Deserter (12 page)

Jake ate everything on the tray before he reached for the paper. Under the masthead of the
Penderton Advisor
the headline was stark, in huge black font across the top of the page:

C
ONFEDERATES
R
OUTED IN
B
LOODY
C
ONFRONTATION;

H
EROIC
U
NION
T
ROOPS
R
EPEL
M
ASSIVE
A
SSAULT
!

Jake began to read the account and then put the paper aside, realizing that the writer probably hadn't been within a hundred miles of the battle. He had the fighting taking place in the town—from house to house—and mentioned nothing about Pickett or the final charge. The casualty count by the reporter was absolutely insane: He cited over twenty thousand Union men killed, wounded, or missing, and over eighteen thousand for the Confederates. Photographs taken by Matthew Brady, renowned photographer of the Great War, would appear in subsequent editions of the
Advisor
, the text promised. Sinclair sighed and put the newspaper aside.

Doc Oliver was rumpled and tired when he showed up at about midday. He unwrapped the gauze from Jake's arm and inspected his work. Behind Jake's
knuckles were a series of perhaps ten or a dozen inch-to two-inch-long series of neatly tied sutures. The swelling was down and there was no stink of infection. The skin, however, was reddened and stretched, particularly between the lines of sutures. “Looks very good,” Doc said. He removed the cap from a blue glass jar and spread a thick, sharp-smelling ointment over the injured areas. “Bovine bag balm,” he said. “Works better than any of the salves the medical suppliers in Chicago sell—at about a quarter of the price.” He rewrapped the hand and arm and secured it, once again, to the board. Noting the disappointment in Jake's eyes, he said, “Look—everything is fine so far. You got off real lucky, Jake. The trauma area needs to be immobilized for at least another day. Today I want you to spend most of your time on your bed. We'll see about tomorrow when it gets here.”The doctor stood and wearily put his hands to his lower back.“Like I said, you're very lucky. Don't screw up my good work now.”

Waiting to heal was about as interesting to Jake Sinclair as watching moss grow on a damp rock. There was very little pain in his right hand and forearm, but the itching was intense, maddening in a sense, worse than pain. The day dragged. He dozed a few times but dreamed of using a handful of rough straw to scour away the incessant itching. Maggie brought him lunch and then dinner but apparently was too busy in the office with Doc to stop to visit. Late in the afternoon gunfire sounded—at first that of standard-caliber rifles and then the more muscular reports of a Sharps or similar weapon. Every once in a while a whoop or a burst of laughter reached Jake and the tinkling of a honkytonk piano was just barely audible if the breeze was
right. The shooting stopped after dark. The frequency of the yells and braying laughter increased as the night progressed, but it was never quite loud enough to be annoying. In truth, the laughter sounded good to Jake.
Men laugh differently, more quietly, with less joy, before or after a battle. It's nervous laughter then, with none of the release of whiskey and fun behind it. Hell, Uriah and I hadn't really laughed together for a couple of months before Gettysburg—even when we came across some whiskey.

Jake Sinclair was wide awake, hungry, thirsty, and very surly when Doc Oliver looked in on him the following morning. “This goddamn itching, Doc,” Jake greeted the physician, “is going to drive me crazy! It doesn't let up for a second. I didn't sleep a wink all night. . . .”

“Strange.” Doc grinned. “The two times I looked in on you, you were sleeping as sound as a federal dollar. And,” he added, “the itching is a good sign. It means things are healing up. Let's take a look.” He quickly removed the gauze, freeing the arm. “Swelling's way down, no sign the infection has returned. Move your fingers.”

Jake complied, feeling some stiffness and some resistance.“Doesn't itch so bad with the dressing off,” he said.

“Make a fist,” Doc said.

Jake's knuckles smarted and his skin felt tight and hot, but he formed a good fist. He turned his clenched hand over and then back again, gazing down at it as if it were his first newborn son. “Thanks, Doc,” he said.

“Sure. Keep it clean and there's no need to wrap it. My services and your stay here are going to cost you
six dollars. Maggie will bring you your change from the forty dollars in your boots. You're ready to go, Jake. If you're still in town in a week, come back and I'll remove the stitches. If you're not, cut them and pluck them out yourself. There's nothing to it. Just don't leave them in longer than a week.”

