Shotgun (17 page)

The old shed was next, the roof thrown into the air, then coming down on two Fire Riders, shards ripping them as jagged darts, a flaming cave-in from the sky.

Another blast tore the mine walkway from the canyon wall, huge sections tumbling, crashing to the ground, bringing tons of stone and gravel with it, blowing a hole in the earth.

White Fox and Bishop galloped through a thick curtain of violent dust, dodging the fallen and the debris, riding blind for the canyon entrance.

Howard took a draw on his cigar, and lit the fuses on two sticks of dynamite, before thumb-stubbing it out. He held the sticks as they burned down, watching the red glow eating the fuse, when a cry erupted from his massive chest; first it was a laugh, then a scream for “goddamn gold!” that became a wild animal howl that was beyond words.

He leapt from behind the slag heap and tossed the two sticks, holding back the Fire Riders with their explosions, as he ran for the open shaft of the old silver mine. He dove away from their rifle fire, scrambling on his feet, always moving.

Chaney managed his knees, breaking part of the arrow from his side, the pain eating him. He yelled, “You going to leave me in this Hell? I'm your partner!”

Howard's broken-by-laughter howl continued.

On the road to the canyon, the howl was just another distant note, followed by more explosions and cries. Bishop and White Fox broke clear of the Goodwill, those damned sounds fading, before another huge blast rocked the ground.

The dynamite quake shook boulders from the top of the canyon until they slid down the walls, breaking apart into huge chunks, blocking the entrance in a dust and gravel eruption.

The sound was louder than the hundred blasts that had come before it.

Bishop and Fox looked back at the Goodwill, half buried, as their horses ran hard toward the down-sloped trail off the mountain. The Fire Rider sentry, guarding the way out, charged them, firing warning shots. Fox drew, and hit him with a warning shot of her own, the arrow puncturing the meat of his shoulder. It was pure whip-fast movement, and perfectly accurate.

The Fire Rider's red hood garbled his howling as he pulled back on his horse too hard, tangling his footing. They tumbled hard into the ditch alongside the canyon road.

The Rider kept swearing at Bishop and Fox as they leapt down an ice-slick hill, to a small cut in the trail. Not more than a break between rocks and dead trees, but it was a door to the other side of the frozen Colorado.

He pulled off his hood, and watched the last burst of flames and black smoke erupting from the Goodwill, feeling the sound of those final explosions, then shook his head. “God Almighty.”

He bit off a plug of hard tobacco, ignoring the arrow protruding from his shoulder. He wasn't entreating the Lord, or seeing the Goodwill as a Biblical pit of sulfur, or doing any damn thing, but just sitting.

Having a quiet chew at the end of the day, a hundred yards from an open grave stacked with corpses.

 

 

The opium smoke was gossamer, a light fog that hovered close to the ceiling of Widow Kate's office. The dragon pipe next to her was lit, but she didn't draw from it, just took deep breaths of the air, working at her desk. She carefully wrote half of the last zero of “100,000,” then urged the ink into the tip of her new Waterman with a quick shake, to complete it.

The columns of figures in the ledger were neatly entered, and their total was her testament. Kate took satisfaction from just looking at the numbers, not thinking about the money, only seeing that each total was greater than the last entry. She could lose herself in numerals.

The knock on her office door was precisely three times, and there was await until Kate called, “Enter!”

Soiled Dove slid the doors open, and closed them behind her before saying a word. She placed five stacks of bills, each with a name written on a small slip of paper on top, on Kate's leather desk blotter.

“I double-checked every girl, makin' sure they wasn't holding out nothing. That's everything, to the dollar.”

“Any gold? Silver?”

“No, ma'am, this was strictly a paper day.”

Kate smiled as she gathered the cash, counting it for herself. “You're doing very well, girl. This place is running like clockwork, and I'm obliged, since I still can't get up and down those stairs.”

Soiled Dove nodded. “I just want to be of help. Here.” She held out White Fox's torn skirt and top that had been wrapped and tied around something small.

