Haxan (2 page)

Despite what people read in yellow-back novels, lawmen were often the last to learn anything of value. “What happened?”

“Comanches tied him to a wagon tongue and put him over a slow mesquite fire until his skull burst.”

I removed my hat and ran my fingers through my hair. “Mayor, you believe in handing a man a job of work.” I tossed the empty bottle into the wastebasket. It rattled around with a hollow sound.

It might have been the sound of my future.

“Sorry, John. I thought you had better know what you’re setting up against.”

“All right.” I cut him a hard look. “But you avoided my question about Larsen’s daughter.”

He made a pacifying gesture. “There’s an unhappy history in these parts. It gives people the wim-wams.”

“If it’s as bad as you say, why not leave?”

“Too much money to be made. Twenty years ago Haxan was nothing more than a sun-baked shack in the middle of nowhere.”

“Shiner Larsen’s place.”

“Right. He came from Sweden and wandered all over the west. When he settled here he named the place Haxan.” Polgar fingered his watch chain. “John, Haxan is a Swedish word for witch.”

The long purple shadows inched down the street outside my window. Someone lighted a cook fire in one of the buildings across the street. I could see black shadows moving behind the muslin curtains.

“You think Larsen was a witch?”

“Some did, like our town dentist, and others. Larsen believed there are places where spirits get trapped and tied in knots. He said Haxan is one of those places.”

“Why did he settle here?”

“I asked him that on a stage run to Albuquerque once. He said life was like flipping book pages. It was a blur until you stuck your finger out and read what was there.”

Polgar continued to play with his watch chain. I could tell he didn’t like talking about this. He wanted a rational world where things could be calculated and understood.

“Larsen said it was probable Sangre County didn’t exist in men’s thoughts, but that it was here because it had to be. When Haxan needed it the right spirits would protect what was worth protecting.”

Polgar studied the burning end of his Havana. He had smoked it halfway. He gave it a careful puff. “Like I said, most people ignored him.”

“Except this time someone didn’t.” I wondered how far a superstitious person would go to ease his scare. I had lawed long enough to know murder would not be out of the question.

Polgar finally tossed the cigar and faced my desk, hands flat on the surface. “John, I’m telling you this because I want you to be aware of the corns you might step on. But I want this killer caught, same as you.”

I had to admit this wouldn’t look good on me if it went unpunished. Plus, every year is an election year for a politician.

But it wasn’t like I didn’t have enough to occupy me already. Tame a raw cattle town, and now hunt down crazy men who thought they were killing witches. Not to mention find the
comancheros
who murdered Breggmann.

I gave a long sigh of frustration. “All right, I’ll do what I can. Now what can you tell me about Larsen’s family?”

“He married a Navajo woman. Her name was Black Sky. They had a daughter.” Polgar took a new cigar from his shirt pocket and started patting for matches. “Last I heard she was on the Bosque Redondo. She teaches kids their books and letters, or something.”

That was enough to start, until I recalled something the old man said about the day his daughter was born. “She have a name, this girl?”

“Shiner called her Snowberry. Magra Snowberry.”

I
mounted my blue roan and rode north out of Haxan. About a mile and half later I cut a shallow creek meandering between boulders.

I rode easy ’tween them. Ancient symbols, pictographs I guess you would call them, were chiselled into the black faces. I’d heard if you studied these old Indian markings long enough you could make their magic work for you.

Did I tell you it snowed the day she was born?

I came on an isolated house in the centre of a circle of stones. Shiner Larsen’s home was little more than a broken down hovel with a sod roof. It was a typical wattle and daub that had incorporated an adobe brick foundation for added structural strength. It stood on a rise overlooking a gulch the locals called Gila Creek. We weren’t all that far from Haxan and Broken Bow, but out here, a mile and a half from civilization, the empty desert predominated.

I rode around the place. There were a few rows of planted maize for a shoat penned behind the house, a drying rack, and hornos, or beehive ovens, for cooking bread. Not much else in the way of prosperity.

I let my horse stand and walked up on the house. The sun had set and the sky was pocked with stars. There were so many of them it made me feel small.

Out on the desert flat coyotes and wolves were yipping and howling. A lot of them. The mournful chorus cut through me the way it does any man.

