The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 28

Oates and Nantan rode through driving rain. The day was as dark as night, black clouds hanging low over the treetops. Thunder roared and blustered, content to let the savage, lancing lightning do its dirty work.

A searing white bolt struck a ponderosa not fifty yards from Nantan, who was taking up the rear. The tree split with a loud crack and burst into a column of fire. The blaze lasted for a couple of minutes until the rain pounded the inferno into submission. Soon only a few flames fluttered like scarlet moths on the charred trunk.

Oates turned in the saddle and said, “That was way too close.”

Nantan heard, but did not answer. By the shocked look on her face, she also thought it was close.

By noon Oates and the girl were riding parallel to the south bank of Cuchillo Creek, past lofty cottonwoods and a few hardwoods. There had been no letup in the rain and thunder still growled in the distance.

Nantan kneed her horse beside Oates, water running down her face. “If we follow the creek, we’ll come to a stage station,” she said. “Maybe we can get out of the rain for a while.”

“How far?” Oates asked.

“An hour’s ride, less. That is, if Victorio didn’t burn it.”

Oates nodded. “I could sure use some coffee.”

“Jake took me there one time,” she said. “He was meeting Dallas at the stage.” She rode closer. “Jake killed a man that day.”

“Why did he do that?”

“They played poker and Jake lost, so he killed the man.”

Oates smiled. “Nantan, I hope they don’t remember you.”

“I was not inside. Jake tied me by my wrists to a tree. He said they didn’t let Apache squaws into the station.”

Oates waited until a peal of thunder passed, then said, “If you’d told me this back at the shack, I’d have put a bullet into ol’ Jake my ownself.”

Nantan smiled. “Now Jake must squat like a woman. It is enough.”

The Cuchillo stage station was a low, squat, timber building with spacious corrals and a large barn. There were several other outbuildings, but as the two riders approached, these were lost and invisible in the rain.

A man stood in the shelter of the portico running the length of the cabin, smoking a cigar. His eyes were on Oates and Nantan and, as they rode closer, the expression on his lean, leathery face was not particularly friendly.

Oates drew rein and said, “Howdy.”

The man nodded. He wore a Colt on one hip and a huge bowie knife on the other.

“We were looking for coffee and a dry hour to drink it.”

“Then you came to the right place.” The man motioned with his head. “You can put your horses up in the barn. The hay is free, two bits for oats.”

“You go inside, Eddie,” Nantan said. “I’ll take the horses.”

“No need, I’ll go with you.”

The girl shook her head. “It is a wife’s duty. You go inside.”

The man on the porch was looking at Nantan curiously, and rather than create a scene, Oates stepped out of the saddle.

“Come inside,” the man said. “Name’s Bill Daley. I’m in charge of the station.” He smiled. “And, Mister, you look like a drowned rat.”

“Feel like one too,” Oates allowed. “And the name’s Eddie Oates.”

The inside of the station was cramped but warm and dry. A couple of tables and benches took up much of the floor space, and a large, cast-iron cooking stove stood against one wall.

To Oates’ left a couple of barrels and a pine board served as a bar and there was another, smaller table, where five people sat.

Oates’ jaw dropped and he took a step back, bumping into someone standing behind him. He turned, then his eyes lifted . . . lifted again. He’d stepped on the toes of a man who stood at least nine inches over six feet from his miner’s boots to the top of his battered plug hat. The look in the man’s ice blue eyes was not encouraging.

“It’s all right, Shamus,” Stella Spinner said, rising from the table. “He’s a friend.”

The woman ran to Oates and hugged him close. “Eddie, I’m so glad you’re here.”

For the first time in Oates’ life someone was happy at his coming, and it affected him deeply. He had trouble finding the words and later would not be able to recall what he said, but he did remember Stella leading him to the table.

And the shock that followed.

Lorraine, Nellie and Sam Tatum, grinning like a delighted possum, were there, and another man, his chest heavily bandaged.

Handsome as ever, though looking drawn and pale, was the riverboat gambler Warren Rivette.

The man took in Oates’ gun, his soaked but good clothes and his fashionable dragoon mustache. “Pleased to see you again, Eddie,” he said. “I’d say you’ve changed since the last time I saw you.”

“Some.”

Rivette waved a hand. “Take a seat.”

Confused, Oates sat beside Stella. He looked at the gambler closely as he tried to grapple with the fact of his being there.

Rivette read Oates’ eyes and smiled. “I don’t quite know either, Eddie. The truth is that a man doesn’t have a conscience. The conscience has the man. I thought you and Sam and the ladies had been roughly handled in Alma, so after the Apaches left, I went looking for you.”

“As simple as that, huh?” Oates said.

Rivette shook his head. “No, nowhere near as simple as that. Why does a man do what he does? Sometimes he can’t explain it.” All eyes were on him and the gambler decided to lighten up. “Besides,” he said, “I was getting mighty bored in Alma. All the interesting folks had been hung, shot by Apaches or banished.”

Rivette pushed a bottle toward Oates. “Daley calls this whiskey. I call it something else. But you’re welcome to make a trial of it.”

Oates shook his head. “I’ll pass, but thanks anyhow.”

