(1986) Deadwood (35 page)

Agnes Lake was last out, and as she stepped into the fresh air she was pleased to hear the captain vomiting. The driver took her hand as she came through the door. "Careful, miss," he said. "It's a tricky balance."

She smiled politely and disengaged her hand. Agnes Lake did not enjoy the touch of skin. She walked behind the coach, and then to the front. The horses were lathered and excited, and one had been blowing blood from his nostrils, probably for miles. None of them seemed hurt, although the larger of the lead horses was cut on both legs.

The messenger had fallen off fifty yards up the road, and when she looked he was limping toward them, cradling a muddy shotgun. She studied his face and saw it was fortunate that he was warranteed gentlemanly.

"When I looked, you was gone," the driver said to him.

The messenger saw Agnes Lake watching them and smiled when he spoke. "When you looked at what?" he said. "You sure as hell wasn't looking at the road." He nodded to her then, and touched his hat, which was muddy and squashed. " 'Secuse my language, ma'am," he said, showing teeth.

"You was asleep," the driver said.

The messenger nodded to Agnes Lake and touched his hat again. "Perhaps we ought to walk into the woods a little ways and discuss it," he said.

"Perhaps you goddamn right we ought to," the driver said. He was not warranteed, and under no obligations to watch his language. They went into the trees, and Agnes Lake walked back up the road toward the place where the accident began. The wheel had come off where the messenger did—the tracks left the road back there and a trench began a few yards beyond. The loose wheel had rolled to a rest against the slope in the ground.

The axle had dragged through the mud for twenty yards or so, and then hit the tree that stopped it. She noticed the thickness of the pine, thinking one of the horses could have broken a leg. The axle had torn the bark off the tree trunk and wedged itself between the trunk and the biggest branch; you could not lift the axle without lifting the tree.

She felt the cramps again and walked back to the coach, keeping the hurry out of her steps. She found a toilet kit in one of her traveling bags. She crossed the road—the opposite side from Captain Crawford and the driver and messenger—and found a place to take care of herself.

When she returned, the other passengers, including Captain Crawford, were standing together beside the coach, talking about Indians. The messenger and the driver were still in the trees fighting. The man with the flask took a drink but, removed from the coach's regulations, did not offer it around. In the woods, the driver screamed once. The farm boy who had fallen across Agnes Lake's lap jumped at the sound of the yell. The captain noticed it and laughed.

"That's not Indians," he said. "That was a bite. I'd say a finger, most likely." And he winked at her. Agnes Lake felt a crawling come over her, and made herself move to keep it from settling.

The peddler and the man with the flask sat on the ground against one of the coach's remaining wheels. They each lit cigars. The noises from the trees were slower now. Agnes Lake noticed the captain watching her again. His eyes went down her body to her feet. His gaze was not the rudest she had come across, but it was plain enough in its intention, and she felt the crawling come over her again. She moved away.

Those gazes always made her move. Not the men themselves, but the intentions.

Agnes Lake was forty-three years old, and could have passed for twenty years younger anywhere there were farm women for comparison. She had always eaten fruits and stayed out of the sun. It was the sun and absence of citrus that aged women. She saw them everywhere in their hats on their way to church, baked and washed out, sitting in wagons with their farmer husbands and four or five barefoot children. The work had turned them old too. It seemed to Agnes Lake that, more than the work, they shrank under the weight of knowing it was always there to do. She saw these women and pitied them, turning old in the fields, still bearing their husbands' children. It seemed to her that at the least, the husbands could notice what they had done to their wives' looks and leave them alone at night.

She knew, though, that there were things between farmers and their wives that she didn't understand, and never judged them openly.

The captain's gaze found her face, and he smiled. The feeling ran fresh over her body, and she moved again to keep it from settling. She did not want to wake up in the night feeling that look on her skin. She walked past him and climbed onto the driver's seat of the coach. The horses stirred and she calmed them with soft words. "Here, now," she said.

