The Bully of Order (38 page)
Read The Bully of Order Online
Authors: Brian Hart
“If I was a killer like Bellhouse, I would.”
“Mind the defamation,” Tartan warned.
Salem sank in his chair. “None intended.”
“Who pays the bounty?” Dar said.
“Boyerton's son.”
“How old's he?”
“I'd say about the same age as Ellstrom.”
“Playin men.”
Salem looked at Dar and then back at Tartan. “Chacartegui has warrants out for half of us up here.”
“Go back the way you came,” Dar said. “Don't tell no one you were here.”
Tartan pushed his chair back and stood. “Thanks for the meal.”
Outside, the sun was high and glowing in the mist in the trees. Through the forest he could see dozens more houses and outbuildings. Women came out of the big house as he went by. They weren't pretty. They all looked about the same as Dar, about to cut your eyes out if you didn't look away or offer to buy them something nice. One was missing a hand. She presented the stump to Tartan and smiled. Children walked behind him on the trail and stepped in his big footprints.
K
ozmin emerged from the
dense forest unruffled, as neat and composed as a songbird. Ten feet to his left Duncan stepped over a downed log and stopped, squatted down to survey the small clearing. From where they stood, they couldn't see Jacob on the other side of his camp, only the mud halo and tarps. All around them hemlocks towered and dripped on the ferns and brush and mostly blocked out the sky. Here and there the ground was trampled and grass torn up, low limbs snapped off. Gathered firewood told the story, piled up like drift next to the shack. Oilcloth tarps hung off either pitch to make a pair of drooping lean-tos. It was a sorry piece of work: string, wire, and rope had been employed, bent and rusty nails pounded into trees, and ax-hewn stakes driven into the mud.
When they came around, Jacob was seated on a stump, staring into a small, nearly smokeless cabin-style fireâthey hadn't seen smoke or even smelled itâprodding it with a twig. Seeing who it was, he jumped to his feet and nervously flattened his shirt. Kozmin held up his hand to say hello, and Jacob did the same. Finally Duncan showed his palm, low near his hip. They were three versions of the same man, plotted along a line that would stretch from war to war, continental disorder to the first germs of empire.
“Come and sit,” Jacob said. “I've been waiting for you.”
Duncan put down his pack and sat on it, took out the pistol, and set it on his lap. His beard was like moss on a skinny tree; he was knobby, shaped like a man-size clothespin.
“There's men chasin me,” he said.
“I see you're the one that lifted my gun.”
“Didn't know it was yours.”
Kozmin gave Jacob a knowing look. “They won't find us here,” Kozmin said, sat heavily on a stump. “I'd say they'll stay in their boats and hope to get lucky.”
“It's good to see you,” Jacob said.
“I won't be here long.”
The silence stretched to the coast and shot like a snapped cable out to sea.
Kozmin opened his bag and extracted a bottle of liquor, uncorked it. “Me? I'm not goin anywhere. I've got work to do, and neither one of you'll do a dance or cartwheel or a thing to help. I know yer types.”
Father and son warily inspected one another. Duncan leaned over and took the bottle, drank deeply, and had to cough to keep it down. His eyes watered. Kozmin snatched back the bottle. “I didn't say I wanted that much help. Jacob, any for you?”
“No.”
“Sober man.”
Duncan looked over his shoulder at the sound of the wind.
“They won't find you here. They never found me.”
“I think by their scales I might rank a bit higher than you.”
“I don't like what you're saying.”
“I'm not sayin she was less important.”
Kozmin kicked his heel into the dirt. “I bet I'm wrong. They probably will be using dogs. They won't stay in their boats. Nothin like a manhunt to get men off their fat asses.”
“The only way in is the way you came, so we can watch, stay right here and watch for them.”
“Not much for vantage. Won't see em till they step on us.” Duncan took off his hat and smacked it against his leg and crawled underneath one of the lean-tos and started taking off his boots.
“Give me those.” Kozmin took his boots. “And the socks.”
Duncan slid off the wool socks, dripping wet, stained with blood and grease, and Kozmin took them and the boots to the fire and set them down to dry.
Jacob went into his shack, and when he came out tried to hand over some dry socks and a shirt, neatly folded.
