The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 4

Stella Spinner, who was the strongest of them, led the way across the high desert country.

At her suggestion, they headed east and followed the bend of Silver Creek. Around them rose the big-shouldered peaks of the Mogollon Mountains standing eleven thousand feet above the flat. Ahead lay a wide, buffalo grass valley studded with sagebrush and cedar. Thick forests of ponderosa pine, aspen and sycamore grew on the mountain slopes and the thin wind talked constantly, whispering secrets no one could understand.

The sky was heavy with rain and a few random drops scattered over Oates as he trudged after the others, trailing the Henry behind him.

He was in the grip of demons and around him the hissing land was full of snakes. The whiskey hunger lashed at him, giving him no rest. He neither saw nor heard and young Sam Tatum had to physically stop and redirect him when the women turned into the cottonwoods and alders along the creek bank.

“We’ve got to rest for a spell, Mr. Oates,” Sam said. “Maybe we can find something to eat.” The boy smiled and rubbed his hands. “Corn bread an’ buttermilk. Now that would be good.”

Oates looked at Sam with dull, uncomprehending eyes, his mouth slack. He said nothing.

“I’ll take you into the trees, Mr. Oates. It’s fixin’ to rain again.”

Stella was sitting with her back against a cottonwood, her elbows on her knees. A strand of yellow hair had fallen over her forehead. “Sam, take that rifle off’n him before he shoots himself,” she said. “Bring it over here.”

Oates let go of the Henry without protest, then found himself a place among the alders. He sat and drew his knees into his chest and shivered, looking around but seeing nothing.

“Stella, what are we going to do?” Nellie Carney asked. She had white-blond hair and huge, frightened blue eyes.

“First thing we’re going to do is strip and wash off the stink of Alma.”

“But it’s raining,” Nellie protested. “Lorraine, tell her.”

“Honey, the creek is already wet,” Lorraine said, “or haven’t you noticed?”

Lorraine looked tired, beaten. At forty-three she’d been too old for the whore’s profession. She knew she was too old by far for what lay ahead of her.

“Strip off . . . but there’s men present,” Nellie said. “I don’t want to bathe in front of men.”

Stella’s laugh was harsh and unpleasant. “Nellie, neither of them two exactly qualify as men. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

A rainbow trout jumped in the creek, then another. Exclamation points of rain covered the water’s surface and wind set the tree branches to rustling.

Rising to her feet, Stella began to strip. “You coming, Lorraine?”

The older woman nodded. Then she too rose. “What about Apaches?” she asked.

“What about them?”

“Suppose they come on us when we’re nekkid?”

“Nekkid, clothed, what difference does it make? We’re all dead, Lorraine. It’s just a matter of when.”

“Don’t say that, Stella,” Nellie cried. “We’ll meet cowboys on the trail, or find a ranch. I know we will.”

Stella’s face took on the look of a scolding mother. “Nellie, all the cowboys have been pulled back to protect their range. We didn’t see a drover in Alma since two weeks ago.” She stood under the tree, naked and unselfconscious. “As for finding a ranch, we could go looking. But my advice is to get out of this country as fast as possible.” The woman smiled. “Maybe it’s not good advice, but it’s all I got.”

“Where will we go, Stella?”

“I’ll tell you after I have a bath and wash the horseshit out of my hair.”

Lorraine had stripped and her pale skin was covered in goose bumps. She reached out a hand to Stella. “You ready?”

The younger woman nodded and took the proffered hand. “Let’s go!”

Together they ran down the slope of the creek bank and jumped, shrieking with laughter, into water still cold from the spring snowmelt.

“Oh hell,” Nellie said. She quickly took off her clothes and joined them.

Sam Tatum had watched all this in slack-jawed amazement. He grinned, reached into his ragged coat and pulled out a stack of paper and a few pencils. He rushed to the creek’s edge and began to sketch furiously.

The three women ignored him, intent on their icy baths.

And so did Oates. He had no interest in Sam or in naked female flesh for that matter. At that moment he would have traded the most beautiful woman in the world for a jug of forty-rod whiskey.

Around Oates green-eyed serpents hissed and coiled in the splintered light, and beyond those a herd of scarlet buffalo moved through a mist of their own making, the smoke of ten thousand frosted muzzles.

Ol’ Wild Bill was there, as ever was, pushing the herd astride a big roan horse. In Deadwood, whenever it was, maybe a hundred years ago, maybe yesterday, Bill had treated Oates to many a drink and never made him play the go-fetch game.

