Working the Lode (26 page)

Zelnora said nothing, so Cormack continued, “He was suffering, Zel, and begged me to assist him. He couldn’t walk, see or do any of the most basic things for himself. He would have only lasted another month at the outside, so I merely hastened it.”

At last Zelnora said, “Well. It’s still murder, right? What were you charged with?”

Cormack shrugged. “Murder.”

Erskine rapidly inserted, “The patient wrote a letter explaining to his relatives that Cormack just supplied the drugs and was sparing him weeks of agony. But they were so irate, so…”

“Grief-stricken,” said Cormack.

“Yes, grief-stricken, they charged him anyway. You know, Zelnora, when you see an injured bird whose wing is broken? And you know it will never fly again, and will just die, and become carrion, and the agony will be drawn out? Cormack put a merciful end to that suffering. What I did was far worse, bilking innocent investors. Cormack was just being a good, compassionate doctor. So we spent three years buried from the world, marching in lockstep…”

“At Sing Sing, the silent system was the rule,” said Cormack, glad of a chance to stop talking about the deceased patient. “Miniscule cells, three foot by seven. Slave labor. Erskine here cobbled shoes all day.”

“Cormack made wooden barrels and furniture.”

“Then how did you get to know one another, if you couldn’t speak?” Zelnora did not sound appalled by his crime, but Cormack couldn’t be sure. With her pious background, it could very well be she would see this differently, as did the jury at his trial.

Cormack even brought himself to smile a little, remembering. “They allowed us Bibles, and the warden decided it was no crime if I was allowed some Buddhist scriptures to read, since we were encouraged to meditate. So we’d write upon the margins—”

“With shoe polish,” said Erskine.

“—and tar, or glue, and planned our escape.”

“It was quite simple, really,” Erskine said as small droplets of rain began to fall on their hands that held the reins. Joaquin and the two bandits waited at the top of the bluff where the pioneers had ceased building the trail. “We communicated mostly by facial expressions. I had no idea this old hoss had such an odd Scottish way of pronouncing things since I’d rarely, if ever, heard him speak.”

Allowing Erskine to ride on ahead a bit, Cormack swiveled his torso to analyze Zelnora’s attitude. Her head was held high on a proud neck, and she seemed strangely serene for such anxious circumstances.

“Zel,” he said, suddenly acutely aware of his odd Scottish way of pronouncing things. “Hard doings? About Sing Sing, I mean.”

She shook her head. “No hard doings. My father was morbidly ill also, and I do wish we would have known a physician such as you. My parents were so angry when my former husband vanished to Van Diemen’s Land because with him also vanished the funds to pay for my father’s ongoing care…Care that didn’t help anything and only prolonged his suffering. When I had no more income, they had no use for me. Since I left on the ship for San Francisco, I’ve not sent them a dollar…So, no, having a man such as you around would have been mighty handy. I am sure the poor man has finally passed, but I was not allowed there to witness it…Well, it looks like the end of the trail, I wonder where to now?”

They spent the night half froze for warmth. Erskine had not slept in three nights since riding from Sutter’s Fort, and rain was falling steadily, so they agreed to stop. Cormack made a lean-to while their mules and horses snorted with funk as though they’d sensed evil white men sign. Cormack said that someone had crawled like a rattler along a riverbed, and Jack agreed that was the direction Brannagh and his men had struck out. So that was their plan for the morrow, while Zelnora and Erskine huddled in the leaking lean-to and Cormack and Joaquin took turns keeping their eyes skinned on the Sonorans in case they decided to light out and warn someone.

Under his buffalo robe, Erskine drooped against Zelnora’s shoulder as she dozed in the solid black night, fat drops of rain plopping on her head and rolling down her arm. She thought about how Cormack and Erskine had spent ten years, wild-looking mountaineers in their animal skins, freezing numb fingers and toes, hunched in the tall wintry peaks of the Rockies. She recalled what Cormack had affirmed when she’d first told him she was barren. “The happiest moments of my life have been in the wilderness of the Far West. I recall with pleasure my solitary camp with no closer, more faithful friend than my rifle…no
compañeros
more sociable than my good horse.” Yet he had added, “That way of life has gone under, Zelnora, and hurrah for womanly doings.”

She knew she was doing the right thing, sticking with these strong men who had fought the Arapaho and Blackfoot and searching for her friend Mercy. She felt much more at home in this lovingly built nest of sticks than she ever had in Brannagh’s damned cabin or in Barton Sparks’ damned house with a cherrywood sideboard.

Putting out early the next morning, Cormack shot a deer, but there was no time to skin or cook it, so they traded half of it for smoked salmon to a few Digger Indians on broken-down horses. Joaquin knew a bit of the Digger lingo, having câched in these mountains with them some two years, and he arranged for a guide. The Diggers said there were some white men a few valleys over holing up in an old emigrant shack, and they had seen a white woman with blazingly red hair—a
pelirrojo
woman, like Cormack, doing chores around the place.

They set off, switching back and forth up a heavily timbered granite cliff.

“You’ll have to let Brannagh know we didn’t come of our own free will,” Jack whined, and Zelnora saw a look of complicity pass between Joaquin and Cormack. “I don’t want him taking us off the payroll.”

When they had topped the ridge and the Sonorans were out of earshot, she asked Cormack, “What’s the plan, old hoss?”

“Well,” said Cormack, looking steadily ahead with his steely eyes of acumen. He always seemed to see things she was completely blind to. “Them Diggers say there are four men in the cabin, and we’ve only got three, since I don’t want them to see you, and those bandits are no bargaining chip. If we go in a-blazing, they could rightly harm Mercy.”

