Novel 1973 - The Man From Skibbereen (v5.0) Read online

  He got to his feet, stretching his stiff muscles and scratching his head. He glanced at the wounded man. His face was haggard, and his breathing ragged … if you could call it breathing.

  Cris went to the stove, found some glowing coals among the gray wood ash and fed in some bark shredded between his palms, then some slivers of pine. He added fuel as the flames climbed, replaced the lid and went to the water barrel. The spigot yielded only a few drops.

  Taking the wooden bucket, he went to the well and drew water. There was a tin dipper, and he tasted the water. It was good, a little brackish, but good. It needed a dozen trips to fill the barrel, and then he filled the bucket, for a man never knew when water would be needed and he had no wish to be without it. Anyway, it was the pattern of his life. If a bucket was empty, you filled it. If a woodbox was empty, you filled that, too.

  There were pink streaks in the sky. He looked slowly around. He had heard the trickle of water when he’d rested under the cottonwoods, so after a glance around, he walked to them. It was quiet there, among the trees, and there was a good bit of fuel and kindling to be gathered from the ground where limbs had fallen after windstorms.

  He found the stream, a tiny one, and followed it a quarter of a mile to a notch in the hills where it flowed from a crack under a slab of rock.

  Again he looked around, but there was nothing in sight or hearing, not even a bird.

  The wounded man was still sleeping when Cris walked back to the shack, so he fried bacon, made coffee, and ate. When he had finished the bacon he dipped stale biscuits in the grease and ate that. The coffee tasted good.

  Cris Mayo was a broad, powerful young man, five feet ten inches tall, weighing nearly one hundred and ninety. He had worked hard all his life and his hands were strong from the lifting and digging. As he drank his coffee he thought about what he must do.

  He knew from overheard talk that the end of track was far to the west and the nearest trackside settlement was over a hundred miles from here. Fort Sanders, that was the name! About forty miles west there was a slough from which the trains pumped water, but there was nothing there, nothing at all but the water and the cattails that surrounded it.

  He had no idea what he should do, or could do. He had no idea when there would be another train, for the trains carrying tracklaying materials and supplies to the end of the line were few. It might be today, tomorrow, or a week from now. And it was a strange land in which he found himself, a land such as he had never seen. It was nothing like the cozy green hills of Ireland; only the endless grass stirring with the wind, and of course there was that … the wind. It blew forever, softly, gently, but always, it seemed. He walked outside and looked through the dancing heat waves toward the horizon. Only those twin rails that melted together in the distance, and not even a cloud in the sky this morning. The storm had come suddenly, gone suddenly. Well, that at least was like Ireland, the abrupt weather changes.

  He went again to the wounded man, who appeared to be worse. He muttered, seemed to argue, to protest, none of it making sense. Cris Mayo listened and tried to think out what must have happened.

  Somebody had tried to kill this man … why? Not Indians, but somebody else. Why? The man could have had nothing of value, and they had not robbed the station. Had the coming of the train prevented that? It could be, but then why had they not come back since? Or was there another reason than robbery? Something he did not know?

  Being an Irishman, he thought of politics. An Irishman is born to politics and to contention. There had always been contention with England, and often among their own people. The tribes and the septs had fought time and again. Was this something like that?

  Cris Mayo had never thought of himself as a bright man. He knew how to work and how to fight. He had acquired the ordinary skills that a working man knows, the easy ways to lift, the way to tip a barrel or a box, the way to rig a block and tackle for the best results. He knew something of his own country’s history, but he knew nothing of America or the politics of it.

  There had been a war recently, of course he knew that. A war between the states over whether they should remain one country or divide into two, and slavery had been involved.

  He had no use for slavers. Ireland had had enough of that, as had most other countries. The Danes had raided the coasts of Ireland, as had the Algerians, for slavery had been a way of life the world around until men began to build machines to do the work for them. It was the same in Africa itself, he’d heard talk of that. Over there in the tribal wars they enslaved their prisoners or sold them … it had been that way forever, so far as he knew; and like as not, all over the world, too.

  Now the American war was over, and a good many Irishmen had died in it. He’d had acquaintances who had shipped over the sea to fight for the North, but with the war finished, there was little reason to believe that this muddle here had anything to do with it.

  So what then? A robbery? The men working on the railroad must be paid somehow, and the money must be shipped westward to where they were; so that might be it, but why kill the station agent? And strip his carcass?

  Wait now! Was the holdup to take place here? He thought of that and the logic of it appealed, yet several things disturbed him. Sitting staring out over the grasslands, he tried to think of how it might be done. That was important, but even more important was the getting away. That was the thing. It was one thing to get the boodle, another to get to where it could be spent. And where did one go from here?

  He had never seen a map of the country, and his only knowledge of it was from one of his companions on the train, Mick Shannon, who had been a soldier in the Army three years ago, and had served out here. To the south there was a stretch inhabited by Indians. America had friendly Indians in the eastern part, and wild, savage Indians in the west … which was right south of here. Beyond that was Texas, and from what he had heard of Texas, anything might happen there.

  To the north there were empty plains, with more Indians ready with their scalping knives. To the west somewhere were mountains.

