Shadow Country

cracked and come apart and now in madness attack whoever came, even the one man who might help him to escape.

The voice was guttural from disuse. “Come slow,” it said. “My nerves ain’t good.”

Pushing the door quietly, I was affronted by the iron reek of rotten blood. Not quite familiar and yet unmistakable, it turned my stomach. On the pine table, pointed at the door, lay Dutchy’s big matched pistols. From my chair, dirt-bearded, red-eyed, Cox watched me gag. He looked less mad than crazily aggrieved.

In his hands he cupped my brown clay jug. “Good ol’ Unc,” he muttered. “Never come back for his pardner.” He was staring drunk in the glazed way of a man who has drunk for many days. Annoyingly, he wore the Frenchman’s hat, swiped from its old peg by the kitchen door.

“I came back before the storm. I hailed the house. Nobody answered.” I turned from the sight of the dark viscous matter on the floor and stairs, mortally sickened.

“Nobody answered,” he repeated with a queer laugh. He had tried to escape inland, on a hopeless trek across the salt flats: that’s where he’d been when I came the week before. When his hope and water were exhausted, he made his way back, retracing his uncertain steps across the marl. Relating this defeat brought tears to his eyes. He had not eaten in days.

“Never come back,” he repeated. “Left me all alone in Hell. IN HELL ALONE!” he shouted suddenly, raising a revolver toward my face.

Alone because you killed everyone else.

“Easy, Les.” I raised my open hands, brought them down again slowly. “I figured some fisherman came by, took you people off.” I cleared my throat, hawked that clotting taste into my kerchief. “Where is everybody, Les?”

He lowered the gun but would not meet my eye; he shook his head back and forth over and over. “Alone in Hell,” he grieved. “You never come.”

“Where’s Green and Hannah, Les? Where’s Reese?”

Crafty, he said, “How come you ain’t askin after Dutchy?” Fully awake now, he raised the revolver. In a while, he said, “Them old fools got agitated up when I shot Dutchy. Got ugly with me, Unc, is what it was. Got on my nerves.” He shrugged, not certain where I stood. “Good riddance, right? What with you owin ’em so much?” He spun the chamber of the gun. “I figured, hell, ain’t I the foreman? Ain’t I paid to clean up Unc’s damn mess for him? Course I ain’t been paid yet neither-”

“Green and Hannah were my friends.”

My tone startled him. “Ain’t you the one told me you couldn’t pay ’em? It ain’t fair gettin hard with me for doin what you wanted done back in the first place. I sure do hope you won’t go blamin all your troubles on a young country feller as was only tryin to help out.”

Cox ranted on in his relief at having somebody to talk to. “One time up to Silver Springs before I run away, the road boss caught me lookin at the woods. Hauls out this long-barrel revolver, says, ‘Best not go runnin on me, kid. See this shootin iron I got here? She shoots real good and one round got your name on it.’ While he’s talkin, he’s pickin cartridges out of his gun, one after the other, holdin each one up to the light before he drops it back into the chamber. ‘Got her right here, bud. Not this’n-nope. Not this’n-nope. It’s this’n here. Yep! C-O-X! Got your damn name wrote right on there, cracker boy!’ ”

His mirthless laugh showed his brown-coated teeth.

“C-O-X.” I nodded wisely. “That spells Cox, all right.”

He hoisted the six-gun and pointed it between my eyes. “You funnin with me, Unc? I’d surely hate to have to haul back on this trigger.” But Leslie wouldn’t shoot, I knew that. Anyway-I knew this suddenly, at just that moment-I didn’t care. I didn’t. I no longer cared. Whatever held body and soul together was stretching and weakening, letting go softly like an old rawhide lace.

Cox sensed I was somewhere out beyond his reach. He saw that deadness in my eyes and whimpered, blaming all that had befallen him on my bad influence.

When Cox heard the Warrior coming upriver and ran over to the shed to waylay Dutchy, he almost collided with the Mikasuki girl, who had hung herself from a boat shed crossbeam. Loomed at him out of the shadows, stirred a little in the draft. Those big deer eyes in the purpled face, watching him come, scared hell out of him. Hung right behind him while he hurried to get set for that damned spick pistolero who had come to kill him. “Lookin right over my shoulder, Unc!” he cried. “She watched me do it!” Next morning, the corpse was gone. “Injuns been skulkin around. You reckon they come took her?”

