attract men of iron."

"What progress have you made?"

"I was coming to that. It is either my great good fortune or my curse to have made the acquaintance of someone who boasts a knowledge of the country where we are headed and has offered his assistance in rounding up men at arms. He is a frontiersman himself, and no greenhorn at Indian fighting, should it come to that."

"What does he want?"

"Merely a place with the expedition. He has wearied of the sedentary life, he says, and longs to return to the wide open spaces."

"Surely he has had many opportunities, if he is as experienced as you say."

"Alas, he is no longer young, and disabled besides; but not in such a way that it would hinder either our aims or our progress. He claims to speak the Sioux tongue and wishes to place himself at our service as interpreter."

"This country is full of men who say they can do things they cannot."

"Just so. To hear the man, he scouted for Custer at the Washita and Crook at the Rosebud and captured Geronimo all alone with his bare hands. In his defense, I must say that it is well-nigh impossible to call him a liar in his presence. If he is not the genuine article he ought to be."

"I would meet him."

"And so you will. He operates the Golden Gate Saloon down the street. Perhaps you saw it on your way in." Mr. Knox looked dubious. "A saloonkeeper?"

Judge Blod shrugged elaborately. "If you lusted after the strenuous life, would you not establish a place where those who live it yet might gather and share stories?"

"I would live the life. But I am able and not yet old."

The Judge directed the clerk to send our bags up to his suite and we repaired down the street to a clapboard shack of pioneer vintage with a plank nailed across the front reading THE GOLDEN GATE in Old English letters that had once been gilt, but which had since darkened and flaked away. In places only the faded wood where the paint had once been still rendered the sign legible. The front window was opaque with dust and smoke discoloration, and one of the batwing doors sagged on a cracked leather hinge. As we approached it, a man in a shapeless felt hat and dirty bib overalls hurtled through, caught his toe on the woodwalk, and fell face down in the dust and manure of the street. A big man wearing a striped shirt and red galluses and garters came out and stood over him.

"Who cut the balls off Johnson's bluebellies, you Yankee-loving bastard?" he demanded, and turned back toward the doors. He spied the Judge and stopped.

"Not entirely auspicious," declared the Judge; "but a meeting nonetheless. Mr. Henry Knox, it is my distinct, if peculiar pleasure to present Mr. Benjamin Franklin Wedlock, originally of Independence, Missouri."

"Your humble servant, sir," said the big man, inclining his fair head, which was as broad as any ox's. "Or so my sainted mother taught me to say in social situations."

These I think were the first words I heard him say. My memory of them is not clear, for I was much more attentive to his appearance than to his speech. He had regular, if aging features–somewhat pale, and clean-shaven but for broad burnsides following the curve of his high cheeks. However, the skin on the left side of his face appeared to have been badly burned sometime in the distant past, for although it was smooth and not at all scarred, it was stained dead black in a patch as large as a man's hand. Even so, it was not this that transfixed me, but rather the pale blue eye on that side of his face, a fixed flat thing that did not move when its mate moved, and which was plainly made of glass.

LEAD FLIES AT THE L GOLDEN GATE

"S
peak up, son. It is ungentlemanly to stare." Mr. Knox's words alerted me to the fact that I had been addressed by Wedlock, who was looking down at me now with his good eye turned my way and a guarded smile that showed an even row of white teeth. Still I said nothing. The artificial orb glittered in its ebony setting.

"It's the eye he's studying on," Wedlock said, good humor in his tone. "I'm used to it."

"That does not excuse the behavior," said Mr. Knox. "How did that happen?" I demanded.

"Master Grayle!" Judge Blod began to apologize for my rudeness. Wedlock cut him off.

"The story repeats well. But it ain't for the street. Our throats would all bear sluicing on a day like this, I'll warrant." He opened one of the batwings and held it.

Mr. Knox pointed at the man lying in the dirt, who had begun to stir. "What about that fellow?"

"An insult to my hospitality. He spoke unkindly of General Lee."

"I fought for the Union myself."

"But with respect for your enemy, I'm bound. This heap of stinking guts stayed home and sold shoddy. Because of him our boys fought in rags and he had the poor judgment to call them tramps."

"They did not fight like tramps," said Mr. Knox.

"Sir, you do an old campaigner's heart proud."

