Doubtful Canon (2 page)

“Why should they come back, Mister Grey?” Mr. Giddings had removed his coat and waistcoat, foldin’ ’em up neatly. “They have no knowledge of our presence. We have fired no shots, given no cries of alarm. The horses and mules are gone, and there is nothing left here but…but….” He couldn’t control the shudder, but it didn’t stop him. “It is my Christian duty to see these men are given a proper burial, or as proper as we can under the trying circumstances. It is your Christian duty, too.”

The Mex, he said the only thing. “Sí.” And crossed hisself once more.

Ask me, it was a mistake, but I wasn’t nothin’ more’n a hired hand, so Mr. Giddings barked out the orders, even if barkin’ wasn’t his nature, and we did his biddin’s. With only one shovel and two picks, one of ’em burned and blackened, that the Cherry Cows had left amongst all that ruin, between us, and not all of us as full of Christian charity and decency as Mr. John James Giddings, we made fast work of that burial. Only dug one grave, and it pretty shallow, and we had nothin’ to spare as shrouds, no wood around that wasn’t burnt or part of the stagecoach for a coffin, or Cherry Cow arrows, so we just dragged the dead to the pit and covered ’em with sand. Doubt if it would keep the wolves offen ’em, but I didn’t tell the boss man that. Mr. Giddings made a little cross out of rocks to mark the grave, and he kept his prayer short. He spouted out some Scripture. Said it was from Psalms, but I’d have to take his word for it. Maybe he was prayin’ for us, I thought, as much as them guys the Apaches had kilt, ’cause when he said…“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”…I figured that’s exactly where we was headed. The Valley of the Shadow of Death. Only we wasn’t walkin’, but ridin’ in a stagecoach. Ridin’ right through Doubtful Cañon and a passel of Chiricahua Apaches on the warpath. But
fear no evil?
You show me a white man who says he ain’t afeared of Apaches, and I’ll show you a liar or a fool.

Mr. Giddings tossed some dust on that pit, and we was done with it. We all made a beeline for the Concord. The Mex asked if he could ride atop the coach with Sam, ’stead of me. Reckon he needed some air. Couldn’t blame him none. I let him.

That’s how come I’m still here to tell you young ’uns this here story. Sam Golden and the Mex rode atop. Me and Bruce and Mr. Giddings sat in the coach, and we lit out for Doubtful Cañon just up the road.

Doubtful Cañon.

And death.

When the albino man who called himself Whitey Grey paused to wash down a mouthful of beans with tepid water from a gourd canteen, my best friend peppered him with questions.

“What happened next? Did the Apaches attack you? How’d you get out of the fight? Where’s that gold? What happened, Mister Grey? You got to let us know what happened next!”

Whitey Grey had set the hook deep in Ian Spencer Henry! Well, I guess he had pretty much hooked Jasmine and me, too.

“What happened?” Jasmine Allison asked, a little more polite, a lot less enthusiastic than Ian Spencer Henry, while I tried to formulate my own questions, organize my own thoughts. Pa had taught me to be inquisitive, but patient, and never to act recklessly or ask ill-thought-out questions, but my father didn’t hold much influence over me on that October day. He hadn’t for a while.

“I have an airtight of peaches,” I said. “They’re good. Really good, and sweet, full of juice.”

“Sure, sure, sure, that’s mighty fine, mighty fine. You’re a top hand…what’s that you say your name is? Jack? Jack. Yeah, I’ve knowed me a handful of Jacks, includin’ Black Jack McKeithan and One-Eared Jack O’Donnell, but you’re toppin’ ever’ last one of ’em. Peaches! Ain’t that somethin’. Sure can’t finish my story on no empty stomach. Here, let me open that there airtight with this here knife of mine. And don’t fret none, young ’uns, ’cause once I et these here peaches, I’ll let you know how come I’m alive, how come that gold’s still buried yonder in Doubtful Cañon, how come I’m willin’ to take on three children as pardners. Won’t leave out no blood and thunder, but it ain’t no stretcher, I’m tellin’ y’all. It’s the gospel. Didn’t get it out of no half-dime novel. Boys, li’l’ girlie…I lived it. Almost died it.”