“Looks like they got business with you, boy.”

“They come any closer, I’ll shoot ’em!” Leslie scowled without much heart. “Then Frank run off on me. You seen him anywheres?” He lost his thread again when I didn’t answer. “Know what I been thinkin, Unc? All them bad nights alone?” He was pointing that damned gun at me again, sighting with one eye, and his drunken trigger finger made me nervous, also angry. “When you never come, I got to thinkin maybe ol’ Unc sent that fuckin Dutchy over to the shed to murder me. That what you wanted?”

I ignored this, awaiting my chance to disarm him. “Why Green and Hannah? Harmless drunk? A woman?”

“Them two was troublemakers, better off dead. Disrespected me, that’s what they done.” Disillusioned, he shook his head. “Them old warts was drinkin. Green started in to hollerin about the Injun hangin out there. See what I mean? Disrespectin me! Then Hannah went to wagglin her fat finger in my face. Says, ‘It’s all your fault! Weren’t no call to go rapin that lost child the way you done.’ Dirty squaw girl, and here she was callin me a raper! My daddy always told me, ‘Boy, don’t never let nobody go callin you a raper, cause that damn word will hang onto a man worse’n stink onto a dog.’ ”

“So you taught Hannah a lesson.”

“I done Green first. We had some words. Burned his belly out under this table with this here six-gun. I seen my cup jump with the boom, or maybe he give the table leg a kick, and his mouth dropped open and I heard his shootin iron hit the floor. Had it right there acrost his lap! Man might of killed me! Next thing I knew, his woman grabbed her big two-blader ax from behind that door, near took my head off! Out to murder me the same as he was! Dropped her ax after I winged her, tried to run up the stairs. Lookin for some weapon on the second floor to kill me with, I reckon.”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” I said. Leslie was lying. Green never had a weapon all the years I knew him. “How come you never cleaned up all that blood? You had two weeks.”

“That was her job or the nigger’s: I’m the foreman.”

I had to finish this. “And those four harvest hands?”

He set down his revolver and slumped back in his chair, grinning a little. “Ain’t your worry, Boss. Cuttin costs, that’s the foreman’s job. Locked ’em in the bunkroom before Dutchy come so’s they wouldn’t go gettin in the way. Couple days later, I marched ’em back out yonder same way you done.”

“God almighty, boy!” My gut too twisted to sit still, I got to my feet. He sprang up, yelling, “Nosir! You ain’t leavin! Not without me you ain’t!” He was so panic-stricken about being abandoned that for a moment he forgot Dutchy’s weapons. I reached across and pulled them in and pointed one at his forehead; he shied back, then shut his eyes and waved his hands before his face to wish that gun away.

Shoving the other into my belt, I waved him toward the door. “Let’s go,” I said.

“It weren’t only me! Frank helped, goddammit!”

“At gunpoint, right? That’s what he told ’em at Pavilion and that’s what they believe. Me, too. He had no motive. Which don’t mean they won’t hang him anyway-that make you feel better?” I kicked open the door onto the porch. “They’re not going to settle for Frank Reese. It’s got to be you or me and that means you.”

“They aim to hang Les Cox?” Cox was incredulous. “Supposin I tell ’em how Ed Watson was behind it?”

“Did you tell Reese I wanted you to kill those harvest hands? That why he turned on me?”

“No! Before he run off, he ast me real suspicious, ‘Mist’ Jack tell you, kill them field hands? Them four young fellas that’s locked in the bunkroom?’ I told him, ‘Boy, that ain’t your business. Wait till the Boss hears how you been runnin your damn mouth!’ ” Cox stared at me, eager. “I was plannin on shuttin him up for good soon’s we got them people in the river. I hate that nigger!”

Everything was puling out. He seemed relieved to be confessing, putting responsibility for his fate into my hands.

“You have finished me, boy.” I could only whisper in weak lassitude, as a man who has opened his veins in a tub feels the last heat in the water running out.

He was already elsewhere. “Nosir, I ain’t never goin back, not on no chain gang.” He