Jake stood from the bedside chair. “I won't forget this, Doc.”

“Sure you will.” Oliver smiled. “In a year or so all you'll remember is the doc with one arm who charged you six dollars for doing next to nothing.” He put his hand on Jake's shoulder. “I won't offer to shake with you, Jake No Last Name—at least until the stitches are out. I'll wish you well, though.”

The livery stable—Jake's first stop after leaving Doc Oliver's office—smelled of good hay and polished leather and the scent of healthy horses. Jake looked over Mare, asked that her shoes be reset, and checked his saddle. He paid the blacksmith's boarding rate of sixty-five cents per day, and said he'd be by in the morning to get her. As Jake was leaving the barn, the smith was leading Mare to the front work area where his forge and anvil were located.

The sun was strong on Jake's back as he walked from the stables to the Penderton Hotel. He took a room on the second floor, paid his dollar in advance as required, dragged the wooden chair that was, other than the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room to the curtainless window and sat down. Rooms with dressers were ten cents per night extra. “I won't be here long enough to need a dresser,” he'd told the clerk.

He watched men go in and out of the saloon for the
balance of the afternoon. Most of the day trade was farmers sneaking off from their fields for a quick drink. Few of them, Jake noticed, carried sidearms. About suppertime a tall, gaunt man in a dark suit dismounted and tied a good-looking roan to the rail in the front of the saloon. He wore a holstered pistol and it rested low on his hip. The holster was tied to his leg with a leather string. Almost immediately another rider tied up outside, this one a squat fellow with flaming red hair and a bushy beard. He carried a long parcel wrapped in cowhide. From its size and configuration, Jake could see that it was a long gun, but it was impossible to determine the caliber or manufacturer. Jake moved from the window and stretched out on the bed. Before long the piano in the saloon began its night's work.

Jake took the holster and pistol from his belt before he left his room, leaving them with the clerk for safekeeping. It was cooler now, although the sun was still sending its harsh light as it approached the western horizon. A fairly stiff breeze was intermittent. Halfway to the saloon Jake crouched as if adjusting his pant leg over his boot and picked up a pinch of dried dirt. He flicked it from his fingers at shoulder height and watched as the grains were whisked away. Then he moved on to the batwing doors.

It took a few moments for Jake's eyes to adjust to the murky light and haze of tobacco smoke in the saloon and he stood just inside until he could see clearly. The place was interchangeable with every small-town gin mill Jake had ever seen: a long bar behind which was centered the obligatory large seminude painting of a buxom female, breasts bared with a hand coyly covering her groin, a half dozen spittoons spread along the
floor in front of the bar, each showing the lack of spitting accuracy of the clientele, oil lamps on hooks throughout the room, damp sawdust, spilled beer, and crushed cigar nubs and cigarette butts on the uneven wooden floor, a few tables with chairs for poker players, and a battered piano at the rear. The saloon smelled of stale beer, cedar sawdust, sweat, and foul breath.

The man who'd left the roan at the hitching rail stood at the bar, his rifle resting on the polished wood. A few other men stood about, schooners of beer in their hands, clustered about the rifleman. Jake eased up to the bar. He immediately understood where the name Weasel had come from: The bartender looked like he'd be more at home raiding a chicken coop than pouring beer and booze. His face was narrow and his nose vulpine, more of a snout than a nose, and his eyes were small and dark and suspicious. His body, too, conveyed the weasel image: It was thin and moved quickly but strangely gracefully—almost sinuously.

“Beer,” Jake said, when Weasel nodded at him.

Jake glanced at the rifle on the bar. “Nice weapon,” he said casually. “Not many Spencer 56.46s around these days. Longer reach than the arm of God, right?” He turned away and raised the beer Weasel had put in front of him.

“That's a fact.” The owner grinned. “Know weapons, do you?” He was tall, probably closer to sixty than to fifty in age, and was dressed in city clothes—white shirt, dark vest, dark pants, and boots. His eyes, Jake noticed, were a pale blue, his gaze unwavering: shooter's eyes. His hair was mostly gray and pushed back from his face, touching his shoulders.

