Deserter (8 page)

“Shit,” he said aloud, getting to his feet, the pistol hanging uselessly at his side. He raised the gun and inspected the front sight. It was straight and true and showed no sign of being damaged or bent. The rear sight was equally intact. Jake shook his head.“Shit,” he said again.

Walking back to Mare he recalled a conversation he'd had with Uriah a year or longer ago about revolvers. “Best gun hand I ever saw,” Toole said, “told me you don't aim a handgun—you point the sumbitch. The fella told me that any range beyond fifty feet made a pistol 'bout as handy as tits on a boar hog, and that the only way to become any good with a handgun is to forget all about aiming and to let your hand and arm do everything the way it wants.”

“Where's this fellow now?” Jake had asked.

“I heard he got shot in the back—killed, he was—by a storekeep he was robbin' in Yuma. Still, what he said about pointing a pistol makes good sense. . . .”

Jake holstered the Smith & Wesson and continued walking to where he'd left Mare. He filled his pockets with .22 rounds from the saddlebags, ate a few pieces of jerky, and made his way back to the stream.

At first the whole process was unnatural, awkward—and without the desired effect. He sprayed lead all around the rock he was firing at twenty feet away, on the opposite shore. The pistol felt like an anchor in his hand, a foreign weight that could never become an extension of his body, as his Sharps had been. Jake stood in the sun, firing, reloading, sweating, firing again, ears ringing so that he barely heard the reports. He went back to replenish his pockets with cartridges, mumbling curses to himself that he couldn't hear.

An hour and a half later—and after two more disgusted walks for bullets—something changed. Jake wasn't completely sure what it was, but something definitely was different. It began when he lowered his extended arm from midchest level and began shooting from slightly above his waist, seeing the smoking barrel in his mind, looking at the target rather than at the weapon. The major transformation was that his shots were coming closer to and even chipping pieces from the rock. And the pistol no longer seemed like a deadweight in his hand. Some of the time the .22 seemed to act on its own, seeking the target—and finding it.

The less he thought about what he was doing, Jake realized, the better his shooting was. He'd always had a
feel for firearms, an intrinsic and unstudied ability to make them perform as he needed them to. He'd been raised with long guns; his father never quite trusted handguns. “Clumsy damned things,” he'd said. “Prone to misfire or not fire at all, and when they do work they have no more accuracy than a woman throwing a stick at a crow.”

Maybe so. But this Smith & Wesson .22 is growing on me, Pa.

When the rock was scattered shards and smoking pieces, Jake ejected the final six empty cartridges, reloaded, and holstered the pistol. As he tucked the flap over the weapon, he saw that getting the .22 free from the holster and ready to fire was an overly long process—one that could cost a man his life in a tight situation. Most of the Texans who carried sidearms, he recalled, favored open holsters, deep enough to keep the pistol securely in place, but that made the grips easy to grab and the weapon easy to pull free.
First chance I get I'll replace the military issue, pick up one of those open holsters. If I'm going to carry a pistol I want to get at it when I need it.

He tightened Mare's cinch and swung into the saddle. There was lots of daylight left and no reason not to cover ground while he could. Within a couple of hours the ringing in his ears was gone. Mare picked her way west with little direction from her rider, leaving Sinclair with nothing but memories to occupy his mind.

Uriah Toole's strange sense of humor, his way of bizarre exaggeration, brought a grin to Jake's face.
We was so poor that my ma fed us on a stew she made up from rocks, dirt, an' horseshit. Wasn't half bad—needed salt, is all.
Jake remembered how his partner described
Texas.
Bigger than heaven, hotter than hell. Jackrabbits taller at the shoulder than a stout head of beef, pigs a man could toss a saddle on an' ride fifty miles in a day. And Texas women—they'd purely wear a man out—screw his ears off till he cain't hardly move, then get him all randy and ready again in half a minute. . . .

Sinclair's smile disappeared as the Gettysburg images pushed the joking and laughter from his mind. It was like suddenly falling into the brackish, slimy water of a swamp: the bodies scattered over the slaughter lane of Pickett's Charge, the evil air alive with steel and lead and blood and clumps and pieces of men. The all-encompassing fear swallowed Jake and closed over him.

