The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 27

Oates dragged the dead man outside, then helped Jake into his bed, a filthy cot that stank even worse than the rest of the shack.

He lit a lamp against the growing darkness and said, “After we’re gone, Dallas will come back and take care of you.”

“I paid twenty dollars in silver for that squaw,” Jake groaned. “Worst investment I ever made. Damned Mexi cans didn’t tell me she was plumb crazy.”

“Apaches are notional,” Oates said.

He turned to leave, but Jake’s voice stopped him. “You got to stay close. I’m bleedin’ to death here.”

“You should’ve thought about that before you planned on robbing and killing me,” Oates said. “And before you treated the girl so badly. What is she? Fifteen maybe?”

“You go to hell,” Jake said. He was fixated on his bloody, ruined groin and didn’t look up.

Oates smiled. “I’ll save you a place by the fire, Jake.”

Ignoring the curses Jake hurled in his direction, he searched around the shack and took what supplies he could find, a side of bacon, cans of beans, coffee and a small pot.

Studiously, Oates stepped around a corked, earthenware jug. He knew only too well what it contained and he heard its siren song. After a battle with himself, he gave in enough to lift the jug. He shook it and let the whiskey talk to him, promising him the world. After a while he set the jug down again and walked away from it, turning his back on the only friend he ever had. It was a betrayal . . . and it hurt him bad.

Oates sacked what he’d found and when he stepped outside again, the Apache girl was already sitting a rangy black with a white blaze and four white socks.

“This is Jake’s pony,” she said, then added proudly, “He doesn’t need it anymore.” Her black eyes dropped to Oates. “You are a great warrior. I will go with you.”

Oates shook his head. “Girl, I’m riding a dangerous trail with an enemy behind every bush. I have to ride alone.” He smiled, trying to reassure her. “You can go back to your own people now.”

“I am Lipan. My people are far to the south. You are my people now.”

The girl saw Oates’ hesitation. “I am a good girl, a Catholic girl. I was taught at the mission by the holy nuns and I say my prayers to the Virgin every night. I did that even when Jake was grunting on top of me like a hog.”

Her eyes misted. “My name is Nantan, and I don’t understand why you wish to send me away. I’ll be a good wife to you.”

Oates tied the sack to his saddle, then swung onto the paint. “Nantan,” he said, “if you want to buy into my troubles, then you’re welcome to ride along.” He shook his head at her. “By the way, my name is Eddie Oates and I sure don’t want a wife.”

The girl looked as though she hadn’t heard. “I’ll be good to you, Eddie,” she said.

Oates let his shoulders sag. He wanted to talk sense to Nantan, but obviously she wasn’t in the mood to listen. He tried a different tack. “I’m looking for a town called Heartbreak. Do you know where it is?”

“Once I heard Jake and the others talk of it, but they said they’d never been there.”

“Did they say where it was located?”

Nantan stared, then shrugged. “No. They did not say.”

A small disappointment in him, Oates said, “Let’s find a place to camp well away from here before it gets much darker.”

The girl nodded, her eyes downcast, suddenly the dutiful, obedient, Apache wife.

Oates groaned inwardly. Given all the difficulties he was facing, the last thing he needed on God’s green earth was a woman problem.

As they rode away from the shack, Oates heard a despairing wail from inside.

He smiled and turned to Nantan. “I guess ol’ Jake just tried to take a piss,” he said.

Guided by moonlight, Oates found a place to camp among a group of boulders near a seep surrounded by a few pines and a single cottonwood.

After he tended to the horses, Oates built a fire and put water on for coffee. He speared strips of bacon on twigs and hung them over the fire to broil.

After he and Nantan ate and finished the last of the coffee, Oates put out the fire, then spread his blanket roll and stretched out. Nantan immediately snuggled beside him and Oates shook his head.

“You know, for a good Catholic girl, you’re certainly bold,” he said.

“I am tired, Eddie.”

“I thought Apaches never got tired.”

“Only the Catholics do.”

The girl’s eyes were closed and she fell asleep almost at once.

Oates lay awake for a while, looking up at the stars, listening to the coyotes talking into the night. He spent some time worrying over Peter Jasper Pickles, the whereabouts of Heartbreak, Darlene McWilliams’ next move and the well-being of Stella and the others. He searched his mind for other things to trouble himself with and found plenty. . . .

But then he too slept, and the only sound was of his and Nantan’s breathing and the distant cry of the coyotes.

When Oates woke to a hazy morning, Nantan was gone.

He rose and checked on the horses. The black was no longer there.

Oates felt a conflict of emotions.

Apaches were notional and it seemed that Nantan had taken the notion to ride off and go back to her own people. That removed the wife problem, but still, he experienced a sense of loss. The girl had sand, as she’d demonstrated at the shack when she’d gunned Jake. She was also right pretty and might even be beautiful once the swollen bruises on her face healed.

