West of Here (33 page)

Doon-doon, doon-doon,
he said.

APRIL
1890

Catching a heel on the last step, Gertie nearly tumbled face first into the mud but managed not to break stride as she darted off down the alley. Tobin was less fortunate in pursuit. Clearing the steps in a single bound, his boot heels hit the mud and immediately skidded out from under him. Rearing backward, his head struck the bottom step with such force that the world flashed white for an instant. By the time he regained his feet, dazedly, Gertie was well on her way. To where, he couldn’t say, but at least she wasn’t running toward the Olympic. Maybe to that bothersome whore in the colony. There was still time to nip this thing in the bud, and he knew he’d have the opportunity to nip it. One thing about whores, they always came back. Then again, Gertie McGrew was not your run of the mill whore.

Gertie had no intention of returning as she kicked off her heels and dashed barefoot through the darkened alley in the direction of Hogback. She could not tell whether Tobin was pursuing her. Briefly it occurred to her that she might change her course and backtrack to the Olympic, but that would be as good as suicide if Tobin was waiting for her. But for the frantic beating of her life force, she was deaf to the world as breathlessly she crested the hill at a trot, looking vainly back over her shoulder into the darkness. Below her, the lights of the colony bounced about wildly as they drew nearer. She didn’t slow her pace until she was well past the boat shed and on the the path to the cottages, where she pulled up briefly to catch her breath. Not until then could she feel the throbbing of her battered face, or the stinging of her shredded feet in the mud. Not until then did Gertie think she heard footfalls giving chase down the hill, and then she hurried her pace once more.

When Eva answered her frantic knocks with a gasp, Gertie practically fell into the house.

“Dear God, what’s happened to you? Who did this?”

“Blow out the lamp,” Gertie said breathlessly.

“Whatever for? We’ve got to —”

“Blow out the lamp!”

Gertie saw the color leave Eva’s face as she straightened up and crossed the room hurriedly to blow out the lamp. In an instant the room was awash in darkness, and the world was so quiet that even the beating in Gertie’s ears fell silent. Sensing no movement, she was startled to feel the cold flesh of Eva’s hand on her elbow and nearly jumped.

“Shhhh,” said Eva. “Come.”

Eva led her by the elbow through the darkness, into the cluttered little sitting room, which she navigated carefully. Groping her way to the corner without upsetting anything, Eva quietly slid the top door of the dresser open and removed the little single-barreled Derringer. It was hardly more than a pencil gun according to Ethan, but persuasive nonetheless. Shepherding Gertie to the rear of the cottage and out the back door, Eva lifted the root cellar hatch and disappeared down the wooden steps. Soon Gertie saw a flash of light from below, the striking of a match, and Eva’s stooping candlelit figure filled the jaws of the cellar, beckoning Gertie down the steps.

Once they settled in with their backs against the earthen wall, Eva blew out the candle, and they sat in complete darkness, Eva clutching the Derringer in front of her.

“What is this about?” whispered Eva.

“Making a difference,” Gertie said. “Or maybe just getting killed.”

“Shhhh.”

From above came dully the sound of the front door swinging open, followed by heavy footsteps proceeding slowly toward the rear of the cottage.

Gertie clutched Eva’s arm, and Eva clutched the Derringer still harder in the darkness, so hard that when she heard the sound of the back door closing, and the footfalls descending the back steps, and finally, the sickly creak of the cellar door as it swung back on its hinges, she could no longer tell whether she was holding the pistol at all.

APRIL
1890

Pulling the cellar hatch back, Tobin was greeted at once by a rush of cold earthen air that set his hair on end. What if the crazy whore was waiting for him with an ax down there? Feeling his way down the steps into the stillness of the cavity, he smelled something else — candle wax? He sensed no movement whatsoever in the tiny space. Arms outstretched, he blindly frisked the emptiness in front of him. He patted around his pockets for a matchstick.