“I don't want em. Mine'll dry.” Duncan hugged his knees and looked out at the forest. The skin was coming off his feet in slabs as thick as bacon, and there was blood oozing from the cracks. Jacob pushed the clothes into his son's hands and went back to his stump. Kozmin was staring at Duncan's feet.
“What?”
“Put the damn socks on.”
“You.”
“My feet are dry.”
Duncan fought his way into the socks and then held out his hands, behold, to Kozmin.
“Might as well try the shirt.”
“Fuck off.”
“You'll see.”
“I'd say you're right about that.”
“They'd have to have dogs to find you here,” Jacob said.
“So they'll use dogs.” Duncan took off his coat and shoved it onto the woodpile, and then took off his wet shirt and put on the dry one.
Jacob squeezed by and took Duncan's wet shirt and coat and hung them up on nails under the eave of the shack. The smell of the rain-soaked clouds came up from the dirt and leaked from the bark of the trees like sap.
As soon as night came on, they had a real fire and hot food. Kozmin told a story, started in the middle but it didn't matter. Duncan and his father sat and listened like parishioners.
Tarakanov was aboard the brig
Nicolai,
commanded by Navigator Bulygin. Six years had passed since he was taken hostage. They were to rendezvous with another Russian ship, the
Kadiak,
a hundred miles down the coast, before they proceeded on. Navigator Bulygin was accompanied by his wife, Anna Petrovna. The crew was promyshlenniki, seal hunters mostly, along with a few Aleuts, including a woman, Maria. The men were chosen for their skill and fortitude, some by Baranov himself. Tarakanov was invited because he was a great hunter and also because over the years he'd proven himself impervious to Indian attacks and captivity. He'd acquired some mysticism among his comrades. He was better than his elders, and envied. The
Nicolai
was outfitted with several four-pound cannons, and the hold was filled with bolts of cloth and beads, fake pearls and brass buttons for trading.
They sailed from New Arkhangel at the end of September. Nothing was expected in the way of trade. Baranov had instructed them to appease the natives as best they could, not to kill them or cheat them or take any food or accept kindness without adequate payment.
The daylight hours found them close to the coast, and night found them safely offshore. Ten days out, and they took notice of the haystack rocks that marked the point. Storms threatened the horizon but delivered little except thin rain and a westerly wind.
Three days later, the winds began to fail and then they stopped dead. The swell carried them toward shore. Twice they tried to set their anchors, both fore and aft, and both times they failed. Navigator Bulygin's continued attempts to stop their drift succeeded only in breaking their anchor chains. They passed luckily through the rocks and drifted into a small bay and in the gray afternoon and misting rain rolled easily into the pounding surf, and within minutes the
Nicolai
was on the beach.
The crew waited until the wash broke against the ship and watched it slip back, and then jumped down and in this way off-loaded their guns and kegs of powder, shot, and one of the four-pound cannons. They took down the main sails and much of the rigging and used it to make two separate shelters up the beach near the tree line. Some of the Makah people were there to watch, but they didn't come close enough to speak to. The Russians cleaned their rifles and put in fresh charges. When one of the Makah stole a sack of stale bread, they yelled but let him take it. Bulygin was unsure of what to do, and his uneasiness threatened panic among his men. Tarakanov posted sentries and had them build a huge fire and dry themselves. As he saw it, there were two options: they could either make a more permanent shelter where they were and try to signal a ship if it passed, or travel the sixty miles to meet up with the
Kadiak
as planned.
Their first night was spent huddled under the sails. In the morning, when the tide was out, the navigator took four men to lower the topmast and strip the upper rigging. Tarakanov spiked the cannons and with help dragged them out into the water and let the ocean take them. They broke the locks off the rifles they couldn't carry and gathered up the axes, adzes, saws, anything made of steel or iron, and pitched them as far as they could into the surf. The sails were cut up and used to bind their supplies into packs for the men to carry. Anna Petrovna was soaked through but didn't seem nearly as disheartened as her husband. He'd not considered that this could happen.
“Wait a minute,” Jacob said. “You skipped something.”
“No, I didn't.”
