The Whip (19 page)

Twenty-Three

One afternoon Charley knocked on Anna’s cabin door.

“It’s open. Come in,” she called out.

Charley walked in to find her chopping vegetables.

“I heard you come home this morning,” Anna said. “We haven’t seen you in a while. Tonia misses you. Can you have dinner with us tonight?”

“Sure. I just came over though to tell you that I’m leaving again for San Francisco first thing in the morning.”

Anna’s chopping got faster and harder.

“You know something Charley…I’ve been thinking…It’s time for Tonia and me to leave. I’m going to talk to her when she gets home from school. We’ll be gone by the time you get back from your trip.”

“What? Why? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don’t want us in your life anymore. Since that night you ran away from me, you are always gone. All those long runs to San Francisco. You don’t even have your days off anymore. I don’t know if you have someone there. It’s okay if you do. You don’t have to tell me. But Tonia misses you. We never see you. It’s lonely here.”

“What do you mean? I thought you were happy. Of course I want you and Tonia in my life…Christ, where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll go to San Francisco too. I can find work. I’ve always taken care of Tonia. I’m grateful for our time here and all you’ve done but I…I just think it’s time.”

“This is fucking crazy. You have a good life. Why would you give that up? What will you do? I won’t let you go back to Luigi…to that kind of life you used to live.”

“At least then I was never bored. And that is not your decision, Charley. You’re not my husband.”

“You’re being selfish, Anna. Tonia is happy here. She likes her school. She has a home. Don’t go.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. We’re leaving.” Anna went back to her chopping.

Charley didn’t know what to do. She poured herself a whiskey. She downed it. She poured another and sat down.

What could she do? Tell her about her “friend” and she’d still leave. Maybe this was the moment that she had to tell Anna the truth…everything. All of it. She took a breath. Please God, don’t let Anna and Tonia leave. She willed herself to speak. But nothing came out.

Anna was just busying about making dinner, acting as though Charley wasn’t even in the room. It seemed like an hour had passed. Why couldn’t she just say the fucking words to Anna? Because she was a coward. That’s why.

“Quit staring into space, Charley. Go to the garden and get me some parsley. Make yourself useful.”

Charley stood up and started towards the door. But then she stopped. She turned around.

“Anna.” Tears had started. “I’m…so sorry. I don’t want you to go. I know I haven’t been around for you and Tonia. I just…” She shook her head trying to stop the tears. “That night I left you…I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. So I just avoided you. I kept avoiding you. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…I didn’t think that you might be lonely. If you want to leave, that’s one thing, but please don’t leave because of me. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Would never hurt you. Please don’t go. I promise I’ll be here more.”

Anna put the knife down. She stared at Charley for a long moment. She had never seen him cry. What did this mean? She walked over to him. She put her hand on his arm.

“Thank-you. I needed to hear that. Let me think…maybe. We’ll see. Let me finish dinner. How about we talk more when you get back from San Francisco? Yes?”

Charley looked into Anna’s eyes. “Yes,” she said. She couldn’t stop the damn tears.

Twenty-Four

Jim Birch looked through the shutters of the Sacramento Wells Fargo office, toward the waiting stagecoach outside.

“This is an important job, Charley. Gold run. No passengers. San Francisco office is expecting you as soon as you can get there.”

They both watched as two bank guards loaded the shipment into the secured strongbox on the coach.

“There’ll be a couple hired guns riding with you,” Jim continued. “One’ll ride shotgun and one’ll be in the coach. Both are professionals. As usual, just let them do their job. You got your gun as well, right?”

“As always Jim.”

Across the street, two men exited a neighboring saloon shouldering their shotguns, and ambled toward the stagecoach.

“There’s your coach guns now,” said Birch.

The two men had the same look: they both seemed to have lost the need to connect with the human race. But one of them, the one on the right with a beard—Charley stopped breathing—that walk, that lanky, insolent stride.

An alarm rang through every part of Charley’s body. Had she been an animal she might have put her head down at that moment and bolted, only the warm ripple of the air left as a sign of the creature who’d been there. Or she’d have charged forward at the man, screaming and baring her teeth; she’d have torn with her nails great handfuls of skin from him; and she’d have killed him with her bare hands.

Her palms were sweating, her heart was pounding, pushing a storm-surge of blood through her, expanding her body almost visibly; her muscles were charged. She was running to the end of each of the possible paths ahead of her. Death after death was happening in her mind.

Jim Birch looked at her. “Something the matter, Charley?”

She took a deep breath, trying to shake her head clear of it. “Nope. I’m fine.”

He wasn’t quite convinced. “Hell, you sure you’re okay?”

“Never better,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Well, okay, if you say so,” said Birch. “Good luck then. Have a safe trip. I’ll see you in two days.”

Charley walked through the door to the red coach glimmering in the morning sunlight. She pulled her hat down low on her brow, hunched her shoulders up…her body a tight fist.

