The next morning, a man in his middle fifties wearing an artillery officer's uniform sought Gamble out. He found him napping, with his back against a stone wall.
“I'm Captain Capron,” he said. “Allyn Capron Sr., actually. I am told that you were with my son yesterday when he ... well, when he died.”
Gamble pulled on the smoke-colored glasses.
“I was with him when he was hit,” Gamble said. “Not later, sir.”
“Tell me about the boy's death,” the man said, sitting down next to Gamble. “I've heard nothing definite. How many times was he shot?”
“Twice. Once in the thigh, and the second time in the chest.”
“He kept on, didn't he?”
“Yes,” Gamble said.
“He didn't quit?”
“No,” Gamble said. “He made light of the wound and urged his men to advance.”
“That's good,” Capron said. “I knew he'd die right.”
Gamble nodded.
“Well, I suppose it will be my turn next,” the man said. “It will make the third of us. His grandfather was killed in Mexico. I hope I get off five good rounds at the bloody Spaniards, and I hope that when it is my turn to go, I die right as well.”
“Your son was a fine soldier,” Gamble said. “The colonels say he was the finest soldier in the outfit, and I guess they should know.”
The man smiled and put his hand on Gamble's knee.
“You don't know what a comfort you have been,” he said. “Thank you, Sergeant. Now, is there anything I can do for you?”
Gamble studied the man and decided to trust him.
“Confidential?”
The man nodded.
“I was in some trouble in the territory,” he said. “Think you could put a word in for me with the authorities?”
Allyn Capron Sr. contracted typhoid a few days later and returned to Florida, where he died.
You see, Colonel, my real name isn't Dunbar, it's Jacob Gamble. I had to change it after I got into some trouble at Guthrie, O.T., and it seemed proper that I used my mother's maiden name. The thing is, Captain Capron Sr. had promised to help me ask for a pardon for my crimes from President McKinley, but of course there was no time to do that during the fighting in Cubaâand no point after. What I was hoping, Colonel, is that you might be able to pick up the promise the Captain had made me in Cuba. You can reach me in care of my friend and attorney, Temple Houston, Woodward, Oklahoma Territory.
Gamble stared at what he had written, and then leaned his head back against the rim of the tub. The water had become warm. He pushed the hat back on his head and looked at the sky. High above, a turkey buzzard was wheeling.
Since being mustered out at Guthrie last year, Gamble had been hiding out in No Man's Land, that narrow strip between Texas and Kansas where there was no law and damned little of anything else.
He looked at the sheet of paper again and, in a fit of anger, crumpled it into a ball and threw it. The wind caught it and carried it along the ground, like it was a tumbleweed. Agnes stepped out of the sod house and put her foot on it.
“Why'd you do that?” she asked, picking the paper up from the ground. She unfolded it and read what Gamble had written.
“Jacob, you must mail this,” she said.
“There's not a post office within thirty miles.”
“The Rock Island is laying tracks south from Liberal,” she said. “I'm sure they're past Sanford Switch by now, maybe even all the way to Texas line. The switch is only twenty miles from here. You can walk it.”
“That's optimism,” Gamble said.
“Climb out of that tub,” she said. “Shave your face and comb your hair. Your clothes are washed and ironed. I'll pack your other things.”
“Sounds like you're trying to get rid of me.”
“You've been planning your escape for weeks,” she said. “You might as well go ahead. Oh, don't give me that look. It's better to talk about it. This way, you don't have to lie to me.”
“All right,” Gamble said.
“You're not coming back, are you?”
“No.”
“Then I just want to know one thing,” Agnes said. She folded her legs beneath her, sat beside the tub, and put a hand on his forearm. “What did I do wrong?”
“Girl, you did nothing wrong,” Gamble said. “But I'm damned near thirty years older than you. It would be a special kind of sin if I stayed.”
“Not if I wanted you to.”
“Especially if you wanted me to,” Gamble said. “Find yourself a younger man, have kids or not, live a good life. Don't waste yourself on me.”
She shook her head.
“Seems that should be my decision, not yours,” she said.
