The guy in the wagon was real good.
Using the cover of the canvas top to the Conestoga he picked off the would-be sharpshooters on both sides of the street, giving Crow a virtually straight run on through to his horse. As soon as the shootist had reached his stallion there was a shout from the wagon and someone whipped up the two-horse team. The stoop-shouldered boy scrambled clumsily aboard and the rig set off down the dusty main street, a rifle barrel still spitting fire from its back, deterring anyone from pursuing it.
Crow made his own escape hanging low across the neck of the stallion, snapping off the last bullets from his pistol in his right hand, sending the curious scurrying again for cover, and helping to guard the rear of the wagon against any sneak attack.
He caught up quickly with the rig well before it had covered a mile, seeing the rear drape pulled across and a man’s face. A middle-aged man, creased around the eyes, waving his rifle in one hand.
“Good to see you, stranger.”
Crow reined in and cantered easily alongside the back of the wagon. As he rode he reloaded his pistol and recharged the scattergun. Tying down the retaining cord over the hammers of the Purdey.
“Guess I owe you thanks,” he said.
“Cuts both ways, mister. You saved Daniel there from a kickin’. Mebbe worse.”
“You’re handy with that Winchester.”
“I guess. But that cannon of yourn surely blew them good ole boys away back yonder.”
“I’m not so great with a handgun. All you need is something that’ll keep off the flies.”
“Sawn-down ten-gauge, ain’t it?”
“Yeah. English. Purdey. Hear it’s one of the best out there.”
The man grinned. “I used to carry a Meteor once. Gave it up when I damned near blew my foot off.”
“My name’s Crow.”
“Hi. I’m Ben Ford. Pleased to know you, Crow. Hey, haven’t I heard somethin’ about you?”
“Maybe.”
“North?”
“Been most places.”
“And seen most things, I guess. Crow. Crow. Cavalry. That’s it. Busted officer. Turned shootist. Up Montana way, Dakotas.”
Crow nodded. “That’s me, Ben. That bother you?”
“What?”
“Who I am?”
“Don’t give a roasted damn who you are. Matters what you are, Crow, and that’s the truth.”
“I hire my gun.”
“Hell, I know that.” Ford laughed. “Known plenty of men did that. But what you did back there for Daniel, that was something else.”
The shootist didn’t elaborate on his own reasons for butting in back in Rosa Cruz. There were times when silence was a good companion. And this was one of those times.
A voice came from the front of the rattling Conestoga. An old man’s voice, but filled with vigor. “Who be that, Benjamin? Our blessed guardian angel from that abode of wickedness?”
“Sure is, Mr. Spangel.”
“I would meet and talk with such a man.”
Ben Ford raised his eyes at Crow in a questioning way. The shootist shook his head.
“Guess we’d best put some miles between us and Rosa Cruz ’fore we get to talking.”
Ford nodded. Raising his voice against the noise of the wheels on the stones of the trail. “Figure we’d best leave that for tonight, Reverend.”
“Why, Benjamin?”
“The forces of the ungodly might be mountin’ their chariots of fire right now and headin’ after us with vengeance in their hearts.”
He grinned at Crow, showing that he didn’t really take too seriously to all that religious way of speaking.
“Very well. I guess you know best. But my thanks and prayers go to the stranger in black.”
“His name’s Crow, Mr. Spangel.”
“His forename?”
Crow shook his head in answer. Ford shouted back to the unseen person at the front of the wagon. “Just Crow. He don’t have no other name.”
There was silence for a while. The shootist rode out a little to the side, peering in to try and see the man on the box. Heeling the stallion back.
“It’s a woman, driving the team,” he said to Ford.
“Yeah. That’s Mrs. Spangel.”
“How come the one you called the Reverend isn’t doin’ that? It’s man’s work.”
Ben Ford shook his head, biting off a chew of tobacco. Offering it to Crow who shook his head to the chaw. “Most times, Crow. But not when you’re blind.”
At Crow’s urging they didn’t stop once during that eternally long, hot afternoon. The trail wound on westwards, but Ben Ford suggested to the Reverend Spangel that they might do well to come off of it onto a side trail. One that took them higher, pulling into the foothills of the big mountains. Crow dropped back at that point, keeping watch behind them for any sign of pursuit from Rosa Cruz.
But the settlement slowly vanished into a blur among the shimmering arroyos and mesas, with the trail clear of dust. In the end the shootist decided that the damage he had done had been too devastating for there to be enthusiasm for a posse after them. And Ford’s accuracy with his rifle might have something to do with that.
