Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) (3 page)

The door was open and the guard stepped in, muttering, “Oh, for God's sake,” as he drew his gun. Longarm saw what was coming and tried to shove Bitter Water out of the way, but the gun barrel slammed down against the side of the Miwok's head and Longarm felt him go limp. He rolled the Indian off, hooked a toe behind the guard's ankle, and kicked him hard in the kneecap with the other booted heel.

The guard went down, gasping in pain, but still holding on to the gun as Longarm rolled to his hands and knees and dove headfirst over his victim's thrashing legs. He landed with all his considerable weight on the man's chest and grabbed for the wrist of his gun hand as he kneed the guard viciously. The man gasped in pain. Longarm grabbed his hair and pounded his head on the floor until he lay limp and silent. Then Longarm hit him once for luck and got up with the other man's gun in his own hand.

He stood for a moment, listening. The sounds of the struggle didn't seem to be drawing any attention from the blazing furnace of the town outside. Both Bitter Water and the guard were breathing, but were obviously out of it for some time to come.

The Indian looked sort of silly lying there with no pants on, but his appearance was the least of Longarm's worries. He stuck the gun in his waistband and picked up the Indian's discarded pants. As he knelt to fumble them on over Bitter Water's big feet, the Indian opened his eyes and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get you dressed and out of here.”

Bitter Water sat up and said, “I can do that. Why didn't you run away as soon as you had the chance? Didn't you think he knocked me out?”

“You mean he didn't?” Longarm asked, astonished.

“No. I was only dazed. It came to me as I lay there that I would be wise to let you run away and then leave myself. You are a good person, but you are Saltu.”

“You mean you figured you could lose yourself in the timber easier without a white man tagging along?”

“Of course,” Bitter Water replied with assurance. “No white man can track me in my native hills. But you did not run away. You stayed to help me. This is a new thing I must consider.”

Longarm shrugged and said, “You light out on your own if you've a mind to. I've got to see if I can find my gun and badge.”

But as he went out front to rummage through the constable's desk, the Indian, now dressed, took his arm and said, “Come, Saltu brother. The siesta will be ending and we must have at least an hour's start on them through the trees.”

Longarm looked at Bitter Water with some surprise. “I thought you aimed to make it on your own, Bitter Water. Just let me find my stuff, and—”

“You are a good person, but a fool. You
had
your badge and they arrested you! When they find their friend unconscious, the whole town will be after us!”

“
Us?
All for one and one for all?”

The Miwok nodded. “You have me in your debt. Come with me and no Saltu will ever cut your trail.”

“Well, maybe if I can get a few miles off and study my next move a spell . . .” Longarm speculated.

“Come. I will show you things no Saltu knows about these hills. Later, you can go back to Wa Sentan. Agreed?”

Longarm nodded, but then he said, “Not hardly. This case is just getting interesting.”

“You mean to come back to this place? Without your badge? Without your gun? Without a friend in the county?”

“Hell, old son, I've got a gun. The other odds just promise to make the game a mite more interesting.”

*   *   *

In a white man's town, wearing a white man's cast-off rags, Bitter Water had seemed a rather shabby specimen. But crouched on a granite outcropping beside the lawman, the Miwok was a wild creature in its own element. The Mother Lode country lay in the oak-covered foothills of the Sierras, rather than in the evergreen slopes he'd half expected, so they were no higher than the Colorado prairie he was used to, yet Longarm was out of breath. His Indian companion had set a killing pace since they'd skulked out of Manzanita. Bitter Water had led them downslope for a time, which made sense, since anyone trying to cut their trail would figure they'd made a beeline for the high country. But then he'd led them in a series of hairpin turns through canyons thick with undergrowth and over hogback ridges too steep for a billy goat to consider, and, except for knowing that they were somewhere to the south of, and slightly higher than Manzanita, Longarm was completely lost.

