her shotgun into the air. The pellets struck an overhead gas lamp that exploded when it hit the floor, sending a rush of flames roaring toward the ceiling.
“Hurrah fer mountain doin’s!” Zebulon shouted.
He yanked off a large gold nugget that hung from a string around the clerk’s neck.
“For settlement,” he said.
Then he picked up an ax handle and knocked over a shelf of air-tights and smashed a window as customers grabbed whatever goods were close to hand and started for the door.
Zebulon found Annie May slumped underneath the table, a bullet through her chest. As he gently gathered her into his arms, a barrel of kerosene exploded behind them, collapsing the ceiling, blowing out windows, killing two miners, and setting the building on fire.
Zebulon carried Annie May outside and laid her on the sagging wooden sidewalk. Around them, a line of men were hand-rushing buckets of water to pour on the flames.
Annie May’s voice faded to a whisper. “Deer is deer… elk is elk and this mountain oyster is a gone coon… I done you wrong a time or two, son, as you did me… but that’s family.” She raised herself up, trying to see him as her eyes clouded over. “Always figured I’d go out the old way. Straight up and on my own breath… But we caused a commotion in this town, did we not, son?”
“So we did, Ma,” he answered.
“Did I ever tell how Hatchet come to be with us?”
“You never did,” he replied, even though she had told him endless times.
“Pa won him from a Mex at a rendezvous down on the Purgatory… Everything was in the pot, everything the Mex had—his traps, horses, pelts, and even little Hatchet as a throw in. No more than a stump, he was. When Pa palmed the last card, he got caught, which bothered him enough to carve the Mex up for callin’ him out. Pa took Hatchet back with him out of guilt, and maybe because he thought he could use another hand. He was always one for slaves, your pa…”
Her voice stopped and he thought she was gone, until he heard her again.
“Are you with me, son?”
“I’m here, Ma.”
“All right, then. Hatchet was a weird boy. Always tryin’ to drown you in the river. And then you tried to do the same to him, just to get even… When you find your pa… tell him… Hell, don’t tell him nothin’. He never did a damn thing for us except bring misery. And now he’s trotted off to the gold fields. The old cocksucker.”
She looked up, her eyes pleading with his not to ever let her go, and then she died.
He sat holding her as the lines of water buckets were passed back and forth. When the fire was out, the sheriff and the owner of the trading post, along with several clerks, surrounded him with drawn pistols. One of the clerks carried a rope with a noose tied at the end.
As Zebulon was pulled to his feet, Hatchet Jack galloped through the crowd, pulling a saddled horse behind him.
Shots were fired, but before anyone could mount up to follow, Zebulon and Hatchet Jack had disappeared down the street.
Ten miles outside of town they parted company, Zebulon for old Mex, Hatchet Jack for California, where he figured to make peace with Elijah.
When Zebulon reached the high desert he hesitated, then rode back to the mountains. Two days later he arrived at the cabin in the middle of the night. His ma’s deck of cards was still spread out on the table. He removed a card and pushed it back into the deck without looking to see if it was the queen of hearts. What’s done is done, he thought, lighting up her clay pipe and sitting down at the table. And none of it was coming back. No more mountain doin’s. All gone. Forever gone.
Not able to sleep in the house, he went outside and built a small fire. When the first light of dawn prowled like a hungry predator over the mountains, he picked up a burning stick and tossed it inside the door. Then he walked around the burning cabin, yelling to his ma his last mountain goodbyes: “Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh!”
When he reached the end of the valley, he turned for a last look. All that remained was a thin cloud of smoke drifting into the sun.
From then on, it was a fast ride across the high desert toward Mexico, with a pause in Alamogordo long enough to hold up the town bank—an act that he performed with such careless disregard for his own safety that he not only escaped without a scratch, but with half a saddlebag of gold coins. Continuing south by southeast, he heard distant gunshots and shifted his direction, narrowly avoiding a band of White Mountain Apaches trapped inside a basin by a platoon of black cavalry. The next day he crossed the Rio Grande, then rode east across Chihuahua toward the Gulf of Mexico and down to Vera Cruz, where no one asked or cared who he was or where he came from.
In Vera Cruz he rented a room in the best hotel, spending his money on the sultry passions of a one-armed saloon singer who played with his broken spirit like a seasoned cat before a kill. Never mind, he told himself; Miranda Serenade, for that was her billing, healed the cravings of his body if not the confusions of his heart. Within a week, he had moved into Miranda’s room above the saloon; his only excursions were nightly visits downstairs, where he gambled compulsively and bought wall-to-wall drinks after each set of his lover’s sentimental love songs.
Miranda was pleased with him, at least for openers, as he was handsome and profligate enough to ease her constant insecurities about money and advancing age. He bought her a black pearl necklace and an elegant horse and carriage and filled her head with fanciful plans. The most prominent being a mad scheme he had overheard on the waterfront about a company of men led by a General Walker, all of them skilled adventurers planning to conquer Nicaragua—a conquest, he assured her, that was bound to be successful. She would be with him every step of the way, he promised, his muse, his fiery goddess, even his minister or queen of culture if that was her inclination. They would inhabit a palace in León or Granada, with all the finery of European royalty. She would have her own saloon, maybe two, and enough servants to satisfy every whim. If they grew bored running the country, they could retire to Madrid or Bahia or the new city of San Francisco, where half the planet now seemed to be headed. Or all three. It didn’t matter. The choice would be hers. Of course, neither of them believed a word, his plans having been conceived after an afternoon of compulsive lovemaking followed by generous dollops of laudanum. Miranda’s designs were more practical: an upscale milliner’s shop for aristocrat ladies or a music palace in the center of town. Business first. Baby second. Love, if not exactly an afterthought, a distant third.
When his money ran out after an all-night card game, he was unable to face Miranda’s wrath. Looking down at her as she lay sleeping in the black silk nightgown he had bought her that very morning, he kissed her for the last time and shut the door softly behind him.
Twenty miles into Texas, he noticed a wanted poster nailed to the side of a feed store:
Zebulon Shook Wanted Dead or Alive for
Bank Robbing, Murder, Arson, and Horse Theft.
It wasn’t his reputation or fear of the law that made him return to Vera Cruz. The pathetic truth was that he missed Miranda Serenade, a raw and vulnerable feeling that he had never experienced before.
~ ~ ~
Miranda greeted him at the door in the middle of a steamy, claustrophobic
