IT WAS ANOTHER night before the new steamer came. Flares had been lit and fastened to the Caprice Queen, marking the wreck as a danger to be avoided. Other flares on both shores lighted the groups of refugees. The new boat was a working vessel, not elaborate, with only a single cargo deck, but she hove to, took the stranded passengers aboard, laid the injured in a row, under what shelter there was.
Lassiter slipped in and out of consciousness through the day and lay low, gathering himself without attracting attention deep into the night. Late moonlight showed him a misty horizon of broken hills and shadowy landmarks along the shore.
Where a long sand spit thrust out into a sweeping bend of the river with the trunk of a dead cottonwood at its point, he bundled his guns into his shirt, slipped over the side into neck deep water. When the boat had churned past, he walked up the spit. He made it halfway to the bank before he passed out. He had not expected to get much further, but it would be all right. Pasquinada’s village was just back of the marsh. The tribe liked this spot for fishing.
He waked next in the Mojave camp, on a coarse blanket in Pasquinada’s tule reed hut. A round-faced Indian girl sat cross-legged on the ground watching him. She saw his eyes open and went outside. In a moment the chief came in.
The small room stank like an animal’s lair, the air trapped behind the rush curtain across the doorway, escaping only through the smoke hole in the domed roof. It stank worse with the smells from the chief’s warm body, almost overwhelming the odor of the bowl of fish stew that he brought and fed to Lassiter.
Pasquinada was short, squat, round and smooth and soft looking as a Buddha, his face a dark moon mask, his bare brown belly stretched with good eating. His diet included anything that walked or crawled on the desert floor. This country that was barren to the white man was a cornucopia of prairie dogs, snakes, Gila monsters, the Arizona iguana. Pasquinada was a potentate, bland, shrewd, a gentle nurse to Lassiter. They had been friends a long time.
He spoke Spanish in preference to English. “You came out of the river, wet. I think my friend rode the boat that made lightning and thunder up above?”
Lassiter had trouble talking. “What do you know about the boat?”
The heavy shoulders shrugged. “I know. A runner came. What was the fight about?”
“A hijacking. Pirates, got two Wells Fargo money boxes.”
A fat smile showed Pasquinada’s broken teeth. “From under your nose? That is funny. So, we make you well, then you go find them. You will remember Pasquinada, no? We will share, yes?”
His smile hurt Lassiter’s mouth. “Blackmailer. Yes, we’ll share. As soon as you get me on my feet. What did your runner say?”
He did not hear the answer. He passed out again. He spent three weeks in the village. He had other hurts than his head, and they were slow mending. When he could move on his own, he left the hut, took the blanket into the fresher air outside. He was a curiosity to the round-eyed children, a source of new stories to the braves, a magnet of speculation to the women.
It was a permanent village, perhaps a hundred huts ranged in a ragged circle, as close to Yuma as the Mojaves chose to live, the central yard packed hard by bare feet. The Mexican villages south of the border were always brightened with rank growing red geranium weeds near the ’dobe houses. Here there was nothing growing, no color except the red strings of drying hot chilis hung against the round reed hovels. It was quiet with the quiet of peoples who live close to the soil, except for the children and dogs and swarming flies. But there was safety for him here, as long as he did not overstep Pasquinada’s rules of behavior.
When he was ready, he gave the chief a gold coin, careful to make the distinction that it was a present, not payment for his care, which would have been a breach of etiquette. Pasquinada bit it and accepted it. One of the young braves ferried him down to the confluence of the Gila, dropped him on the south shore. From there he walked into Yuma, around the bluff that was capped by the ugly stockade of the Territorial Prison.
It was too close to please him. He did not like prisons. Particularly, he did not like the reputation of Yuma, the worst in the west. Men who had survived it called it the Hell Hole. It had been described to him in grisly detail. The high wooden stockade surrounded a bare, baked exercise yard. Across this the cells were dug back into the cement-hard conglomerate rock bluff. Each cell held two tiers of three bunks each: six men. There was a two-foot-wide corridor between tiers. They were open faced to the weather, caged off from the yard by heavy iron webbing. A hundred and twenty degrees in summer; frigid in winter.
With regard to temperature, the detention cell had the advantage. It was completely within the hill, reached on hands and knees down a long passage. It was also completely dark, except at noon, when the piercing sun ray shafted down the air hole six inches across that ran up from the dome ceiling.
Year by year a third of the prisoners died of consumption. A third went crazy from the privations, the fear of scorpions, tarantulas, and snakes that crawled into the cells or were thrown in by sadistic guards.
He looked at its vileness. The guard houses on the stockade top. The water tower with the Gatling gun mounted to cover the entire area. The cemetery of shallow graves scratched in the lower hillside, the wooden headboards warped, dry-rotting back into the ground.
