The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 6

Eddie Oates woke as the first light of morning bladed though the cottonwood branches. He lay still, listening to the small sounds of insects in the grass around him.

He tried to move—and groaned deep in his throat.

Immediately iron mallets pounded in his head and lightning flashed, searing streaks of white and scarlet, hellfire from the forge of a demented god.

Oates buried his face in the wet earth, deep into its musky fragrance, as soft and welcoming as the breasts of a beautiful woman.

His heartbeats thudded in his ears, the rapid, hammer-trip cadence of the alcoholic that threatened to rip his chest apart.

Dear God in heaven, he needed a drink.

It took a supreme effort of will and a battle against pain for Oates to rise up on all fours. Again he waited for the blinding agony in his head to subside. Then he struggled to his feet.

The world spun around him, trees, creek and sky cartwheeling past at dizzying speed. He bent over and retched, blood rushing into his face, which swelled like a red carnival balloon.

After a few minutes he straightened again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, blinked and peered around him. He was alone.

What was he doing here in this wilderness? Desperately Oates tried to remember. . . .

Alma . . . they threw him out . . . a useless mouth to feed . . . the saloon whores . . . Sammy Tatum. A rifle. Somebody had given him a rifle. He could sell it and buy whiskey. . . .

Where was the damned rifle?

Oates stumbled along the creek bank. Something fluttered from a cottonwood trunk; a white thing—paper—spiked on a broken branch.

He staggered to the tree and tore the sheet free. It took him several minutes to read the words and three times as long to understand what they implied.

We headed east on the

Heartbreak Trail.

Follow if you can.

You was asleep and

could not be waked.

Oates glanced around. The whores were gone. They’d taken his rifle and headed east—where the sun was touching the blue peaks of the Mogollons with golden light. He stumbled from the creek and started to walk.

He needed that rifle for whiskey money.

After an hour, Oates came on a game trail that ran parallel to the north bank of Gilita Creek. This was grassy country, heavily forested by wild oak, piñon and juniper, here and there stands of cactus and thistle. Once, a huge bull moose crossed his path, not yet displaying the antlers that would grow an inch a day by midsummer. The moose stood and watched Oates, intently, evaluating him as a potential danger. Seeing nothing to alarm him, he moved on and disappeared into the trees.

To the south soared the high peaks of the Gila Wilderness, their slopes heavily timbered by aspen and Douglas fir. Long before the Apaches came, this country had been the home of the Mogollon Indians, who had fished its creeks and hunted its canyons. Around AD 1300, the entire tribe had mysteriously vanished, leaving no scars on the land and only their ghosts to mark their passing.

Of this, Oates was unaware. He was conscious only of the whiskey hunger and the pain in his thin, undernourished body. He was unaccustomed to exercise and crossing this hard land was rapidly draining what little strength he had.

His bare feet were cut and bruised from the trail, and the heat of the climbing sun began to punish him.

A tall, undercut rock, wedged among a stand of juniper and a single, wind-racked pine, offered the promise of shade and a chance to rest. Oates stumbled into the blue shadow at the base of the rock and threw himself on the ground. He let a dreamless oblivion that wasn’t sleep take him. . . .

Eddie Oates felt himself rising, leaving the earth. He kicked and struggled, afraid of soaring too high and falling. But then he was shaken like a rat and a man’s laughing voice said, “Feisty little cuss, ain’t he?”

Oates opened his eyes. A big, bearded man wearing a buckskin shirt had him by the back of the neck and continued to shake him hard.

Another voice said, “What’s he got, Clem?”

“Nothing that I can tell, Pa.” The bearded man wrinkled his nose. “Smells like the business end of a polecat, though.”

“Bring him here.”

Oates was dragged from the rock into the open. Two men sat mustangs, grinning at the sight of him. The older of the two had a mane of dirty, silver hair that hung over the shoulders of his buckskins and a beard of the same color fanned out across his chest. The other man was a carbon copy of his companion, except that his hair and beard were black. Both carried Winchesters across their saddle horns.

“Well, what ill wind blew you here, boy?” the older man asked.

Oates had trouble focusing his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but managed only a mangled croak.

The big man shook him again. “Answer my pa.”

“He’s tetched in the head, maybe.” The older man grinned.

“Alma . . . I’m a couple of days out of Alma,” Oates said.

“Where you headed, boy?”

Oates remembered the note. “Heartbreak. It’s a town east of here.”

“Heard o’ it,” Pa said. “Never been there, though.”

The man’s pale blue eyes grew shrewd. “Here, what’s ailing you, boy? You sick?”

Oates shook his head. “I need a drink of whiskey, Mister. I need a drink real bad.”

Pa turned to the man beside him. “Now, that’s not a bad idea, is it, Reuben? Pass me the bottle.”

The man called Reuben reached behind him and produced a bottle of bourbon from his saddlebags. Oates noticed that it was three-fourths full, glowing gold in the sunlight.

Pa drank, then wiped his bearded mouth with the back of his hand. He looked down at Oates and smiled.

Oates tried to match the man’s smile and succeeded only in stretching his mouth in an insane grimace. “Mister, I appreciate this,” he said.

“You got money, boy?” Pa asked.

Oates shook his head. “But I got me a fancy rifle gun.”

Suddenly all three men were wary, looking around at the trees where the wind was playing. “Where is it?’ Pa looked stern. “Don’t you lie to me, boy.”

Oates tried to think, an effort that was rewarded by a cuff on the back of his head from Clem. “Where is the rifle?” Clem asked.

“It’s . . . friends of mine have it. Three women, whores, and a simple boy.”

“Where are they?” Pa asked.

“East on the trail. They’re headed for Heartbreak.”

Clem looked up at his father. “Pa, we haven’t had us a woman since the Apache squaw we jumped in Burnt Corral Canyon.”

Pa nodded. “It’s been a spell right enough.” He looked at Oates. “Whores, you say? Are they real purty?”

“Pretty enough,” Oates said.

“And a simple boy?”

“Yeah. Just tell them I said for them to give you my rifle.”

“Victorio might have ’em by this time, Pa,” Reuben said. “Or ol’ Nana.”

“It’s worth a look-see,” Clem said. “Last I heard, Victorio’s young bucks were playing hob west of here, raising all kinds of hell.”

Pa leaned forward in the saddle. “Boy, if you’re lying to me . . .”

“I ain’t lying, Mister. Now, can I have a drink?”

“Naw, this is prime whiskey. It ain’t for trash like you.”

Oates couldn’t believe what he just heard. “But . . . but you said . . .”

“I didn’t say nothing about giving you whiskey.”

Anger, the first he’d felt in years, flared in Oates. “You dirty, lying, son of a bitch!”

Pa’s face hardened. “Clem, you gonna let trail trash speak to your old man like that?”

Oates heard Clem laugh. A fist as big as a ham crashed into his face. Then he doubled up when the man rammed a punch into his belly. Oates fell to the ground, retching, as Clem’s boots went in hard.