Whitey Grey had chiseled himself into our lives that morning when Ian Spencer Henry, Jasmine Allison, and I made our surreptitious journey to the Lady Macbeth Mine for school. It wasn’t a real school. Shakespeare had no school. Not really. The town had no church either, a fact that had caused me pause after hearing Whitey Grey’s comment about swearing on every Bible in town. I doubt if there were six Good Books in the whole town, including the one in the old Lady Macbeth shack from which some miner had torn out pages to patch holes in the adobe walls.

We lived in a raw, hot, brutal mining town in New Mexico, a few miles south of Lordsburg and the Southern Pacific rails. My father had come to Shakespeare to start a newspaper—the Shakespeare
Globe,
he’d told Mama he’d call it, wondering if any silver miner would get the joke. For a year he had worked at the Shakespeare Gold and Silver Mining and Milling Company, saving his money until he had enough to become Shakespeare’s first journalist. Only before he got the first edition published, my mother and baby sisters took sick. Diphtheria, Mr. Shankin said. Mr. Shankin was no doctor—Shakespeare lacked one of those, as well—but he came as close to anyone in town, and whatever the disease, whatever his diagnosis, my mother and siblings had been called to Glory within a week. Therefore, the Potter press collected dust, and my father spent his time brooding, not speaking, not even to me until he discovered the power of John Barleycorn.

We picture mining towns of the West as lawless establishments, regular Sodoms, and Shakespeare certainly lived up to such description. On my eleventh birthday, I had watched Curly Bill Brocious gun down some cardsharp on Avon Street over a three dollar bet, then spit out the most foul curses imaginable as he paid two Mexican laborers five dollars each to bury the cheat. Such was the law in Shakespeare. We had no constable, no marshal, and rarely if ever saw a sheriff’s deputy, but if you killed a man, you had to bury him. That was our Golden Rule. With the desert heat, it certainly made murder less attractive, Pa used to say, before he took to drink.

Yet while silver miners and boomtown parasites might not have much need of religion, they often display a charitable side, so the entrepreneurs behind the National Mail and Transportation Company, the Stratford Hotel, and Shankin General Merchandise led the charge to form a subscription school and hire the would-be editor, Russell Dunivan, as schoolmaster. “It’ll take Russell’s mind off his tragic loss,” Mr. Shankin said, “give him a new purpose.” My father happily accepted, and thirteen children from ages eight to fifteen filled our home on the outskirts of town.

Of course, the good citizens of Shakespeare didn’t know the extent of my father’s depression, or his need for liquor. The subscription fees paid for his whiskey. At first, he’d pass out
McGuffey’s Readers
to students, the extent of his lessons. Then he’d drink. Later, he just drank himself into a stupor without bothering to effect some semblance of teaching the three R’s. So I’d try to fill that void. Was it family pride? Shame? A desire to educate? Honestly I don’t know. The older boys laughed at me and walked out, but some of the younger ones stayed…for a while. Within a year, most students had stopped coming, and the Southern Pacific had put the National Mail and Transportation Company out of business. There was no more subscription school—really, there never had been one—so Pa found his drinkin’ money (when he didn’t just steal the scamper juice) elsewhere, but I kept trying to be the great educator.

That’s because of Jasmine Allison.

Back when there had been at least a façade of a school, Jasmine’s mother had no money for the subscription, and even those charitable people trying to help out my father had limits. Jasmine’s mother worked in one of the cribs, and her father (or so the story went) had been Cornwall Dan. In November of 1880, Cornwall Dan and a San Simon cowboy named Harley King had been hanged in the Grant House’s dining room. King’s crime was horse theft, Cornwall Dan was executed for being a pest, and everyone in Shakespeare knew the timbers in the Grant House’s roof to be among the strongest in the county, a suitable substitute for the gallows.

