Chapter Six
The railroad linking southwestern New Mexico Territory with the rest of the country had been completed not that many years previously, and getting from Fort Smith to Lordsburg by rail still wasn’t what anybody would call a simple task. You had to either go north to Missouri on the Santa Fe, and then circle back through Kansas and Colorado before turning south through New Mexico to El Paso, and then finally turn west to Lordsburg; or else travel south through Texas to Houston and switch to the Southern Pacific, which roughly followed the old Butterfield Stage route through Texas to El Paso. The last stretch of the trip from El Paso to Lordsburg was the same either way. It was about the same distance out of the way no matter which route you chose, too.
John Henry took the Texas route, which cut across the corner of Indian Territory. He’d had a little to do with that rail line being completed, so he thought it was fitting he put it to use now.
Northern Texas, he discovered when the train crossed the Red River, looked a lot like southern Indian Territory. It stayed that way for several hundred miles before growing more wooded.
Houston was the biggest town John Henry had ever seen. He and Iron Heart switched to a Southern Pacific train there. San Antonio was the next stop. John Henry wouldn’t have minded doing some looking around in that historic old city, but he didn’t have the time. He wasn’t traveling for pleasure. He had to reach Purgatory well before Jason True and the other mine owners brought their gold down, so he’d have a chance to get the lay of the land and sniff out any trouble.
After San Antonio the terrain changed. The train rolled through a band of rugged hills, then hit a stretch of flat, semi-arid plains. This was drier country than John Henry had ever seen, and it seemed to get more dry the farther west he traveled. Here and there, rough-looking buttes thrust up from the tableland, and trees became scarce. Low brush and clumps of ugly-looking grass covered the ground, interspersed with cactus and areas of bare rock. Settlements were few and far between, too. Often when the train had to stop for water, there was nothing to be seen but the water tank itself, sitting up on stilts, and the telegraph line that ran alongside the railroad tracks.
John Henry wasn’t sure why anybody would want to live out here in the middle of nowhere. Some people did, though. He’d been told that there were vast ranches out here in western Texas. He believed it, because country like this sure wasn’t good for anything else.
He slept sitting up, since he had the frontiersman’s ability to doze off just about anywhere, under any conditions. A cheap carpetbag containing his belongings was under the seat. When he reached Lordsburg, he would switch his things over to his saddlebags and leave the carpetbag at the depot for safekeeping until he returned.
When he awoke, mountains had replaced the desert. He bought an apple for breakfast from a boy who came through the car selling them and looked out the window to the south as he munched on the fruit.
Someone sat down on the bench seat beside him. He looked over and saw a thickly built, middle-aged man with curly, graying hair under a pushed-back derby. The man wore a dusty town suit. He said, “Mexico.”
“What?” John Henry said.
“Mexico,” the man repeated. “That’s what you’re looking at. Those mountains over there are on the other side of the border. You can’t see it from here, but the Rio Grande runs between us and them.”
“All right,” John Henry said. “They look just like the mountains on this side of the border, don’t they?”
The stranger chuckled and said, “Yeah, I guess they do.” He put out a pudgy hand. “Mitchum’s the name, Thaddeus Mitchum. Most folks call me Doc.”
“Because you’re a doctor?” John Henry asked as they shook.
“Oh, shoot, no. In my younger days I was a traveling man, sold elixirs and patent medicines.”
“Snake oil, in other words,” John Henry said.
Mitchum laughed.
“You’re a plain-spoken young man, aren’t you?”
“I try to be. I mean no offense by it, though.”
“Oh, none taken, none taken,” Mitchum said with a wave of his hand. “I’ve been called much worse than a snake oil salesman in my time. But, as a point of fact, the nostrums I sold actually did bring some relief to people who bought them.”
“Mix enough alcohol and opium in something, and that’ll do it.”
“Indeed. I don’t believe I caught your name, friend.”
John Henry had done some thinking about that very thing. Judge Parker had suggested, and he agreed, that it might make his job easier if he didn’t go around announcing the fact that he was a federal marshal. So the question was, should he use a false name?
