Way station, p.1
Way Station, page 1
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The Way Station
Paul Lederer writing as Owen G. Irons
ONE
In the coolness of early dawn Cameron Black stepped outside of the way station and studied the long land, the garishly colored desert sky. It was a primitive place to make your last stand, but that was what he and Virginia had chosen to do. Finish up their long, troubled careers in the virtual isolation of the desert. A few doves had already taken to wing, flying toward water holes hidden among the stone-flanked hills. A coyote glanced at Cameron and slunk away furtively. A tangle of fifteen-foot high ocotillo plants, now flowering at their tips, cut dark, thorny silhouettes against the sky which had gone from gray to crimson to gold-limned blue and soon would become a white vault above them.
Whitey Carroll, who had arrived three months before from parts unknown, was already at work cutting wood for the kitchen stove which had to be kept burning so that six meals a day could be prepared – for the westbound stagecoach, for the passengers on the eastbound and, of course for the station crew. There was no way around that although during the summer the kitchen was a furnace. But then by noon on an August day, Borrego Springs was a furnace outdoors as well as in. Lucia, the young cook would already be up, muttering small Spanish curses as she banged iron kettles and copper pots around, a lot of the action unnecessary as Cameron knew. The woman had to protest her condition in some way. Cameron tried to keep his visits to Lucia’s sanctum to a minimum. If there were any problems, Virginia would see to them. Her manner was more soothing.
Passing the corral, Cameron looked over the coach horses. They were still frisky at this time of the day; later a slow torpor would settle over them, only the twitching of their tails to chase away the horseflies indicating that they were alert in any way – and a part of that was probably reflex. They had plenty of hay and enough water – Cameron would have to tell Whitey to fill up the trough again when he was finished with his wood cutting.
The kid never objected to any job he was assigned, although he moved with painful slowness. Cameron could never tell if the young man was sun-struck or simply none too bright. Nevertheless, Whitey did all that was required of him and he would not be easy to replace out here on the empty land.
Cameron entered the dry shade of the barn. In the loft Archie Tate would still be sleeping until the heat awakened him later in the day. Tate was the hostler, and the wiry, bearded man seemed to have an internal clock which awakened him fully when it was time for an incoming stage. Then he was quick with his movements, unharnessing, hitching a fresh team with rapid skill. The rest of the time he lazed the days away in whatever shade he could find. He, too, did all that was required of him, and he, too, would not be easy to replace out on the desert. Both men were trustworthy in their own ways, and Cameron seldom interfered with their ideas of what their jobs entailed.
Having made his brief tour of the yard, Cameron returned to the way station’s office where Virginia was already going over their tally books, making up a list of supplies they were running low on to send to the head office in Santa Fe. She looked sleepy to him, but not tired, really. Her gray-streaked dark hair was tied back loosely. She had a cup of coffee at her elbow.
‘Hello, Scopes,’ Cameron Black said, entering the room which was still cool thanks to its thick adobe walls. Virginia smiled.
It was an old joke, greeting her that way. Her name now, of course was Virginia Black, but when Cameron had first known her it had been Virginia Scopes. And when he had grown angry with her for small crimes, instead of calling her ‘Ginnie’ as he had when they were both much younger, he had taken to calling her Scopes.
If Borrego Springs might seem to be a kind of a hellish life to others, they had already been through several kinds of hell along life’s trail, and this wilderness living was a kind of comfortable solitude to them at this point in their lives.
‘Could you ask Lucia how we’re doing with beans and rice? How many sacks we need for next month?’ Virginia asked, turning her young-old eyes toward her husband.
‘You want me to enter her kitchen?’ Cameron asked with mock horror which caused Virginia’s mouth to twitch into a smile.
‘You can’t be that afraid of her,’ Virginia coaxed. ‘A grown-up man like you?’
‘She’s already banging pots and pans around and the sun’s barely risen.’
‘I’m not asking you to move in with her,’ Virginia said. ‘Just ask her how we’re doing with beans and rice.’
