Rudolph Wurlitzer - The Drop Edge of Yonder

"I thought you did," Zebulon said.

Hatchet Jack laughed. "Too late to get into that. Go ahead. Ride up to Sutter's Fort and rope the witch in, and good luck to you. If we're lucky we'll never meet up again."

When Zebulon woke the next morning, Hatchet Jack was gone, along with Lu.

Large Marge was sitting on a log, rubbing the raw welts crisscrossing her shoulders and neck, a result of her near drowning.

"Don't talk," she warned. "I don't know where they took off to and I don't give a damn."

ARGE MARGE AND ZEBULON DRIFTED ACROSS THE Sacramento Valley towards Sutter's Fort. The only signs of life were an occasional herd of deer, and once, a startled bear gazing at them from the middle of a berry patch. Entire farms were deserted, vineyards and orchards neglected, fences broken. All that was left of once-golden wheat fields had been grazed over by stray cattle and sheep.

When a line of riders appeared in the far distance, moving in and out of rain squalls and shafts of milky light, they galloped in the opposite direction, ending up at a deserted farmhouse sheltered by a mournful stand of half-dead oak trees. Leading their horses through the front door, they squeezed into a narrow low-ceilinged room, thick with dust and straw from a collapsed roof. The dirt floor was covered with mice and weasel droppings, the cupboard empty except for a leftover slice of bread covered with blue mold.

"We'll pad our bellies, then rest up," Large Marge said, then walked outside. A few minutes later she returned holding a headless chicken.

Not wanting to advertise their presence with a line of chimney smoke, she plucked and cooked the chicken in a deep pit.

"I've had my run-ins with old man Sutter," she said, tearing into the half-cooked meat. "Rolled him biscuits, made dough for him, burned his grease, wet his whistle — you name it. I cooked for him one winter when no one else would. Pleasured him when he was too roostered to know I wasn't one of them San Francisco whores. Anyway you cut it, I comforted him better'n anyone had a right to."

She threw the chicken bones over her shoulder, wiping her lips on a sleeve of the Warden's jacket.

"Tell you what, Mister Shook. You go on alone to Sutter's, unless you prefer to head up to Oregon, just the two of us. I'm talkin' partners, not esposa, although that could change. We'd be a team. But count me out with Suttter. He's used up. Overrun and plowed under. A thousand Argonauts up there squattin' on his land, I guarantee you. A stampede. Time is money. That's what you'll hear up there…. Used to be the man had himself an empire, the biggest and best stretch of land from the Sierras to the Pacific: fruit trees, pastures like billiard tables, a thousand head of horses. The man would trade with anyone — Ruskies, Spanish, Mormons, all kinds of pilgrims. Gave 'em what they wanted and took what he needed. The biggest sawmill in California. Biggest parades. Biggest barbecues. Biggest fandangos. Slickest women. Made his Injuns wear uniforms and start a marchin' band. He was the biggest cock-a-doodle-doo from Mexico to the North Pole. Now look at him. You don't want to know"

She stood up. "So how about it, Mister Shook? Are you ready to stretch a blanket with me and plow a furrow all the way up to Oregon?"

Zebulon shook his head. "I'm on my own trail."

"Well of course you are," she said, more relieved than disappointed. "A famous outlaw like you. Not to mention that foreign whore you're stuck on, the one that everyone is flapped up about."

She mounted her horse. "Don't give me that look. People talk. I been around the dark side of the barn long enough to know when a man is pulled by his whizzle string."

"Call it any way you want," he said.

She thought it over. "I'll ride with you to Sutter's because maybe I owe you, having sprung me from that prison hulk. But then you're on your own."

They rode on until they topped a rise and Large Marge reined in her horse. Her arms crossed, she gazed at Sutter's Fort silhouetted against the granite peaks of the Sierras like a destroyed Crusader's castle.

"There's no way I'm haulin' my freight to that pile of stone. I don't care what we have goin' between us."

She dismounted and lay back in the tall grass, staring at a parade of black clouds drifting across the sky. "I'll take my preciosa carcass over to Sonoma. There's a saloonkeeper there who owes me favors, enough for a ticket back to where I used to be."

She looked over at him: "If you was smart, you'd ride with me. Sonoma's a pretty little town. On a boom right now"

When he didn't answer she mounted up.

"It's your loss, Mister Shook. Somethin' has gone to your head, maybe bein' hunted for and talked about so much. But I know better. I know who you are and who you ain't. And you ain't weaselshit. No matter what that wild witch might say or the lies that newspaper feller's always writin' about you."

After a snort and wave, she rode off towards Sonoma.

He hadn't gone more than a few miles when she galloped up beside him. "I remembered what it is about that saloon in Sonoma. The oily bastard that runs it is most likely six feet under feeding worms. Or if he ain't, he should be. Not only that, but it's me that owes him, and I ain't in no mood to settle up. Not with the way things are goin'. Maybe it's time for Sutter. It's not like he don't owe me a stake after all I done for him."

A mile later she changed her mind again, deciding on Hangtown, where an ex-lover had a brother who ran a feed store. "I can start something big up there. If not with him, someone. Hitch myself to some pilgrim or store-bought fiatlander, and if that rides south I'll turn into a shanty queen. Experience counts, Mister Shook. Twenty dollars a poke, plus extras. Hangtown is a favorable place. No one will recognize this old sow among all them busted bushwhackers and down-and-outers. I don't know what I was thinkin' about, throwin' in with you. 'Specially now that you have a fancy price on your head."

With another shout and wave, she galloped away.

Zebulon was relieved. He preferred to be alone. It was a condition that he had longed for ever since his days on The Rhinelander: to know that his feet were once again planted on the earth; to stare into his own campfire, or, if his mood shifted, ride back to Colorado or Mexico or some place off the map. He was finished with people and their wants, who says what, who's going where and why. It was enough to survive. The chasing and finding was for others. The problem was…. But the thought evaded him.

He rode past an Indian's severed head displayed on a stake beneath a faded sign:

BAD HOMBRES AND DOINS NOT TOLERATED PAST THIS POINT.

In the fading light, dozens of ghostly figures were floating around campfires in front of the Fort. "Like soldiers from a defeated army," the Count had said. He remembered Delilah on the steps of the Vera Cruz hotel, staring at him as if he was a ghost. Save me, her eyes had implored. And if you know what cgood for you, stay away.

mile from the fort, he joined a weary procession of Pennsylvania Quakers — the men walking beside half-dead oxen, the women sitting on battered Conestoga wagons, their heads bowed under bonnets, their shoulders covered with thick shawls. They had started their journey over two-hundred strong, and now they were reduced to less than fifty, having been decimated by Indian raids, a Platte River flood, and bouts of cholera and dysentery.

What was left of the fort's iron-studded gate lay on the ground, most of it having been used for firewood. The stench of sewage and rotting food made it almost impossible to breathe. In front of them, a sprawling cluster of shelters and tents had been thrown together from whatever was at hand: old blankets, pants and shirts, wagon slats, broken tables and chairs, and the usual strips of torn, mildewed canvas. The fort's three-foot-thick adobe walls were riddled with bullet holes. On the crumbling bastions, a row of dismantled cannons pointed blown-up muzzles towards an empty sky. Everything else was in motion: cursing women, banging dinner pots, howling dogs, tents raised and dismantled, wagons repaired, mules braying, horses and oxen unyoked and fed.