In Indian Territory, quite a few people had heard of him; he was chief sheriff of the Cherokee Nation, after all, in addition to his duties as a deputy U.S. marshal. He was somewhat well-known in certain parts of Arkansas and Kansas, too.
But it was hard for him to believe that out here, with the vast reaches of Texas between him and home, that anybody would have ever heard of John Henry Sixkiller. So it just seemed simpler to use his real name.
“It’s John Henry Sixkiller,” he said in reply to Mitchum.
“Sixkiller,” the man repeated. “You’re an Indian?”
John Henry knew that his dark hair and blue eyes made him look more like his mother’s Scotch-Irish ancestors than the Cherokee on his father’s side. He said, “Half.” He didn’t go into detail since it was none of Mitchum’s business.
“Oh. Well, that’s fine. You may run into some people out here who are bothered by that, but I’m not one of ’em. I’ve studied history enough to know that most people are mongrels of one sort or another. I mean nothing derogatory by the word.”
John Henry nodded. He didn’t have anything against Mitchum, but he didn’t particularly want to encourage a long conversation with the man, either. He found his eyes drawn back to those mountains that Mitchum had told him were in Mexico. This was the first time he had seen a foreign country, and he found it fascinating, even though it didn’t really look any different from Texas. This trip was awakening a wanderlust inside John Henry that he hadn’t known was part of his personality. He found himself wondering what it would be like to see an ocean, or a city like San Francisco, or even the great capitals of Europe.
Not that he was ever likely to travel that far. But as long as he was a U.S. marshal, there was a chance he’d be sent to more places that he’d never been before, like this journey to New Mexico Territory.
“Where is it you’re bound, if you don’t mind my asking?” Mitchum said.
John Henry did mind, but he’d been raised to be polite. His mother, Elizabeth, wouldn’t have had it any other way. He said, “A little town in New Mexico Territory called Purgatory.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” Mitchum said. “Never been there, though. It’s a mining town, isn’t it?”
“I think so.” John Henry kept his answer deliberately vague.
“Going there on business? You didn’t mention what line of work you’re in.”
“No, I didn’t,” John Henry said. He left it at that. He figured he’d been polite enough, long enough, and he didn’t want to encourage this busybody any more than he already had.
Mitchum seemed to take the hint. He didn’t ask any more questions, and after a few inconsequential comments about the landscape, he stood up and said, “Perhaps I’ll see you again later. Good luck on your journey, Mr. Sixkiller.”
“You, too,” John Henry said.
Mitchum moved off along the aisle that ran through the center of the car. John Henry leaned back against the hard seat and closed his eyes, tipping his hat down over them. Even though he hadn’t been awake all that long, the sleep he had gotten sitting up hadn’t really been all that restful, either. Besides, the gently rocking motion of the train and the monotonous clicking of the joints in the rails combined to make him drowsy. A nap wouldn’t hurt anything, he told himself.
He dozed off and didn’t dream. He expected he might sleep all the way to El Paso.
That turned out not to be the case. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep when he sensed someone else sitting down beside him. He opened his right eye only the tiniest slit, trying to get a glimpse of his fellow passenger. If Doc Mitchum was back, John Henry intended to go right on sleeping, or at least pretending to do so. He didn’t want to have to entertain the old medicine show conman.
To his surprise, the person sitting beside him seemed to be wearing a dress. Some sort of bottle-green traveling outfit, to be precise. Still slumped against the seat with the hat partially shielding his face, John Henry opened his eye a little more and let his gaze trail up the woman’s body. He could see the curve of her bosom and above it her chin, and a fine chin it was, too, with a hint of firmness and determination about it.
He couldn’t see the rest of her face, though, unless he lifted his head and revealed that he was awake. He was debating whether or not he wanted to do that when he felt the soft pressure of her shoulder against his. She was leaning toward him, and a second later he felt the warmth of her breath touch his cheek as she whispered, “Please, sir, you have to help me, I beg of you!”