‘If I have to,’ Cameron replied and Virginia’s smile deepened. He kissed his recent bride and started toward the kitchen. Virginia watched him go: once one of the most feared gunmen in the territory afraid of a tiny Spanish cook! She knew he was mostly kidding with her, but also that he felt uneasy about confronting any of their employees. Things were just fine the way they were; he didn’t want to disturb anyone, step on any toes.
She had met Cam so long ago that it did not seem possible that so many years had passed. As a girl she had admired the young gunfighter, cocky and sure of himself, his two guns worn low, his shoulders heavy with muscle, his dark curly hair always uncombed. She had seen Cameron take out two members of the Carson Plenty gang with a total of three shots. Her heart had fluttered with fear and pride at once.
Later the guns became too much for her. Cameron accepted all sorts of jobs, which he approached recklessly, returning to her only when he was exhausted or wounded. It was too much for a girl of her age to bear. Going to sleep at night, wondering where he was; waking in the morning wondering if he were dead. One morning when she felt that she could take no more, she had simply packed her bags and left.
He had drifted; she had drifted. Virginia had begun working in a dancehall and eventually turned to more profitable and dubious enterprises. When she had again met Cameron Black, twenty years on, she was besieged in an army outpost surrounded by Indians with her caravan of three camp-follower girls. That was when he had started calling her ‘Scopes.’ Debilitated so that he could no longer even draw his left-hand pistol, Cameron Black had nevertheless pulled them all out of a very dangerous situation.*
They had had a long ride to Santa Fe to discuss their past and their future. Neither was sure there could be another chance for them or where to even try it. They could not get past their mutual feelings of abandonment and blame, but they decided to go on with life. Cameron had landed a job with the stage company – one which no one else wanted – managing the way station at Borrego Springs and here they had landed, a tired former whore and an ex-gunfighter. They still had not worked out all of their problems, but they had married and come to Borrego, sure of one thing – their troubled past could not follow them there.
At least that was their constant hope. The long desert, barren and blank, was their final refuge, their final home. Virginia sighed and got back to the books.
Cameron found himself hesitating at the kitchen door as another pan clattered to the floor. Lucia was in a mood today. He grinned, reminding himself of the times he had not flinched at stepping into a room to face half a dozen gunmen … all those years ago … and swung the door open to find Lucia, frozen in motion with another pot held high over her head. Her dark eyes sparked, her full lips twitched, but she said nothing and slowly lowered the pot.
Lucia was young still, slender, usually friendly, but mercurial.
‘What’s the trouble, Lucia?’ Cam asked.
‘Always the same trouble!’ she spat. ‘Where is Renaldo? He does not come for me. He left to go off to make money for us so that I could be his wife and not a cook-slave.’ Her eyes suddenly moistened, and she sagged onto a straight-backed wooden chair, bowing her head. ‘I am stuck here,’ she murmured, ‘and he is off riding, I do not know where.’
‘I understand, Lucia,’ Cameron Black said. Whether the girl believed him or not, he really did. ‘All you can do is be patient. Remember, Renaldo misses you as much as you miss him. He will return.’
Lucia dabbed at her eyes with her apron and nodded her head. ‘Thank you, Señor Black,’ she snuffled.
Cameron was briefly embarrassed by the gratitude in her eyes. ‘Talk to Virginia after a while. She can probably give you better advice than I can. For now, will you check the larder and tell me how many more sacks of beans and rice you need for next month? Virginia says the list has to be sent to Santa Fe today on the eastbound stage.’
Returning to the office he found Virginia more alert, her hair brushed and pinned. She swiveled toward him in her chair.
‘Lucia sounds more subdued,’ Virginia said. ‘What was it?’
‘Renaldo again.’
‘Oh! Whatever happened to that vaquero of hers, Cam?’
‘I couldn’t guess. I never knew the kid. I just hope he’s managed to keep himself alive – for her sake.’ He handed Virginia the list of items Lucia wanted from Santa Fe – she had added a few of her own. ‘I told her to talk to you later … about times like this,’ Cameron Black said.