Gertie heard the
switch
of the match and felt the quick acid sting of sulfur in her nostrils, before the flare of the light illuminated Tobin’s face unevenly, his eyes black and glossy as obsidians. When he saw the little Derringer pointed squarely at his chest, he sneered.

“You might aim a mosquito at me,” he said. But he was frightened, Gertie could tell. His black eyes were alert.

“While sleek in appearance, Mr… ?”

“John C. Tobin,” said Gertie. “And he ain’t a mister. He’s a no good sonofabitch.”

“While sleek in appearance, Mr. Tobin, I’m told that this mosquito stings quite hard at close range.”

“For them that can shoot it,” said Tobin. “What about you? You ever shot that pistol?” His match was burning low.

“Ask me again in ten seconds, if you you don’t back off.”

Suddenly, the match flared and the cellar went dark.

“Still got a bead on me, have you?” said Tobin.

Eva kept her pistol trained straight ahead in the darkness. “Try me, Mr. Tobin.”

An abrupt scraping of feet on the dirt floor betrayed Tobin’s offensive, as he rushed them blindly, tripping headlong into the dirt wall. When he recovered, he lit the second match and discovered that the
women were on either side of him, Eva still training the gun on his chest.

“The shovel,” she said.

Gertie took hold of the nearby clam shovel and raised it.

“Back out slowly, Mr. Tobin, or I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”

“John, he doesn’t know nothin’,” blurted Gertie. “He may suspect, but it’s not my doin’, I swear! I’m sorry, John.”

“Quit apologizing,” said Eva, her eyes locked on Tobin’s. “You just keep right on moving, Mr. Tobin.”

Even as he backed out at gunpoint, Tobin was smiling his cruel smile, first at Eva, then at Gertie, his black eyes laughing. He’d kill her one way or another. If not this moment, soon. And he wouldn’t even give it a thought. He’d kill her with no more ceremony than a possum or a rat. That hurt most of all. She raised the head of the shovel still further.

“You’re a cruel sonofabitch, John.”

“You’re a dead whore,” said Tobin.

Gertie swung the shovel with an old rage, clipping Tobin on the shoulder. The blow glanced off the side of his face. Dropping the match, he went careening backward into the steps, just as Eva’s errant shot rang out, splintering the ceiling above the steps. Eva leveled the pistol once more in the darkness, though the chamber was empty.

Just as he heard the whistle of the shovel, Tobin scrambled to his feet, taking the blow in the back of the leg, as hurried up the steps into the night.

Gertie and Eva listened as his footfalls grew distant, leaving only a dense silence.

“He’s right. I’m a dead whore.”

“Come,” said Eva. She led Gertie back up the steps and into the house to the sitting room, where she lit the lamp and rifled through the dresser drawer for another round of ammunition, fumbling in the quavering light to reload the pistol as Ethan taught her. It was still a mystery to her how Ethan knew such things. Where did he learn to handle a gun or build a cabin? Where did he learn to believe he could tame the wilds or master his own destiny?

When Eva succeeded in reloading the pistol, she pressed it firmly into Gertie’s palm, then retired to the bedroom with the lamp. Gertie stayed put, still trembling in the darkness with the pistol in her grip. Maybe it would’ve been better to get it over with in the cellar. Better to be dead already than to deal with the chilling certainty of death. Maybe she ought to turn the pistol on herself.

Eva returned with a full length camel hair coat, a man’s from the look of it. She clutched two short stacks of bills fastened smartly with paper bands. Setting the lamp on the dresser, she draped the coat over Gertie’s shoulders, where it hung nearly to the floor. Eva stuffed half the money in the coat pocket, then blew out the lamp.

“Come,” was all she said.

She led Gertie out the front door, and down the path toward the heart of the colony. They said nothing as they hurried along. The gaping sky was uncharacteristically clear. The stars burned cold, and somewhere in the distance a donkey brayed.

