The Bully of Order (41 page)

“How many days they been lookin now?” Sha asked. The boat glided along, and a viscid wake peeled off beside them.

“Seven or eight.”

“If they ain't found him yet, he'd be slint to get caught.”

“It's cold and lonesome out here. He'll be found.”

“Cold and lonesome swinging from a rope, Dickerson.”

“That ain't my name.”

“Yer one Dickerson among a million. Yer all Dickersons. Like seeds from a dandelion blowing off in a cloud. Yer big round heads.” He laughed.

“Fuck Dickerson.”

“Dickerson killed Chenamus.”

“You know, I looked into that, asked Lacroix who the fuck is Dickerson.”

“He's a killer.”

“Fifty fuckin years ago.”

“Yer fifty fuckin years ago.”

There was something on the shore moving among the blighted trees and stubby clusters of brush. “What's that?”

“I see him.” Sha poled the canoe to the bank behind a water log, and they waited for him to show himself. They heard dogs barking in the distance. It was Duncan Ellstrom. He was trying to find a way across. They followed him upstream, riding the swirling pools of the eddies and eddy lines. Tartan had his rifle ready, and his right glove was in his lap so he could pull the trigger. Sha had his rifle too, but he hadn't bothered to unfold it from the blanket he kept it in.

“You aren't gonna shoot him, are you?” Sha said.

“No, I won't shoot him.”

They banked on the western shore and mirrored Duncan's progress in his search for an adequate crossing. They rounded a bend, and there he was, halfway across the river, scurrying over a rockbar. Tartan was about to call out when the dogs came bursting from the trees at a dead run. A shot rang out on the eastern shore, and Duncan scrambled onto dry ground and ran, head turned to see his pursuers. It was Chacartegui and his deputy behind him, and they were both firing now. Tartan rose up and shot the deputy, and he fell. Chacartegui hadn't seen him yet, but he could see the smoke from his barrel. Tartan levered in another shell and fired again, and the sheriff dropped. Duncan spun and quickly put it all together. Tartan stood up, but Cherquel Sha stayed low.

“I won't harm you,” Tartan yelled.

Duncan stood up and came carefully toward them, checking for movement from Chacartegui, from Tartan. He hadn't seen Cherquel Sha yet.

“Maybe you ain't a Dickerson,” Sha said quietly.

“Maybe not.” To Duncan: “I ain't takin you in. You go on and run.”

“You might as well. They'll hang me for sure now. They'll think I killed those two.”

“They weren't shootin to help you across. They were tryin to kill you. You'd be dead now.”

“They'll be after me to California for Chacartegui.”

Cherquel Sha stood up, and Duncan jumped back.

“Don't worry, I'm not shootin anybody,” Sha said. “I got a canoe downstream a ways. You go on and take it.”

“Take it where? They're all over in the South Bay. What else do I got but my feet?” He started to walk away, and then looked over his shoulder at Tartan. “Yer feelin bad about throwin me in the river, aren't you?”

Tartan nodded. “I told you I was sorry.”

Duncan smiled, a defeated light in his eyes. He turned away and walked off. When he neared the tree line, Tartan lifted his rifle, then hesitated, then raised it again.

“Fuckin Dickerson,” Sha said. “All of you, fuckin Dickersons.”

“It's a kindness. He's dead anyway. Now at least he can do me some good.”

M
y first shot was
wide, but the next hit home, and after the strange slapping sound against his gut registered, that big son of a bitch Tartan doubled over, and the man I recognized to be Cherquel Sha turned and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. I didn't see Duncan anywhere. I waded in, pack and all, and swam the river with my pistol held high and climbed up the bank. I heard movement behind me and turned at the sound. Tartan was up and coming toward me. I emptied my gun at him, didn't aim, just fired. One round hit him in the shin and another in the face, and then he fell. The Indian came and stooped over him and touched his neck.

“Where is he?” I said.

He pointed to the trees.

I ran after him and found him squatted under a bush.

“He was gonna shoot me, wasn't he?”

“Yes.”

“You saved me.”

“We need to get as far away from this as we can.”