Brooding above the town, the prison threw its pall across the whole community on the river flat below. Yuma, owing its existence to the prison, the fort, and the ferry that crossed the turbulent mixing of the Colorado and the Gila, was a cheerless place, fetid and festering with the malaise of the swampland around it. It was not a place he wanted to visit. But it was the likeliest place to pick up the trail.
River Street was lined with squat ’dobe buildings, blank, windowless walls. Windows let the heat inside. He turned in at the Colorado Bar. It was long, low ceilinged, filled with men along the counter, insects around the lamps. Teamsters, river roustabouts, miners, a sprinkling of uniforms from the fort across the river. The hot, wet air had an alcoholic content that would down a sober man. Above the backbar hung a hand lettered notice in red and black.
MACKS, PIMPS, PROSTITUTES:
DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU HERE.
SHERIFF KNOWLES
Lassiter wedged between two groups, who gave him grudging room. He said, “Whiskey,” to the bartender. The man brought a bottle and glass. Lassiter poured his first drink in three weeks, nodded at the sign. “Friendly sort of town.”
The bartender was baldheaded, fat, bored. “You don’t like it, move on. You got girls working for you?”
“You think so?”
The bartender looked at Lassiter’s guns, tied low on his legs, looked at his face, looked away from the eyes. His tone lost its challenge. His chuckle had a complaint in it.
“No, friend, I don’t.”
Lassiter finished his drink slowly, listened to the talk around him. There was nothing of interest. He tossed a twenty-dollar gold piece on the bar. The bartender looked up from the coin, did not touch it.
“You got many of those?”
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t flash them around here.”
“American double eagles have gone out of style?”
“Maybe you didn’t hear. The Caprice Queen was blown up three weeks ago. She was carrying a hundred thousand in gold, shipped from Prescott to pay the prison guards, pay the army at the fort, some for the local bank. Wells Fargo was handling the shipment. The pirates got it. Now the Territory is crawling with agents. The Territorial people are upset, got a bunch of Rangers around asking questions. The army is put out. They don’t like people bothering their payrolls. I’m supposed to report anybody who pays me in gold.”
Lassiter picked up the coin, put down a silver one. “To keep you honest.” He poured a second drink, said, “Get yourself a glass. I’ll buy.” He leaned on the bar, inviting conversation. The bartender, he thought, wanted to talk about the excitement. There wasn’t much in Yuma. He wanted to listen.
The man drank, nodded his thanks, sighed. “It’s a hell of a life. Always serving drunks. Now the goddamn John Laws want me to squeal for them. A man could get killed doing that.”
“Some have. Anyone been arrested yet?”
“Several, but the only one they kept was a gambler named Parsons. They say he was advance agent for the pirates, that he rode the boat coming down.”
Lassiter poured another pair of drinks. “What happened to him? Why’d they pick him?”
“An army captain and two sergeants swear they saw Parsons talking to some of the pirates just before the attack. The sheriff arrested him. The guards from the prison tell me they’ve got him up there, in solitary, not feeding him, trying to break him, make him name the gang and say what they did with the gold. So far he’s holding out.”
Lassiter thought of the officer Parsons had caught cheating in the poker game. “Captain named Crouse, maybe?”
The bartender shrugged. “I don’t know. But he’ll talk. They always do up there.”
Lassiter frowned. “If Parsons was part of the gang, why didn’t he stay with them? Stupid stunt to come down here.”
“You talk like a lawyer.”
Lassiter changed the subject. “Who’s in charge for Wells Fargo?”
“A man named Blood, Sidney Blood, and I’d hate to have that buzzard on my tail.” The fat man shivered. “Just looking at him, you can tell he’s mean, mean. He was in here earlier, snooping, asking if I’d heard of somebody called Lassiter. He’s going to bring a picture of him as soon as it comes from San Francisco.”
Lassiter did not stop pouring the drink he had started. His hand was steady. So Blood was in Yuma. Old faithful nemesis Sidney. Pride of James Hume’s Wells Fargo special police. Dedicated to seeing Lassiter dead or behind bars for life. Seven years dedicated. Locked in. Fanatic.
The fat bartender was going on with a bitter humor now. “Comes in here all hail-fellow, hearty, wants my cooperation in upholding the Law, seeing Justice done. Then I get it that this Lassiter is eating on him like a worm. Seems Wells Fargo grabbed the guy’s stage line, ruined him, and Lassiter’s partner killed himself over it, and ever since, every money box the company ships by rail, coach, boat or mule train Lassiter thinks is fair game. You ought to hear Blood’s voice curdle when he talks about it.”