By the nature of his profession, a gambler needs to be a perceptive man and Rivette read the signs. “Shamus,” he said to the big man who was hovering close by, “take this vile swill away. I’m deeply ashamed to offer it to my guests.”

“Sure, Mr. Rivette,” Shamus said, suspiciously eyeing Oates. He picked up the bottle and glasses and returned them to the bar.

Oates eased into conversation again. “I have someone with me,” he said, “an Apache girl.” He heard the door open and turned. “And here she is. Her name is Nantan.”

Rain dripping from her slicker, her hair plastered over her face, Nantan stepped to the table. Rivette, raised to be a gentleman, got to his feet and a blushing, grinning Sam Tatum did likewise.

Oates made the necessary introductions. Then Lorraine rose and rushed around the table. “You poor thing,” she said to Nantan as she began to unbutton her slicker, “you’re soaked through.”

Her eyes moved past the girl to Daley who was lifting a sooty coffeepot off the stove. “Hey, Daley,” she yelled, “after you’ve done that, move your lazy ass and bring me a towel.”

“I’ve only got two hands, Lorraine,” Daley said, setting the pot and cups on the table.

“Nobody knows better than me how many hands you got, Daley.”

Nellie, looking prim, said, “I declare, Lorraine, you’re such a whore.”

“Takes one to know one, Nellie,” Lorraine said.

Daley looked at Nantan as all three women now fussed over her, then to Oates. “First time I’ve ever had an Apache in here. Usually they’re outside whoopin’ and hollerin’, if you catch my drift.”

“Sorry,” Oates said.

“Lipan, ain’t she?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“A man spends enough time around Apaches, he knows.” Daley shrugged. “I’ve never had no trouble with Lipan.”

The man turned away and walked behind the bar. Oates was uneasy. While he’d been talking to Daley he was sure he’d heard Nantan say the word “wife.”

Now Stella confirmed it. “Well, congratulations, Eddie,” she said, grinning. “I never took you for the marrying kind.”

“I’m not married and she’s not my wife,” Oates protested. “We didn’t have a churchin’ or nothing like that.”

“You could do worse, Eddie,” Rivette said. “She’s a right pretty girl.”

Then Shamus, the big, ugly, broken-nosed Irishman, did something strange. He stepped to the table, dropped a huge ham of a hand on Oates’ shoulder and said. “I can’t say it in Apache, but a Mescalero woman taught me their wedding chant—”

“Damn it all,” Oates said, “I told you, I’m not married.”

“If Nantan says you’re married, you’re married,” Lorraine said. She looked at Shamus. “Let the happy couple hear the wedding chant, Irishman. That ought to seal their bond, like.”

Shamus took a breath and, his hands pounding a drumbeat on the table, chanted.

Now you will feel no rain,

for each of you will be shelter for the other.

Now you will feel no cold,

for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there will be no loneliness,

for each of you will be friend to the other.

Now you are two persons,

but there are three lives before you: his life, her life and

your life together.

Go now to your dwelling place to enter into your days

together,

and may all your days be good and long upon the earth.

After Shamus was finished speaking, there was a round of applause. Rivette bowed and said, “Please sit at the table, Mrs. Oates, and have some coffee. It will warm you.”

Stella made a place for the girl beside Oates and he was freed from commenting on the wedding issue when Rivette said, “Eddie, I guess that was you back at the ridge when I was pinned down by the McWilliams riders.”

Oates poured coffee for him and Nantan, then nodded to the gambler ’s bandaged chest: “You took a bullet.”

“It could have been worse. You saved my life that day.”

Oates looked around the table, still hardly able to believe what he was seeing. “How did you all end up here?”

Rivette spoke up. “After I left the ridge, I knew I was hurt bad. Then at nightfall I saw a blazing fire on top of a mesa. I figured only you could be that dumb, Eddie. Anyway, I needed help, so I was willing to take a chance.”

Sam Tatum said, “It was my fault, Mr. Oates. I lit a fire too close to the tree.” The boy looked miserable. “I do silly things sometimes.”

“We all do silly things, Sammy,” Oates said. His eyes angled to Rivette. “Especially someone as dumb as me.”

Rivette caught the look and smiled. “Sorry, Eddie. Like I said, you’ve changed considerably, so being dumb doesn’t apply anymore.”

The gambler pulled the coffeepot and a cup toward him. He inspected the inside of the cup before he poured, then said, “The ladies here patched me up as best they could, but they knew I needed rest. We set out for Heartbreak, but I couldn’t make it, so I told them to detour here and we’d hole up until I recovered my strength.”

Rivette found a cigar in his shirt pocket, bit off the end and Stella lit it for him. Through a cloud of blue smoke he said, “Bill Daley used to have a clip joint on the San Francisco waterfront and one time I helped him out in a shooting scrape. He wrote me a letter before I drifted to Alma and told me he’d gone straight and was running the Cuchillo stage station with Shamus here. I figured he owed me a favor.”

Daley overheard and grinned. “Helping me out in a shooting scrape means he killed two men and wounded a third. They were trying to roll me in an alley, but made the mistake of drawing down on Rivette.” He nodded. “I’ll say I owe him a favor.”

“You’re lucky you found us, Eddie,” Stella said. “We’re heading for Heartbreak tomorrow.”

Then Oates told them the bad news.