At the Colony Hotel, they circled around the back to the livery, where a half-breed stable-hand was asleep on his pallet with a pitchfork in his clutches. Only when Eva shook his feet did the young man stir.

“Up,” she said. “I’ll need a horse and a man to go as far Port Townsend, and I’ve got money.” Eva felt the thrill of decision as never before. She waved the stack of money at the stable hand, who jumped immediately into action. “And boots for the lady,” she called after him.

Gertie could not help but notice the change in Eva. “What are we doing?” she said.

“You’re leaving.”

“To where?”

“To wherever that money will get you. At Port Townsend you can catch a steamer to Seattle. Or San Francisco, or the Yukon, if you get the notion.”

Suddenly Gertie was paralyzed by a different kind of fear, not the fear of certainty, but the fear of the unknown — it ran cold through her from the roots of her hair to the bottom of her bare feet. But circumstances left her little occasion to ponder. Within moments she
was mounting a dark red mare with the assistance of the stable hand, and she found herself clutching the thick waist of a bearded stranger who smelled of campfire, and all of this Gertie acted out mechanically, without a single notion as to her deliverance.

Rapidly, Eva issued the rider further instructions, which washed dully over Gertie’s ears. By the time Eva turned her attention to Gertie, she found herself at a rare loss of words.

“Go,” she said, as much to the rider as to Gertie.

And as the horse set off at a canter, Gertie McGrew offered only the slow, stunned wave of a hand as she looked back over her shoulder at Eva for the last time.

Thirty-six hours later, upon a chill dawn blanketed with fog, Gertie left Port Townsend on the
Colonel Thomas T. Aldwell,
bound for San Francisco, wearing a new blue dress of a modest cut, a pair of sensible shoes, and a yellow and blue checked floppy bow. On her hip, tucked securely in a square felt clutch, was ninety-six dollars, two hairpins, and a single-barrel pistol.

JULY
2006

Standing on the narrow ridge with all that he owned strapped to his back, looking over the wedge-shaped valley toward the humbling spectacle of Mount Olympus, Timmon knew, despite the cold reality of death lurking in his bones, that he must cross that threshold to seize his destiny, his nameless creek, his sun-dappled valley, his solitude. Yet standing there in the shadow of Olympus, Timmon was conflicted about his destiny for the first time since he marched out of High Tide Seafood.

For starters, he was out of Snickers bars. Moreover, his crossbow might have been a particle accelerator in terms of his proficiency in operating the damn thing. But worse than the bare bones survival stuff was Timmon’s lingering uncertainty regarding the fate of the octogenarian hiking party, particularly that little prune-faced lady who pissed herself. His fate now rested on her. If she was fine — say, a little dehydrated, or exhausted, or even down with a little myocardiopathy (whatever the hell that was), well then, chances were, Timmon was safe. But
if
she had a stroke and her face went all paralyzed, or even worse, she keeled over, then Timmon could be up shit creek with a turd for a paddle. He had a bad feeling about High Pockets, too, the spindle-legged little fucker. He knew the type — Mr. Take Control of the Situation. Mr. Do-Gooder. Mr. Fourth of Fucking July. Timmon saw the way the old man looked at his ink, as though Timmon were some type of common … well, criminal. No doubt, the old buzzard would tell the authorities everything, embellishing details to suit his whimsy.

Timmon might have stood ruminating on the ridge for the remainder of the afternoon had something not flashed silver from down in the valley. Scanning the basin, he could find no reflective surface to
account for such a beacon — only trees, spurs of craggy rock, and the precipitous shale face of the western ridge. But then, just above the tree line, he picked up the broken ribbon of the trail halfway down the ridge, where he soon intimated two tiny figures wending their way up the bald face of the incline some five hundred feet below him. Once again, the silver point gleamed, and Timmon traced its point of origin to the lead hiker. A wristwatch perhaps. Carabiner, maybe. Possibly an aluminum canteen.