Lassiter was not listening. His mind was on Blood. Why would Blood think of him as tied to this job? It wasn’t his job. Then he knew. The agent guarding the boxes on the Caprice Queen. Lassiter had never seen the man before, but the man must have recognized him, have seen one of the posters offering the reward for his capture. There were plenty of them floating around.
Blood would bring one of them in to show this bartender. The fat man would remember him. Whether or not he would not say so to the special agent, he could not know. He would be smart to put distance between himself and Yuma.
And leave the hundred thousand dollars? The two chests on the boat had tantalized him. Now they had a name. He liked the sound of it. Further, there were the men who had blown up the boat, who so nearly got him killed. He wanted to find them.
In three weeks the men and money could be in Mexico, San Francisco, on a ship bound for South America. Or the whole outfit could be lying low somewhere in the savage desert or barren hills that surrounded the river town. They would expect an intense search, and the telegraph wires connected the Wells Fargo net that lay over the whole country. It was as good a guess as any that the gang would stay under cover until at least the first vigor of the hue and cry died down.
There was only one place to start looking. Yuma. The prison. The prisoners, their grapevine.
Apparently Wells Fargo thought so too, pouring agents into the town, questioning the saloons. There could be a man in here now, someone who would recognize him, follow him.
He paid for the drinks and left, walked half a block and looked back. Lights from stores crossed the street. Three men came from the bar, separately, turned toward him. He stepped into a dark doorway, his hand on the walnut stock of one forty-five.
All three passed, not glancing toward him. He stayed where he was. In ten minutes no one else came out. He stepped from the shadow and went on to the livery.
The night hostler was alone, a tall man with a death’s head face, a thin knife scar pulling his mouth up toward his right eye in a perpetual grin. He came out of the office, stopped when he saw Lassiter, swore in a soft, accented voice.
“I’ll be goddammed.”
“Hello, Frenchy.”
Frenchy did not offer to shake hands. He jerked his head toward the office, where a lantern lighted the tack room.
Lassiter said, “Better out here.” The runway was dim.
“Sure … you’re right … surprised … didn’t think. Yeah, there’s been people asking if somebody looks like you bought or rented a horse. I didn’t know you were within a thousand miles.”
“Nobody else does.”
“Oh yes. Sidney Blood, damn him.”
Blood had sent the French Canadian to Yuma for stage robbery. Five years later they’d paroled him, but he had to stay in town, report to the prison every week.
“You talked to him?”
“He talked at me, the bastard. I never opened my mouth. He said if I helped you it was back to the bluff for the rest of my sentence. Did you blow up that steamer?”
“No. I didn’t get the chests either.”
Frenchy sighed. “I was hoping maybe you did; you’d need help moving the weight to Mexico. I’d like to make a run for the border for a piece of that stake.”
“Did he say why he ties me to the robbery?”
“An agent named Doughman was on board, recognized you when Blood described you. As soon as Blood heard you were there, he started throwing up reward offers like fireworks.”
“You could turn me in and collect that reward, maybe Blood would even get you a pardon.”
The man’s hesitation was short. “Sure. And you’d kill me as soon as you shook free. Thanks, no. I’ve seen you bust out of too many jails. Even Yuma I wouldn’t trust. You after a horse?”
“You’ve still got a contact with the grapevine up there. Any line on the job?”
Frenchy spat thoughtfully. “Not a murmur. It wasn’t any of the regulars. Strangers, likely, maybe boys from down south. If I was looking for that gold, I’d try Mexico.”
“Orillo?”
“Not me. I’ll keep real clear of that hungry hombre.”
Lassiter knew what he meant. He had had his own trouble with Don Miguel, protector of Orillo.
“You want a horse?”
“Would you sell me one?”
The grin twitched. “I’ll leave one in the corral, saddled. It could be stolen.”
“Put it out there. I don’t know whether I’ll need it.” Lassiter turned to go.
The Frenchman hissed him back. “Somebody else is looking for you, a lot prettier than Blood.”
“Who?”
“A lady, by the way she talks and dresses.”
“Possibly named Amelia?” Lassiter’s body had tensed.
Frenchy squirmed. “I don’t have the way with women you do, they don’t give me their names first thing, and mostly there’s no second chance. But she wanted the same thing as Blood, to know if you’d been in for a horse. Who is she?”
“Just a woman I met.”
“A prime one. She’s at the hotel. She promised me twenty bucks if I heard anything about you.”
Lassiter flipped him a gold piece. “To keep her promise. Don’t forget to have a good saddle on that horse.”
He went back to the street, the night. A pulse grew in his temple. Women were his trouble. Women and trouble often went together for him. But he needed women more than he minded trouble.