Kate took the bundle. “I was just thinking about those two, wondering if they did what they set out to do. Or maybe got killed. That would be a shame. You should burn these.”

“Yes ma'am. There's something inside.”

Kate unfolded the bloody clothes, revealing an earthen jar of salve with something written on its side:
For your scars
.

Kate stroked the bandage protecting the stitches along her massive side, luxuriating in the opiate fog, and said, “Now, I'm obliged to the Cheyenne.”

The explosion gut-punched Howard, Chaney, and Beaudine against the mine wall, pieces of the rotting ceiling beams falling around them, followed by broken chunks of rock and tarry mud. They kept their heads down as the force pushed past them, grit raining into their eyes. The grit shimmered, with a taste of silver fog.

“Was that the last?”

Howard didn't hear Beaudine. He was holding his nose and blowing, to clear out his ears. Beaudine asked again, and Howard said, “I ain't sure. Should be though.”

“Let me put it this way, are there any more charges that are closer?”

“You saw where I put 'em.”

“I'm saving your life bringing you here. Want to answer me straight?”

Howard blew his nose again. “There aren't no more that are closer.”

The three looked back down the shaft to the opening of the Goodwill silver mine, which was now blocked by collapsed timbers, and fallen-in walls. Chaney inched his way to his feet, holding his bleeding side. “It don't make no difference. We're trapped. My thanks for saving us, though.”

Beaudine didn't respond. Chaney cleared his eyes with his fingers, looked at the flecks of silver on their edge. “But at least I'll die a rich man.”

Beaudine, holding the long cleaver and one of the Fire Riders' red hoods, said, “Rich is what we're all working for, but your death will not be today. We've escaped prisoners to find, and we're wasting time. There's an air duct tunnel right up ahead, opens above the river.”

Chaney and Howard looked to each other, bloody and tired. Beaudine said, “See for yourself.”

Chaney and Howard hauled themselves up and followed Beaudine farther into the mine, the dark of it becoming even darker, as they felt their way along the narrowing walls.

“Don't get ideas about picking up nuggets. This was played out years ago, if it played at all. And that stuff on your hands is residue from the mucking. Worthless.”

Howard said, “Forget the silver, I'd just a-soon get the hell out of here.”

“We will.”

Chaney wiped off the worthless. “How'd you know about an airway? I thought Creed picked this place.”

Beaudine said, “My brother told me. He's buried in that miner's bone orchard that you blew to smithereens, Mr. Howard. When Creed suggested the Goodwill, I did what a good soldier does in the face of the enemy, and revealed nothing.”

Beaudine stopped, with Howard and Chaney next to him, their eyes hit with a narrow slice of sunlight coming from the end of a small tunnel cut in a sidewall.

Chaney started around Beaudine. “Let's go!”

“Hold on. Mr. Howard, you first. There are planks at the end that need to be broken through to the outside, and your strength is mandatory. But before you do, Mr. Chaney?”

Beaudine handed Chaney the red hood. He held it for just a moment, feeling its curious weight. Chaney's eyes adjusted, focusing first on the blood soaking one side of the hood, then on the Rider's head still inside it, lopped cleanly at the neck with the cleaver blade.

Chaney dropped the hood, choking air.

Beaudine kicked it aside. “This was a difficult day, gentlemen. We fought hard and let the savage loose, but now we're an army of three. If we're going to find our way to Bishop's gold, there can be no mutiny, no disloyalties. If your heart is traveling in that direction, now would be the time to tell me.”

Chaney held his wounded side with red-wet fingers. “I'll do what's needed.”

“Mr. Howard?”

Howard regarded the head at his feet, then said, “You keep asking like I don't want that gold no more. I want it.”

The ceiling shifted with a low rumble, a crack above them widening. Chaney half-crouched as Beaudine stepped to one side, pointing to the airway with the cleaver blade.

Howard worked his way through the stone cut, to the opening fifty feet in. The passage was too small for him to raise his arms, so he smashed through the boards with a single head butt, flooding the mine with sunlight and the fresh sound of the river below.