He recalled the rhythmic pulse of her back against his and the soft whisper of her breathing in the night. Now the only voices he heard were echoes of his own thoughts, the sound shadows of a lonely man.

Under a gray sky that threatened summer rain, Oates made a hasty breakfast of coffee and bacon, then saddled the paint. He planned to sweep north in his hunt for Heartbreak, riding the high country parallel to the Sierra Cuchillo. If that failed, he’d turn south again.

The rain that had threatened earlier was falling and Oates buttoned into his slicker as he swung the paint north, heading into a rugged wilderness of dizzying, sawtoothed peaks, rocky ridges and dense forests of aspen and pine that prospered mightily eight thousand feet above the flat.

After an hour, the weather grew worse. Lightning scrawled across above the misty summits of the mountains like the signature of a demented god, and thunder crashed.

Oates found his way blocked by a wide canyon. Not trusting a slippery descent in a hammering downpour, he swung into a stand of pines where there was some shelter from the rain. He stepped out of the leather and let the mustang forage on whatever it could find among the trees.

Wet, miserable and lost, Oates looked out at the rain-lashed landscape, a vast panorama of mountains and black, fractured sky. He would not attempt to cross the canyon until the weather cleared, though when that might be he had no idea.

As to what lay beyond the gorge, he couldn’t even guess. More high desert country he suspected, that went on and on and never stopped. Maybe the land stretched clear to the roof of the world where traveling men said snow-white bears hunted with great, blue whales.

Discouraged, cold drops of water trickling down the back of his neck, Oates stood and waited, like a man with all the time in the world. . . .

Nantan saved him.

She came up from the south, riding the black through the raging storm.

Oates saw her and yelled, and the girl swung toward him. She was soaked to the skin, her shirt clinging to her breasts, her long, dark hair hanging in wet strands over her shoulders.

She rode into the trees and sat the horse, looking down at Oates. “Why did you not wait for me?” she asked.

He saw anger in her eyes. “I thought you’d gone,” he said, then added lamely, “back to your people.”

“I told you, Eddie, you are my people now. Nantan is your wife.”

Oates let that go. Now was not the time to discuss his marital status. “Where did you go?”

“I did what an Apache wife does. I went out early to search for your town.”

Hope flared in Oates. “Did you find it?”

The girl nodded. “I met a man. He told me where it was. It is south of here, west of the Salado Mountains, a place well-known to the Apache.”

“A man? What manner of man?”

“A small man on a donkey.”

“Nantan, was it a donkey or a mule?”

The girl shrugged. “Donkey, mule, what is the difference?” She reached behind her. “He gave me these as a present.”

Nantan held out a pair of frilly bloomers, threaded through with pink ribbon.

“I have not ever had such a present.” The girl smiled. “Nunca un tan bonito: never one so pretty.”

Oates felt a chill. “You spoke to this man. Did he say where he was going?”

“Yes, I spoke to him because we were strangers in the rain. He said he was going home to his wife.” She held up the bloomers. “He said he’d sold many of these to the white women in Heartbreak.”

“How did you find me?” Oates asked.

“Eddie, you are easy to follow, even for a Catholic Apache.”

Oates shook his head, more a gesture of despair than disgust. In an empty land, two people meet by chance, one a sure-thing killer and dangerous enemy, the other an abused Apache girl who called herself his wife.

Was it fate? Or some twisted, cruel destiny that was even now mocking him?

Oates realized it was neither.

Pickles was headed out of Heartbreak and Nantan was searching in the same direction. Even in this wilderness the chances were fairly good that they’d meet.

Had the man already found Stella and the others and killed them?

When he reached the town he’d ask around and try to get a lead on them. Three whores, a gunman and a simple boy traveling together might be a happenstance that would stick in memories, especially if there was a lawman around.

Oates looked at Nantan. In the manner of Apache women, she’d known her man was contemplating something and would not interrupt his thoughts.

With a sudden pang of guilt, he saw that the girl was soaked through, getting wetter and shivering. He shrugged out of his slicker and held it up. “Come down,” he said, smiling.

Nantan slid off the horse’s back and Oates helped her into the coat. “Keep you a little drier and warmer.”

The grateful, adoring glance the girl gave him made Oates feel even more guilty. “Let’s hit the trail,” he said gruffly.

With a cupped hand he helped the girl mount again. Then he swung into the saddle of the paint. “We’ll find a nice, dry hotel in Heartbreak,” he said. “And some decent grub.”

Then Oates thought of P. J. Pickles out there on the trail somewhere, heading back to tell Darlene McWilliams with a smile that the job she’d paid him for was done.

If Stella, Nellie, Lorraine and Sammy were dead, he would not let Pickles live.

He’d go after the man and kill him.