‘Thanks,’ Virginia said in a half-teasing tone.
‘What else was I to do? I thought you could tell her that she’s not the only one who’s ever had this happen … waiting, I mean.’
‘I know what you meant,’ Virginia said. She rose to her feet and went to him, kissing him fully but not heavily. Holding Cam at arm’s length, she asked, What are you going to do today?’
‘I thought I’d better go out after a deer. We’re down to four steers in the pen, and I don’t expect them to drive a herd in from Santa Fe anytime soon.’
‘No.’ Virginia cocked her head. ‘But you’d better wait awhile. Archie Tate is up and moving – what time is it?’
‘Just about time for the westbound – but it’s a little early.’
‘You know Archie. If he’s stirring, we’ve got a coach arriving.’
‘I’ll go and see if I can help him,’ Cameron Black said. He crossed the room, paused at the door and turned back toward her. ‘Virginia? Is this going to work out?’
‘It has to, Cam. Damnit, it just has to. There are so few trails left for us to travel.’
Black locked eyes with her for a minute, manufactured a smile, and went out into the heat and glare of the desert day.
Far out on the desert a plume of white dust could be seen rising into the pale skies. Archie Tate, seemingly alert now, was in the horse pen, selecting his four-horse team in a manner known only to him. These, the freshest, would be fitted into the coach harnesses as the used horses were hied into the corral for their rest.
‘Going to need any help, Archie?’ Cameron asked, approaching the corral. He placed his boot up on the lowest rail and squinted into the sun.
‘Do I ever?’ Archie asked, not sharply, but as if it were a slight slur on his ability. ‘Better fill these troughs, though. Those are going to be some thirsty ponies arriving.’
‘Didn’t Whitey do that yet?’ Cameron growled. Obviously the kid had not, and so Cameron busied himself with two pails, drawing water from the pump in the yard and carrying it back to the corral. By the time he was finished the coach was near enough to have form. It seemed to be Kyle Melrose driving. The narrow man with the long mustache was due, he supposed – Cameron had never taken the time to figure out the drivers’ schedules. It was of little importance. The man beside Kyle in the box Cameron did not recognize at all, but then the company was always hiring new shotgun riders. It wasn’t only the danger of the job that drove off some of their best men, but the sheer boredom and discomfort that came with the job – riding on a rocking, jouncing stage for eight or twelve hours a day, during most of which nothing at all happened. By the end of the first shift the man would have heard all of the driver’s tales and told most of his own. After that it was a heated ride across featureless land, your butt taking a beating from the hard wooden seat.
A lot of the shotgun riders went back to the job of working cattle which they had deserted, vainly looking for easier wages.
As Cameron knew, the shotgun riders could not be eternally vigilant. The sun had a way of causing a man to tug his hat low and sometimes to close his eyes. Then, when he least expected it, the coach might be hit by a gang of hold-up men with no compunction about shooting him dead. It was one of those jobs that looked romantic and interesting only to outsiders.
‘Hold up there!’ they heard Kyle Melrose shouting to his team of horses as he held back the reins. His face was grim. That, too, was not as easy as it seemed, holding back a team of four horses on the run, although most drivers slowed them to a walk a mile or so out of the way stations to make the halting of the team easier. Some of these horses were only half-broken to the harness, well-trained animals being hard to come by on the desert.
Kyle brought the stage to a halt, cursed the horses, set the brake and climbed down heavily, rubbing his legs.
‘Hello, Mr Black,’ he said as Archie Tate moved in, ready to unhitch the well-used horses.
‘Any trouble on the trail?’ Cameron asked.
‘No, thank God. But on some of these days I almost wish something would happen to enliven the run.’
‘Don’t wish anything like that on yourself.’
‘I don’t, really. One thing about these flat-desert runs is there’s not a bush or a rock to hide behind. Anyone who has a brain and wants to try a hold-up waits in the hills up there,’ Melrose said lifting his chin toward the chocolate-colored hills beyond Borrego. ‘Anything to eat?’