When I stepped on the porch the front door, hung on leather hinges, swung open a crack. Twin eighteen-inch barrels of a Stevens 10 gauge coach gun centred on my stomach.

“What do you want?” a voice demanded.

“My name is John Marwood. I’m the U.S. Marshal out of Haxan.” I lowered my voice in condolence. “I’m here about your father.”

“My father is dead.”

“I know. I’m the one who found him.”

“Step back so I can look at you.” She stood in the half-dark of the jacal, but there was enough starlight bouncing off the desert floor to make her out.

She had long raven hair tied back with red packing string. She wore a heavy Union coat patched at the elbows and one shoulder, and a doeskin skirt that fell below her knees. A narrow blue belt encircled her waist. She also wore moccasins and deerskin leggings. She was pretty, in that hard way the New Mexico desert makes people.

“You must be Magra Snowberry,” I said.

“How do you know my name?”

“Your father told me.”

Did I tell you it snowed the day she was born?

The twin bores of the shotgun never wavered. “Marwood. I heard talk about you. People said you worked a lot of bad towns in Montana Territory. Helena and the like. They say you killed men. A lot of men.”

The way she said it somehow made me feel smaller than the stars ever could.

“Only when they needed killing.”

She kept the gun trained on me. “I recognized you right away. Papa said you would wear a grey duster and carry a Colt Dragoon with a bone handle, holstered crossways.”

This took me aback. “Your father—”

“Papa had visions,” she interrupted. “Not knowing him, I don’t expect you would understand his strange ways.”

The eastern horizon sparked yellow fire. The moon was rising fast, owning the desert. There was enough light to see she had been crying. Her eyes looked like they had lampblack smeared under them.

“Mayhap I do understand, Magra. More than you think.”

“I doubt that very much.” She raised the coach gun and parked the heavy stock on her hip. “What are you doing out here, Marshal?”

“I want to find the men who killed your father.”

“What is his life to you?”

“Law says they have to be caught and punished.”

She looked me up and down. “And you’re the new law in Haxan.”

“I am now.”

She thought a minute before she swung the door open with her free hand. Maybe she felt she had no other choice but to trust me. “All right, come in.”

Despite what the place looked like on the outside, inside was neat and tidy and square. There wasn’t much room, however. The close mesquite walls were more like a cage than a home. The mud ceiling was interlaced with
latillas
. Magra set the shotgun down and lighted a coal oil lamp swinging from an iron rafter hook.

The feeble glow cast awkward shadows on our faces and the packed-dirt floor.

“I have coffee.”

“No thank you, Miss Snowberry. I’d rather talk about your father.”

Her shrug was lost inside the large Union coat with its shoddy carpetbag patches.

“Papa was a good man,” she began, “but he had a lot of old-world superstitions and queer ways. People didn’t understand what he could see, and sometimes when they weren’t laughing, they got scared.”

She watched me with large, dark eyes. “You said you understood. I’m not sure I can believe that.”

There was a chair and a rough-hewn table in the centre of the room. Without being asked I pulled the chair out and sat down. “Magra, it’s hard to explain, but I’ll try.”

She sat on the other side of the table, her long brown hands folded.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Your father was right about some things. This world—everything you see around you and everything you can’t see—is like a vast sea made up of crests and troughs. Sometimes a wave raises a person high enough and he can see a long way. I think your father was one of those people.”

She watched me with steady eyes. “Go on.”

“Other times, you’re stuck at the bottom of a wave where the bad things collect.” I used my hands to try and show her what that might look like. “I think that might be Haxan. And through this sea of time and dust, in places that might never be, or can’t become until something is set right, there are people destined to travel. Forever.”

“Papa talked about wandering Norse spirits. The Navajo, my mother’s people, believe in skinwalkers.”

I shook my head slow. “No, I’m talking about real people. Flesh and blood like you and me. They’re taken from places they call home and sent into this stormy sea to help calm the waters. It never ends because it’s the storm itself, the unending conflict, that makes the world we know a reality.” I paused. “Along with all the other worlds that might be.”

I had to give her credit. She didn’t gainsay anything I said. I suppose she was used to hearing wild talk from her father. Whether she believed me or not was another question.

“Marshal, how was my father killed?”