“I've always respected a good rifle like the Spencer and the Sharps.” He added, “My name's Jake.”

The rifleman nodded. “I'm Will. You shoot, Jake?”

Jake took a long pull at his schooner of icy cold beer. It felt wonderful on his throat and tasted just as good. He wiped foam from his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled. “I'll tell you this, Will—I'd bet that if you give me two practice rounds with your rifle, I can outshoot you with it at any distance under any conditions. So yeah, it's fair to say that I shoot.”

Sinclair hadn't spoken loud, but his words had been heard by the men at and around the bar. An uneasy silence followed. The bystanders watched Will carefully for his reaction, trying to appear that they weren't doing so.

“That right?” Will said. “You'll take up my rifle and outshoot me with it?”

“Just as sure as you're standing here,” Jake said.

Will chuckled, but the coldness that had set into his eyes made a lie of what his laugh said. “Cocky sumbitch, ain't you?” He paused for a moment and then grinned again. “I guess I might just as well drink for free tonight on you, Jake. Think you can find ten dollars somewhere?”

“I can.”

Will removed two cartridges from the side pocket of his coat and put them on the bar in front of Jake. Each was almost three inches long and as thick as a stout man's finger. “Here's how this'll go,” he said. “You take your two practice rounds and then I pick a target and we both get but a single round. Best shot wins—no arguments. If it's real close, Weasel here will judge it. He's
a crooked-looking sumbitch for true, but he's honest. Agreed?”

Jake picked up the two cartridges. “Agreed,” he said. Will handed the Spencer to him, handling it almost reverently. Jake paid the weapon the same respect. The group of men moved out to the street. About a hundred yards from the saloon the road leading to town took a bend around a heifer-sized boulder, its dusty brown crags and surfaces glinting in places as the sun struck bits of mica. Sinclair fed a cartridge into the Spencer's breech, worked the lever action, and raised the butt to his shoulder. The rifle was slightly lighter than the Sharps he'd gotten so accustomed to, but he felt the quality and power of the Spencer as he sighted at the boulder. It was immediately apparent to the group what Jake had selected as a target. The report was like that of a cannon. A geyser of dirt erupted an inch to the right of the rock.

“I'll give you five to one 'gainst Will, mister,” an observer offered.

“Me too,” another voice said.

Jake ejected the spent cartridge and inserted the second one. “Five dollars each?”

“Five's good.”

Jake's second attempt clipped a cigar-sized piece of rock away at the very edge of the boulder and the slug ricocheted into the distance, its high-pitched whine echoing after it.

“Nice shootin',” one of the men said sarcastically. “'Specially since that li'l rock ain't no bigger'n a goddamn barn.” Sinclair ignored the laughter.

Jake handed the rifle to the shooter named Will. “What's your target?” Jake asked.

“Just a couple pieces of board with bull's-eyes painted on them, Jake. Nothin' fancy. We got some already made up inside.” Will turned to the group. “Yappy—you go on an' set up a couple of the targets out there about 150 yards or so, will you?”

Yappy hustled back to the saloon almost at a run. “I buy him a drink or two every so often,”Will commented.

Yappy grabbed his horse from the rail and rode at a gallop out past the boulder a good distance. There he stopped and turned back, waving to Will. Will returned the wave. Yappy took his horse far off to one side. The two boards he'd stuck in the ground a yard apart were a foot and a half tall and about eight inches wide. Toward the top of each a bright red circle was centered.

“I'll take the right one,” Will said. He fed a cartridge into his rifle, cocked it, and raised it to position with the ease and understated skill of a true rifleman, not wasting a motion. He barely appeared to aim before he fired. He handed the smoking Spencer to Jake. “Have at it.” He grinned.

Jake accepted the rifle and another round. He loaded and cocked the weapon, brought it to his shoulder, and peered down the sights. He spread his boots apart a few inches wider and squeezed off his shot. Yappy grabbed the two targets, scratched something onto Will's with a pencil, and rode back. He reined in and handed the two boards to Will. The one with the W scratched below the bull showed a good shot. The slug had made a clean hole through the dried wood, very slightly off center.