The Man Who Lost the Sea (28 page)

Afterward, Conlin got a full report on what Scott had done at Elwood—from Henry Little Hawk, of course. No, Scott had not seen Henry. The little man had squatted under a blanket outside the rear door of the saloon while Scott drank; he had been in a tree outside Flo Connery’s heavily curtained window during Scott’s stop at Miz Flagler’s honkytonk. He had been sitting in the shadow of a packing case across the street when Scott went into the general store and when Scott came out with the schoolmaster; he had come up the alley by the school just in time to see Scott accept a book from the schoolmaster and leave with it.

Scott had cooked and camped once on the way to Elwood, once on the way back. He had seen and spoken with nobody, either time. Yes, Henry had had a word with Flo Connery and with the bartender at the Last Chance Saloon. Scott had been most discreet and had given no information.

Conlin received all this with satisfaction; he picked his men the way he picked his jobs, with care and forethought. He overlooked only one thing, and that simply because not even Henry Little Hawk could be everywhere. He had no inkling that two hours after Scott’s departure the schoolmaster went to the sheriff’s office with Scott’s carefully drafted map of Casson’s Quarry, a neighboring mine and cattle town, complete with the date and time and method of Conlin’s next raid.

Before sundown a deputy was on the stage road to Casson’s Quarry, where, after some quiet discussion, a welcome was secretly and efficiently prepared. They had more than a week to sew up the details, there at Casson’s Quarry, and by the appointed day there were deputies and three sheriffs and railroad men and bank men and even a United States Marshal. Conlin was, indeed, in for a surprise, to discover that a small army knew details possessed, he thought, only by himself and the silent Henry Little Hawk.

And so, for a week after his return, life at the hideout proceeded in its quiet and uneventful way. Scott continued with his bookish visits to Loretta, who was pathetically grateful for the dictionary he brought back with him, and increasingly taken with the worlds she
read about—worlds of fashion, adventure, romance, scandal in high places.

She didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to Scott. Without advance warning the whole gang, except for Henry Little Hawk who had gone on ahead, assembled two hours before sundown, saddled up, and rode. By the time they camped, most of them had a pretty shrewd idea as to where they were going; but nobody said anything about it until sunup, when they squatted around the fire with their black coffee and fatback and listened to Conlin.

“This here Casson’s Quarry,” Conlin said, squatting in front of a clean-swept place in the dust, “is hung on the side of a hill. Most of you been there so you know what it’s like.

“I want you two who ain’t seen it yet to listen even harder; there ain’t nothin’ clumsier than a man who thinks he knows everything.”

He began to draw in the dust.

“This here’s the main drag, they call the Stage Road. The town mostly tapers off gradual to the north and west, but here on the east there’s a hogback that cuts it off real sharp. The Stage Road runs right down to that hogback, and the bank’s spang on the last corner.”

“Now, time was when the stage had to turn north a mile, on a road that angled up the hogback, and then switch back south to get down the other side, windin’ up not forty yards away from the butt end of the main drag. Somebody got the idea of cuttin’ through the hogback so the stage could drive straight through, so they done that, and it’s their pride and joy; they opened it with speeches and all that, and everybody in town was drunk for two days.

“But if you go in town that way—and we do—you get through that cut and practic’ly fall into the bank. We don’t scatter and we don’t filter in, not this time; we go in together, fast and bunched up, and no yippin’ an’ ki-yi-in’, either, hear me, Al? We take the bank and bounce back out again before anyone can so much as start for the sheriff’s office—it’s way the hell up the other end of the street.

“Coe, Ike, Scott—you three go in with me. Moko, you and your brother ride right past the front and down the alley at the other side and flush out anybody you see there. Go right around the back and
around the bank to the front again and cover us—we ought to be out by then.

“Then we bunch up again and out we go through the cut. You all got it straight in your minds how to get back? Six of us—we go back six different ways. Just one thing—if you see Henry Little Hawk settin’ on the hitchin’ rail at the bank, go on by and don’t even look at the place. We’ll all go to the Piebald Bar and have a drink and go on home. Is there any questions?”

There were no questions. Conlin stood up and shuffled out the sketch he had made in the dust, and they mounted. They rode west for two miles and then left the trail and entered the woods. It was scramble and duck for a while, and once they had to lead their horses; but at last they emerged on the Stage Road, not a quarter of a mile from the cut.

