The Drop Edge of Yonder (20 page)

"I should certainly hope so," Delilah said. "It's important for a lady's state of mind to know that she's traveling with a provider."

Delilah bought a pair of leather kid gloves, a pair of black leather boots with high lace tops, two split riding skirts, and finally, a.41 -caliber derringer that she slipped into a leather purse. For his part, Zebulon chose a broad-brimmed hat ornamented with silver conchos and a fringed Mexican jacket with small lapels that reached over his hips. His final purchase was a pair of square-toed boots and a fancy set of spurs with silver rowels.

"So what do you think of my new-bought flasharity?" he asked, turning around and examining himself in front of a fulllength mirror.

"You look like a judge or a lawyer."

"Now no one will know me," he said.

She held out her arms, twirling around in front of him.

"And me?" she asked.

"The wife of a judge. Or the madam of a high-priced whorehouse."

She laughed. "Which do you prefer?"

She pranced away, swinging her purse and throwing him a coquettish glance over her shoulder. "I suggest that we find out."

Their next stop was the waterfront and the Palace Hotel, where Zebulon impulsively booked a room on the top floor with a view of the harbor, a transaction that was made possible only after he represented Delilah as his slave; as people of color, even one as obviously exotic and indefinable as Delilah, were not allowed in the hotel except on terms of servitude.

They stood before the window inside the lavishly overdecorated room, staring down at the harbor and its hundreds of abandoned ships.

"Now I'm your slave," Delilah said.

"For one night anyway," he said. "Does that bother you?"

She turned away, sitting on the edge of the bed. "It bothers me that we're joined to a fate that we can't control. But then isn't that what fate is, a kind of slavery?"

The seriousness of her question unsettled him, even to the point of making him afraid, and then angry. "If you don't want to be here, maybe you ought to take off"

"I no longer know how to take off," she said. "And I don't know how to be here either, or anywhere else. When I saw you in the saloon I wanted to run away And then in the hotel in Vera Cruz. But you keep showing up."

"Where does that leave us?"

"I have to see Ivan before he dies. He shot a man in the gold fields, in Calabasas Springs"

She stood up. "You don't have to come"

"I wish that was true," he said, and followed her out the door.

After they left the hotel, Zebulon purchased two horses and they rode south towards the Spanish town of Calabasas Springs, where Ivan was scheduled to be hung.

S SOON AS THEY LEFT SAN FRANCISCO, DELILAH'S MOOD changed. Rather than urging him to press on, she started to drift and hang back, allowing them to proceed at a more leisurely pace over rolling green hills dotted with giant oak trees and clusters of well-fed cattle; the only sounds they were aware of were those made by their horses' hooves and their own breathing, and then gradually, as if they had entered into a silent and languid dream, not even those.

Their reveries were interrupted by a dozen cattle scrambling out of a gully followed by a vaquero in a wide-brimmed hat, shouting and swinging his reata. Once the cattle were out of the gully, the vaquero reined in his horse. He was old and had been through more than his share of hard times, but he had never seen anything quite like these two fancy pilgrims. Most likely a wealthy businessman and his slave, he decided, traveling to one of the great Spanish ranches that spread down the middle of the state like feudal kingdoms. Not wanting to find out, he tossed them a quick salute and rode off after the cattle.

Delilah spurred her horse in the opposite direction, smacking Zebulon's thigh as she galloped past him.

Laughing and shouting, they raced across a grassy meadow until they pulled up their horses by the bank of a slow-moving river. When she leaned forward, trying to catch her breath, he pulled her off her horse, dropping her kicking and screaming into the river. Rolling over on the muddy bank, they tore off their clothes, reaching out for each other in the weed-choked water.

Suddenly she stood up.

He looked up at her, not understanding.

"I can't," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Do I always have to know what I mean?"

"I'll get some food," he said.

Without bothering to put on his clothes, he picked up his rifle and waded across the river.

After he had walked several miles with no game in sight, he sensed that he was being followed. There were fewer bird calls, and the land was too still, as if an unknown presence was moving through it. At first he thought it might be a Miwok, or a lone brave from a tribe he had no knowledge of, or maybe even a bounty hunter. He erased his footprints and circled back where he came from. Crawling through a clump of waist-high bunchgrass, he saw Delilah bending over, her eyes on the ground as she concentrated on his footprints. He watched her until she disappeared, then he circled ahead, waiting to surprise her in a clump of high grass. When she didn't appear, he circled back again.

When there was still no sign of her, he suddenly became worried and ran back to the river.

Delilah was leaning against a tree. A few feet away a wild turkey was roasting over a spit.

"When the wolf is silent," she said, "the moon begins to hunt."

hat night they slept next to each other and yet apart. The following morning, after fording the San Joaquin River, they rode along the bank of the Tuolumne, through sparse country dotted with occasional oak groves, madrones, and manzanita shrubs.

Ten miles outside of Calabasas Springs they approached a collection of tents and shacks surrounding a half-finished adobe cantina. Any patch of earth not squatted on by prospectors was cluttered with mining equipment, wagon beds, spare wheels, barrels, and stacks of lumber.