‘Lucia should have something up by now. You’ve just time enough to rinse off at the pump,’ Black said as Archie led the sweating team away toward the corral.
‘Old Archie,’ Kyle said, removing his hat to mop at his perspiring brow, ‘he’s cantankerous, but he’s the best hostler on the line.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Black said, his voice fading as one by one the passengers emerged from the stagecoach to make their way toward the station. Through long habit he studied each of the four of them. A portly little man in a bowler hat – marked him as a salesman or travelling businessman. A lanky older-looking man in black wearing a battered Stetson. Maybe a ranch owner on his way to visit relatives or escaping the summer heat for a while.
After them a passenger whom he did not study out of habit, but out of interest. A pretty little blonde girl in dark green with her small green hat set at a saucy angle, wide blue eyes looking around the station as if with surprise.
After her came a dark-eyed, clean-shaven man with a tight expression, clenching a red travelling-bag. He made no attempt to assist the young woman but seemed to be urging her to hurry up as if he had somewhere important to go.
‘Shall we go in?’ Kyle Melrose asked. He had returned from the pump after rinsing up and was combing his damp hair back with his fingers. ‘Or don’t you get hungry around here, Mr Black?’ The shotgun rider trailed after him and Black glanced that way. ‘His name’s McCoy,’ Kyle said looking at the man with the sad eyes, shotgun clenched firmly in his hand. ‘I’d introduce you, but I don’t think he’ll be long on the job.’
‘Soft?’ Black inquired as they made their way toward the station.
‘Not exactly, but just sort of unsuited, you might say.’
‘Not many are suited for his job,’ Cameron Black said.
‘How about you, Black? Are you suited to this job you have?’
‘I’m still here,’ was all Cameron said in response.
Whitey, who was nowhere to be found when Cameron needed him to fill the water troughs, appeared out of nowhere as the smell of Lucia’s fresh cornbread and coffee came to meet them. Well, he would talk to Whitey later, although it usually did as much good as talking to a stump. The kid lived in his own small world which was structured around repetition. He had been sent to cut wood, and he would cut wood until the sun went down, but he would not be diverted from one task to take on another.
Cameron escorted Kyle into the dining room, which remained relatively cool thanks to the thick adobe walls. The travelers were enjoying their breakfast which, Cameron noticed in passing, was cornbread and thick slices of meat cut off the last of the four hams in the smokehouse. There were no eggs. Coyotes, and at least once a bobcat, had gotten into the chicken house, destroying it and the birds. Their provisions were getting low. Cameron would have to start demanding that the people in Santa Fe honor their obligations – if they wanted hungry stage passengers fed at all. He determined to add a little note to the end of Virginia’s request. Maybe it would do no good, but it would make him feel better.
Along the plank table, lingering over coffee, Cameron saw Kyle Melrose and McCoy, his shotgun rider, in close conversation, probably concerned about the possibility of bandits when they began their ascent into the Chocolate Mountains. Further along the table he saw the man he had taken for a salesman and the cowboy, unspeaking, and the nervous-looking citizen with the wary eyes seated by himself. He did not see the young blonde, and figured that Virginia had guided her to a place where the woman could clean up.
Lucia appeared briefly in the doorway to the kitchen, perspiration beading her brow, a lank dark curl dangling across her forehead.
‘Everything all right?’ Cameron asked.
‘No one complained,’ Lucia said with a weak smile. ‘Now all I have to do is wash the dishes and start on the meal for the eastbound stage.’
‘I’m going to try to find someone to help you out, Lucia, but people looking for work don’t come by every day – maybe an ad could be placed in the Santa Fe newspapers.’
‘Who would want to take a job in this hell!’ Lucia asked, and she re-entered her furnace-like kitchen. A moment later pots and pans were being hurled around again. Although they needed Lucia, Cameron found himself wishing that the lost Renaldo would return before the young woman went insane.