She found the toolbox under the messenger's seat. The lock was broken. There were two hammers inside it and a mallet, a bottle of Huron City mineral spirits and a bottle of Hood's Sarsaparilla, a blond wig, and a small axe. Under the wig were a dozen modern cartridges loose on the floor of the box. There was no saw.

She took the axe and the mallet and jumped to the ground, landing as softly as if she had been dropped there by the wind. The others noticed the jump and regarded her in a new way. None of them moved. She put the tools on the trunk of the tree next to the axle of the coach and walked back up the road for the wheel.

She set the wheel on its rim and rolled it back toward the coach. It was not dissimiliar to setting Bill on the vertical and walking him to bed. The trick was all in the balance. The captain took off his hat and moved to help her, and doing that, he stepped in front of the wheel. It bounced into his legs and then dropped onto the ground.

"Let me help you with that, miss," he said. He retrieved the wheel and winked at the others. "Now," he said when he had it up, "where were you taking it to, anyway?"

"This will do nicely," she said. "If you would just hold it." The captain smiled and held the wheel. She turned her back on him and picked up the axe, and went to work on the fallen tree.

She started at the base of the branch where the axle was caught, cutting down twice, then once across. The limb was a foot thick and the wood was still fresh. The sap streaked the axe blade, and the air filled with its smell.

Agnes Lake cut with short, accurate strokes. She guided the axe into the base of the limb, but did not try to do its work. The power came from the top of her swing, and seemed connected in some way not only to her arms and shoulders, but to her back and legs., Captain Jack Crawford stood behind her, holding the wheel, holding his smile. The man with the flask seemed to toast her before he drank.

There was a rhythm to her work. There was the sound of the axe hitting the tree—two down and one to the side—and a little gasp just before, as she sent it down again and again. The wood caught the axe on the deeper cuts, and she pried it out, and then returned the blade to the same spot, as if to punish it. The wood came out in wedges and flew up over her head.

The others watched, and in a quarter of an hour the sound of the axe against the tree changed, and a few strokes afterwards the limb holding the axle broke loose from the trunk, and she pushed it away.

"A woman that can wield an axe is a gift from God to her husband," the captain said, smiling again.

She was perspiring now and damp-backed. It was a good feeling, after all the hours cramped inside the coach. "If you would be kind enough to bring the wheel to the other side of this tree," she said, "I believe we can repair the coach."

Captain Jack Crawford looked at the axle and shook his head. "It's too low to the ground," he said. "Half a foot at least."

The peddler got up off the ground and looked too. "I'm afraid he's right, miss," he said to her. "When the driver and the messenger come back, we'll have to rig a pulley to lift it up." She did not answer them. The cramps returned, and she walked across the road and found another place in the woods.

The summer complaint gave her chills, and she began to shake, feeling her skin against the damp dress. She stayed in the woods a long time, until the sensations eased. When she came back to the coach, the driver and the messenger had finished their business. She noticed the way they regarded each other and knew it was not over for good. From their looks the messenger had gotten the best of it—the driver's left eye was closed and he'd taken a fearful bite on the cheek, while the messenger was only dabbing at a bloody nose—but she had been hurt herself, and knew that the worst injuries did not always reveal themselves to others.

The men had rolled the wheel next to the empty axle and were measuring the distance they needed to lift the axle—and the coach—to slide the wheel back on. "It's half a foot, at least," the captain said.

The messenger gave him a long look but kept his thoughts to himself. He was warranteed polite, in emergencies as well as when events ran normal. "If all the men lifted, we might get it up, boys," the captain said.

The messenger closed his eyes. The new Concord coaches were built as heavy as banks. The driver spit blood. "We ought put the horses in there and lift them too," he said. "Or just wait for a train; and we could pick up that."

"We're seven able men," the captain said. He went to the axle and gave it a meaningless tug. The driver wasn't watching. He looked into the woods and finally spotted a narrow, smooth-skinned tree with gray bark, and he went for that with the axe.

It took him about as long to drop the tree as it had taken Agnes Lake to remove the branch. His work was not as pretty as hers, though, and he missed the spot often. Once he missed the whole tree. Agnes Lake stood away from the men, studying the axle and the wheel and the ground.

