Sudden Country (8 page)

"Stay between us. Until I have seen how you shoot, I shall feel safer leaving your arms here."

I wanted to tell him that he could not count upon Judge Blod in the event of a scuffle. I kept silent. The truth seemed a violation of the tenets of partnership.

We reached the Golden Gate without incident. Although the front door was secured with an official-looking iron padlock, a light was burning inside. We followed an alley around behind the building, where the back door admitted us into a combination office and storeroom with a cracked oak desk and crates and barrels stacked to the ceiling. It smelled of tobacco and whiskey.

Through an open doorway and out behind the bar. There stood Ben Wedlock's sallow bartender, gripping the pistol his employer had used that afternoon. Its short barrel was trained on us. Neither the Judge nor Mr. Knox had had the opportunity to produce his own weapon.

"Leather that. You'd be shooting the payroll."

The owner of the familiar voice was seated at a table in the corner by the locked door. Even in repose, Ben Wedlock's solid frame might have belonged to a pine Indian but for his fair hair and face, washed out in the light of a Chesterfield lamp hanging by a chain from the ceiling. The false eye glistened against the patch of burned flesh on his face. Scoured sections of the floor and doorframe marked the scene of the violence earlier.

The bartender let down the hammer and returned the pistol to its socket in the row of beer pulls. I heard another hammer sliding into place, noted Mr. Knox's hand in his right pocket, and realized that he had not been as unprepared as I'd thought. The air cleared.

Wedlock bade us forward. Eight men stood in loose single file in front of the table, attired in everything from distressed buckskins to bowler hats and carrying themselves in that peculiar manner that men have when they are armed. The saloonkeeper himself was using an old Remington revolver to hold down a scrap of coarse brown paper upon which he was scribbling with a gnawed pencil stub no longer than his thumb. The effort of writing was clearly a burden, for he was bent double over the sheet and a pale tip of tongue showed in one corner of his mouth.

"Last name?" he asked.

The first man in line unscrewed the cigar from between his teeth and looked at the end. "Pick one. My paw didn't stay long enough to introduce hisself."

"I got to put something down."

"Hell, Ben, just plain Blackwater' s been good enough for you since–"

"Clarence is your Christian, right?"

He chomped down on the cigar. "I don't answer to it."

"Clarence Blackwater then, for the record. Experience?"

"You know all that."

"The record don't."

"I fit with Chivington at Sand Creek and Miles in Montana."

"What else?"

"Let's see, I run a ferry acrost the Muddy by Jeff City till the carpetbaggers shot my pard and taken it over. That was in '68."

"What else?"

"Banking and railroads, I reckon."

The other men in line hooted.

"O.K., find a seat. Next."

Blackwater held the spot. "What's the pay?"

"Paymaster's yonder. Ask him."

The recruit came our way. He was tall and built like stretched rawhide, dressed in homespun with a dirty feather in his hatband. His cigar threatened to ignite a set of black whiskers tipped with gray.

"Fifty cents a day," Mr. Knox told him. "Did I hear you say you were at Sand Creek?"

"Wild'n, that was. I bare hung on to my topknot." He scratched his throat.

"I heard it was a massacre of squaws and children."

"Them newspaper writers wasn't there. Fillersteens, Colonel Chivington called 'em."

"What was that remark about banking and railroads?"

"Just a stretcher, Cap'n. The boys liked it."

"Aren't you rather old for this work?"

"Young bucks got too much to lose. I ain't so old in the saddle."

Wedlock was interviewing the next man in line. He was shorter and stouter than his predecessor and had on a stained linen duster and a hat with a rattlesnake band. He was not much younger than Blackwater, although he had a baby face and no whiskers. He was holding a burlap sack at a peculiar angle from his body.

"Christopher Agnes, you still clubbing rattlers for your supper?"

"Not no more. There's better money in bagging 'em live. I know a man in Frisco can't get enough of 'em. Sells 'em to pilgrims for luck. This'n here's worth two bucks if it's worth four bits." He shoved a leather-gloved hand inside the sack and drew out the largest diamondback I had ever seen, holding it behind its ugly squat head while it coiled its body around his arm. Its rattles buzzed. Every man in the room drew back except Wedlock. The baby-faced man cackled.

"Put that up, Christopher Agnes," Wedlock said calmly. "I'm signing men, not sidewinders; though I'm studying on making an exception in your case."

Christopher Agnes pressed a thumb behind the diamondback's head, popping its fangs. A drop of venom plopped to the table. "Old Ike wouldn't hurt you, Ben. He'd likely curl up and die."

Wedlock picked up the Remington, cocked it, and aimed it at the reptile's gaping mouth. "He'll do it quicker without brains. You'll just go on like always without yours, but it'll smart A snake's head makes sorry cover."

Someone coughed in the silence. After a moment Christopher Agnes cackled again and started to return the snake to the sack. Wedlock took the pistol off cock and put it down. Suddenly the diamondback flexed its body, breaking its owner's grip, and sank its fangs into his forearm. He shouted and dropped the snake. In the next instant, half a dozen guns came out. Old Ike's head was obliterated in the fusillade. It thrashed about for almost a minute, then relaxed with a shudder. The room stank of spent powder.

"Someone get a doctor!" cried Mr. Knox.

"No need." Christopher Agnes finished rolling up his sleeve, unfolded a jackknife from his pocket, and slashed the wound in two directions, making a neat X. He sucked out a mouthful of blood and spat it on the floor. Returning the knife, he took a piece of sticking-plaster from another pocket and pressed it to the wound, holding it there until it adhered. "I been bit I bet a hunnert and sevenny-five times," he said. "First ten or twelve I figured I'd kick over sure. Now I just run a fever. I'll be fit to ride by morning." As he rolled the sleeve back down, I noticed that his arm was mottled all over with X-shaped scars.