Duncan nodded and followed me. Sha waved us over and led us to his canoe, and he helped me lay Duncan in the bottom and cover him up. We drifted downstream toward what I knew to be more manhunters, but we hadn't a choice. The sun dropped away and it started to rain, but we kept our course. The harbor was speckled with ship lights, but we hugged the bank and I believe we were part of the water and the rain and the trees and they could've been right on top of us and not seen us.

It was sometime after midnight when we made the coast. I set up shelter in the trees, and Sha started a fire. It wasn't the best idea but we hadn't a choice. Duncan was pale and drawn. He had a fever. I made him a bed and covered him up.

“Tartan's lucky he's dead,” Duncan said.

“He ain't dead,” said Sha.

“Yer sure?” I asked.

“He wasn't when we left.”

The rain had stopped, but I hadn't noticed when. The sound of the ocean came up from the ground. Sha and Duncan and I shared a skin of water, and then Sha walked off into the dark, I assumed to refill the skin. I curled up next to my son and slept. I woke up in the night, and Sha was still gone.

Dawn found the three of us back in the canoe, sneaking the breakers, headed south. Duncan sat up for a while, but soon he was lying down and Sha and I were paddling. We went like a waterbug in the shallow, boiling sea, and it was exciting. Miles disappeared. I kept a watch on the bluffs for bounty hunters, but we didn't see anyone save for fishermen and three misguided otter hunters perched in a tripod of death thirty feet off the sand. Sha waved, and they waved back. Duncan was covered and looked like stowed gear.

“Otters are gone,” Sha said to me.

“Seals around, though.” We'd seen some earlier, bobbing and staring at us, dumb as bartenders and shopkeeps. “Might be shooting seals.”

“I shoulda finished him off,” Sha said.

“The walk out most likely did that.”

“Somebody could find him.”

“Could,” I said.

I cherished the little jump we made over the broken waves. Sha and I leaned at just the right time and hit our strokes and flew down the back, where the water was only inches deep. Far offshore the waves stood and blackened thickly, and then slugged down and foamed, and that was the part for us; that was our ride. Our paddles, our haulage. How many times could you circle the globe like this? That was my question.

I
n the morning I
found my balls next to my pistol and gave them a scratch. I followed Chacartegui's trail west. Biltmore seemed in better spirits and the deadfall thinned and we made fair time, far as I could tell. Wet day with snow on and off. When I hit the river, I saw the birds. The sheriff and his deputy were tipped over, with their knees bent wrong and hands all a-gracey-grace with cold guns and blood. And where were their eyes? And where were mine? Searching for the killers with my pistol drawn, then I spotted someone. The other side of the river. A raised arm, swapping about in the limp grass.

Biltmore forded amiably, and only my feet got wet. The waver had a hole in his face and his coat and shirt were soaked black, and a pant leg too. I knew him by sight but had never dared to speak to him. He was Bellhouse's man.

“Get me outta here.” Garbled in the broken teeth and black blood.

I was off Biltmore and helping Tartan into the saddle and in a flash he was off with me trotting behind him like a stableboy. We followed the river to the harbor, and then Tartan took my rifle and fired off all my shells. Half hour later he was on a steamer heading toward town. Three men from the ship came ashore and I led them to the bodies. They'd come from Oysterville with a cargo of by-god oysters. The eldest, Tully he said his name was, did all the talking.

“What happened?” he asked, not really directing the question at me, but who else?

“Ellstrom killed them,” I said.

“You saw it?”

“No.”

Tully produced a small lantern from inside his coat and lit it. “Don't go spreading rumors,” he said.

“Tartan said that's what happened.”

“And he's a pal of Chacartegui. Him and Hank both.”

“I don't know about that. I thought you came from Oysterville. How do you know Tartan or anyone?”

“Who doesn't, ships in these waters?”

“There's a bounty,” I informed him. “It's more than you'll make on ten boatloads of oysters.”

“Not if we didn't score the bounty or sell oysters either.”

“I guess you're right.”

“You'd have to be a lazy pile to get in on a manhunt. Any salt, and you'd be too fuckin busy.”

“He killed my father.”

Tully lowered his head, dripping with shame. “I didn't know.”