“You've been living in that soddie since your Daddy dragged you here in the run of 1890,” Gamble said. “He'll be here foreverâhe's buried out back. But you're still walking and talking, and you can get out. But you won't if I stick around. You'll stay here and make a kind of living by growing potatoes and selling warm beer and weak whiskey to the odd cowboy.”
“Then take me with you.”
“So you can watch as they hunt me down and kill me?” he asked. “You might want to ask Edith Doolin about how that feels. No, Agnes, I'll not let you play that role.”
“Then don't play Bill Doolin,” she said. “You really are an old fool, aren't you? Send that damned letter, get the pardon you were promised, and come back for me.”
“And what if there's no pardon?”
Agnes hit the side of the tub with her fist, splashing water in Gamble's face. She stared at him with narrowed eyes, seemingly on the verge of telling him something, then changed her mind and looked away.
“Then you rob the biggest fucking bank you can find,” she said, “and I'll meet you in Mexico.”
T
WELVE
The panhandle seemed to stretch forever in every direction that Jacob Gamble lookedâexcept down. He walked at a steady pace, the shotgun slung over his left shoulder, a haversack riding on his right hip, the smoke-colored glasses shielding his eye from the wind and sun.
At about noon, he found a rock almost big enough to sit on, squatted down on it, and uncorked the stopper from the tin, canvas-covered canteen. The water was hot and metallic tasting. Then he unwrapped the ham sandwich that Agnes had packed him, removed half of it, and wrapped the rest back up in the brown paper and returned it to the haversack. He ate slowly, glancing idly at the dirt and scrub around him. There were clusters of buffalo bones scattered about, where twenty years before a buffalo hunterâfor profit, for sport, or simply out of boredomâhad pumped a few rounds into a herd. There were some scattered rocks embedded in the hard earth. One of the rocks, ten yards away, was bulbous and a dirty white color and had a jagged hole the size of a walnut on top.
Gamble realized it was not a rock, but a human skull.
He walked over to the skull and nudged it loose from the dirt with the toe of his boot. The skull rolled over to stare at him with blank eye sockets and a grin that was missing many teeth.
“Hello, old-timer,” Gamble said. “Been here long?”
Then the wind quieted and he could hear the thud of hooves, the rattle of trace chains, and the squeal of wood. He turned and saw a heavy wagon pulled by a team of oxen approaching from the east. The back of the wagon was heaped with a cargo of what from a distance looked like a jumble of broken up furniture, in white.
Five minute later, the wagon rattled to a stop beside Gamble's rock. The driver was a weird-looking man with wild gray hair, a face with a low brow and a broad jaw, and limbs that seemed too long for him. On the right side of his forehead was a curious discolored patch, blue and brown, that was disturbingly ugly. His clothes were filthy and he appeared unarmed, except for an enormous knife with a brass hilt that was sheathed at his belt. He set the brake, dropped the reins, and jumped from the wagon to the ground.
“What are you after?” the bone hauler asked, his eyes threatening to pop from their sockets.
“What do you mean?” Gamble asked.
“The shotgun,” the man said, snatching up a buffalo rib and tossing it in the same motion. The bone clattered on the pile already in the back of the wagon. “What are you hunting?”
Gamble turned philosophical.
“Whatever comes along, I suppose.”
“Nothing will come along,” the bone hauler said, picking up another rib bone and giving it a toss over his shoulder. It missed the wagon by a yard. “Everything's dead, all of it, just like the buffalo.”
“Well, not everything is dead,” Gamble said. “We're walking and talking.”
“We're dead all right.”
Then the bone hauler spotted the skull and scooped it into his freakishly long fingers. He examined it for a moment, then lobbed it like a ball into the bed of the wagon.
“What the hell?”
“Bones is bones,” the man said.
“That one was human.”
“Bones is getting scarce,” the bone hauler said. “Used to be, I wouldn't have to go more than five or six miles outside Dodge and have a wagon full. I have no idea where the hell we are now. Do you know?”
“No Man's Land,” Gamble said. “Old Cimarron Territory, the Seventh County, now Beaver County. The Panhandle. Dodge City is more than a hundred miles to the northeast.”