Marshal Honyocker came in from the back presently to investigate the shots. Showed the dead snake, he stood sucking a cheek. His spectacles glittered. "Conducting business, Wedlock?"

"This here's a private party," replied the saloonkeeper.

"See it stays private." He withdrew.

After that, the others in line were a blur. Wedlock was interviewing the last man when a newcomer entered. He was slat-thin in clothes that hung on him like wash on a line and his face was a matting of black beard that started just below his eyes and grew down past his chin so that when he grinned, a gold tooth shone like a nugget in a bed of moss. He had a slouch hat pulled low and his right arm hung in a sling of filthy muslin. He was carrying a coiled bullwhip in his left hand.

"Afeared I went and missed it." He squirted tobacco juice into a cuspidor, making it wobble. "Bull's-eye! They ain't ary a soul in Armadillo'd give a honest man the time of night."

His nasal whine had the same effect on me as the shining object in my dream. I grasped Mr. Knox's sleeve. "That is Pike!" I exclaimed, pointing. "The man with the whip the night Flynn was killed!"

Nazarene Pike turned murderous eyes on me. The hand holding the whip drew back. Mr. Knox reached inside his pocket, but before he could bring out the pistol, a metallic crunch announced that Ben Wedlock's reflexes were faster. The Remington was trained on Pike, who froze.

"What's this about killing?" The saloonkeeper's attention remained on Pike, but the question was directed at me.

I glanced at Mr. Knox, who nodded shortly. I said, "He used to ride with Jotham Flynn, the Quantrill man I told you about. He was one of the men who killed him."

"A raider, you say?" Wedlock turned his head my way. Suddenly the whip lashed out, snatching the Remington out of his grasp. Before anyone could react, Pike vaulted the bar and ran out the back. Mr. Knox gave chase, weapon drawn. Presently he returned from the storeroom. "Twice now that man has eluded me," he said. "There will not be a third time. How many other nightriders are you recruiting, Wedlock?"

"None, if I've a voice." Rubbing his hand, he turned to the bartender. "Hold that man for the marshal if he comes back. Shoot him if he gives you cause. I'll have no bushwhackers on this expedition."

"I think it is up to me what we will and will not have," Mr. Knox reminded him.

"Yes, sir. Just looking out for your interests."

"That fellow seemed to know his way about the place."

"I do a good trade here. I cannot answer for everyone who moves in and out."

The schoolmaster pocketed his pistol. "Wedlock, I've reserved a Pullman and a stock car on the ten-ten to Cheyenne tomorrow morning. You will have your band of heroes at the station. Each man will supply his own provisions and mount, or arrange for them in Cheyenne. This should get them started." He removed a sheaf of notes from his wallet and laid them on the table.

Wedlock seized the money. "Count on us."

"I intend to. What became of the Judge?"

"Present." Judge Blod stepped from behind a coatrack. As we went out the back, Mr. Knox asked, "Judge, what have we wrought?"

Behind us, Christopher Agnes was demanding to know who was going to pay him for his damaged rattlesnake.

WE BEGIN OUR QUEST

O
ur group attracted considerable attention at the depot later that morning. Passengers, greeters, and hangers-on forsook their various pursuits to stare at the men in rough clothes carrying rucksacks and blanket rolls, from the ends of which protruded rifles and carbines of every make and manufacture, yet forswore to ask them what they were about. Those in our party who had horses led them to the stock car for loading and stood around pummeling one another and laughing coarsely at tales of past journeys and adventures. Christopher Agnes arrived with a squirming burlap sack and the notion of hawking live rattlesnakes at every stop; after some persuasion by Mr. Knox and Judge Blod and an exchange of money, he released them in a sandy lot nearby and clubbed them to death with a blackthorn stick he carried for that purpose. The snake-catcher complained of stiffness in the arm that had been bitten ten hours earlier, but otherwise appeared no worse for the experience. Of all my recollections from the time, that one is questioned most often. I have never met anyone else who demonstrated immunity to poisonous snakebites.

And the weapons! Amarillo's ordinance prohibiting the carrying of firearms did not apply to men leaving town, and so the parade of long guns and pistols–thrust inside belts, riding in holsters on hips and under arms, or just simply carried by hand–suggested a convention of gunsmiths. In addition to the expected array of Colts and Winchesters, there were Sharps and Remington buffalo guns, Creedmore competition rifles with mounted scopes, LaMatte .36 caliber pistols equipped with secondary barrels that fired birdshot, pepper-boxes, Greener shotguns, Yellow Boy Henrys, and, in the possession of the man called Blackwater, a British Enfield carbine that he insisted had seen action in the Zulu War of 1879, in the hands of a cousin who had sold his services to Her Majesty's army. In the Texas of 1890, large public displays of percussion weapons were confined to hunting parties and not usually on railroad platforms; hence our celebrity. I confess that I myself carried my blanket roll with the Winchester stock exposed rather higher than necessary.

By contrast with all this ostentation, Ben Wedlock cut a subdued figure in an old Confederate campaign hat with the brim tugged down over his Dresden eye and a canvas coat buttoned over a bulge that I supposed belonged to his Remington revolver. He was carrying a McClellan saddle and pouches and leading a sorrel stallion that stood at least eighteen hands high. True to his prejudice, the animal was all one color. The muscles on its flanks stood out like sculpture. I asked Wedlock what he called it.

"Nicodemus. I've had him ten year come August, and I do believe he's commencing to be a patch on Old Deuteronomy." He laughed when the horse whinnied angrily. "Listen to him. He don't countenance being compared."