The sun was already out sight behind the orange-tipped peaks to their left and ahead of them before the rig finally creaked to a halt. The young man, Daniel, swung down and began to water the horses, looking silently at Crow from behind his own shoulder, turning awkwardly as though he was crippled in some way.
Only then did Crow tie his stallion to a convenient rock, waiting for Ford to come and join him. But the middle-aged man stayed exactly where he’d been for the whole journey, flat on his back in the bed of the wagon.
The shootist was turning away when Ford called out to him. “Be obliged for a hand, Crow …”
“How’s that, Ben?”
“Need a hand out.”
“You shot?”
“Hell, no. I’m ramrod for this family. Hired on their way west from Florida. Picked me up in Texas. Not far from Twin Buttes. Just lost my wife and I was figurin’ on movin’ out. Things was fine until a week ago.”
“What happened?” Crow was aware that there were more folks in the wagon than he’d realized and that there was already the bustle of a camp being set up. But he was interested in Ben Ford’s tale.
“We lost a wheel. Got the rig all propped up and I was greasing the axle ready for the new wheel to go on. Rock slipped. Wagon fell on me. Bust my hip in a half dozen places. Doc we saw in MacNally Flats says I’ll likely not walk again.”
“Damned shame,” said Crow, climbing up and lowering the tail of the wagon. Holding out his arms and supporting the ramrod. Lifting him with a grunt of effort.
“Hell, you’ll need Daniel or...”
“I can carry you, Ben. Real easy. Ill set you down where they’re readyin’ the fire.”
“My God, but you got muscles like a waterfront wrestler, Crow, You don’t look more’n one-forty. Skinnier than a whip-butt. Fine, down there.”
It was something of a shock to see how Ford’s legs dangled helplessly, swinging in Crow’s grip like a rag doll.
The shootist tried to think of something reassuring to say, but there were no words ready and he kept silent as he laid the man on the ground.
“Thank you, Crow. That’s right neighborly of you. Guess I ought to introduce you to the rest of the family here. Reverend Spangel!”
“Pa’s out yonder, behind them rocks. Making water,” said the son.
“Oh, well ... You already seen Mr Daniel here. This here is Crow.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr Crow. And I’m mighty obliged for the way you saved me from them animals back yonder.”
“Think nothing of it, son.”
Daniel turned away and walked off, sideways, like a hunting crab. Ben Ford saw Crow watching the boy and waved a hand to attract his attention. Beckoning him to stoop so that he could talk low.
“Fine party you gotten in with, Crow. Me a helpless cripple and the Reverend Spangel blind as a bat at noon. Daniel there’s lost the sight of his left eye. Clear gone. And I been watchin’ him and his right’s failin’, though he’s too stiff-necked proud to say it. That’s why he shuffles and looks at you crooked like he do.”
“I wondered ’bout that.”
“And there’s the ladies, God bless ’em.”
Crow looked round. Seeing two women. One tall, middle-aged, walking around the site they “d chosen for their camp with a gentle, vacuous smile pasted on her pale cheeks. She saw Crow looking in her direction and dropped him a deep curtsey. Ben saw the direction of Crow’s gaze and chuckled.
“That’s Ma Spangel, all right. Mrs. Lily Spangel, from Pensacola. Whole family’s from Florida.”
“She have some troubles?”
“Kind of. Not eyes or nothin’ like that. More her way of thinkin’.”
“She doesn’t look as though she’s living in the same place as other folks.”
Ben nodded, spitting out a stream of tobacco juice in the dirt. “Guess that’s one way of lookin’ at it. Fact is, Lily Spangel there’s not more than ten cents in the dollar.”
“Lack brained?”
“More than some, Crow. More than some. Half the time she doesn’t know rightly where she is and the other half of the time she don’t know what’s she’s doin’. I seen her water the horses with sand and try and put a fire out with lamp oil.”
“That the daughter?”
“Miss Mary? Yeah, that’s her.”
Mary Spangel looked to be in her late teens, but it was hard to tell. She was dressed in a long gown that trailed in the dust around her feet. Her hair was tucked under a faded poke bonnet and she also wore extremely thick eyeglasses, tinted a deep shade of blue, making it impossible to see her eyes.
“She don’t see so well, huh?”
Ben shook his head. “That’s a mite like sayin’ that a cougar can be a mighty cantankerous creature. With them glasses of hers she can make out folks if’n they’re close to her. And I seen her readin’ and figurin’. She’s bright enough, is Miss Mary.”