He could only hope that anyone following them was as bushed and mixed-up as he was. As he rested his cramped calves by sprawling on the granite on one elbow, Longarm began to recover his bearings as well as his breath. The lookout Bitter Water had selected was a cunning choice. Longarm knew most men moved to the highest ground they could find when they wanted to see out across the world. The Miwok had led them to one of many boulders running in a horizontal band two-thirds of the way up this particular ridge. Anyone sweeping the high country with field glasses from the valley below would have no particular reason to study the rocks they were on, and their outlines were well below the skyline.

At the same time, they had a spectacular view to the west, north, and south. The sun was low and blazing red as it headed for China. The tawny, rolling foothills lay below them like some huge, wrinkled carpet, stitched together by the Great Spirit from odds and ends of animal skins—mostly cougar. The ridges ran north and south, under a cover of cheat grass and wild mustard, in rounded muscular curves that reminded one of the feminine strength of a great cat. It was easy to see, from up here, why California was earthquake country. The lower slopes of the Sierra looked as if they were about to spring at the North Pole. The folds between the smooth rolls of the slopes were dark with canyon oak and manzanita. To his left and right, the land grew rougher as the slopes became steeper, with a darker pelt of ponderosa pines and other evergreens disputing the claim of the lowland vegetation. He couldn't see the snow-covered crests of the High Sierra behind them, for the range climbed to the timberline in graduated waves, steeper toward the east and gentler toward the sunset. The western slope of the Sierra would hardly have been noticeable, in fact, had not time and the patient running waters of a million brooks carved the main slopes into thousands of smaller ridges and canyons.

Bitter Water was watching one of the brush-choked canyons. They had come through it on the way here, and he was worried about his attempts to hide their sign. He'd called the place Spider Valley, Longarm remembered it as a winding stretch of dusty hell where he'd crawled on his hands and knees under waist-high twisted branches that smelled like medicine. He didn't remember seeing any spiders in Spider Valley, but the place had been crawling with sassy little lizards who stuck their tongues out before they darted away along the branches.

He couldn't locate it now. Spider Valley could have been any of those wrinkles down there, sinking into twilight well ahead of the still brightly illuminated ridges. He squinted his eyes against the red sun and managed to make out the distant flatness of the Great Valley between where they stood and the lower coastal ranges. The lowlands shimmered under a flat haze of dull orange and woodsmoke gray as the late afternoon breeze moved in from the invisible Pacific, beyond the horizon. He knew Sacramento was down there, somewhere. That son-of-a-bitch federal judge who'd disputed his jurisdiction was probably watching a nice sunset and planning a night on the town. In a state notorious for political corruption, Justice Stephen Field had gained a reputation for innovative crookedness.

The trouble with federal judges, Longarm mused, was that they were appointed for life and were often given the job as a reward for getting out the vote instead of for juridical literacy. Justice Field was one of those old-timers who'd come West to do good, and he had done a lot of it—for himself. They said he'd killed a few men in his day, and he was widely known for his draconian views on the rights of Greasers, Chinks, Niggers, or Injuns, as he called them. He was reputed to be thick with the railroad barons and bankers. He'd elevated the art of land-grabbing and claim-jumping to a fine science. This very year, at a place called Mussel Slough, U.S. marshals from the judge's district had done battle with a group of small ranchers and farmers who had failed to see the justice in their homesteads being seized by Justice Field for his richer cronies. Longarm was glad he hadn't been assigned to that case. The Battle of Mussel Slough had been a bloodbath California was going to remember. Five settlers had been gunned down by federal deputies, but they had taken two members of the attacking forces with them before losing their lands. It was easy to see why someone in Washington had asked for a deputy from another district. The California marshals had said they had no idea who had been stealing that gold bound for the San Francisco Mint. Longarm wondered if they were all in on it, or if he only had a few key men in high places to worry about. He felt a certain sense of loyalty to his fellow deputies, but in truth, he knew his own good reputation was mostly the result of his having a certain amount of common sense in an outfit tending to hire cheap help. He knew a lot of federal deputies who didn't have sense enough to pour piss out of their boots. They'd go where they were told and see what they were told to see. The cover-up that Washington suspected was pretty obvious. Yet, wasn't it a mite
too
obvious?

