Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (3 page)

The boy
stopped in front of the old man and began exchanging words. Although Jackson
had picked up a fair understanding of the Spanish language from his time in
Texas and especially the gang’s more recent excursion into South America, the
dialect was confusing and the conversation too rapid-fire for him to follow in
any meaningful way.

Juan
and the old man went back and forth, and then the young guide returned to
Jackson. He kept his voice low when he spoke, and Jackson wondered why. What
did it matter if anyone heard? “He…he says the liquid is…it is…”

The boy
looked away, either embarrassed or afraid to continue, and Jackson waved his
hand in an impatient circling motion. “Out with it,” he growled.

“He
says it is the secret to eternal life,” Juan finished. Tears rimmed his bloodshot
eyes and he looked miserable.

There
was a long silence. No one moved and no one spoke. Jackson didn’t know what he
had expected to hear, but he knew that wasn’t it. Then one of the Krupp
brothers giggled from somewhere behind him and Jackson turned and glared. Both
brothers looked away, each appearing equally guilty, and Jackson was glad he
would soon be parting ways with the two dullards.

He bent
and said to the boy, “I want to make sure there was no misunderstanding. This
is important. You go back and ask that old man what happens if someone drinks
that liquid in the glass tube he’s holding, and then you come back to me and repeat
exactly what he says, word for word.”

Juan
did as he was told, and Jackson watched the exchange with a critical gaze. The
old Peruvian shaman lifted his head and shot Jackson a look of hostility that
went far beyond anything he had ever seen, even out of the good ol’ boys back
in Texas just before he put bullets in their heads and made off with their
money.

This
time the conversation was brief, and when Juan returned, he said simply, “If
you drink the liquid, you will live forever.” He refused to meet Jackson’s eyes
and stood shuffling his feet uncomfortably in the dusty South American night.

Jackson
Healy smiled. He had come to this desolate spot in the wilds of Peru in search
of riches, and would leave with so much more.

***

The slaughter was sudden,
efficient, and brutal. Jackson instructed Juan to take the tube containing the
golden gel-like liquid from the hands of the shaman priest. He accepted it from
the boy and walked over to his burro, placing it into the saddlebag already
weighted down with the golden disk. Then he strode back to his position in
front of the fire, which had begun to wane but was still burning brighter than
any campfire he had ever seen.

The
Peruvian tribesmen and the American outlaws faced each other, with Juan
standing on the side of the gringos only because he had been forced there. The
night breezes were humid and carried on them the promise of a coming storm. Off
in the distance, thunder rumbled through the heavy air. The hint of a
flickering glow appeared over the horizon, winking once, twice, three times,
and then disappearing like the end of a nightmare.

Without
warning Jackson turned and nodded to the Krupp brothers. The three men raised
their Colt revolvers in perfect unison and began firing, and Peruvian tribesmen
began falling, and within seconds it was over, the sound of the dying men’s
moans barely discernible over the screams of the young boy the outlaws had
hired as their guide. Juan stood off to the side, rooted to the spot in shock
and disbelief, staring with wide, frightened eyes and screaming into the muggy
night.

And
then Jackson turned his pistol on Juan and fired.

And the
screaming stopped.

***

The smell of gunpowder hung in
the air as the three outlaws prepared to flee. Jackson Healy surveyed the
devastation, the fallen bodies littering the flat plain in front of Puerta de
Hayu Marka like a child’s dolls after a tantrum. Wesley Krupp asked, “How long
d’ya suppose it’ll be before someone finds this mess?”

Jackson
shrugged. “Couple of days. The kid’s ma and pa will wait for him to come home
tomorrow, and when he don’t, they’ll get a search party together and head out
here at first light the next day.”

“So
we’ll have about a day-and-a-half head start on the locals. That ain’t much.
We’ll have to ride non-stop for the next few days.”

“One of
us will,” Jackson agreed, and then he drew his Colt again and gut-shot Wesley
Krupp, then turned and fired on Amos almost before Wesley had hit the ground.
Amos was so stunned he never even reached for his gun.

“Sorry
about that,” Jackson said agreeably, aiming his voice in the direction of his
fallen partners. “It’s nothin’ personal, but you fellas have outlived your
usefulness. Know what I mean?”

He
waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming. Pained gasps, punctuated by the
occasional shocked curse, seemed to be the limit of the Krupp brothers’ current
vocabulary.

Jackson
shrugged, unsurprised. He gathered the reins of the four burros into one hand
and began walking away from the carnage in what he hoped was the direction of
Puno. He had no intention of entering the village—to do so would be the
height of stupidity, given what he had just done to the twelve year old former
resident of the place—but intended to skirt it to the west, then head
north toward the good old U.S. of A.

Three
of the burros he would release into the wild shortly, and the fourth—the
one carrying the saddlebag containing a fortune in pure gold, not to mention
the fountain of youth—would transport Jackson Healy until he could steal
a horse to use to escape South America and move on to his suddenly limitless
future.

As he departed,
leaving in his wake bodies and blood and devastation, he could hear the
muttered curses and vain threats of his now-dying former partners. He ignored
them and walked on into the night.

4

June
18, 1858

Paskagankee,
Maine

Lucas Crosby had just finished
wiping down the bar at the Paskagankee Tavern when the horse-drawn carriage
arrived. The evening’s last drinker had departed over an hour ago, and Luke
would normally have been asleep in bed by now, but not on delivery night.
Delivery night was different.

The
clop-clop-clop of horse hooves on hard-packed dirt became stronger as the wagon
approached from the south, then faded away again as it drove straight past the
tavern’s front entrance. Luke knew the routine. It was always the same. The
driver would turn his horse into the small delivery area hacked into the dense
forest just past the building, then guide the wagon along the side of the
tavern until reaching the rear service entrance.