The hired guns were standing by the coach waiting. They nodded to Charley and Jim. Charley turned away, but then her body twisted without her will, to look…just her eyes showing, shoulder and hat hiding the rest of her face. The man she’d thought was Lee glanced over at her. His eyes squinted as though he were looking into the sun. It was Lee Colton. It was Lee. He was barely recognizable under his hat and full beard, but she knew those fucked up eyes. She was petrified. Part of her wanted to run. She needed to gather herself.

If he recognized her, he gave no sign of it.

Charley willed herself to climb up onto the driver’s box. Swift and silent, the two gunslingers took their place; Lee inside the coach, and the other man on the spare end of the driver’s seat. He nodded to Charley and settled down next to her with his gun resting comfortably in his lap, staring straight ahead. He reeked of strong liquor. Charley scanned the horses, the position of the reins. She could feel movement below her as Lee settled into his seat. She thought of something.

“Jim,” called Charley.

Birch stuck his head out the office door.

“If anything should happen today, you’ll see to it Anna gets whatever’s coming to me?”

Birch hesitated at the implication, but then gestured assent with a nod and disappeared back into the building.

An eerie unsettled feeling hung in the air. She felt a rising rush of dread and energy building up inside of her. She picked up the reins and started the horses moving.

He had returned again. To drag her down into her nightmare.

How could this be happening? Life had, these last years, become pleasurable. She had her job. Her horses. She had Edmund, Anna, Tonia. Life was good.

Fucking Lee. What should she do now? Pull out her gun, kill him? Finally get her revenge. Did she even want revenge anymore? She had tried to let go. She had almost forgotten about him.

All these thoughts were jumbled in her head. For the first time in a long time, she felt fear…her fate sitting in the coach below.

Their last encounter she had lost everything.

And that was it. Her head cleared. Her body grew still, cool, alert. She could not let that happen again.

The right moment would come. She just had to recognize that moment and not flinch when it came.

Twenty-Five

About an hour out of town they reached a narrow pass. A sheer rock face on the north side and rolling rocky hills to the south, an arroyo long since dried up.

Lee was staring out the coach window. Killing was his profession and he was good at it. Already he’d emptied his gaze in readiness, in trance…in such a way a hawk dreams over the landscape—detached, yet attentive. The smallest movement and he plunges.

The six-team kicked up dust as Charley’s stagecoach rounded a bend. The rocks glittered on their left and right. The light was brilliant and Charley shielded her eyes with one hand.

High above them, the bandit shielded his eyes for a moment as well, looking down through the blinding sunlight at the coach navigating the dusty trail. He wore a pair of burlap sugar sacks tied at the ankles and another one over his face.

Down below, Charley guided the team through the rough terrain. She scanned the rocky hills that hemmed the coach. She was radiating tension, and the horses were picking up the unfamiliar scent of it, the strange jaggedness in the feeling of the reins. They snorted.

Charley and the horses would all have liked to make a run for it, to leave this ominous, glittering corridor. But the road was too narrow to move faster than a walk.

All of a sudden, the lead horses began to whinny and toss their necks. They strained against their bits. The swing and wheel horses joined in the confusion. Charley reacted, reining them back under control.

Lee’s eyes scanned the hillside, his gun trained through the open window. The gun up top next to Charley sat chewing tobacco, eyes scanning as well.

Not a second had passed when they heard the characteristic rattle of a diamond-backed rattlesnake. Charley saw it coiled on a rock near the road. That is what spooked the horses. She cracked the whip at the snake and it slithered off, away from the road. She relaxed. Just a rattler. The guns relaxed. At Charley’s urging the team moved on slowly.

She heard a gunshot. She ducked. The horses frightened and unable to bolt in the narrow pass, came to a confused, disorganized halt.

Up on the hillside, four masked outlaws were silhouetted against the bright sky, their rifles trained on the stagecoach.

Charley looked up from the driver’s box. “Oh, shit,” she said.

Charley and the hired gun leapt off the coach and hunched down behind the front wheel, guns drawn.

Atop the hill, three of the bandits were raining down bullets. Sugarfoot was moving down the slope, covered by their gunfire. Inside the coach, Lee was kneeling on the floor, the barrel of his rifle resting on the window ledge, returning fire.

The second gun started to move down the length of the coach to the cover of the larger rear wheel.

Sugarfoot was now crouched behind a boulder, taking aim just as the second gun’s legs appeared through the undercarriage. His eyes followed the movement of the legs, and his finger squeezed the trigger. A shot rang out and the man fell to the ground. As he tried to defend himself under the coach, Sugarfoot fired a second shot, this time to the man’s head. He collapsed.

“Put your hands up,” commanded Sugarfoot. “I know what you’re carrying.”