Zelnora gave voice to what had been her main fear all along. “I’m sure that Brannagh would much rather have possession of me than Mercy. He holds no grudge against Mercy, other than her intention to leave for the Colorado River. I’m certain he’s using her as a bargaining chip.”

“Well,” Cormack said again. “This child isn’t letting him have you.”

There was a heavy silence as they entered the first of the park-like prairies the Diggers had mentioned.

At length, Erskine, who had been near enough to hear their conversation, added, “We can knock the hind-sights off them when it comes to shooting.”

“That’s right!” Cormack said, almost cheerful. “Many are the coups we’ve struck, and when’s the last time anyone saw Brannagh discharge a piece?”

That was true—Brannagh was a newspaperman, a wily businessman, a gambler, and a sporadic hunter at best, but not known as a marksman. So Zelnora held her tongue until they crested the last ridge, holding their animals steady behind a row of pine. Joaquin raised his glass to his eye to view the shanty the Digger pointed out, but Cormack had the eagle’s eye of a hard case and instantly spotted it. She sighed, bathing in the sight of his exquisitely handsome profile, the pointed aristocratic tip of his nose, the full cupid’s lips, his strong white throat. She had experienced a lot of terrifying events— the disappearance of Barton Sparks, the disowning by her parents, rounding Cape Horn with hundreds of women and children colonists two years earlier—but nothing quite like the shoot-out that looked to be imminent. Her Colt’s was loaded, her pocket pistol was shoved into the waistband of her skirt, but Cormack pointed to a stand of timber where she would wait in hiding with Joaquin. Erskine would wait with them, as it would do no good to let Brannagh know they had a romantic quest at heart, and even more at stake.

The shanty was about fifty yards from their hiding spot. The breakfast cook fire still smoldered with a scent of frijoles and lard.

Joaquin whispered, “My men said there were four of them, but there may be fewer in the cabin, some may be off hunting.”

“I’m not betting on that,” Cormack answered. “I’ll just draw them out, see what’s shining in Brannagh’s tiny brain.”

Not having much doings as an ambusher, Zelnora dared to insert an opinion. “They won’t let Mercy go without a written agreement from Origin Pickett—or something more valuable.”

Cormack bored his piercing celestine eyes into hers. “‘Something more valuable’ is staying put right here.” To Joaquin and Erskine, he whispered, “If he lets Mercy out of his shot, put a ball into him.”

“Shoot sharp’s the word.” Erskine nodded crisply. “Here’s luck.”

And Joaquin urged, “
Viva Carlos Quinto.
Death or glory.”

Cormack did not look back at Zelnora. She told herself it was because he needed to concentrate on the goal at hand.

With the two bandits in tow at gunpoint, Garcia so hungry and lame he was nearly toppling out of his saddle, Cormack trotted into the clearing before the shanty. Not a rustle came from the little ramshackle structure, and the trio hiding in the pines could clearly hear Cormack’s forceful bellow.

“Brannagh! Get out here and show your devil’s hide!”

The trio tensed, their weapons leveled at the ready. Erskine crouched beneath Zelnora using one pine tree as a shield, and Joaquin poked his pistol around the trunk of another. Brannagh could very well start blazing from a corner of the tiny window, and his mark would certainly be Cormack rather than the worthless highwaymen, whom most people wished were dead anyway.

But after a few seconds during which Zelnora could testify she saw a metallic glint in the window, the door opened, and Brannagh stepped out, two men shadowing him.

One of the men was Nutting, the colonist Cormack had saved from choking with the eagle’s quill.

Chapter Twenty-six

Cormack was pleased at first to see Nutting, the man whose life he’d saved. Yet there was a growling cast to Nutting’s countenance that did not seem to soften with gratitude when Brannagh sauntered forth grinning impudently, hands on hips over the short-skirted frock coat that had always given the wearer the look of a preacher, although the two pistols at his hips were not the weapons of a missionary.

“Well, well!” Brannagh shouted heartily, as though greeting dinner guests. He even casually clapped his wide black sombrero onto his head, not wanting to pain his eyes with the overcast autumn sun. “Bowmaker, the murderer of poor folk on their deathbeds! Sorry to inform you, nobody is ill around here, so you may as well turn around and go home.”

“You know I’ve come for Miss Mercy Narrimore. It’s the meanest kind of action to hold a woman against her will.”

“Is that so?” Brannagh bawled. “And so you’ve brought the two maggots who murdered three of our countrymen? Thanks for the hard work, Bowmaker. You can hand them over to the law now. I’ll see that Judge Lynch takes proper care of them.” He gestured impudently, as though requesting a whiskey refill.

Cormack shouted back, “These two men will witness that you paid them to ambush the train going over to the Colorado River.”

“Madre de dios!”
cried Three-Fingered Jack. “You promised you wouldn’t—”

Perhaps at the news that Brannagh had committed such a heinous act, Mercy herself appeared in the cabin door, shoving aside Nutting and the other thug. As could be expected, she looked about to go under, coiffure in whipped strands about her haggard face, paltry blouse torn and mussed. Affected by her formerly refulgent face that had now seen such deprivation, Cormack paced toward the cabin several yards.
“Cormack!”
she trilled. “What is this about Brannagh paying those bandits? I had heard he is holding out for Origin Pickett to make an agree—”

Brannagh yanked Mercy’s arm so stridently that Cormack winced. Her head wobbled on a whipped neck, and her feet seemed to leave the ground for a fraction of a moment. At the same time, Brannagh’s free hand tore the pistol from its holster and leveled the barrel to Mercy’s breast. Brain calculating wildly, Cormack knew there was an even chance that one of his sharpshooters with their ever-ready weapons got to Brannagh before he raised Mercy’s hair, but there was a chance Brannagh’s fourth man was still câched inside the shanty. He had to remain calm, yet play what was nearly his last card.