“No, I don't think Dodge is that far,” the bone hauler said, then turned his attention again to the ground. “See any more of the old fellow? Usually, there's more. Rib cage, vertebrae, long bones, fingers and toes. That noggin was pretty lightâit's been out here a long time. Maybe some poor Indian that got thwacked on the head with a stone axe and left here in the Cimarron desert and a coyote carried off the head.”
“More likely the rest of himâor herâis buried in the dirt.”
“Right, good thinking,” the bone hauler said. He dropped to his knees and began digging with the blade of his knife.
“What are you doing? The remains of humanity can't add much weight to your pile.”
“Bones is bones.”
The knife flashed, carving away dirt and sand.
“Aha!” he cried, picking a phalange from the hole. “A finger.”
“Surely that is too small toâ”
The man flung it toward the wagon. It fell far short.
“Why are you wearing that ridiculous jacket?”
Gamble self-consciously rubbed the yellow trim on his cuff. The jacket was unbuttoned over a collarless undershirt. His blue jeans were stuffed into a pair of tan cowboy boots.
“It's the only jacket I have,” he said. “We didn't wear these in Cuba, we were given them just before we mustered out. In Cuba we had wool, not khaki.”
The man continued gathering and throwing buffalo bones at a furious pace.
“Cuba,” he said. “Cuba. Don't recall hearing of that town before. What part of Oklahoma is that?”
“It's an island,” Gamble said. “About a hundred miles off the coast of Florida. There was a war there last year. Hear of it?”
“No. Who won?”
“We did,” Gamble said.
The man grunted.
“You know who is president now?”
“Sure,” he said. “Hayes. No, Garfield.”
“You're only four or five behind,” Gamble said. “It's been William McKinley for a few years now.”
“Never heard of him.”
Gamble looked at the dark splotch on the man's forehead.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Since sixty-nine or seventy, maybe.”
“That's a long time to make your living beneath the sun.”
“I told you, we're all dead,” he said. “Dead and don't know it. We're all corpses, and we just think we're eating and drinking and fucking, but it's all an illusion. The world has gone away and each and every one of us is but a shade upon the earth.”
“The cancer has made you as mad as Ahab.”
“Of course,” the bone hauler said. “But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.”
The bone hauler was on his knees, stabbing the ground savagely with the knife.
“Balls, I'll never find all of him,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Now, what am I going to do?”
“Perhaps what you were doing before.”
The bone hauler's face went slack, his eyes clouded, and his chin dropped to his chest. The knife fell from his fingers. His spidery fingers went up the side of his face to his forehead to probe the cancerous mass.
He threw his head back and let out an inhuman cry.
Then he snatched up the knife by the blade and brought it to his forehead and began scraping at the tumor. Blood flowed over his brow and into his eyes.
“Stop that,” Gamble said.
The bone hauler paused, the whites of his eyes flashing through a veil of blood. He dropped his hands and the knife slipped from his fingers.
“The cancer is killing me,” he said.
“But you can't get it out that way,” Gamble said.
“Can't get it out any way. I've consulted with surgeons. To remove it, they wanted to hack out a chunk of my brain as well. Not much of a choice, is it?”
The bone hauler tore a strip of dirty cloth from the tail of his shirt, mopped the blood from his eyes, and wound the cloth around his head.
“Would you kill me?”
Gamble didn't answer.
“Just put that shotgun against my temple and blow my brains out,” the man pleaded. “I'll fall right here, and my bones will mix with those of that old feller and make a complete set and then some.”
“I wouldn't feel right about it.”
“Told you, we're already dead. Where's the sin?”
“I cannot do it,” Gamble said.
“Coward.”
“When's the last time you've eaten?”
“I don't know.”
Gamble took the other half of the sandwich from the haversack and held it up.
“Here,” he said.
“I can't. The thought of it makes me sick.”
The bone hauler got to his feet, picked up the knife, and returned it to its sheath. He walked over to the wagon, climbed up into the seat, and released the brake.
“Where you headed?” Gamble asked.
“Does it matter?”
The bone hauler flicked the reins and the mules surged forward. The wagon passed Gamble amid a cacophony of protesting metal, leather, and wood. He watched the tailgate as it drew farther and farther ahead, then looked up at the blazing sun high in the sky.