He fought his way back to the sun-speckled forest somewhere in Pennsylvania, felt his good horse under him, smelled leather and pine and hot dirt, and wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve.

A leafy branch high in a tall oak a hundred feet ahead sagged with the weight of the gray squirrel that had landed on it. Jake stopped Mare with a light drag at the reins and shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun with his hand. Squirrel was a treat to the folks in the quarters back home. Since they weren't allowed to own firearms, it was up to the whites to drop off the results of a day's hunting in the woods, and Jake and his father had done just that many, many times. Jake recalled the sweet-tangy taste of squirrel stew and the slightly gamy but not at all unpleasant taste of a piece of squirrel broiled on a stick over flames fed by dripping fat. His right hand fell to the flap of his holster, paused, and then reached to the stock of the rifle in
the scabbard at his knee.
Pistol's fine—but I'm hungry and that squirrel's a small target.

He fit the butt to his shoulder, levered a round into the chamber, and placed the front sight on the squirrel's chest. He felt Mare tense under him as she heard the lever of the rifle work. Jake squeezed the trigger. The squirrel swung backward, the instant-of-death convulsion locking its claws to the branch for a moment, and then it dropped through the limbs and leaves to the ground. Mare stood stolidly, without flinching at the report, showing her cavalry training. Jake patted her neck, slid the Winchester back into the scabbard, and sent his horse forward to where the squirrel had fallen.

Jake skinned the squirrel right where it'd hit the ground. It was early to end the day, to make camp, but his hunger was gnawing at him, and there was adequate grass for Mare in patches under the trees.
Plus, I'm not on a schedule—I'm not a soldier anymore. It doesn't matter when I stop for the day or when I start in the morning. As a matter of fact, not much of anything that mattered before Gettysburg means a damn thing to me now. I always kind of looked down on the drifters and saddle bums—saw them as aimless and pointless men who couldn't make a life for themselves. Now—maybe keeping moving isn't such a bad thing. Maybe drifting makes good sense. I guess,
he told himself,
I'll find out about that.
He unsaddled and hobbled Mare.

Gathering dry branches and a handful of kindling took only a few minutes, and digging a small pit with his bowie knife a few minutes more. He structured a campfire in the hole and dropped extra wood next to
it. The soil below the surface was dark and rich and moist. Jake figured that if the land could somehow be cleared, cotton would just about leap out of the ground after a good spring planting.

He used one of his matches to start the fire and sat back to watch it catch and grow. While it burned down to white embers, Jake skewered pieces of the squirrel meat on a green stick cut from a young tree. There was a good bit of meat, but he figured he'd finish every last morsel; a constant diet of jerky left a man with a strong yearning for hot, greasy, flavorful, red meat. The fat squirrel didn't disappoint him. The flesh was tender and marbled nicely and the flavor took him back to his boyhood. He ate the entire carcass, wasting nothing. Sated, Jake leaned back against a tree and watched the shadows lengthen and the light diminish. Just before dark, he picked up on the slight difference in the rhythm of the forest, the hushing of some of the birds, the cessation of the movement of the small creatures in the brush. If he hadn't noticed, Mare's questioning snort would have warned him. His eyes swung in the direction the horse was looking—and in which her ears were pointing—but could make out nothing but shadows and murky shapes. He unholstered his pistol, clicked back the hammer, and waited. Mare huffed again, but this time she was staring in a different direction.
Two men coming in from different angles? More than two?
He watched as her muzzle rose and she drew air and the scent of whoever was approaching.
One man shifting around, maybe, trying to make me think there's more than one out there?

Jake got his feet under himself, keeping his back against the tree. He reached out to the saddle, eased
the rifle from its scabbard, and placed it on the ground in front of him. His right palm began to sweat against the bone grips of the .44. He relaxed his grip a bit, loosened the tension in his wrist. When he heard a twig snap in the direction Mare was peering, the sound was sharp and loud and he swung the barrel of his pistol toward it. Another twig broke under weight and a muffled curse followed.

“I've got you covered,” Jake called out. “You might just as well walk on in. I'll want to see your hands raised up when you do.”