Offspring of a hanged border ruffian and a soiled dove, Jasmine Allison was ostracized by everyone, it seems, but Ian Spencer Henry and me.

Even had her mother been able to afford it, Jasmine wasn’t allowed to attend school, and I took exception to that. She was a pretty girl, dark-haired, dark-eyed, strong-willed. I found her beautiful, and—unlike most of the children of miners, legitimate businessmen, and parasites—she wanted to learn. So I became her tutor, with Ian Spencer Henry serving as my assistant.

Every day, we’d meet at the Lady Macbeth Mine, long played out and deserted except for tarantulas, scorpions, and rattlesnakes. After too many cave-ins and not enough pay dirt, the owners had closed it up even before Shakespeare came into existence. Some—even Mr. Shankin—labeled the mine haunted, and located on the far southern tip of town, few grown-ups ever ventured that way. Perfect place, I thought, for a secret school.

That afternoon, Allison, Ian Spencer Henry, and I were walking toward the abandoned mine when we met Whitey Grey for the first time.

“What are you kids doin’ here? Get out! Get away or I’ll rip out your hearts and et ’em!”

He barged out of the Lady Macbeth’s entrance, and, for a second, the three of us froze. He wore duck trousers stuffed inside scuffed boots of two different colors and sizes, soiled braces, and a dust-covered, green-and-white plaid shirt missing several buttons and its bib front, a faded calico bandanna, hat battered beyond recognition, and an ivory-handled Colt stuck in his waistband. Even at the distance of several rods, I could tell his face was savagely pockmarked, and his hair and thick mustache were unkempt. I couldn’t call him a big man. Later I would realize he was rather small, and he dressed—with the exception of the fancy revolver—and looked like most miners in town.

Except he was an albino.

The stark white hair…the skin just as pale…eyes almost dead, inhuman. When he came charging out of that mine, screaming that he’d eat our hearts, even though educated in reason and enlightenment, I couldn’t help but fear that Mr. Shankin and everyone else in Shakespeare had been right. The Lady Macbeth was haunted, and here, as proof, charged a ghost. So we did what any twelve-year-olds would do.

We skedaddled.

Dropping in the dust the sack containing a pail of leftover beans and airtight of peaches that I had procured for Jasmine, I whirled, grabbed her hand, and led a not-so-gallant retreat. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Ian Spencer Henry dive beside the rock wall and disappear through a coyote hole. That’s when I tripped, sending Jasmine and myself sprawling into the dust. Hearing the white man’s curses, and his footfalls, I screamed Jasmine’s name and crawled underneath an overturned ore cart, barely propped up on a boulder, the opening about as small as the coyote hole through which Ian Spencer Henry had made his escape. Jasmine followed, and we waited, staring, hearts pounding, trying to catch our breath. Dust and dirt caused my eyes to tear, and I realized I had picked a terrible hiding spot.

A moment later, I found myself staring at an unmatched pair of boots, one the color of dried blood, missing the inside mule-ear pull, the other dusty black, one with a squared toe, the other with no toe at all, just a frayed, filthy sock sticking out.

“Hey, there, you young ’uns. Don’t run. Ain’t no need to hide. I ain’t gonna hurt y’all none. Just gave me a fright is all. Come back here. Come out from under there afore that ol’ thing falls down on you. Iffen that happens, you be dead certain sure. Suffocate you, it will, ’cause I ain’t strong enough to lift it offen you. I ain’t no outlaw, no monster. Here. I picked up your…what is that? Beans? Criminy, beans and a tin of somethin’.” He smacked his lips. Then, with a heavy grunt, knee joints popping, he flattened himself on the ground and stared into our frightened faces.

“I’m your friend, kids. Name’s Grey. Whitey Grey. Come on out. Let’s talk a mite.”

We did what any twelve-year-olds would do when ordered by a grown-up. We obeyed.