“Someone nailed him to a tree with railroad spikes.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she looked years older. “Why would anyone do that to Papa?”

“If they thought he was a witch it stands to reason. A witch can be killed with cold iron.”

“Papa wasn’t a witch. He was only different.”

“In this world that will always be enough to get you killed.” The words sounded harsh even to my ears. “Magra, I know this hurts, but the men who killed your father thought otherwise. Did he have any enemies?”

“Not outright. Like I said, people were wary of him, but that’s all.”

“Scared people do bad things, Magra.”

She pursed her lips in doubt. “I can’t think of anyone who would want to kill him. Not like that.”

“That’s because you were used to his ways.” I stood up. “You can’t stay here. Whoever killed Shiner Larsen will come after you next.”

“But why?”

“If they believed Larsen was a witch they might think you have powers, being his blood daughter. I know it sounds fanciful, this being the nineteenth century and all. But someone like this, well, that might be how they think.”

So you can help her instead, Marwood. My daughter, I mean.

“I was going back to the reservation tomorrow. There’s nothing for me here now that Papa is gone.”

That was probably why they weren’t here already, I thought. They’re off riding for her in the country. I grimaced at my limited options.

“Maybe you can stay at the Haxan Hotel until I run these men down,” I offered. “But, I have to warn you, that might take time.”

She released a dry, ironic laugh. “Marshal, Alma Jean Clay won’t let a half-breed sleep under her roof. Anyway, I have no money.”

“Then you can stay in my office. You’ll be safe there.”

“That wouldn’t look right, either. People will talk.”

“I’m not here to make people like me, Magra. I’ve got a job to do as marshal. Tomorrow morning I’m going back to that hackberry tree and see if I can’t cut their trail.”

“You’re going to track them down? All alone?”

“It’s what I get paid for.”

“When you find these men . . . what are you going to do?”

“Haxan is part of Judge Creighton’s circuit. I know him pretty well. If they’re found guilty they’ll be taken to Santa Fe, or the county seat in Coldwater, and hanged.”

Her gaze remained fixed on mine. “Yes. That’s what the law says. But what are
you
going to do when you find them?”

She had a way of looking inside a man and seeing what was hidden.

“That’s my business,” I told her. “Now, take what you need for a couple of days and nothing else.”

“I don’t have a horse.”

“My stallion can carry us both.” I picked up the break-action shotgun and opened the breech. It was filled with buckshot: killing loads.

“You know how to use this?” I asked.

“Papa taught me. He never used it for hunting, only protection. He rode guard for Wells Fargo.”

“So I heard. Too bad he didn’t have it with him when he died.” I snapped the breech closed and handed it back. “Keep it. You’re likely to need it before this is all over.”

While riding in I asked Magra about her name.

“I have a foot in both worlds, Marshal,” she said. “One white, the other Navajo. Papa said I should be proud of both, even if neither one wanted me.”

“He was right about that. The being proud part, I mean.”

“When Papa saved a little money, and I got old enough, he sent me east to a boarding school.”

“Where to?”

“Pennsylvania. They didn’t want me, either, but I learned how to read and write. Now I teach children on the reservation.”

Her words got me to thinking about my past. What little there was to remember.

“How did you hear about your father’s death?” I asked. “I found him a couple of hours before I met you. No one in town could have told you in that time.”

“He came to me in a dream many days ago. He was never one for writing letters. So he night-walked me sometimes to let me know how he was doing. He told me he was going to die soon. I raced back home to see if I could help, but I was too late. The house was empty.”

She fell silent. We rode on. Somewhere an owl called across the flats.

“Why don’t you ask me what you want to ask, Marshal?”

The girl sure had a way of seeing right into you. “All right, I’ll play along. What did your father say about me?”

“That one day you would come to Haxan, or a man like you, because it was the centre of things. He said a man had to be here, in one way or another.”

“You believe that story?”

“I don’t know.” She thought briefly. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am.”

“Maybe that means something,” she added.

We didn’t talk after that. After a while she rested her chin on my shoulder as we rode through town.

It was true, though. We go where we’re needed.

We have names and we stand against that which must be faced.

A dead man had called me to Haxan. I would serve his wish until I was successful or I died. There was no distinction between the two.

For me, and others like me, death and success were often the same thing.