"We'll need a stake," Zebulon said as they dismounted in front of the cantina.

Delilah hesitated, staring at two bearded men sitting on a bench, passing a bottle back and forth.

"The man wearing the bowler hat thinks he's seen you somewhere," she said. "Neither of them can figure out what you're doing with me, or what I'm doing with you, or if I'm for sale." She shut her eyes, her head shaking back and forth. "Bowler Hat hasn't told Yellow Rag about the nuggets he's keeping from him in his money-belt. Also, he hasn't heard from his wife in over a year. Mostly because she left him for someone else."

He looked at her as if she was mad.

"Lately I've become second-sighted," she said. "The way I was when I was a child."

As they walked towards the cantina, Bowler Hat leaned over and spat tobacco juice on Zebulon's boot.

"Ay know ye, dun' I?" he asked with a thick Scottish accent. "Ye be a bad un on the run."

"Bad enough to handle the likes of you," Zebulon said.

Bowler Hat stared at Zebulon with narrowed oily eyes. "Are ye makin' foon a' me? 'Cause if ya are, ya gaunna suffer."

Zebulon removed the man's bowler hat and stepped on it, grinding it into the dirt. "Ask your friend why he's hiding the nuggets he owes you. They're inside his belt. And forget about your wife. She's run off with someone else."

As they entered the cantina, they heard shouts, followed by a shot.

The smoke-filled room was loud and brimming with the usual collection of prospectors and whores. In the back, a rangy towheaded farmer and a tall cadaverous man in a shiny black suit were shooting billiards.

"The one in the black suit is known as the Undertaker," Delilah said. "He's the one with money and the one you have to watch out for."

The Undertaker sliced his cue ball off two balls, and then another, not looking up as the farmer staggered towards the door.

"Game?" Zebulon asked.

"Your funeral," the Undertaker replied.

Zebulon put his last twenty dollars on the table, then won three straight games before he missed.

As the Undertaker bent over the table, Delilah sat down on a chair, staring at him and silently moving her lips.

Halfway into his shot, he stopped to look at her with eyes as cold and white as the cue ball.

"Don't stare," he demanded, then looked at Zebulon. "Tell your whore to turn her back when I'm lining up a shot, or I'll have her thrown out."

"She sits her own horse," Zebulon replied. "Nothin' me or anyone else can do about it."

"I'll second that," Hatchet Jack said as he walked up to the table, looking prosperous in a black three-piece suit, a narrowbrimmed hat with a braided horse-hair band, and a stringed tie. "If you let the witch break your stride, you're done for. You'll have to take up dominoes."

He sat down next to Delilah. "Go ahead. Take your shot. I'll keep things under control."

The Undertaker twisted both ends of his mustache, then slicked back his hair and slammed his stick into the cue hall, sending it ricocheting around three sides of the table before it nudged a ball into a side pocket.

They played two more games, the Undertaker winning all of them.

"Now you're done," the Undertaker said to Zebulon as he took the twenty dollars.

"Not just yet," Hatchet Jack replied. "The meal ain't over."

He dropped Delilah's gold and ruby necklace on the side of the billiard table. "One game. Your whole stake against the choker."

The Undertaker slid the necklace through his long bony fingers. When he realized that it was probably worth more than he had won in the last five years, he dropped thirty gold eagles on the table.

"Not near enough," Hatchet Jack said, "considering that this choker belonged to the Czar of Russia's cousin and before her, the Queen of Sheba."

The Undertaker dropped twenty gold eagles on the table.

"All right," Hatchet Jack said, clapping his hands and walking back and forth as if he intended to rearrange all the energies in the room.

"Sit or I'll walk," the Undertaker said.

Hatchet Jack sat, then stood up, staring at Delilah, until she gestured for him to sit down.

All of the Undertaker's considerable experience told him that he was being set up and that he should quit while he was ahead. The only problem was the necklace. Once he had it, his life would never be the same.

He took a deep breath and bent over the table as side bets flew around the room.

"You know why they call him the Undertaker?" Hatchet Jack asked the crowd as the Undertaker sank the first five balls. "Because he's five feet under, goin' on six."

"Under! Under!" Delilah mumbled. "Who will bury the Undertaker when the Undertaker goes under?"

When the Undertaker's shot missed by less than a hair, Zebulon ran the rest of the points as easily as if he was playing a game that didn't matter.

"You set me up," the Undertaker said. "All three of you."

He picked up the gold eagles, then took out a pepperbox pistol from his vest pocket.

Before he could pull the trigger, Zebulon slammed his cue stick on the Undertaker's wrist, then over the back of his head, knocking him out.

He picked up the necklace, the Undertaker's pistol, and his fifty gold eagles, half of which he gave to Hatchet Jack, who ordered a round of wall-to-wall drinks for the room. Then all three sat down at a table and ordered a big sloppy meal of chicken mole and corn bread.