Whitey Grey dusted off our clothes as best as he could, although his efforts left us dirtier, and reluctantly handed Jasmine the sack of beans and peaches. “Where’s that other boy?” Whitey Grey demanded. “He ain’t run off, has he? Why, the way he scrambled through that li’l’ hole! Can you fetch your friend back, young ’uns? I got a proposition to make y’all!”

“Ian!” I yelled. “Ian Spencer Henry! Come back here.”

Nothing.

“Come on, Ian Spencer Henry!” Jasmine echoed.

“Hey, there!” Squatting, Whitey Grey peered closely at Jasmine, his monstrous eyes squinting. “Criminy, you ain’t no boy. You’re a gal.”

“Ian Spencer Henry!” Jasmine called again, ignoring the white-skinned man’s observation. “Are you yellow?”

“He’s not going to hurt us!” I yelled, though I couldn’t say that I had completely made up my mind yet.

At last, there came a faint reply. “I ain’t getting my heart ripped out and ate up!”

“I was just funnin’, boy!” the strange man called out, and let out a little chuckle. “Funnin’ is all. I need…I need…need me some pardners.” The laughter died abruptly, and the pale face hardened with seriousness. “For thirty thousand dollars in…”—he lowered his voice—“gold.”

“Gold?” I asked, a little too loud for Whitey Grey’s liking, because he cringed, his face now angry, and gave me a chilling look with his dead eyes before he looked around to make sure no one had heard. There was no one around but us.

A fortune in gold,
I thought. Shakespeare was a silver town. Most attempts at finding enough gold to make mining worthwhile had failed, but the word had prompted Ian Spencer Henry to pop his head through the small opening in the fence. Seeing that Jasmine and I were still alive, our hearts remaining inside our chests, he snaked his way through, brushed off the dirt from his trousers and shirt, and approached us tentatively.

“Let’s get out of the sun.” Whitey Grey led us to the opening of the Lady Macbeth. Once inside, he sat cross-legged facing the entrance, and we gathered around him.

“You gonna eat ’em there beans?” he asked.

When Jasmine shrugged, and I understood his meaning, I took the sack from Jasmine’s hands and passed the grub to him. He withdrew the pail from the sack, returned the airtight of peaches to me, and attacked the cold beans with a vengeance.

“What about the gold?” Ian Spencer Henry asked.

Since my family’s arrival in Shakespeare, Ian Spencer Henry had been my best friend. He turned out to be an outcast, much like Jasmine, much like, after the Dunivan tragedy, me. His father worked in the assay office in town while his mother lived somewhere in Michigan with his stepfather—at twelve, I didn’t quite understand the scandal of this—and to hear Ian Spencer Henry talk, his father didn’t know he even existed, keeping his nose buried in books and ore. My best friend passed his time reading the five-penny dreadfuls Mr. Shankin peddled, and, when he had memorized the text of those stories, he would sell them to eager miners for a profit of two cents, things costing higher, even half-dime novels, in a rawhide mining town like Shakespeare, New Mexico.

He stood about my size, with sandier hair and green eyes instead of my blue, prone to go off on a whim or a dare while I remained the cautious one. As voraciously as he read, his true calling came in math. He could cipher figures better than his father, or anyone else, at the assay office. I figured he’d grow up to be about as wealthy as Colonel William G. Boyle, whose mines had brought Shakespeare to new life back in ’Seventy-Nine. Although good at mathematics, Ian Spencer Henry had little interest in figures. At age twelve, like most boys his age, he longed for adventure.

“The gold?” Ian Spencer Henry—I never called him anything but his full name, and never heard anyone call him different—repeated when he got no answer.

This time, Whitey Grey lifted his rump off his rock seat, and let out a loud fart. Jasmine rolled her eyes. Ian Spencer Henry grabbed his nose and gagged. I don’t remember what I did. Patiently we waited for the smell to fade, for the white-skinned man to finish his tale.

“I know where there’s a fortune in gold,” the albino man finally said. “Only I need help in gettin’ it. Pardners. You young ’uns be game?”