Lee took careful aim out the window. There was a quick flash as he got a bead on the bandit and fired. The bullet nicked Sugarfoot’s shoulder. He recoiled, falling behind the rock. The three men up on the ridge were still firing down at them. The bullets ripping into the fine wood body of the Concord stagecoach.

Charley, still crouched behind the front wheel, saw Lee jump out of the carriage.

“Get in the coach and cover me,” Lee yelled.

Without hesitation, she climbed inside and began firing back at the bandits on the hill.

Lee, dodging from rock cover to rock cover, headed up the steep hillside.

Sugarfoot jumped out from behind the boulder, gun trained on Lee as he fired—missed. Lee flung his body against the ground. In that same moment, Charley’s finger squeezed off a shot and her bullet hit Sugarfoot in the chest.

On the ridge, the bandits saw him fall. Sensing the jig was up, they fled to their horses tied nearby. Lee picked off two of them as they were mounting up. The remaining rider galloped away, disappearing down the other side of the hill.

Everything got very quiet.

Charley climbed out of the coach. She walked up the hillside toward the man she had just shot. She stood for a moment staring down at the body and then knelt down next to him. She rolled him over and pulled off the sack from his face. Sugarfoot was staring up at the clear blue sky, the life draining out of him.

“Oh, my God,” uttered Charley. “Edmund?”

He attempted a feeble smile. “Guess you broke even with me…”

Charley shook her head, astonished beyond belief, “I didn’t know.”

Edmund emitted a short, painful laugh, blood spurting from his mouth.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She kept repeating it over and over. She was too stunned to even weep.

“No hard feelings, my girl. We had—” He struggled to catch his breath. There was a long moment of stillness and then Charley heard that sound, that sound she had heard before, that rattle of the soul escaping.

And he was gone. Her gloved hand closed Edmund’s eyes.

A shadow fell across the body. Charley glanced up to see Lee looming over her.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said as he bent down and picked up Sugarfoot’s rifle. “Help me load up these bastards so as we can collect the reward.”

A sharp cold pain filled her craw. Now. Now was the moment.

Charley stood up. Where the fuck was her gun? She felt as though she might vomit with rage and impotence. It was gone. The gun was gone. “I got to go to the horses.”

Lee’s eyebrows went up at that. “Well hurry the hell up. I ain’t carrying three dead bodies myself.”

At the coach she searched for her gun. Where the fuck did she drop it? Wait. The hired gun under the coach. She would grab his rifle. She couldn’t see it though. It must be underneath his body. She began to pull him out from under the coach. She was struggling at it when Lee came up behind her dragging Edmund’s limp body. He let Edmund’s feet drop to the ground. He bent down and helped Charley drag the guard’s body out. Lee rolled him over with his foot and picked up the rifle before Charley could get it.

She stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. All she wanted was a fucking gun and Lee was standing there with three of them slung over his shoulder.

He demanded that Charley help with the other two bodies that remained up on the hill. She had no choice but to comply.

She’d had her moment and now it was gone. All these guns and all these bodies and still she fucked it up. She didn’t even know if she had the will left to pull the trigger, even if she had a gun. She was numb.

She helped Lee drag the remaining bodies down the hill. And together they hoisted all of them into the coach—he made Charley help with that as well.

They started back to Sacramento; Edmund, piled together with the others, taking his last earthly ride.

Lee rode shotgun next to Charley, swigging from a flask of whiskey. He offered the flask to her. She gave no response.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “Don’t know why, but killin’ a man always gives me a powerful thirst. Always has.” He took another long swig.

The sound of Lee’s voice was buzzing through her head. She was unable to speak…unable to make sense of anything. How was it possible that she had not known? Had not recognized? Edmund had seen through her disguise. And yet she had not even considered the possibility that he was also living an invented existence. A life of masks and sacks and games and fantasies. Her mind flew backwards to the gal in the saloon so many moons ago sitting on Edmund’s lap. Charley remembered that brief second that she had seen revealed, the gal’s tiny fragile truth within. Why had she not seen the truth in Edmund? Why had he not trusted her with his truth? If he had, he would still be alive. Enough. Enough. She could not, would not think of what she had just done…killed a man. A man whose moving flesh had found its way deep inside her.

Enough. Her pain was looming beyond the breath. And now crawling somewhere deep inside the dark side of her brain she heard her mind speak. It was seductive. It told her to be glad that it was not Lee that she had killed. Not sad.

Lee, whose smell and voice and eyes were here close…so close. They were so intertwined. The truth…she was never going to be able to kill him.

If she could have gone somewhere, anywhere, to be beaten into stupid insensibility, she’d have galloped there directly. If a tree trunk had fallen to halt the coach and break them, she’d have lain on the road and muttered blessings to that tree trunk with each red drop of the river of blood that poured from her mouth.

Her mind was slipping from her…floating like the wind that blew the dust from the graves of men.