From the middle of the road they could look through the hogback that barred the way like a high earthen wall, and straight up the main street of Casson’s Quarry. It was all but deserted.

“Hey, Jim—bank open now, you reckon?”

“Sure, Ike. Cattle auction today, and payday at the mines.”

“Don’t see many people around.”

“Let me do the worrying,” said the Badlands Bookkeeper. “Let’s get it done, boys.”

They cantered down the road. They had it all to themselves.

Al Coe moved up beside Scott. “All the same to you, perfessor,” he growled, “I’ll stick by you.”

Scott flicked a glance at him. It was the first time since that talk in the bunkhouse that Coe had said more to him than “Pass the salt.”

“Help yourself, Coe,” drawled Scott, “I ain’t afraid to ride next to a target like that pretty hat.”

“I don’t figure they’ll shoot no New Mexico lawman,” said Coe.

“You and me,” said Scott steadily, “we’re going to settle this thing out, right quick.”

“That’s what I figure,” said Coe, and he rode close.

“God,” said one of the Waley brothers as they approached the cut, “a ghost town.”

“Just early, that’s all,” said Ike.

“Let’s go,” said Conlin, and flicked his mount into a lope. They bunched, Al Coe shouldering Scott annoyingly. Scott glared at him, but then they were into the cut and too busy keeping out from under each other to argue.

And suddenly their way was blocked.

A small, tattered figure on a moldy gray mare suddenly appeared at the town end of the cut and ambled toward them. The little brown man seemed to be asleep on his mount.

“Chop ’im down,” barked Big Ike to Conlin, who was in the lead.

“Chop hell, that’s Henry!” Conlin tried to rein in, but for three, four seconds the idea didn’t penetrate to the others and they crowded him at a dead run. “Whoa, dammit!” roared Conlin in the loudest voice Scott had ever heard from him.

They bumped and milled and cussed, and then all hell broke loose.

From the town end of the cut a dozen men appeared. From above, on each side, guns like thunder and lead like hail roared down. There must have been fifty men up there on the ridge, flat on their bellies, watching them come, and now half of them were pouring lead down into the ambush and half were diving and frog-hopping down the eastern slope, to close the trap at the other end.

“Back, get back!” shouted Conlin; but the last word was not a shout. It was an agonized grunt as a .44 slug tore through his thigh and into the side of his horse’s neck. The horse screamed and reared, and Conlin fought back, twisting the animal around by brute strength, so that it was headed back through the cut as its forefeet touched tire road.

Moko Waley and his mount were down, kicking and spitting their lives out; Conlin jumped them. His horse screamed again as he lunged forward.

There was a confused motion in front of him—Big Ike leading him pace for pace for an interminable moment; Big Ike, the only one of his crew who’d stick by him, stick for sure, no matter what—then Big Ike throwing his guns up in the air, riding with his hands up and empty, and terror on his face as he swung his head from side to side, hoping someone in the posse would see him surrendering.

To one side was Gus Waley, afoot, hands up too. On the other
side was Al Coe, maybe in a panic, crowding Arch Scott to a standstill against the rock wall.

Then there was nothing ahead of Conlin but a line of men across the road, between him and the badlands, and suddenly he was afloat in the air, his horse gone out from under; and then a jarring, red-hazed impact as he fell, and the wound in his thigh scalding with road grit. He got one foot up, the other knee under him, and wavered there; then there was a thunder of hoofs behind him and Henry Little Hawk landed lightly in the dust. The little breed caught Conlin under the armpits and heaved. It was a desperate, impossible effort; Conlin threw out an arm for balance and felt his hand on a saddle horn.

Then somehow he was lying face down on the back of the breed’s gray mare, rushing the line of deputies, riding two of them down.

When Conlin glanced back, he saw Henry Little Hawk lying in the road, one leg twisted crazily. He was propped up on his elbow, waving goodbye like an old woman watching a train pull out of a depot.

There were horsemen at the town end of the cut, but none here; and the cut was full of crazy horses, dead horses, dead and crazy men; so Conlin got clean away on the breed’s horse.

Back in the cut Arch Scott was crowded to the wall by Coe and his big black stallion. A man afoot, with a big shiny star pinned to his vest, shouted, “This way, Mr. Scott, this way, I’ll cover you.”

