The Whipping Boy (17 page)

The next shot from Miller was the kind of experience that Jake had heard old soldiers describe but never quite believed true. He saw the bullet, or distinctly thought he did, and in the immense smallness of that instant knew that something had changed, some extremely basic fact, maybe that he was dead. This cerebration took place before he heard and felt the snap at his ear. It had clipped the ear, which didn't hurt exactly, although soon he could feel the warm blood dripping off his earlobe and chin.

Jake was beyond desperate. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He felt like he'd fallen off a cliff and was plummeting through thin air, trying to learn how to fly. Miller's horse had trotted down the edge of the river and now wheeled around and was ambling back, sniffing the water like a dog, looking for the shallowest way across. Jake pulled off two careful shots and the poor thing made a noise and fell with an unpleasant thump to the ground.

There was a moment's pause before Miller screamed, “
You bastard, you killed my trotter!
” He stood up, fired wildly, and ran over to see about his animal. Jake took the chance to stand up and crank hard and fast on the wheel.

The mules did just what he was afraid they'd do, but they were already in the shallows of the other side, and the wagon's back wheels dropped off the raft and hit ground. He stood up in their faces and got one of them by the nose and pushed him backwards off the ramp. They stalled and he pinched their noses hard and pulled them struggling through the water up to dry land. “
Aiya! Aiya!
Come on!” Tom and Samantha waded up after him, and a couple more shots from Miller ate the air wide of the mark.

Over the bank there was a trail following the river, and they struck out westward. Jake didn't question for a minute whether Miller would follow them. He'd go back to town, get a horse, and turn right around. Once across the river, he could gain on them quickly. The Santa Fe line was to their west, whether ten or twenty-five miles away Jake didn't know, but they had a chance of getting to it before dark if the mules and wagon held out, and if they could lose Miller.

They went for a while down the riverside road, then in a rocky place went over the shoulder of a hill and headed southwest. Wet and shivering, they stopped in a grove of leafless pecan trees to put on dry clothes, Tom and Jake with their backs turned to Samantha.

Tom, shivering, wild-eyed, was having trouble figuring out the shirt, and Jake helped him get it on. “Why was that man shooting at us?”

“I don't know. Better get the dry clothes on.”

Tom clamped his teeth together, trying to stop shivering. The scars on his back were livid in the cold wind.

“Who is he?” Samantha asked, surprisingly unruffled.

“He's lowlife, he's a killer, that's about all I know about him.” Jake turned to Tom and looked the boy in the eyes. “Can you keep your mind on driving these mules? We need to cover some ground. I don't want him catching us.”

Tom looked back down the trail, his teeth gritted. “He looked like he was dressed for church.”

Jake looked around the hills. “They call him the Deacon because he dresses up and acts polite when he's doing a job. They say he gets downright embarrassing-polite before he kills a man.”

“Do you know him?” Samantha asked.

Jake shook his head. “I know of him.”

Samantha's coat had been lost somewhere, probably when the wagon hit the river, and she'd put on a simple cotton dress. Everything about her condition, her unfettered body, hair wet and kinked up and loose on her head, showed how young and comely and free acting she was. Before they got back on the wagon, Jake saw her take hold of Tom and try to hug him, like a mother would hug a scared child, but Tom was stiff as a tree, as if he'd never been faced with a hug before. Jake piled into the back, Samantha got up beside Tom on the seat, and he got the mules moving. Jake was impressed by the way Tom handled the team despite what had happened.

Jake reloaded the pistol, put the remaining bullets into his coat pocket, and kept the lookout.