But Bill was dead and had lain cold in the grave this three year.

Oates shook and hugged his knees. He was locked in his own personal hell that had neither windows nor doors but only darkness streaked with fire. The darkness had eyes that watched him, ruby red, unblinking and soulless.

He shivered. He was in hell and could no longer sell his soul for a glass of amber whiskey, because he’d made that bargain with the devil years before.

But then came deliverance.

Bill was standing over him, the ivory handles of his revolvers plain to see, that wry grin on his mouth that used to set female hearts aflutter.

“For you, ol’ hoss,” Bill said. “Looks like you need it.” He held out a beaded glass of bourbon, the fragrant, glowing ambassador of reason and human happiness.

“Thank you, Mr. Hickok,” Oates said. He reached out a quivering hand . . . but clutched only the slate-colored mist of the rain.

A man needs to be alive to cry, but Oates had been dead from birth. He laid his forehead on his knees and trembled, aware of nothing but his own pain.

Sam Tatum was still sketching on the creek bank, one hand sheltering his paper from the rain, the other busy with his pencil. The boy was fifteen that spring. At least that was some people’s guess, the few who cared enough to speculate, but he was tall and big in the arms and shoulders and looked years older.

Led by Stella, the three women kept diving into the water, clutching at its pebbly bottom, and Sam squealed in delight as he sketched.

Then the boy discovered the reason for such strange female behavior.

Stella, water dripping from the hair that had fallen over her face, held a wriggling trout in her hands. She quickly tossed it onto the bank. “Sam, make sure that damned fish stays there,” she yelled. “It’s supper.”

Sam stuffed his papers into his coat and with his foot shoved the fish onto grassier ground. Stella threw another rainbow that landed at his feet. Lorraine also caught a fish, but Nellie had no luck.

Shivering, the three women left the creek and hurriedly dressed on the bank. Once she was clothed, Stella crooked a finger at Sam and said, “Come here, you.”

Wary of the stern note in the woman’s voice, the boy shuffled reluctantly close to her. “Yes, Miss Stella?”

“What was all that stuff you was writing when we were in the creek?”

“I wasn’t writing, Miss Stella.”

“You were doing something, you little pervert,” Nellie said, frowning.

“Show us, Sam,” Stella said. Her fisted hands were on her hips, a bad sign as the boy knew from his bitter experience in foster homes.

Quickly the boy took the papers from inside his coat and passed them to Stella. The woman shuffled through them, quickly at first, then more slowly, her face changing from irritation to wonder.

“What’s he say?” Lorraine asked. She was looking closely at Stella.

“Come see this. You too, Nellie.”

The women crowded round Stella and began to pass around the pages.

Nellie looked from the paper she was holding, to Sam, then back again. “It’s like we’re alive, right there on the page.”

“Hell,” Lorraine said, “is my ass really that big?”

“Yeah,” Stella said, “and so are your tits.”

“Your own ass ain’t so small either, Stella,” Lorraine said, irritated. She looked over to the embarrassed Sam. “Hey, boy, how come you’re not a famous artist?”

Sam shrugged. “I just draw what I like.”

Stella thought for a few moments, then seemed to make up her mind about something. She stepped to Sam and held up four fingers of her left hand. “How many fingers do you see, Sam? Count them.”

The boy looked confused. “I don’t know my ciphers, Miss Stella.”

“All right then, get out your pencil and write your name.”

Sam’s cheeks reddened. “I don’t know how. I don’t know my letters either.”

“He’s simple in the head,” Nellie said. Her interest in Sam’s sketches was already fading.

“How can he be simple and draw pictures like that?” Lorraine asked. “His mind works different than other people’s, that’s all.”

Stella nodded. “It’s us, but better than us. He changed us and made us . . . beautiful.”

“Uh-huh, big asses an’ all.”

“You shut up, Nellie,” Lorraine snapped. “What do you know about anything?”

“You’re such a whore, Lorraine.”

“And you’re an uppity little bitch, Nellie. And may I remind you that you’re also a whore?”

“But I won’t be when I’m your age. By then I’ll have a fine house and a carriage and servants.”

Stella laughed the strident, practiced bray of the saloon girl. “We’re surrounded by Apaches, Nellie. If you’re lucky, the house you’ll own will be a Mescalero wickiup.”

“We haven’t seen any Apaches,” Nellie protested, even as her face paled.

“That’s true, but don’t you think they already know we’re here?”

In that, Stella was right.