The Drop Edge of Yonder (33 page)

As if to verify what he said, there was a shot from the saloon, then another, followed by a scream.

Halfway down the hall, he hesitated.

"North," Delilah said, as they hurried down the stairs two at a time.

Then they ran for a stand of trees, where Delilah had horses waiting for them.

'HEY RODE BENEATH A COLD SHIVER OF METALLIC STARS, their horses' hooves thudding over the black earth. Before dawn they reached a lean-to, a strip of canvas nailed between two oak trees. In front of the lean-to, three saddled horses were hitched to a log near the remains of a small fire.

Hatchet Jack stumbled towards them, pulling on his pants and reaching for a gun-belt hanging from a branch.

He looked at Delilah. "I figured you and him for old Mex."

"He wanted to. I didn't," she said.

Hatchet Jack pointed to Elijah's otter cap pulled over Zebulon's forehead. "I know that bonnet."

"Pa's dead," Zebulon said. "He got himself shot."

Hatchet Jack turned away, kicking dirt on the fire. "It was gold that done it, that and leavin' the mountains."

Hatchet Jack disappeared into the lean-to. He came out carrying his rifle and two saddle bags that he cinched over a horse.

"I should have left you in that ditch," he said. "It would have saved me and everyone else a lot of trouble."

"Who's leavin' who in what town?" Large Marge said, swaying out of the lean-to.

She slowly hoisted herself onto a horse. "I guess you know they're comin'. But I ain't stayin' to find out."

She galloped off, followed by Hatchet Jack.

Delilah walked over to her horse, then stopped, looking back at Zebulon.

"Go with them, if that's what you want," he said.

"I was thinking we should head for Mexico," she suggested.

"I'm finished with all of that," he said. "And maybe with you, too."

"If only that was true," she said, mounting her horse and riding after the others.

He sat down against the trunk of an oak tree waiting for her to return.

,Quien es? he asked himself.

The answer was a confusion of voices that sounded like marbles poured over a dishpan.

He waited through the morning for the voices to stop. When they became louder and even more confused, he rolled on the ground, pounding his fists on the earth.

Quien es? he asked again.

Finally he got up and rode after Hatchet Jack and Delilah. After a few miles, he became worried about falling asleep in the saddle. The last thing he needed was to wake up inside a dream that wasn't his.

Dreaming was easy, he thought. Being dreamed was the problem.

E FOUND THEIR CAMPFIRE AT THE FAR END OF A NARROW ravine. It was dark. The air was cool from a recent rain and the wet earth smelled of pine cones. Halfway into the ravine, he dismounted and hitched his horse to a stunted pine tree rooted in a boulder.

An owl hooted and he answered with a long mournful twonote. When a sharp pain exploded through his chest, he dug his fingers into the earth and bit his lip until he tasted blood. Again, the owl hooted, this time from a lower branch. "Shook!" the owl screeched: "Shooook... Shooook... Shooook!"

When he stumbled into the camp, everyone was asleep.

He lay down next to Delilah, who was sleeping on the other side of the fire next to Hatchet Jack, her head on his chest, one arm around his shoulder.

He hesitated, looking from Hatchet Jack to Delilah, then placed a hand on the small of her back, inhaling the scent of her musty mud-caked hair.

"I knew you'd come," she said, not opening her eyes.

He hesitated, looking over at Hatchet Jack. "Maybe it's too late."

"Maybe you should find out," she replied.

She didn't resist when he slipped off her pants.

As he entered her, she pulled her arm away from Hatchet Jack, whose mouth was stretched open as if in rigor mortis.

"Don't move," she instructed as she let him settle into her, breathing with him until he felt a pressure rush up his spine, followed by waves of pulsating heat.

The sensation over, he felt suddenly abandoned, as if he was falling towards the waves of a dark turbulent sea. Come closer, the towering waves howled, closer to - There was no way of knowing what waited for him. When he opened his mouth, he was no longer breathing. He imagined his lungs full of water, and the more he struggled to breathe, the more he felt fear overwhelm him.

He prayed to Wakan Tanka and to all the spirits who live and dance where the sun goes down, who take care of all the in-between creatures trapped in all the waters of the world. The old people were talking to him. His Ma and Pa were calling out to him and to the two-headed eagle who lives where the giant supports the world on his shoulders; they were all calling for him.

"Hee-ay-hay-ee," he called, the cry loud enough to wake the others. "Hee-ay-hay-ee-ee!"

When he opened his eyes, Hatchet Jack was leaning on an elbow looking down at them, his Colt .44 pointed at Zebulon's forehead.

"Ain't you carryin' this ride too far, little brother?" he asked, with a curious half-amused smile.

Zebulon recognized the Colt that he had carried when he had been shot in the saloon and thrown into the arroyo.

"I didn't steal it," Hatchet Jack said. "And I didn't take it off a dead man. Not my style. The Colt was on the table. Since You weren't around, I figured it might as well be mine."

"Go ahead and shoot him." Large Marge was looking over at them. "And her, too. He'd do the same. Or if you lose your nerve, shoot me. Or yourself. Anything that shuts down all this stupid goddamn palaver and poochin' around with each other."