A hurt-animal sound woke her, and she lay dazedly for a moment, thinking it was part of some unhappy dream. But then she heard it again and flew out of bed and down the narrow stairs.

Out front, on the grass near the door, Jim Conlin lay face down making the noise. A few feet away stood Henry’s gray mare, blown and foundered, the reins over her head and a rope of spittle carrying clear from her bloody mouth to the ground.

Loretta got the Bookkeeper inside somehow, and somehow got his clothes off and washed away that special mud made of dust, blood, and sweat, until she could find out where he was hurt. Actually it wasn’t much of a wound, as such things go—a little hole here and a large one nearby where the slug had gone through. It had
missed the thighbone and had almost stopped bleeding. But it hurt, and maybe it wouldn’t heal. She did what she could. She did pretty well.

He didn’t talk for a long time. When he did, he said, “All gone. All, all gone. He saved me, Loretta, and he died.”

“Big Ike?”

“Big Ike!” he snorted. “Tucked his tail down and threw away his guns.”

“Al Coe?”

“Dead. They shot him dead, then they shot him some more.

She had to know, but … don’t ask, don’t ask; maybe—“The Waleys?”

“Moko dead. Gus, he and Big Ike quit.” Conlin half rose, screwing up his face. “Big Ike surrendered, you know that”” he shouted.

“Shh. Shh. Did … was it Arch Scott who saved you?” “Damn it, I told you.” He sank back. “I always said ‘the breed.’ Never slept in the bunkhouse with the others. He never asked to, but I tell you, I’d have laughed if he ever did, kicked his butt, the breed. Never ate with us white men, except campin’. He was the one, the only damn one—he saved me, and he died.”

“Henry,” she identified finally.

“All eyes, all brains. Tried to warn us, then he saved me, then he died.”

She hit herself softly on the temples. “Jimmy, for the love of God—”

“All gone. That Coe, crazy as hell. Never tried to fight, never tried to run. Hung on to Scott, watching him every second, then shot him in the head. Then they cut Coe to pieces—crazy …”

“Scott—dead?”

“All gone,” said the Bookkeeper. “All gone.”

After a time he said, “Loretta?”

“Get some sleep,” she said hoarsely. “You got to get some sleep.”

He nodded weakly. “Yuh. Some … Loretta, they’ll be comin’. Big Ike, if he’d quit, he’d bring ’em. And Gus Waley. Always said he’d sell me out for a good enough price. They got the price now—his dirty neck for mine.” He breathed painfully for a while. “We’ll
take all the gold we carry, Loretta. You pack anything you want, and we’ll start again some place.” He caught up with his breathing again, then opened his eyes and looked around the lamplit room.

“Loretta?”

But she was not there.

In the morning Jim Conlin woke up. He had a fever. There was a bottle of water nearby and he drank it all. There was also a note:

“All, all gone,” Conlin muttered. He dragged himself upstairs and got fresh clothes. He wondered what had happened. Al Coe had said Scott was a railroad man, but Al was always a trouble-maker. Henry, he’d know what happened.

He found Henry’s long Winchester. It made a pretty good crutch. He got to his cache and took as much gold as he could drag. It wasn’t much. He inched it down to the corral and caught a gelding and got the gold on. He roped a black, an old one, but the only one that would hold still for the kind of roping he was doing now. He got a saddle on it, led it to the bars, and climbed up on them and fell into the saddle. He rode off, leading the gelding.

They found the gelding, dead, in a ravine a month later. They got that gold and all that was in the cache too. Jim Conlin, the Badlands Bookkeeper, was never caught. Maybe the Mexicans got him, maybe fever. Maybe he’s still alive.

Here in the moonlit I sit, assigned to write an ode. I won’t write an ode. I’ll write … I’ll write what happened instead. I’ll never write another ode. I’m a throwback. I’m a grinning savage, as of this day. And they won’t believe me, and they’ll laugh—or they will believe me, and then by the powers I think I’ll laugh. I think I will. I think I can.

Or cry. I think I can.

I know: I’ll write it with all the background, just as if there was somebody left on earth who hadn’t lived with it up to this moment. I just want to see if one narrative can contain all of an enormity like this.