Longarm chewed thoughtfully on the edge of his full, dark brown mustache. Aloud, he muttered, “I don't understand it. We just ain't talking about all that much money!”

Beside him, Bitter Water asked, “What money are you talking about?”

Longarm said, “I've been thinking about those gold shipments. A federal judge is expensive and I've been adding it up. Those high-graders haven't been running off with gold bullion; they've been stealing whole trainloads of ore. You know what ore is, don't you?” Bitter Water looked at Longarm a bit reproachfully.

“Of course. My people roamed the Mother Lode before the Saltu found out there was gold in that band of yellow-brown quartz that runs north and south through these hills.” He chuckled softly and added, “We used to make arrowheads out of it. If the Saltu were less unfriendly, we could show them places where the flecks of gold in the rock are visible to the naked eye. We never had any use for it. Gold is softer than lead; it makes very poor tools. In the old days our children used to find the beads of gold washed out of the rocks by running water and, being children, they'd bring them to their mothers. Once, when I was a boy, I found a nugget as big as my thumb. My mother said not to be foolish. It was the time of the year to be gathering acorns.”

Longarm nodded and said, “I sometimes wonder myself why so many men have gone crazy over the stuff. Though I don't hold with eating acorns. Pinyon nuts ain't bad, but acorns are bitter as hell.”

The Miwok laughed and pointed a finger at Longarm. “You are a Saltu. You don't know how to wash the bitterness from our food. Your people have no patience; you only eat what's easy. Over to our west, there is a valley where a whole party of your people starved to death many years ago. They were very crazy. They starved surrounded by food, had they but seen fit to gather it. Yet they cried like women and started to eat one another. My people have often joked about those crazy Saltu.”

Longarm frowned and asked, “Are you talking about the Donner party, back in the gold rush?”

“I think that was what they were called. They got lost in the High Sierra and were snowed in for the winter. There were roots and nuts all around them, but they ate each other. The ways of your people are very strange.”

Longarm had had this same conversation with other Indians, so he didn't want to get into it. Unlike some whites he knew, Longarm liked most Indians. But he didn't buy the “noble savage” myth. As a man who'd lived with, slept with, and fought with Indians, he knew them better than either the bigots who hated them or the poetic writers who, never having swapped shots with Apache, tended to picture them as misunderstood supermen. The tragedy of the American Indian was simply that, save for a few tribes he could think of, they saw the world they shared with the white man as something
different
—something no white man could fully understand. Bitter Water seemed neighborly enough, and they were in this mess together. But Longarm knew that, no matter how it all turned out, they'd never really understand each other, so he didn't waste time trying.

He said, “The sun's going down. You aim to spend the night up here on this rock like some big-assed bird?”

The Miwok shrugged and said, “One part of this country is as good as any other. I don't see dust against the sunset. If they are trailing us, they are on foot.”

Longarm stood up, shook the kinks out of his leg muscles, and stretched in the red glow of the setting sun.

“I could have told you that. We went through places no pony could have gone. Come to think of it, I wouldn't have laid odds on a mountain goat.”

“If I had run off alone,” Bitter Water continued, “I would not think anyone was taking the trouble to search for me. They consider us pests rather than game worthy of a great hunt. But you seemed important to them. From what you have told me this day, important people want you out of the way. There may be a reward offered for your capture. Saltu will do anything for money.”

The tall deputy nodded grimly. “That's for damned sure. But you purely puzzle me, Bitter Water. You
know
what money is.”

“Of course. Did you think I was a stupid person? You know I speak your tongue. ‘Fuck' and ‘money' are the first words anyone learns around you people.”

Longarm chuckled. “Well, maybe ‘son of a bitch' comes almost as early. Where'd you pick up English, at some mission school?”