They hit the old government road to Fort Sill and took it straight west to Pauls Valley, on the Santa Fe line in the Chickasaw Nation. It took about three and a half hours of brisk traveling. Pauls Valley was in relatively open country, and near it they passed an Indian cemetery with a cluster of aboveground graves like tiny houses. Close to the railroad track a group of what looked like Shawnee were camped in three wretched coal-blackened box shacks that had probably been built for the trackmen of the Santa Fe twenty years ago. Nearby was a pile of buffalo and cattle bones, as tall as a house, doubtless awaiting shipment to a fertilizer factory. Jake often saw this along the rail lines in the western territory: destitute Indians collecting bones for some white man, who sold them by the carload in Kansas City. The town of Pauls Valley had a big sky and open feel to it. On the main street were several newish buildings including a large whitewashed IOOF building. A cattle pen near the rail depot held a few skinny animals. Jake kept an eye out for fear that somehow Deacon Miller had got there before them.

At the depot, a hand-lettered sign was posted by the door:

 

$$
GOOD MONEY FOR BONES
$$

SEE THE AGENT INSIDE
.

 

Sitting against the building on the sunny side were a gaggle of Indian men with the half-dead look of faithful drunkards. The first thing Jake noticed inside, on the counter, was a display board with several different-sized empty bottles with prices underneath, from ten cents to fifty. It was a widely used method by whiskey sellers throughout the territory: the liquor itself was discreetly out of sight. The ticket agent, a prosperous-looking man with a shrewd gleam in his eye, said that a train from Fort Arbuckle was three hours late but was expected anytime. Jake asked him whether there might be someone in town who'd buy a mule team and wagon. The agent went outside, took one look at the mules, and without hesitation walked right back in. “I'm afraid not. You couldn't find nobody to feed that old team through the winter.” Then he added, “I'd be glad to go to the trouble of disposing them for you. Afraid that's about all I could do for you.”

“I'll bet you would,” Jake said. Rail agents got his goat, always cheating and scheming. He asked how much a ticket to ship the team with them to Guthrie would cost, and the agent looked at him as if he was crazy. “You mean to haul
those
animals on the train?”

“That's what you sell, ain't it? Train tickets? Or do you just sell whiskey?” Jake wasn't in a mood to be fooled with. The agent gave him a look and flipped open his pricing book. Jake laughed at the amount he quoted. “You fellows ought to spend more effort getting your trains on time, or getting your shipments where they're supposed to go, instead of sitting around figuring out one more way to put the screws to your customers.”

The agent started to reply, but when he saw Jake reach into his wallet, he kept silent, eyes on the money.

During their brief wait, Jake went outside rather than stay in the same room with the agent. At the moment, he didn't feel like talking—about anything. Tom brought the mules a bucket of water, which they sucked down like it was the last liquid on earth. Tom petted them on their noses while they drank. Jake noticed how Samantha was looking at Tom.

The sun was setting in the mountain of white bones when the evening northbound pulled into town. Tom brought the mules up to the trackside ramp. They'd seen no sign of Miller since the river, but Jake wasn't convinced they'd shaken him.

***

On the train to Guthrie the three of them finally talked about what had happened. They figured out that Deacon Miller had been following them at least from the Choctaw Nation, possibly even all the way from Fort Smith. Jake couldn't guess why a hired gun might be after him. Possibly because of John Blessing. Blessing had a lot of relatives, and they might have decided that Jake was responsible for his death.

But hiring somebody like Deacon Miller would be a strange thing for the Blessings to do. Another possibility was Ernest Dekker. Ernest might have found out about the old man's plan to retake the store and make Jake boss. Ralph had said that he was going to tell one of the other salesmen—Dandy, as Jake remembered—and the word might have gotten back around to Ernest. Hell's Fringe was the ideal place to do away with somebody, since little or nothing that happened out here ever got to a court of law.

After dark they approached Purcell, which was on the Canadian River west of Violet Springs, and Jake had a foreboding as they slowed down. The car was cool but otherwise comfortable, dimly illuminated by lamps along the walls. Tom, who was developing a knack for sleeping on the hard wooden benches of trains, was curled up, dead to the world, so asleep that he'd gone pale. His head was against Samantha's leg. Jake had noticed that things were happening—looks, little exchanges—that suggested something was going on between the two of them. In Jake's opinion Tom didn't know enough about the world yet to pair off with some woman, any woman, particularly one as mature as Samantha King. But then Jake wasn't exactly an expert at pairing off. He saw her again as she looked coming out of the river earlier today; she'd had more composure than he'd had after being shot at and pushed in a cold river.