Soon we were all looking at the death mush that was Chacartegui's face. Tully handed off his lantern and pried the gun from the sheriff's hand and then did the same with the deputy.

“Your horse mind hauling corpses?”

“Probably not.”

“Ever try?”

“Of course not.”

“Not even a deer.”

“No.” We turned to Biltmore, and he turned away.

“Christ, he looks mean, but we'll give it a shot.”

Biltmore didn't take to it, and we spent all of an hour getting the bodies lashed down and moving. My contribution was pother. I'd never seen dead men up close or handled them. Nothing simple about corpse hauling. The invention of the wheel came from it. No question. I think if Biltmore were given the option, he would've quit me and gone to work for someone else, and honestly, if I could've quit the manhunt and saved any kind of face, I would've gone home and had a bath and gone to bed.

When we hit the water, the oystermen took the bodies in their boat and left me with Biltmore to find my own way home, which I did, after a terror-filled night lost in the forest. By some miracle I found the Ellstrom camp again and slept there. I slept in the same dent in the ground that I slept in before, that was made by the man that killed my father. But I was going the other way now. I was going home, and he was on the run. I would live forever, and he would go to his grave. Death is a powder, and mine was wet. Duncan's, bone dry and ready to fire.

S
ha and I carried
the canoe into the trees and left Duncan to rest under a sheltering boulder. The Indian climbed up and fed a rope over a limb, and I tied it to the canoe, and with me pulling on the rope we raised it and Sha lashed it safely down. Standing back, you couldn't tell it was there. He hadn't wanted to round the point, said the currents were too strong and we'd sink. Sha knew a man in South Bend that would help us, but he'd go alone and talk to him. He might not be around, and if he wasn't we had to wait. There was nothing else but to trust him.

Two days later Sha returned with coffee and a venison roast and a pot of potatoes. We ate and then packed our things and went for the meager lights of town. I heard the bells clanging first, and then smelled sewage at the shore. No one saw us board, and by the next evening we'd cleared the point.

The captain's name was Doris. He was black haired and had deep lines going down the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth that gave him the look of a sick-eyed cat. He advised me that Duncan and I shouldn't stop in Portland; he said we should continue inland to the Snake River. Land was cheap, and there were rumors of another gold rush. I had some money. Duncan and I could get outfitted and disappear. But I feared that it was only a matter of time until the cable would snap tight and yard Duncan back to the Harbor, to whatever justice might be waiting for him there.

The crew took turns shooting at seals with a Sharps rifle and hit a few but made no attempt to recover the carcasses. Crossing the bar, they all stood astern and pissed toward the setting sun, an act of unified affrontery that I saw as tempting the fates, particularly if you were a sailing man. Perhaps they perceived it opposite of me. We steamed up the Columbia while Duncan slept.

Next I checked, Duncan was tossing in his bunk, talking nonsense. His fever had spiked and his eyes were loose in their sockets and his lips were peeled back in a snarl. He said that Jesus was the first creator, and he was the second. He said he made me. The motion of the boat rolled him around in his bunk and made him appear even more mad. Sha said he stunk like a pickled turd.

When we tied up in Portland, Duncan and I stayed on the boat. Sha wandered off, I don't know where. For twenty dollars Doris walked the pier and found us a ride to Lewiston.

Sha returned, said he'd go with us as far as Lewiston and see how it went. I asked him again why he was helping us.

“The fish aren't runnin yet. Rain's gone cold. Nothin to do but sleep and try to outfart the dog.”

Duncan appeared on deck and walked between us. He glanced back and hitched his jacket around his throat and crawled over the rail and dropped heavily onto the pier. I told him to stop and went after him, but he pushed me back. He fell going up the ramp toward the street, and I helped him up. We found a place to sit at the edge of the river. Sha stayed on board, leaning on the rail, watching the ships. Doris came out of the wheelhouse to speak to him. I didn't like the look of him, and judging by Sha's face, neither did he.

“This is Portland,” Duncan said, craning his neck around to take in the scene behind him. It was a busy place, and much improved since I'd last seen it. Warehouses had been built up and down the river and shipbuilding was under way, the smack of hammers echoing across the water. The town proper had graded streets. Power and telegraph lines stitched the buildings together.