 

 

The finger of water coming off this side of the Colorado didn't have a name, but ran cold and fast down the mountain, before splitting into a dozen streams cutting through winter-bare woods. White Fox and Bishop stood on one of those stream banks, frosted with snow to the water's edge, tending themselves.

Caked with black gunpowder, dust from the Goodwill, and blood, they washed as best they could, with handfuls of icy water splashing across their wounds. Fox pulled the shotgun rig from Bishop's arm, the blasted-jagged section of the breach slicing her hand.

She sucked on the cut, started to unhook the leather straps across his back, pain eating at them both. Bishop kept his voice flat: “The gambler was going to give us Beaudine. Give us. You didn't have to shoot.”

Fox pulled the leather free. “We don't have the word. You'd say it was ‘a choice.'” Then she stuffed the broken rig into Bishop's saddlebag.

Fox took a deep breath and held it, feeling the mountain cool, before she said, “
Ametané'ôsené
.”

“You think you gifted me life?”

She smeared the blood from her hand onto the blood on her clothes. “We wouldn't have survived. Now, you can go on with the hunt.”

She knelt by the water, pulling her shirt down over her shoulders, so he could clean the deep sore there, rubbed to the muscle by her bowstring.

Bishop looked through the medical kit. “Your salve would be good for that.”

“I gave the last away.”

“Another choice?”

The tiny voice from behind the trees chirped: “Mister, if you've got money hid, you need to give it over. Really slow.”

The little girl was about four feet tall, with a flat nose that seemed to run directly from her mouth with no break, and blue eyes that were too far apart. Her hair was straight, cornstalk yellow, and in desperate need of a ribbon or a comb that would have helped it hide her enormous ears. She held a rusting squirrel rifle crimped against her, and she moved it around every time she spoke in a way that was oddly musical. Tuneful, even when she mangled her words.

“That there the money? I'll be wanting it.”

Bishop's arm went into firing position, without his thinking, and without a weapon. His eyes met Fox, and his instincts cooled. “Really don't think you need a gun.”

Bishop tried to follow the end of the rifle as it moved in circles while the little girl bobbed her head about, almost singing. “I do need it, to make you give over money. Or I'll shoot. You. And her. And then, maybe, you again.”

“It'll probably hurt some, but that's not going to kill either one of us. Or even a squirrel for supper. Is that what you're doing out here?”

“Ask you the same question!”

“We're just riding through. Is this your land? Is that it?”

“No, it ain't.”

“Then why are you pointing that? Are you a robber?”

The rifle started moving again, and so did the “voice music”: “My sister's ailing bad, and we can't fix our wagon, and my pa don't know which end is up, so I'm taking charge. And you all are the first things I'm taking charge of.”

Fox said, “Where is your father?”

“No business of yours! Show me your hands!”

Bishop raised his left hand, and half a right arm skyward. The little girl said, “Was you born that way, or did somebody take after you?”

“Somebody took after me. We can help you, and your sister.”

“She's been dyin' for as long as I can remember.”

White Fox said, “He is a doctor.”

“You're like somethin' the devil coughed up! I seen doctors afore, and they didn't look nothing like you. Or her!”

Bishop smiled. “You're surely right, most don't look like me, but I am a doctor. Let me try helping your sister, and if you don't like it, you can still shoot me.”

Nodding, the little girl lowered her rifle, blurting, “Don't think I won't!” She repeated it as if it were a chorus.

The Conestoga was propped on a tree stump, leaving the back axle to freely turn, without the weight of its shattered wheel. At first glance, it looked to be the wagon of a broken-down circus: the canvas top had seen too many repairs, with patches of all colors, as had the too-large wagon bed, which was pieced together from half a dozen freight schooners by a carpenter with no skills.

The campsite could have dropped out of the sky to land in this most unlikely place: there was a small fire with a fine, polished steel cook pot and implements hanging over it, surrounded by two upholstered rocking chairs, a mahogany dresser with bottles of perfume scattered across the top, most of which had spilled down its side, and a large vanity mirror mounted in a standing frame.