Crow watched her with something akin to pity. His own eyesight was excellent, good enough to tell the color of a man’s shirt at a mile. And it was difficult to imagine what life must be like for someone who could barely distinguish the color of a man’s shirt across a well-lit room.
“That’s all the family.”
“You haven’t met the old man yet,” replied Ben Ford. “He’s kind of different.”
“You say he’s short of seeing?”
“No. I said he was blind. Full stone blind. Don’t know whether it’s day or night. Light or dark.”
“I knew a blind whore once,” said Crow. “Somewheres out Oregon way.”
“Yeah?”
“She was blind from an accident with some scalding water, her Ma running a laundry. I recall her telling me that she’d wake in the night from a dream. Lie there staring up at the blackness. And she’d wonder to herself. Was she awake and blind, looking at the ceiling? Or was she awake and not blind, looking into blackness for a ceiling she couldn’t make out? Or was she dreaming the whole damned thing? Used to make her weep, I remember.”
They both heard the rattling of stones and turned round to see the patriarch of the Spangel family stalking towards them.
“Reverend Charles, Mr Crow,” said Daniel, formally. “Leader of our group seeking the one true place for our tabernacle.”
Charles Spangel was an imposing sight. Topping Crow by nearly nine inches, putting him within touching distance of seven feet tall. His hair was silver-grey and tumbled around his shoulders like the foaming crest of a tidal wave. He also wore a full beard, nearer white than silver, combed and clean, almost covering the front of his neat grey shirt. His eyes gripped Crow’s attention. The old man’s blindness looked like it was caused by cataracts. Milky spheres obscured the eyes, reflecting the dying light of the sun so that they glowed with a hideous fire. As the old man turned his head, so the fires seemed to flash and die and flash again.
Crow stood up. “Good to meet you, Mr. Spangel. Glad I could be of service.”
The old man’s reaction startled the shootist, used though he was to relying on his own quick reflexes.
Spangel carried a long staff, crudely carved at one end so that it resembled pictures Crow had once seen of old-fashioned shepherds” crooks. At the shootist’s friendly words he suddenly raised it and lashed out, faster than a blind old man had the right to be. Crow swayed back and the blow hissed by his head, missing him by less than three inches.
“Impious and blasphemous dog!” snarled Spangel. “To take to yourself the rights of thanks belonging to the Almighty.”
For a moment the shootist considered gunning down the crazed old man, but he stayed his hand. Seeing Ben Ford was trying to hide a grin.
“What’s that for, Reverend? I done you a favor. Saved your boy’s life.”
“No. No! No!!” The syllable louder and louder until it seemed to make the mountains around tremble with his anger. “It was the Lord. You were mere clay acting for him. His great spirit passed through you.”
“Well, he fired my scattergun real well,” said Crow. “I’ll give him that.”
For a moment he thought that Spangel was going to strike him again, and he readied himself for the draw and the shot that would have wiped him away in a heap of bloodied flesh. In the background he noticed that the son, the daughter and the mother were all frozen into stillness. Each watching in their different way.
“You are either mad, Mr Crow, or you are filled unknowing with the essence of the Almighty. Topped to the brim so your mind o’erflows with the tincture of his goodness.”
“Guess you’d know more ’bout that than me, Reverend,” replied the shootist.
The great leonine head nodded and the knuckles gripping the staff relaxed. The milky eyes stared out beyond the hills towards the setting sun. Crow guessed that the old man could feel the warmth of the sun on his face and knew which way to turn.
“Aye. We have been much plagued. My wife is bereft of sense. My daughter can scarcely see in the light of the brightest day. My son is afflicted with the same illness as myself. Now our strong right arm, Benjamin Ford there, has also been struck down by a thunderbolt from the heavens.”
“Where are you heading?”
The long stick rose and pointed with a grim certainty towards the west. “Where the sun sinks, shall our new city rise.”
“Where?”
“We do not know, Mr Crow,” said a new voice. The daughter, Mary, peering myopically at him from behind her glasses. Crow looked back at her with interest, seeing that there might be a pretty face beneath the hanging brim of the bonnet. But the glasses so obscured much of her that it was hard to tell.
“Ma’am?”
“I thank you as well for saving Daniel from those brutal fools.”
“Wasn’t anything, Miss Mary,” replied Crow.
“I do not agree. It was everything,” she insisted. “Everything.”
