Ralph Compton The Man From Nowhere Read online

  “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.

  Chapter 5

  The Mescaleros came just as the light of the spring day was fading and the sun was a red pool shadowed by rain clouds.

  Four men riding wiry mustangs rode up on the creek, then sat their ponies, watching Sam and the three women as they huddled around a small, smoking fire.

  “Well, they’ve arrived,” Stella said. “Hell, and just when the trout is almost cooked.”

  A tight, frightened gasp escaped between Nellie’s lips. She was used to men, but the Apaches looked more like lean, hungry wolves. What appetites they might possess, she did not want to guess.

  Stella rose to her feet and levered a round into the chamber of the Henry.

  The Indians noticed and their black eyes glittered. For now at least, they would be wary of the rifle.

  The Mescaleros slid off the backs of their ponies and approached the fire. All wore black headbands and were painted f
or war. Three carried Winchesters, the stocks decorated with brass and iron tacks, and the tall man who seemed to be their leader cradled a Sharps .50 in his arms.

  “What do you want from us?” Stella asked. She motioned to the fire. “We have fish but too little to share.”

  The tall man said nothing. He walked to Oates, lifted his head by the hair and stared into his face. “What ails this one?” he asked.

  “He’s a drunk,” Lorraine said. “El es un borracho.”

  The Apache nodded. “In the white towns, does this sit with men?”

  “No,” Stella said, “he does not.”

  “It is just as well.” The Apache let Oates’ head fall. “Would there be any honor in killing such a one?”

  “No,” Stella said. “He’s sick and will die soon.”

  The Apache raised his foot and contemptuously kicked Oates onto his side. The little man groaned, raised his knees to his chest and lay where he’d fallen.

  The hard, obsidian eyes moved to Sam Tatum, measured the boy, dismissed him. A fighting man, the Apache could recognize that quality in others. He saw nothing in Tatum to alarm him.

  But Sam read it wrong. The big Indian meant him harm.

  The boy reached into his coat and pulled out the sketches he’d made. He proffered them to the Apache. “Pretty pictures,” he said. “A gift.” He waved to the women. “Pictures of them.”

  Scowling, the Mescalero pulled the papers from Sam’s hand. He glanced at the drawing on top and bent his head to study it more closely. Then he looked across the fire to Lorraine, grinning.

  He said something to his companions, and they crowded around him. Soon they were passing the sketches back and forth, laughing and slapping one another on the back.

  Indians are notional, none more so than Apaches. Their meeting with the women could have ended badly but for Sam’s clumsy attempt to make friends. The sketches of three naked women splashing in the creek amused and excited them. For now it was enough.

  A young warrior with a terrible saber scar down one cheek laid his Winchester on the ground and bounced his cupped hands in front of his chest. He pointed to Lorraine and grinned. Another lifted his breechcloth and slapped his naked rump. Again Lorraine was the target.

  “I told you, Lorraine,” Stella said. “You’ve got a big ass.”

  The tall man motioned to the others, and the Apaches immediately swung onto their ponies. They rode away yipping and hollering, and waving Sam’s sketches over their heads.

  It was over, for now. The pictures of the naked women had satisfied them, something to show around the ranchería fires that night.

  But it was the Henry that had tipped the balance, the rifle and the confidence of the cold-eyed woman who held it.

  Stella leaned back against a cottonwood and brushed a lock of hair off her forehead with an unsteady hand. “For a moment there, I thought we were all dead,” she said.

  Lorraine looked from the woman’s pale face to the Henry. “Can you use that thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Stella said. “I’ve never tried. Where I was raised, the price of this gun would have kept my folks in grub for a year.”

  Nellie was sitting on the ground, her face in her hands. She raised tear-stained eyes to the other woman. “It takes a man to shoot a rifle gun like that,” she said.

  “Well, we don’t have one o’ them handy,” Lorraine said. “Now, let’s eat the fish before it burns to a crisp.”

  Sam and the women shared the trout around their feeble fire. The trees were alive with wind and the rain was falling heavier, ticking from the branches.

  Nellie looked over at Oates, who was still lying on his side, moaning softly. “What about him?” she asked.

  “What about him?” Lorraine said.

  “Shouldn’t we feed him?”

  Stella looked at the younger woman with the cool, bruised eyes of the professional whore. “Sure, Nellie, you can give him yours.”

  “I just said—,” Nellie protested.

  “You’d only be wasting food, honey,” Lorraine said. She sounded as detached as Stella. “Unless he finds whiskey soon, he’ll curl up and die.”

  “Why does a man get to be like him?” Nellie asked.

  Lorraine shrugged. “Life, I guess.”

  “Or he just can’t handle whiskey,” Stella said absently.

  “Nellie, Eddie Oates is a man who might once have looked at his life stretching away from him and saw nothing but ten thousand miles of empty road,” Lorraine said. “Maybe that’s why he stays drunk all the time.”

  Nellie shivered as drops of cold water fell from the trees and trickled down the back of her neck. Oates already forgotten, she said, “Stella, what are we going to do?” She hugged herself and tried to get closer to the fire. “I’m scared, Stella.”

  “We’re all scared.” Stella wiped her hands on the wet grass beside her. “There’s a town east of here called Heartbreak. Maybe we can make it.”

  Lorraine smiled slightly. “Unless the Apaches get bored with the pictures and decide they want the real thing.”

  “They’re men,” Stella said. “Of course they’ll want the real thing.”

  “How far away is Heartbreak?” Nellie asked.

  Stella shook her head. “I don’t know. Fifty miles, a hundred, I’ve no idea.”

  “Do we even know it’s there?” Lorraine said.

  “It’s there,” Stella answered. “I knew a girl who worked the line in Heartbreak. She said it was a fair-sized town, miners mostly, but there are some ranches around.”

  Nellie brightened. “Miners are high rollers. We can set up in business, the three of us, run our own house.”

  “Can I come, Miss Stella?” Sam asked.

  “Sure you can. I think there’s money to be made from you, Sam. I just have to figure a way how.”

  “What about Mr. Oates? Can he go to Heartbreak?” Tatum asked.

  “If we can wake him.” Stella searched around in her carpetbag. She found a flat tin, opened it, took out a thin cheroot and held it up for the others to see. “Anybody else?” When no one answered, she lit the little cigar with a brand from the fire.

  Another search produced a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38 with ivory grips. Stella handed it to Lorraine. “Shove that in a pocket of your mackinaw,” she said. “It’s handy for up-close work.”

  “So, when do we take the Heartbreak Trail, Stella?” the older woman asked, dropping the revolver into her pocket.

  “We’ll sleep for a few hours, then hit the road while it’s still dark.”

  Lorraine stared into the guttering fire for a few moments, then said, “Stella, it seems you’ve become our leader, so tell me: how do you rate our chances of reaching that Heartbreak place alive?”

  Stella didn’t hesitate. “Slim to none, Lorraine, and slim’s already saddling up to leave town.”

  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 a
gain, 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.