“I know the history, and there was a battle at Sitka with the Russians.”
“That's right, in 1802. A great battle. Baranov was almost killed.”
“But he wasn't,” Jacob said.
“No, he lived.”
“Why'd you skip over that part?” Duncan asked.
“Because our man Tarakanov wasn't there. He was at that time in California, and this story doesn't have anything to do with New Arkhangel, California, or even the Kiksà di any longer.”
“Oh, I bet it does,” Jacob said.
“We'll see about that. Can I go on?”
“By all means. You finish your dinner, and I'll set water for the washing.”
“You're a thoughtful host. Where was I?”
“They were headed south, or about to,” Duncan said.
“Right, and it was raining like it was fit to flood the world.”
They had yet to break camp when the promyshlenniki had another skirmish with the Makah.
“They're throwing rocks at our men,” Anna Petrovna said.
Tarakanov stepped out from the tent that he shared with the Bulygins and was hit in the chest with a spear, thankfully too lightweight to puncture both his thick leather and wool coats. He raised his rifle to fire, and the man who had thrown the spear threw a rock and hit him in the head, but Tarakanov got off a shot anyway, and his attacker fell forward and didn't move. Tarakanov stumbled and fell backward onto the rocky shore and tried not to lose consciousness. He touched his fingers to the gash in his head and the hole in his coat, a little blood, a scratch. His comrades were firing all around him, and the Makah were fleeing. Smoke filled the air, and the sailcloth popped in the wind.
All but a few of the men were wounded in the attack, but none mortally. Bulygin had been hit in the back with a spear, but it didn't penetrate more than an inch. They'd been pummeled by rocks, and they were frightened. None of them had been hit by a rock since he was a boy, and the vision of grown men throwing rocks at them overhand as hard as they could terrified them as much as or even more than if they'd been armed with rifles. Everywhere there were stones perfect for throwing. Their powder could get wet, rifles failed. Three Indians were dead. The Russians collected their spears and coats and even their hats, because really they had nothing and needed to take whatever they could find. They posted sentries and spent another night huddled under their shelters and didn't sleep.
Tarakanov listened to Bulygin try to console his wife but thought she wasn't the one that needed consoling. He wanted to stand up from his miserable bed and tell him, Navigator, we both were stuck with spears, and we're fine. Hit by rocks, but we can stand and travel and still fight. But his head hurt, and his little speech died against the throb. He wasn't getting up until he had to, and if the Makah attacked again he'd fight out of pure anger at being disturbed. He'd kill whoever roused him.
At first light they broke camp and hoisted their packs, each man with two rifles and a pistol. The onshore wind slammed them in the side of the head as they stumbled southward.
The forest was a wall of hemlock, and if they were lucky and found a doorway in, they ran into spruce and cedar, and if they crawled, the ferns smothered them. All felt a kinship to the smallest insect, and perhaps some of them quietly repented for any cruelties they'd previously wrought upon the small and the frail. Not so big in the world, not so bold. So it was down the coast on the rocks and beaches or nowhere.
Anna Petrovna walked in front of her husband and carried a pistol in her right hand. She had a large canvas case slung over her left shoulder and had her hair tied up and one of the dead Indian's hats pulled low over her brow. Half Aleut, she knew how to go forward without complaining. Her husband watched her back and her feet, the mud soiling the bottom of her dress. His eyes betrayed his fear. The promyshlenniki carried mostly powder and cartridges, with very little food. Hunting and trade were their intention and hope, but they weren't above raiding. Come what may, they were moving, and with any luck would catch the
Kadiak
at the Harbor, known on British charts by the name Whidbey. Called Gray uniformly everywhere else.
When Tarakanov last looked back at the
Nicolai,
it had already begun to be swallowed by the sand.
They made only a few miles that first day and made camp inside the trees and posted sentries but had no nighttime visitors.
Tarakanov woke rested and went out to the shore and hid among the jumbled and tilting rocks and cleaned his rifle. When he'd finished, he climbed up and watched the waves crumble and flatten on a narrow shelf of sand. He picked out a small round stone, named it Nikolai, and watched it disappear. The current offshore was barreling northward around the point. Nothing wanted them to go south.