The question of precisely where they were heading seemed to have slipped away for a moment. The mother came hesitantly up and joined them, smiling at the shootist with her head on one side, like a quizzical dove.
“You killed so many, Mr. Raven.”
“Crow. Name’s Crow, Ma’am.”
“One black bird is another black bird is another one. Beaks and claws and fiery eyes. I am in your debt. My body is yours to command.”
All said with the gentlest of smiles. Crow nodded at her, uncomfortably aware of the husband, standing unblinking a yard away. Fortunately unable to see that Lily Spangel had calmly unbuttoned the front of her bodice, revealing two pleasing breasts, the nipples erect, tipped with scarlet in the glowing light of the westerly sun.
Mary Spangel was clearly used to the eccentricities of her mother and stepped in, taking the older woman’s arm and leading her away.
Ben Ford watched the small drama with an enigmatic grin, looking away to where Daniel was still struggling to light a fire.
“Don’t use that green kindling, boy,” he called. “Give more smoke than fire and it might be better not to do that right now.”
“You think that those ... those men from Rosa Cruz might come after us?”
Crow answered. “Bet any dollars you got, son. Maybe sooner. Maybe later. But they’ll come.”
The Reverend Spangel still stood like a gaunt rock, head craning towards the shootist. “Sunday mornings, in my home town, so long ago,” he began, then seemed to lose the thread and wandered a little distance away. Sitting himself in the dirt, his long limbs folding and cracking under him like a strange insect. He crossed his hands in his lap and seemed to fall asleep.
“See what I mean, Brother Crow?” asked Ford, quietly. “Hell of a fine party you up and gotten yourself invited to.”
The shootist nodded. “Yeah. Mad old man. Mad wife that offers herself like a Juarez whore. Son that seems to seek out trouble where there isn’t any. Pretty daughter, from what you can see.”
“And me,” added Ford, with the first trace of real bitterness that Crow had seen.
“The break’ll heal.”
“I don’t look like an egg-suckin’ wet-nose brat, do I, Crow? No, I don’t. Doctor said no more walkin’. Jesus, but I’d like to think him wrong. But there’s nothin’ down here,” striking the flat of his thigh with the palm of his right hand.
“It might come back.”
Ford sighed. “I’ve broke limbs before this. Wrist, fingers. Bone at the collar here four, five times. Leg once and ankle twice.”
Crow nodded. If you were a working cowboy then your life wasn’t the idyllic romance that some of the Eastern pulp magazines tried to make out. Life riding out with cattle was unpleasant, harsh and brutish. And frequently short.
“And they all hurt. Hurt like a bastard, Crow. But this one …” he shrugged. “Didn’t pain me a moment. There was a damned loud crack and then … then nothin’. Nothin’ at all. I can lie in the wagon and maybe make some use with a long gun. Like back there. But that’s it. Over for me, Crow.”
“Why stay?”
“Gave my word. And the Reverend has...” he looked round and dropped his voice, beckoning the shootist nearer. “He’s got a lot of dollars. Ran a successful ministry back in Florida. Enough to bring him and the family out here.”
“What’s the idea?”
“Start a kind of paradise. The Spangels have the dollars to set it up. Once it’s runnin’ then all the folks from back in Pensacola get invites.”
“I see. They for real?”
Ford sniffed. “Realest thing I ever saw. They promised to take care of me once the city’s built.”
Suddenly the Reverend Spangel unfolded himself again, standing up and looking around the clearing where the wagon stood. For all the world as though he could see. The sun was now far down, evening’s gloom settling across the land like the creased wings of a great bird of prey.
“Mr. Crow?”
“Yeah, Reverend?”
“Benjamin has told you of our divine mission?”
“Some.”
“How we plan to find the land of our dreams where there shall be no taint of blood or violence and there will only be light and softness.”
“Yeah. Something of that.”
The staff pointed out towards the shootist. “I hear the mockery, but I forgive you that, Mr Crow. I believe that you are no empty vessel, but a fine weapon for the anointed ones. You shall be our lawman.”
“Could be I’ve got other plans.”
The towering figure shook his head, something of a smile appearing through the beard. “The decision is not with you, Mr. Crow.”
“I’ll ride with you a day or so. Then I move on.”
“I will pay you fifty dollars for every day you serve.”
Crow looked at Ford, trying to conceal his surprise at the amount of money being offered.
“Like I said, Reverend. I’ll ride with you a day or so.”
“Then?”
“Then, we’ll see. Guess we’ll have to see.”