Disgusted with a situation that was more than she could or wished to understand, she pulled a blanket over her head.

Hatchet Jack handed the Colt to Delilah, who shifted it from one hand to the other. Then she handed the Colt to Zebulon, who handed it back to Delilah.

Hatchet Jack stood up, pulling on his pants. "Tomorrow we'll ride after Plaxico. He's waiting on the Yuba. He drew me a map.

He removed a slab of cowhide from his shirt pocket. CALFORNIE was scratched above a line of arrows pointing to the northwest, ending in a three-masted sailing ship. Another scratch of letters was marked ORAGON.

Delilah pressed the Colt between her breasts with both hands.

"Is that all we need? A map? Is that why we're here? To ride on, and then ride on some more, and then some more again after someone who rides after us, or maybe ahead of us, because we don't know how to ride after ourselves? If that's true, then let's ride up to Oregon and find whoever it is we're looking for. Maybe Plaxico, whoever he is, will tell us what we're doing, even if he doesn't know, or if he does, but can't say why. You choose. I don't care."

She fired a bullet into a tree trunk and stalked off into the night.

When she returned they were sleeping, or at least pretending to be. Choosing a spot away from Hatchet Jack and Zebulon, she curled up alone with her arms crossed over her breasts.

Above them, dark clouds swept beneath a full moon, like blotches of spilled ink. Somewhere a wolf howled. Then two more, until the whole pack joined into one mournful chorus.

They slept through the night, together and apart, too exhausted to dream, or hear the howling of the wolves.

ATCHET JACK LED THE WAY OVER GRASSY HILLS DOTTED with goldenrod and manzanita berries. To the east, a rainbow, thin and pointed as the end of a cue stick, hovered over a waterfall. Above, eagles soared. At the sound of their horses' hooves, antelope and deer scattered ahead, then stopped to stare back with huge startled eyes.

After crossing the headwaters of the Sacramento River and Cottonwood Creek, they negotiated a series of hills covered with tangled alder and thick groves of maple. Further on, as they emerged from a stand of spruce, they saw a thin column of smoke curling against the horizon.

They climbed towards a rocky outcrop. The thin air left them speechless, their minds empty, as if they had entered a stillness that had always been there, a magical land free of stagnation and death, where nothing had ever happened nor was yet to come.

Their dreamy preoccupations were interrupted by the clink, clink of pick axes and shovels. Beneath them, through strips of foamy mist, a mining camp of shacks and tents had been set up along the bank of the river - a roaring cascade that plunged down the middle of a steep gorge.

The only shack with four walls stood apart from the others on a small rise. A sign across the door read:

SUPPLIES AND GEAR - AFFORDABLE PRICES.

Delilah pointed to Cox, the Englishman from The Rhinelander, as he walked up the rise towards the shack, followed by three Miwoks carrying heavy sacks of grain on their heads and shoulders. After Cox directed the Miwoks inside, he sat down on a bench near the door, lighting up a hand-rolled cheroot.

Beneath him, a line of exhausted men worked tailrace ditches and flutter wheels. Further downriver, half-naked Chinese, Mexicans, and Indians stood waist-deep in freezing water, shifting gravel back and forth in wooden rockers.

Suddenly a Miwok let out a low cry. Kneeling down, he pressed an ear to the ground. Immediately the other Miwoks working upriver threw down their rocker pans and ran into a dense stand of silver fir, just ahead of the Warden as he galloped into the camp.

A slanted cockade hat was pulled over the Warden's forehead. His frail body, bent with dysentery and choleric rage, was covered with a torn red cloak. Behind him, the Sheriff led a ragged platoon of guards and three horse-drawn supply wagons. Further back, struggling to keep up, Stebbins and the photographer pulled two mules loaded with camera equipment and several racks of Spanish wine.

"We're looking for the outlaw, Zebulon Shook," the Warden shouted. "We know he rode this way. If any man has information about his whereabouts, now is the time to speak up."

No one spoke. Most of those present had never heard of Zebulon Shook - not that they would have betrayed him if they had, or any other outlaw, given their own problematic histories.

"One last chance," the Warden shouted again.

When no one came forward, he nodded to the Sheriff, who pulled out his pistol and shot a Chilean miner through the foot.

Except for Cox, who had run into his shack at the first sign of the Warden, everyone else shouted what they knew, or thought they knew about Zebulon, even if most of their information was invented: "He went to ground, General. Who knows where -"; "New Mexico or Coloradv -' ; "Oklahoma -"; "El Paso is what I heard -"; "People seen him on the Brazos -' ; "He took down a bank in Sliver City, shot up half the town -' ; "Killed a man in Placerville -"; "Set up camp on the Frazier River with a bunch of renegades -"; "Halfway to Vancouver -"; "That mulatto whore leading him by his nose ring -"; "On the way to Oregon, with some Minnesotans -"

"Apprehend that man!" the Warden shouted, pointing towards a Chinaman crouching behind a sluice gate, his face half-hidden beneath a split-bamboo hat.

As two soldiers ran towards him, Lu wrenched a board from the gate and waded into the river. Holding onto the board, he let himself be swept over the boiling rapids, his long black queue trailing behind him like a snake as he disappeared down the river.