The voice that answered was deep, almost hoarse, but calm. “No need to be so twitchy, friend. I ain't armed and even if I was, I don't mean you no harm. I smelled that squirrel of yours cookin', is all. Hope I'm in time for maybe a bite or two. Maybe we can barter. I got me some coffee. It ain't army, neither—it's right out of an Arbuckle's sack.”

“Come on in, then. And like I said, keep your hands where I can see them. Hear?” Jake kept the pistol trained on the voice and pushed wood onto the dying embers of his fire with his other hand. The dry fuel caught and flared almost immediately, giving Sinclair a good look at his visitor. He was about five feet eight, neither skinny nor fat. He wore a shirt that had once been a different color—perhaps white—that was deeply stained under the arms and across the chest. His denim pants were tucked into the tops of boots that were scuffed and worn. He was about Jake's age—maybe a couple of years older. His face showed hard planes, prominent cheekbones, and a strong, protruding jaw. His skin had a light copper cast to it, and Jake could see that his eyes, even at a distance of ten feet,
were obsidian, like nuggets of polished coal. His hair hadn't been cut in a long time. There was what looked like a messenger's satchel hanging at his side, suspended from a leather cord that crossed his chest. A canteen hung from his belt on the side opposite the satchel. He held his hands at shoulder height, palms out. His teeth showed white in the firelight as he spoke.

“Mind if I set down?”

“I'd be a lot happier if you'd empty that sack here by the fire,” Jake said.

The man took some steps closer, crouched, moved the cord holding the sack over his head, and emptied the satchel onto the dirt near the fire. The contents consisted of a sheathed knife, a spare shirt, an empty and unlabeled tin can, a paper bag with its top rolled tightly closed, an empty canteen with its cork in place, a pocket Bible, and a block of lucifers with their heads encased in paraffin, making them waterproof. “Like I said, I ain't armed,” he said. “Now can I set?”

Jake nodded. He still held the .44 but the barrel no longer pointed to the stranger's chest.

The fellow settled onto the ground, his legs crossed Indian-style. “About that cookin' meat I smelled . . .”

“Nothing left but a good taste in my mouth, I'm afraid. I've got jerky I'll trade for some coffee, though.”

The fellow grinned, again showing his teeth. “Hell, I can't afford to be choosy. Jerky's better than nothin'.” He picked the tin can from his pile of belongings, dumped ground coffee into it from the paper bag, and filled it with water from his canteen. He set the can on the edge of the fire, on embers.“My name's Ferris,” he said.

“Mine's Jake,” Sinclair said. Neither man offered nor
expected a surname. Sinclair eased the hammer of the .44 back into place but didn't holster the pistol. Instead, he rested it in his lap. If Ferris noticed, he didn't comment.

Jake pointed to his saddle. “The jerky's in the saddlebag closest to you. I figure one good handful ought to pay for the coffee. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” Ferris repeated, working the buckle on the saddlebag and digging his right hand into it. He pulled out as much jerky as his hand could hold and set it in front of him. He closed and buckled the saddlebag before he began to eat. His jaw worked up and down rapidly as he fed sticks of dried meat into his mouth.“This ain't that deer shit,” he said around a cud of beef. “This come from a cow.” By the time he'd finished his meal the coffee was boiling and bubbling in the can and its aroma made Jake's throat move as if he were already swallowing a mouthful. Ferris took a pair of sticks from Jake's extra wood, maneuvered the can from the embers to the dirt, and grinned.“We'll just let it set till we can hold the can without raisin' blisters.”

The tin can was on the very cusp of being too hot to hold, but Jake hadn't tasted coffee in three days. He scorched the inside of his mouth with his first gulp and paid no attention to the pain. He set the can down and wiped his mouth. “Damn, but that's good. No chicory cut—just good coffee.”

“I told you it didn't come from no army,” Ferris said. “I'd almost rather do without than drink that slop they call coffee. Them cooks . . .” He let the sentence die.

“Cooks for what side, Ferris?”

A long moment passed before he answered. “Doesn't really make no difference, does it?”

Jake didn't answer. The two men sat in silence, taking turns with the can, until the coffee was gone. “Maybe we could make a deal, Ferris,” Jake offered. “How about another couple handfuls of jerky for about half of that coffee?”