  Where then would they go, if robbery was the idea? And what was more to the point, where were they now?

  He was sorry he had thought of that, for they must be somewhere near, and that meant a camp, a base of operations, a place to wait until the train came.

  When he went to the wounded man again, his eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling. Cris stood beside the bed and after a minute he said, “I’ll fix some broth. You’ll be well to get something inside you, man.”

  The man’s eyes turned, and there was fear in them. “I am Cris Mayo,” Cris said. “I got left behind when the train stopped. I was headed for the end of track to be a-helpin’ with the liftin’ of rails and the swingin’ of hammers, like.”

  He stirred the fire and shaved some beef jerky into the hot water he’d kept, and after a bit of stirring he carried it to the wounded man and spooned some of it into him. The man took half a dozen spoons and then shook his head weakly.

  “You’ve been beaten,” Cris said, “and shot, and stripped.”

  The man stared at him, his lips fumbling at words that wouldn’t come.

  “I found you out back.” Cris pointed. “You came up through the rain. It is in my mind that you were hauled away from here, hidden and left for dead. It was not Indians, I think?”

  “No.”

  It was the first word. The man closed his eyes.

  Cris hesitated. The man should rest, but desperately he needed to know. “Why?” he asked.

  The man shook his head. Cris squatted on his heels. “How many?” he said. “You’d best tell me. They might come back.”

  The eyes opened. “The train!” he whispered hoarsely. “Sherman!”

  “How many? Who are they?”

  “Ma … many. Nine, ten … more.” The wounded man struggled to rise, got to his elbows. “Call … must call! Help me!”

  “You lie down now. Take it easy, man. You’ll be needing rest. There’s t
ime—”

  “No! No time! The train!”

  “Is it a holdup?”

  “Sherman … it is Sherman.” The man’s voice trailed off and he fainted, falling back upon the bed.

  Sherman? He knew nothing of outlaws in the west. Whoever this Sherman was, he had the telegrapher scared. Mayo walked from front to back, staring out at the grasslands. They were returning, a lot of them, and they’d try to stop the train … but when? When was a train coming and why did they want to stop it?

  “Crispin Mayo,” he said aloud, “this is no affair of yours. Get out of here, hide down yonder where the trees grow. You have no part in this. You came over from County Cork to lay track, and you’d best be at it, and nothing else at all.”

  Yet he was not a callous brute, he could not leave a wounded man who needed care. He went to the telegraph key and banged away on it, but this time there was no chattering response, no sound at all. He tried again … nothing.

  He took out the pistol and examined it, looking to the loading of it. After a time he figured the weapon out.

  He walked from door to door staring outside, but there was nothing. It was hot and very still. He took off his black coat. It was growing shabby. He combed his hair in front of a piece of broken mirror. His hair looked black when wet down, but was actually a very dark red, something you couldn’t see unless it caught the sun.

  He wore a candy-striped shirt and sleeve garters. His arms bulged with muscle, the kind they could use out there, laying track. He wiped the dust off his heavy brogans and tried to brush his pants clean. Then he looked out the doors and windows again.

  It was very hot, and very still. He stared toward the relative coolness of the cottonwoods, but dared not leave the station.

  He looked down at the pistol he was wearing and strutted a little. If they could only see him now! If only Maire could see him!

  He went back inside and rummaged about for something to read. He found a newspaper, several weeks old, and a book by Oliver Optic that was quite new. It was called Brave Old Salt.

  He opened the paper. Advertisements for patent medicine, the Sioux on the rampage in Dakota, and somebody named Rowdy Joe Lowe had killed a man: his second, some said, others claimed it for his third. A young girl lost with two children … he tried the silent telegraph key again, but there was no response.

  Walking outside onto the platform, he stood alone in all that vast and empty silence, staring along the tracks. His eyes followed the wires. As far as he could see in either direction they seemed intact, but he knew they had been cut. And the notion began to grow in him that if you wanted to stop a train, then just to make sure it stayed put you’d tear up a bit of the track farther on.

  Out of the tail of his eye he caught movement, and turned. Far out on the grass, a black dot. Then there were two … no, there were four … five.

  They came in dozens then, huge things with shaggy heads. Big, black cattle they were, like none he’d seen before, and all matted from rolling in the mud. All day long they kept coming, some of them brushing against the shack, and when night lowered they just bedded down where they were, paying no mind to the building or the men inside it.

  Little it was that Crispin Mayo slept that night, for the great creatures muttered and moaned, sometimes their horns clashed, and several times one arose to stretch and scratched himself so vigorously against the corner that the shack rocked on its base.

  It was after midnight when the wounded man awakened, and Cris sat down by him. “It’s all right now. It’s a grand hearty lad you are, and you’ll be up and about soon.”

  The muttering stopped, and clear and sharp the voice said, “Who is it? Who is there?”

  “It’s me. The Irish lad left behind by the train.”

  “Train!” His voice shrilled until Cris feared he would frighten the beasties out yonder. “It’s the train they’re after. It’s murder they plan!”

  He muttered, cried out loudly a time or two, and only the fact that the great herd of beasts was now lying several hundred yards away kept them from milling about and perhaps knocking down the little station.