Jake reached up and touched his ear, which had begun throbbing with the train's vibrations.

In the car were a handful of passengers: three drummers, one of them snoring so loudly you'd think he'd choke, and a couple of rawhide-stinking cowboys. Deacon Miller remained on Jake's mind. If he had gone straight down the river road, he'd have arrived at Purcell, where they were about to stop, and he'd probably be checking trains. When the Westinghouses clamped down for the Purcell station, Jake's worry b came as palpable as the vibrations of the car. He moved to the little fold-down conductor's seat at the front of the car, behind the door, and put his hand around the pistol in his coat pocket.

Outside, someone walked slowly by the car and Jake saw what appeared to be a derby hat. But the lone figure strolled on, and disappeared, and soon the train powered noisily out of the station. One of the drummers at the front of the car eyed Jake nervously when he went back to his seat.

Miss King extricated herself from under Tom's head and sat beside him. “Did you see something?”

“Guess it wasn't him.”

She looked at his ear. “You'll have to have that dressed.”

Jake thought about the instant of time back on the river when he'd looked a bullet in the eye. The train was up to speed, whacking along on roughly laid tracks. They would be crossing the Pottawatomie and Shawnee Reservation now. There was nothing to see in the blackness of the window except the soft reflection of a wall lamp across the aisle. He leaned back, still feeling as jumpy as a cat.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“I don't know,” he breathed out. “Not sure we shook our friend.”

“Who is he? Tell me what you know about him.”

Jake shook his head. “His name is Jim Miller. Off and on, he's been a house ‘detective' at some of the row-house hotels in Fort Smith. I believe in his younger years he was an enforcer out here in the Fringe. White man's sheriff. In these whiskey towns, they hire men who make sure no debts are left unpaid, no bartenders or dealers get killed by customers, no Indians give em any trouble, that kind of thing. Last I heard, he'd come up in the world. Working for the railroads as an enforcer. But that's just saloon talk, I don't know it to be true. People always want to make a big deal out of men like him. I've been hearing rumors about him for years now. He apparently mixes with the horse crowd. I don't know whether you noticed his horse.”

“The one you shot?”

“Yeah,” Jake said grimly. “That's a walker, and it was worth several thousand dollars.”

“Why's he after you?”

Jake shrugged. He tried to look unconcerned.

Tom, asleep on the seat, started making noises of fear, and Samantha reached across and caressed his temple until he stopped. Again, Jake was surprised by her tenderness.

She changed the subject. “Have I brought you bad luck, Jake?”

“I've been traveling out here over twenty years and never had much trouble. Since I met you, there's been flood, dynamite, poison water, and now a hired killer on my tail. All we need's an earthquake.”

“Who do you think hired him?”

“Don't know, but now that I killed his walker, he's got a personal reason to finish off the job.”

“Does it have something to do with your job? These mortgages?”

“Ralph Dekker called his business Dekker Hardware, not Dekker Land Company.”

“You don't like your new boss, do you?”

“That's no secret.”

“Why are you staying with them?”

Jake snorted. “Fifty-five-year-old man looking for a job in a depression? I wouldn't look forward to it.”

“Want to go partners with me?”

“Partners doin what?”

“You're worried about your company being in the wrong hands. Quit them and set up your own hardware company.” “You're joking.”

“No I'm not.”

“So now you're making me a job offer,” he commented. “Boy, we really have come a long way, haven't we.”

Her big eyes were directly on him. “I think we'd make a good team.”

“How old are you, Samantha?”

“Old enough to write a check,” she said.

“Twenty-three, twenty-four?”

“Does it worry you that I'm a woman?” She looked at him with a little hint of flirtatiousness—or was she making fun of him?

“That doesn't make any difference to me,” Jake grumbled. “Some of the best business people I know are women.” He scooted down in his seat and put his hat over his eyes.