Rudolph Wurlitzer - The Drop Edge of Yonder

Forced to dismount, they led their horses through thick groves of hemlock and cottonwood. The river widened and became sluggish as it merged into a large estuary. At the lee side of a large peninsula, they saw the tiny specks of buildings clustered around a saw mill. Further on, where the estuary flowed into the sea, a fierce wind blew curtains of white sand high into the air.

Walking their horses around a bend in the river, they heard rifle shots.

Four Russian sailors wearing oversized tunics and baggy pants stood in the middle of a sewn-together canvas longboat, shooting at a herd of sea otters feeding in a kelp bed.

A large otter sat on a rock, staring at the sailors. As if pleading for mercy, the otter held up a front paw, covering and uncovering its eyes. A dozen others lay dead on the shore, their front paws crossed gently over their breasts, as if, at the last moment, they had come to terms with their fate.

Delilah cried out, but not for the otters.

It was The Rhinelander, announcing her arrival from a cannon booming from her stern as she sailed through the mouth of the estuary. She was freshly painted, displaying new sails and a row of bronze swivel guns protruding from her bow

They watched the ship from the riverbank until all they could see were her running lights moving across the black water. Even for Zebulon and Large Marge, who had vowed never to set foot on a ship again, The Rhinelander offered an unexpected ray of hope, enough, in any case, to press on.

By the next afternoon they reached the peninsula, where they discovered a line of rutted wagon tracks leading to a sprawl of shacks and salmon racks. A full moon was rising while the sun sank, making it seem, in the last drop of daylight, that moon and sun were on a collision course.

The settlement's only street was deserted except for a few drunks sleeping in doorways or sprawled across soggy planks. A dog barked as cold fingers of fog swept across the estuary, sliding around the corners of a trading post and the half-finished frame of a church. At the far end of the street, past the sawmill and several large storage sheds, a piano pounded out a dance tune from The Trail's End Saloon, a ramshackle two-story building made out of shipwrecked timbers and freshly cut cedar planks.

A roof over a long porch fronting the saloon was propped up on a row of narwhale tusks. On either side of the front door, narrow windows faced the estuary and a dilapidated wharf, where The Rhinelander was tied up bow to stern. Next to her, two Russian fishing boats were lined up behind a sea-going canoe with a high-curved prow dominated by the widespread wings of a carved eagle. Further up the shore, barely visible in the fog, a line of groaning logs shifted back and forth like an undulating road.

A burst of laughter reached them from two men smoking cigarettes on The Rhinelander's stern.

"The only boat I been on was that prison hulk," Large Marge said. "They'll have to strip me naked and cut out my heart before I set foot on another one."

The wind shifted and The Rhinelander disappeared inside a thick blanket of fog.

The only way to the saloon was over a narrow plank laid across a wide ditch. As Zebulon stepped on the plank, a frog croaked beneath him. Looking down, he saw a goat staring up at him, methodically chewing on garbage.

He was unable to move. Once across, there would be no way back.

"Who's out there?" a kid yelled from the far end of the plank, his small body a vaporous outline in the fog.

"Are you from the boat?" the kid asked. "'Cause if you ain't from the boat, then where are you from?"

On a plank stretched between worlds, Zebulon thought as he took another step.

A rock hit the plank in front of him, bouncing into the ditch.

"Say somethin', Mister," the kid yelled, "so I know you ain't a ghost."

Zebulon took a small step. Then another, then stopped.

"What the hell," Large Marge muttered behind him. "Do I have to hold your hand?"

A frog croaked in the ditch.

The kid's words floated in the fog.

"Can you hear me, Mister?" The kid's words seemed to be floating somewhere above him.

"We're from California," Large Marge replied.

"Did you come up here to fish?"

Zebulon took another step. Now he saw the kid. He was wearing a rain slicker, rubber boots, and a black sailor's toque pulled halfway over his head.

"Hey kid," Large Marge called out. "Do they serve food in that saloon?"

"They have food, but my Ma won't let me go in. She says people get shot in there and all kinds of things."

"You mean they get shot because of the food?" Large Marge asked.

"My Ma says people go in there to play cards and fool around, and some shoot at each other and some of them never come out because they're dead."

The kid threw another rock, then two more and ran off into the fog.

Zebulon took a few more steps and suddenly he was across.

A small bandy-legged man in a sheepskin coat stood before him on the edge of the saloon's porch, taking a leak.

"Never mind the boy," he said. "He thought you might be a bunch of ghosts. He gets scared when a boat comes in and there's strangers lurkin' around. Last week he saw someone get shot and thrown into the ditch. Ever since then, he sees ghosts. When the fog is in, I make him stand out here, just so he knows there ain't no such thing as a ghost. That way he can shake hands with his fear."

He paused, looking at Zebulon. "Do I know you?" He reached for a pistol inside his belt. "Wait now I seen your likeness. It was on a wanted poster on that boat that come in, The Rhinelander. The poster was hung up in the Captain's cabin. A thousanddollar reward for the outlaw, Zebulon Shook. And he looks just like you."

Delilah walked up behind Zebulon. "Maybe you didn't hear what happened to Zebulon Shook. They hung him in Calabasas Springs, in California. The whole town turned out to see him hang. It was in the papers."

"I know what I seen," insisted the bandy-legged man. "That's all I'm savin'."

"Anyone can make a mistake," Zebulon said. "But if you're gonna dry-shoot someone, me included, do it with your whizzle in your pants."

He pushed past him into the saloon, not giving a damn, one way or the other.

The bandy-legged man looked at Large Marge and Delilah, then at the two whores laughing at him through the window

"Damn ferriners," he said as he shoved his whizzle into his pants. "Who cares who he thinks he is or who he thinks he ain't. Not me. But I know what I seen."

As Large Marge lumbered past him, she allowed her shoulder to slam into his back, causing him to fall face-forward into the ditch.

'WO OIL LAMPS HANGING FROM A LOW CEILING CAST A flickering glow over the gloomy smoke-filled room. Another row of lamps was empty or had been shot out. As they headed for the bar, they passed a rattlesnake coiled up inside a glass jar on top of a piano. The piano player glanced at them through rheumy half-closed eyes, then struck a series of rumbling dissonant chords that shook the top of the piano, causing the snake to wave its head back and forth as if looking for a way out or someone to sink its fangs into.

At the bar they drank several rounds of screech, a local whiskey that burned into their guts like branding irons. In back of the bar, an unfinished mural showed two Kwakiutl fishermen standing at the prow of a war canoe, their spears raised as they approached a spouting sperm whale. In the distance, under a dark gloomy sky, a three-masted schooner beat her way across a sun-splashed sea under full sail, four swivel guns protruding from her bow and stern. The ship was sailing towards two men and a woman sitting on a rocky shore. All of their faces were blank. Above the mural, five moose heads were lined up in a row, staring over the room with shot-out eyes.