Next to the map of Warm’s claim, Morris had made a smudged drawing of the man; but he might have been standing at my side and I would not have known it, it was so clumsy a rendering. I mentioned this to Charlie and he said, ‘Morris is waiting for us at a hotel in San Francisco. He will point Warm out and we will be on our way. It’s a good place to kill someone, I have heard. When they are not busily burning the entire town down, they are distracted by its endless rebuilding.’
‘Why doesn’t Morris kill him?’
‘That’s always your question, and I always have my answer: It’s not his job, but ours.’
‘It’s mindless. The Commodore shorts me my wage but pays this bumbler his fee and expenses just to have Warm tipped off that he is under observation.’
‘You cannot call Morris a bumbler, brother. This is the first time he has made a mistake, and he admits his error openly. I think his being discovered says more about Warm than Morris.’
‘But the man is spending the night in the streets. What is holding Morris back from simply shooting him as he sleeps?’
‘How about the fact that Morris is not a killer?’
‘Then why send him at all? Why did he not send us a month ago instead?’
‘A month ago we were on another job. You forget that the Commodore has many interests and concerns and can get to them but one at a time. Hurried business is bad business, these are words from the man himself. You only have to admire his successes to see the truth in it.’
It made me ill to hear him quote the Commodore so lovingly. I said, ‘It will take us weeks to get to California. Why make the trip if we don’t have to?’
‘But we do have to make the trip. That is the job.’
‘And what if Warm’s not there?’
‘He’ll be there.’
‘What if he’s not?’
‘Goddamnit, he will be.’
When it came time to settle I pointed to Charlie. ‘The lead man’s paying.’ Normally we would have gone halves, so he did not like that. My brother has always been miserly, a trait handed down from our father.
‘Just the one time,’ he said.
‘Lead man with his lead man’s wages.’
‘You never liked the Commodore. And he’s never liked you.’
‘I like him less and less,’ I said.
‘You’re free to tell him, if it becomes an unbearable burden.’
‘You will know it, Charlie, if my burden becomes unbearable. You will know it and so will he.’
This bickering might have continued but I left my brother and retired to my room in the hotel across from the saloon. I do not like to argue and especially not with Charlie, who can be uncommonly cruel with his tongue. Later that night I could hear him exchanging words in the road with a group of men, and I listened to make sure he was not in danger, and he was not—the men asked him his name and he told them and they left him alone. But I would have come to his aid and in fact was putting on my boots when the group scattered. I heard Charlie coming up the stairs and jumped into bed, pretending I was fast asleep. He stuck his head in the room and said my name but I did not answer. He closed the door and moved to his room and I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.
Chapter 3
In the morning it was raining—constant, cold drops that turned the roads to muddy soup. Charlie was stomach-sick from the brandy, and I visited the chemist’s for a nausea remedy. I was given a scentless, robin’s-egg-blue powder which I mixed into his coffee. I did not know the tincture’s ingredients, only that it got him out of bed and onto Nimble, and that it made him alert to the point of distraction. We stopped to rest twenty miles from town in a barren section of forest that had the summer prior been burned through in a lightning fire. We finished our lunch and were preparing to move on when we saw a man walking a horse a hundred yards to our south. If he had been riding I do not think we would have commented but it was strange, him leading the horse like that. ‘Why don’t you go see what he is doing,’ Charlie said.
‘A direct order from the lead man,’ I said. He did not respond and I thought, The joke is wearing thin. I decided I would not tell it again. I rode Tub out to meet the walker. When I swung around I noticed he was weeping and I dismounted to face him. I am a tall and heavy and rough-looking man and could read the alarm on his face; to soothe his worries, I said, ‘I don’t mean you any harm. My brother and I are only having our lunch. I prepared too much and thought to ask if you were hungry.’
The man dried his face with his palm, inhaling deeply and shivering. He attempted to answer me—at least he opened his mouth—but no words or sound emerged, being distraught to the degree that communication was not possible.
I said, ‘I can see you’re in some distress and probably want to keep traveling on your own. My apologies for disturbing you, and I hope you are heading for something better.’ I remounted Tub and was halfway to camp when I saw Charlie stand and level his pistol in my direction. Turning back, I saw the weeping man riding quickly toward me; he did not seem to wish to hurt me and I motioned for Charlie to lower his gun. Now the weeping man and I were riding side by side, and he called over: ‘I will take you up on your offer.’ When we got to camp, Charlie took hold of the man’s horse and said, ‘You should not chase someone like that. I thought you were after my brother and nearly took a shot.’ The weeping man made a dismissive gesture with his hands indicating the irrelevance of the statement. This took Charlie by surprise—he looked at me and asked, ‘Who is this person?’
‘He has been upset by something. I offered him a plate of food.’
‘There’s no food left but biscuits.’
‘I will make more then.’
‘You will not.’ Charlie looked the weeping man up and down. ‘Isn’t he the mournful one, though?’
Clearing his throat, the weeping man spoke: ‘It is ignorant behavior, to talk about a man as though he was not present.’
Charlie was not sure whether to laugh or strike him down. He said to me, ‘Is he crazy?’
‘I will ask you to watch your words,’ I told the stranger. ‘My brother isn’t feeling well today.’
‘I am fine,’ said Charlie.
‘His charity is strained,’ I said.
‘He looks sick,’ said the weeping man.
‘I said I’m fine, damn you.’
‘He is sick, slightly,’ I said. I could see that Charlie’s patience had reached its limit. I took some of the biscuits and put them in the hand of the weeping man. He gazed upon them for a long moment, then began to weep all over again, coughing and inhaling and shivering pitifully. I said to Charlie, ‘This was how it was when I found him.’
‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘He didn’t say.’ I asked the weeping man, ‘Sir, what’s the matter with you?’
‘They’re gone!’ he cried. ‘They’re all gone!’
‘Who’s gone?’ asked Charlie.
‘Gone without me! And I wish I was gone! I want to be gone with them!’ He dropped the biscuits and walked away with his horse. He would take ten steps and throw back his head to moan. He did this three times and my brother and I turned to clean our camp.