  Cris Mayo paced the floors of the two rooms. All was still. He was worried, knowing nothing he could do for the wounded man, and no way in which he could tell anyone of the trouble they were in. He could only wait for the next train to arrive and hope that the man would live that long, and that the bad ones, whoever they had been, would come no more. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, but could not sleep.

  Hours later he was startled by a shot. He lunged up from the floor, then dropped to his hands and knees, groping for the rifle. Suddenly, some distance off, there was another shot, then a thunder of hoofs. He threw open the back door and by moonlight he saw them coming.

  Rushing out, he waved the red lantern he had kept lit in order to stop any train that might come through, and he shouted. Then, drawing the pistol, he fired it at the approaching mass. A big bull went to his knees not thirty paces off, started to scramble up, but another shot dropped him.

  Cris fired again, saw another stumble but recover. Waving the red lantern and shouting, he managed, with the help of the fallen bull, to turn some of them. Backing up, he paused at the door to fire again. He scored, and a second animal fell.

  Holstering the pistol, he grabbed the rifle from its place by the door, and wasted at least six shots that had no effect on anything. A big bull leaped one of the fallen animals, hit the corner of the station with a shoulder, jarring it to its foundations, then charged on.

  Again he fired, point-blank, but the beast crashed by as though Cris had but breathed in its face.

  The herd thundered on, parted now by the fallen bodies as well as by the building. Cris fumbled with the pistol, reloading it. When he looked through the door into the other room the wounded man was up on one elbow. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Those black cows. They rushed upon us after somebody shot at them.”

  The man lay back down. “Buffalo. They’re buffalo. The building shook. I thought it was going.” The man lay still, breathing hoarsely. “Who are you?”

  “The train left me. I told you.”

  “Can you handle a key? We’ve got to send word.”

  “I can’t, but it makes no difference. The wire’s destroyed and silent. I think it was cut.”

  “Likely. Likely they’ve torn up some track, too.”

  “It was my own thought,” said Cris. “Who is it behind the trouble? Is it you they’re after?”

  “No.” He looked at Mayo, trying to make up his mind. This man was a stranger, yet he looked like what he said he was. He wore a square derby, a shabby but neatly brushed suit, heavy brogans. Certainly he was no Western man. “They’re a bloody lot of renegades. They’re going to take the train. I heard some talk after they’d caught me in bed and beat in my skull, and thought I was dead.” He paused. “They shot me out back there, when they found I was still alive, and dragged me a ways off to hide me. They want to kill somebody on the train, and I believe it’s General Sherman.”

  “Why, is he important?”

  “He is. And he led the march from Atlanta in Georgia to the sea, burned plantations, tore up railroads, wrecked the country; but it broke the back of the South and helped to end the war.”

  “Is he on the train?”

  “They think so. He’s supposed to be coming west. It’s an inspection tour, or something of the kind.”

  The wounded man closed his eyes and lay still, thinking. There was nothing he could do, no matter how much he worried over the situation. If the wires were down … and he had heard no sound from the instrument … they were helpless. Nor had he any idea just where or how the renegades hoped to seize the train. He tried to run over the possibilities in his mind, and he was still thinking of it when he fell asleep.

  Crispin Mayo went to the door and peered out. It was very dark. There were stars enough, and he could see the dark bulk of the two buffalo he had killed. They represented
meat, and as he looked at the hugeness of them he thought briefly of what such a vast mound of food would have meant to him at various times in the old country.

  There he would have known what to do, what to do about everything; but all was strange here. The menace of “they,” whoever they were, worried him. He had no part in this fight, and wanted no part in it. They had tried once to kill the man within, and when they stampeded the buffalo they were probably meaning to wipe out all trace of the telegrapher and perhaps of the station. But what had that to do with Cris Mayo?

  The few moments of mental clarity on the part of the agent had helped him none at all, and it was gradually coming to him that nothing was going to help. He was caught in the midst of something that could mean the death of him and of all those fine dreams of going home to Maire Kinsella with her pert nose and freckles.

  Ah, those fine, foolish dreams! He had thought to return wearing fine clothes, with a great golden ring on his finger, and driving a flashy pair of blacks … he’d show them! Well, now he’d be lucky if he got out of this alive.

  He would fight. Naturally he would fight. It was never truly in his mind to do anything else, however he grumbled over it. That was the only way he knew, and he looked at the great dead black beasts yonder with a kind of pride. He had fired at them, and he had hit them. At the same time a wary little something in his mind warned him that they had been coming in a mass and how could he have missed? Be sensible, boyo, he warned himself, do you not be betrayed by a bit of luck.

  Morning came again, and with it a renewed sense of vastness, of the enormous dome of the sky, of the sweep of the endless grass bowing before the wind. He recalled his village in Ireland, which could be dropped into this grassland and lost. Indeed, the whole of Ireland could be lost here.

  He backed away from the thought, and glanced around the shack’s rooms, where things were small, confined, easily understood. When he looked outside, the sheer size of it all overwhelmed him, yet there was also the fact that the soil was good. He had run it through his fingers … you could grow barley here, or rye or wheat, and you could grow potatoes… .