Albert Tomlinson stepped from the back of the Conestoga, wringing out a washcloth, when he saw his daughter rifle-marching between Bishop and White Fox, as they rode from the woods to the campsite. Albert, whose body could barely support the clothes he was wearing, waved to his little girl with a tired, grey smile.

“Well, how're you folks doing today?”

The girl started running to Albert, turned midway to keep her bent rifle on her new prisoners, then back-stepped the rest of the way to his side. Her voice was all highs and lows. “Look what I found in the woods, Papa! Caught 'em on my own, brung 'em in on my own. And you know they got money!”

Albert patted the top of her head. “Now, May Flowers, I think you were supposed to get us some dinner.”

“But they're better!”

Bishop and Fox got down from their horses as Albert extended a bony hand. “Albert Tomlinson, over to Arkansas. Surely am sorry about this. Hope you didn't feel too threatened.” Then he whispered, “My May Flowers wouldn't really shoot nobody.”

Bishop shook with his left. “She's a good protector. How long have you been here, Mr. Tomlinson?”

“Nigh on three days.”

“And we're the first to find you?”

“This is a pretty lonesome spot, I guess. There was a Shoshoni scout party one night, but they didn't come in.”

“What happened to your outfit?”

May Flowers said, “Have 'em empty up their pockets!”

Albert took the rifle from his daughter as he scare-crowed back to the wagon, settling by the empty axle. May Flowers jammed her tongue stubbornly behind her lower lip as her father spoke: “The axle started turning funny coming down the trail out of that low range, and then we lost the wheel.”

White Fox looked underneath the wagon, pointing to the loose iron above the axle braces. “The brake rocker is broken.”

Albert said, “Yes, ma'am. We couldn't control nothing the last bit, and crossed the water too fast. Darn near toppled over completely. That's when we lost the wheel, and I had to fish it out. But I was surely glad to get to this side, with the girls and all.”

Fox moved to the wheel, which was leaning against the mahogany dresser. She rolled it in the grass, to the place where the iron flatting had peeled back, splintering the wood.

“The felly is split. This can't be fixed.”

May Flowers singsonged, “She knows about all of this?”

Bishop said, “She knows. If you don't pull out of this mud soon, this wagon's staying put.”

Albert said, “We're worse than the church mouse right now, can't afford a darn thing.”

“You've got some fine furniture, Mr. Tomlinson.”

“My wife's things. She's gone.”

“Why don't you sell a piece, get a new wheel?”

May Flowers grabbed one of the bottles of perfume and began dousing herself. “That's how come I was getting us money.” Then she stuck out her tongue at White Fox.

Albert said, “I got me another daughter who's with bronchitis. That's the baby, and I can't leave her to go to town, to do business.”

“May told us. I'm a doctor.”

Albert took a long look at Bishop, in tatters, before finally saying, “Really?”

Little May Showers had a Chinese abacas lying on her tummy, and she pushed the beads around trying to match the colors in a row. If she managed it, she allowed herself a thin smile between fits of harsh coughing. A slip of a girl, tucked up tight in a hammock strung across the back of the freight schooner, she rocked it defiantly when her father came close.

She looked a great deal like her sister, but her face was smaller, and meaner, with coarse black hair instead of blond. She shared the same blue eyes, but they didn't soften her features, or invite anyone closer.

Albert entered the wagon, which was filled with more furniture, including a spinning wheel, and moved carefully to his daughter. May Showers huddled in her hammock, racking the beads on the abacas, back and forth, clicking them together with every step Albert took, as if he were approaching a rattler about to strike.

“May Showers, this here's a doctor, honey. He's going to help you, so you behave and let him.”

The little girl thrashed violently, as Albert pried the abacas from her fingers. She didn't yell, but burst into a fit of deep, raw coughing. Albert tried more water, which she couldn't swallow, the spittle running down her chin. Her chest finally relaxed, and she settled back into her sweat-dirty pillow. She never said a word, but thrust her hands out for the abacas.

Albert put it aside. “I'm a bookkeeper by trade, and I find this exotic device very useful. The girls think it's a plaything. They don't like no dolls or nothing.”