Luke
waited a couple of minutes for the driver to navigate the narrow, rutted
pathway, then walked through the kitchen and out the back door to begin
unloading supplies.

Receiving
deliveries in the middle of the night was unusual, Luke knew that. And in fact
the strange nocturnal schedule had raised a few influential eyebrows five years
ago, when Luke had purchased the Paskagankee Tavern with his wife, Sarah. But
he explained to the Town Council that arranging for supply deliveries to a
location as far out in the wilderness as Paskagankee was no easy task, and when
the distributor—located all the way down in Portland—offered Luke a
discount if he would agree to the unorthodox schedule, he had jumped at the
offer.

“It’s
all in the name of giving the people of Pakagankee a place to wet their
whistles,” Luke had explained, and while the town fathers were none too happy
about the deal, they didn’t interfere, either, especially when Luke told them
it was either that or he would not be able to open the tavern.

He
walked out the back door into the uncertain light provided by two flickering
gas lamps mounted on the exterior wall, one on either side of the door.
Delivery man Matt Fulton grunted a greeting, his heavily muscled arms straining
under the weight of three cases of liquor as he stumbled by, moving in the
opposite direction. “Hotter’n the hinges of hell, ain’t it?” Matt mumbled after
placing the cases just inside the door and returning to the wagon for more.

Luke nodded
and said nothing. All of his concentration was focused on unlatching a small
iron hook fastened unobtrusively onto the rear of the wagon. He struggled with
the latch—it was intentionally difficult to loosen for their protection,
a fact Luke could appreciate but which was, nonetheless, extremely frustrating
at two o’clock in the morning. Finally the offending latch popped free with a
heavy
clank,
and Luke pulled the wagon’s
false bottom straight backward, as if opening a gigantic dresser drawer.

The
contraption rolled straight out about four feet, then swiveled on an iron bar
mounted under the wagon as a hinge. Luke lowered the free end of the false
bottom to the ground and a man tumbled out. It was a black man. The man was
sweating profusely, having been trapped inside the tiny space for virtually the
entire ten-hour trip north from Portland.

The hidden
traveler rolled onto the dusty ground and pushed himself onto all fours. He
struggled to his feet with difficulty, his limbs clearly stiff and sore. It was
painful to watch. Luke extended a hand to help the man but was ignored. The man
was old, wizened, with receding gray hair and rheumy brown eyes.

Most
slaves willing to risk everything for a shot at freedom were younger, often
with families; men and women with more of their lives ahead of them than behind
them. This man seemed to be the opposite. He walked with a slight bend to his
frame, as if unable to fully straighten his spine. He was short and
frail-looking, and it looked as though a strong wind might reduce him to smoke
and blow him away.

Luke
was stunned that the frail-looking old man standing unsteadily before him had
made the long, dangerous trip. He tried to guess the man’s age and settled on seventy-five,
maybe eighty. That would make him easily a quarter-century older than any other
slave that had ever used the Paskagankee Tavern waypoint.

Luke
had purchased the tavern with the intention of making it the final stop along
the Underground Railroad’s Portland route almost five years ago. After making
some special modifications to the building’s basement, he did exactly that. The
Canadian border was located just a few short miles to the north, close enough
for escaping slaves to make the final freedom-seeking dash on foot, after
resting up at the tavern for anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

For the
last five years Luke had been helping make slaves’ dreams of freedom come true.
There had been hundreds of deliveries just like this one, and in all that time,
he had never seen anyone of this advanced age and frail physical condition tumble
out of the wagon’s false bottom. The space was so small and cramped that one
decent-sized adult was forced to lie either on his back or his front, with
barely enough hip-room to turn over. Luke couldn’t imagine how this man had
managed ten hours.

Luke waited
patiently while the elderly slave brushed himself off. His clothes were
threadbare and dirty and his brushing motion accomplished nothing besides
smearing the dirt around. Finally he gave up and shook out his arms and hands
vigorously in an attempt to restore some of blood flow.

The man
glanced around disinterestedly, as if falling out of invisible compartments and
into deserted, out-of-the-way courtyards in the middle of the night was nothing
noteworthy. Probably it wasn’t, having ridden the Underground Railroad
hundreds, if not thousands, of miles over many days and weeks.

Luke
smiled gently, again extending his hand. “Welcome,” he said quietly. “You’ll be
safe here tonight, if not quite comfortable. My name is Lucas.”

“Jedediah,”
the stranger answered, finally breaking down and shaking Luke’s hand. His eyes,
though, never met Luke’s. He continued to scan for potential danger, his head
swiveling in all directions.

Luke’s
smile widened. “You needn’t worry,” he insisted. “Nobody lives within shouting
distance of this place, and everyone in town ‘cept for me and Matt has long
since gone to bed.”

“Not
everyone,” the old black man muttered. “Someone’s coming.”

Luke
withdrew his hand and stared into the dark night, listening hard. If someone
was indeed approaching the Paskagankee Tavern during a nighttime delivery, it
would be a first. The tiny village was a workingman’s town. Folks liked to
drink hard, but they also worked hard, and getting a good night’s sleep was important.

“I’m
sure you’re wrong,” he said. “I don’t hear a thing. But just to be on the safe
side, let’s get you inside and bunked down for the night.” Luke bent down and retrieved
a tiny valise that had slid off the wagon’s false bottom at the same time the
slave did. The bag was dusty and torn, and it depressed Luke to think it contained
every last item the old man owned.

“Too
late,” Jedediah said, and at that moment a man rounded the corner at the side
of the inn, emerging out of the darkness into the half-light of the flickering
torches. The man approached along the path the wagon had taken just minutes
before, confidently following the ruts worn into the grass from hundreds of
deliveries on hundreds of nights just like this one.