The interior of the establishment was cool and dark after the hot glare of the street. It was nearly full at that early hour and an umbrella of smoke hung under the rafters. The air smelled of liquor and damp sawdust and the sour proximity of unwashed men. Behind the bar, over a mirror bearing a lumber firm's advertisement, hung a tattered Confederate swallowtail and a rusty print of Robert E. Lee in an oval frame, the only decorations in the room. Wedlock directed a lean sallow bartender dressed like himself to draw three beers and a ginger beer and carried them to a corner table in back, two mugs to each hand. We sat.

"I was privileged to serve General Jackson at Second Manassas," Wedlock said. "We fit from midafternoon until well past dark and I lost a good horse. McClellan and Banks was in retreat at midnight. The mount I drew to replace old Deuteronomy was skittish and backed up from this here bluebelly–beg pardon, Mr. Knox, Federal–corpse, and I was busy with the reins when that corpse stood up and emptied its Springfield at my face. Wasn't quite through dying, it seems. Well, I was lucky. In the heat of fighting he'd recharged that gun but forgot the ball and all I got was this here powder bum and a hole in my head where the eye was. I wore a bandanna over it through Appomattox and after the war I bought me this eye you see from a china merchant named Melander in St. Louis. It was made in Dresden."

"It is a fine thing," said Judge Blod, who for once seemed at a loss for a prettier phrase.

"What became of the man who shot you?" asked Mr. Knox.

"I had my saber. He wasn't the first man to lose his head in battle." He swallowed half his beer.

"Are you sometimes called Black Ben?" I asked.

"Master Grayle!"

Wedlock gazed at the ceiling with his working eye. The other remained on me. "Not to my face, for certain, or in my hearing. There's them that call a man all manner of things when his back is to them, so I cannot say no and swear to it. Why?"

"I was told by a man who had ridden with Quantrill to watch out for a man with a black mark on the left side of his face and a Judas eye. The name Black Ben frightened him."

"Quantrill, you say? The butcher. You keep interesting company, lad."

"I saw the man who told me that killed. One of the men who did it rode a big blaze-face and had a glass eye."

Judge Blod said, "The boy has an imagination. Pay him no heed."

"I steer clear of horses that ain't all one color," said Wedlock. "They're sore luck."

"You are not an admirer of Captain Quantrill?" Mr. Knox was studying him closely.

"Captain by whose authority but William Clarke Quantrill's? I did not join the War for Southern Independence for his like."

The strength of his feelings was evident in his tone. I was perplexed. "Are there many men who lost eyes during the war?"

"Eyes, ears, limbs–I know of one who gave half his skull to a mortar round and walked about for two years afterwards with his brains showing. Until I left Virginia for good in '66 a whole man was looked upon with suspicion." He lifted his mug. "To the maimed and dead–and them that might as well be." He drank.

"Virginia, you say." Mr. Knox set down his beer. "Judge Blod said Missouri. I hear it in your speech."

"You've sharp ears. My mother took me from Independence at a young age to live with her mother in Roanoke. My father was addicted to strong liquor and answered most questions with his good right hand. I was reared by women from the time I was seven until I turned sixteen and left home. Mind that never happens to children of yours."

I knew his meaning. In spite of myself I had begun to warm to the big frontiersman.

Mr. Knox said, "You told Judge Blod you speak Sioux. Where did you learn it?"

"After the war I took work hauling freight in Nebraska. One day the train was set upon by a band of Red Cloud's warriors. I am the only survivor. An arrow through my short ribs pinned me to a wagon and I'd of got clubbed to death just like the others if I didn't think to reach up and pluck out my eye in front of them savages and stick it back in. Well, sir, that there was big medicine. They taken me back to the village and patched me up and there I stayed, eating dog and dispensing advice, until I was fit enough to make my escape. I picked up the lingo meantime, together with a fair knowledge of injun ways that served me in good fettle throughout the troubles."

"Fascinating," said the Judge; and I could tell by his expression that he was listening with Jed Knickerbocker's ears.

"It is not that I disbelieve you," Mr. Knox interposed. "An old campaigner like yourself must know that frauds abound here. I would hear something in Sioux."

"No offense taken," said Wedlock. Whereupon he paid out a string of guttural intonations of a complex variety that defied question. Even Mr. Knox was impressed. He asked Wedlock what he had said. The saloonkeeper colored slightly.

"Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, or a fair approximation," he confessed. "It was to honor your company and show I've settled that war in my heart."