Presently, the driver cussed and the tree fell. He took the branches off the trunk, and then cut the last ten feet off the top. "What we got to do," he said when he was back, "is to wedge this here under the axle and lift the coach up whilst one of us fits the wheel back on."

Before there was time for objections, he moved behind the coach to find a spot to place the tree. There was no boulder or tree stump there to use as a fulcrum for the lever, so the driver placed the thick end of the tree under the coach, and everyone but the messenger and Agnes Lake found a spot on the tapered end and pushed up.

The wagon moved forward a foot or two, and then rocked back to the spot it had been. "We got to have more back in it than that," the driver said. "It's a long walk in if we don't."

"All right, boys," the captain said, "on the count of three. Wild Bill and I once pulled a full-grown moose up a hundred-foot gully, just the two of us, on the count of three. This problem here is child's play, compared to that."

They blocked the front wheels and pushed again, and the back end of the coach rose an inch or two, and then dropped. "Son of a bitch," the driver said.

They tried again. The coach came up, the same inch, and then dropped. "We got to build a goddamn pulley," the driver said. All the passengers except Captain Jack Crawford let go of the tree. "One more time," the captain said. "We can get it, boys."

The driver looked at the messenger for the first time since Agnes Lake came out of the woods. "I hate the ones that enjoy an accident," he said. The messenger held on to his ribs.

"Pardon me," Agnes I^ake said, "but there's a spot twenty yards up the road—"

'"Secuse me for sayin' so, ma'am," the driver said, "but we got a situation here, and need quiet to think it out." It was quiet for a minute or two, and then the driver cussed and they all lined up again on the tree and pushed until the peddler fell on the ground and the driver's nose bled. "Son of a bitch," he said.

Agnes Lake said, "I do not mean to interrupt—"

The driver had thrown his head back and was holding his nose with the fingers of both hands, his feet spread apart as if to hold the weight. "'Secuse me for sayin' so, ma'am," he said, "but can't you see ever' damn thing in creation's gone to hell?"

Agnes Lake put her hands on her hips and looked around her. Only the messenger met her eyes. He was hurt inside, she saw it clearly now.

She walked to the coach, kicked the blocks from under the front wheels, and climbed onto the driver's seat. "I ain't responsible," the driver said behind her. "She's determined to get her neck broke, and I ain't responsible, and neither is the Northwestern Express, Stage, and Transportation Company, unless she gets off there right now."

She untied the reins and calmed the horses. "Here, now," she said. The horses moved slowly, in a straight line, until the coach was clear of the fallen tree. The empty axle rode a foot lower than the center of the wheels, and a strong wind would have blown the whole thing over. " 'Secuse me, ma'am," the driver said behind her. "Ma'am?"

She kept the horses slow and steady, headed on a diagonal back up onto the road, bringing the one remaining inside wheel within a few inches of the drop in the shoulder. Then she stopped the coach next to the drop, calming the horses again, set the brake, and climbed down. She blocked the front wheels and walked past the driver, who was following her now, trying to talk.

She picked the wheel up and set it on the road.

The driver followed her down and followed her back up. " 'Secuse me," he said. "Ma'am?"

She rolled the wheel down the road to the coach, and then off the road until it rested a foot beneath the empty axle. She wiped her hands, and then fit them underneath the wheel and lifted. The weight of it shook her arms as she fit it over the axle.

No one moved to help. When the lip of the wheel casing slipped over the axle, though, the messenger produced the mallet she had taken from the toolbox. He did not try to hammer the wheel on himself. That was the easy part, and he left it for her to finish.

She liked him for that.

When she had finished with the mallet, he turned to the driver and said, "You think you could find the lady a lock pin so's she could finish saving us, or you going to stand there with your thumb up your sitter and wait for the Indians?"

The driver looked at what she had done. He said, "Son of a bitch," and climbed up into his seat and found a pin in the toolbox to replace the one that had broken. Without another word, he hammered the pin into the axle and then climbed back into his seat and waited for the others to load.