Crucifixion River Read online

  Crucifixion River

  Marcia Muller

  Bill Pronzini

  A collection of stories

  In this Spur Award-winning story, a Pinkerton detective, a couple on the run, a wanted man, and a traveling salesman with mysterious wares all converge on the banks of Crucifixion River to take shelter from an impending storm.

  Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini

  Crucifixion River

  © 2007

  End of the Road

  “Are you going to send me back?”

  No, I thought, I’m going to put a bullet in your silly head and dump your body in the slough. Be rid of one problem, at the least. I’d never killed a woman before, but there’s a first time for everything, and she was a burden I couldn’t bear. I eased back the tail of my coat.

  “If you take me with you,” she said, “I’ll tell you how we can go on.”

  “Go on? With this blasted tree blocking the road?”

  “There’s a way around, another road intersects with this one about a mile farther south.”

  “What road? You mean the one we passed a ways back?”

  “Yes. It leads to Crucifixion River.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s…a kind of ghost camp.”

  “Nobody lives there?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Easy to spot, this track?”

  “It’s overgrown. But I know where it is…I can show you.”

  “You’re not lying to me?”

  “No! I swear it.”

  I stared at her, long and hard. Her blue eyes were guileless. Some of my rage began to ease and I let the coattail fall closed. Her death sentence had been reprieved-for however long it took us to reach Crucifixion River.

  Crucifixion River

  by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

  T.J. Murdock

  Bad storm making up. And moving in much faster than I’d expected.

  You could tell it from the bruised look of the southwestern sky, the black-bellied cloud masses, the raw whip of the November wind. Already the muddy brown water of Twelve-Mile Slough-Crucifixion Slough to the locals-had roughened, creating wavelets that broke high against the muddy banks. The ferry barge, halfway across now, rocked and strained against the bridle looped over the taut guide cable. It took nearly all the strength I possessed to keep the windlass turning. If the storm broke with as much fury as I suspected it would, the crossing would be impassable well before nightfall.

  The coming blow was a concern in more ways than one. Annabelle should have returned from River Bend an hour or more past. I hadn’t wanted her to go at all, but she had convinced Sophie to let her take the buckboard in for supplies. Seventeen now, no longer a child but not yet old enough to find her own way in the world. Headstrong, impulsive, chafing at the isolation of our lives here at the ferry and roadhouse. The trouble in Chicago was too many years ago for her to remember it clearly, and to her there was no longer any danger or any need for hiding. Perhaps she was right. But neither Sophie nor I believed it. Patrick Bellright had a long memory, and his hate for me would surely continue to burn hotly until the last breath left his body.

  On the barge, the Fosters were having difficulty with the nervous mare hitched to their farm wagon. Harlan Foster waved an arm, asking me to hurry, but it couldn’t be done. The windlass creaked and groaned as it was, and the cable made sounds like a plucked banjo string as the barge inched along. At the rear of the Fosters’ wagon, Sophie stood, spraddle-legged, against the pitch and sway. It was days like this one that I worried most about her assisting with the ferry work. She was as capable as any man, but cables had been known to snap and ferries to capsize, passengers and crew alike to drown. We could not afford to hire a man for the job, and, even if we could, I was loath to take the risk of it. We had been safe here for eight years now, but safety is illusory. People are seldom completely safe no matter where they are. And fugitives from a madman…never.

  The barge was nearing the Middle Island shore. Sophie signaled and made her way forward to lower the landing apron and attend to the mooring ropes. At her next signal, I locked the windlass and straightened, flexing the aching muscles across my back and shoulders. As Sophie tied the lines and the Fosters led their skittish mare off the barge, I turned to look up along the levee road. It was still empty, although the Sacramento stage was due from River Bend any time. But the stage was not what I was looking for.

  What was keeping Annabelle?

  Worry, worry. About the girl, about Sophie, about Patrick Bellright, about strangers, about the weather, about a hundred other things day after day. At times it seemed our lives were nothing but a plague of worry, leavened only occasionally by hopes and pleasures. If it weren’t for Sophie and Annabelle, and my writing, my life would be intolerably barren.

  The wind gusted sharply, shushing in the cattails and blackberry vines and rattling the branches of the willows lining the slough. I could hear the clatter of the loose shingle on the roadhouse roof. I had been meaning to fix that, just one of the many chores that needed doing. The roadhouse, built of weathered boards reinforced with slabs of sheet metal, stood on solid ground and was solid enough itself, but the puncheon floor inside was warped in places and in need of new boards; there was painting to be done, and a new wood stove was fast becoming a necessity. Outside, the short wharf that extended into the brown water tested rickety and at least two of the pilings should be replaced. The livery barn was in good repair, except for the badly hung door and gaps in the south wall boarding. And now winter was nigh. Another rainy season like the last would keep repair work down to the minimum necessary for reasonable comfort and survival.

  This California delta, fifty miles inland from San Francisco where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers merged, was a vast network of waterways and islands linked by ferries and a few levee roads. Its rugged beauty and fertile soil drew farmers, ranchers, fishermen, shanty boaters, Chinese laborers, loners, eccentric groups of one type and another-and not a few fleeing from justice or injustice. But it was a harsh land, too, prone to bad weather and winter flooding. As many people as it attracted, it drove out in defeat and despair. The Crucifixion River sect, for one instance.

  I shifted my gaze to the southwest, back along the levee road to where the peninsula extended into the broad reach of the Sacramento River. Stands of swamp oak, sycamores, and willows hid what was left of Crucifixion River, the settlement that had been built along the tip-more than a dozen board-and-batten shacks and a meeting house, crumbling now after seven years of abandoned neglect. The sect’s dream of a self-contained Utopian community that embraced religion and free love had died quickly, destroyed by the harsh elements and the continual harassment of intolerant locals. I held no brief for the sect’s beliefs, but I understood all too well their desire to be left alone to live their lives in peace, without fear.

  I remembered the day they’d arrived from Sacramento, three score men and women and a handful of children in a procession of wagons. Everyone had been singing, their voices raised high and joyous:

  We shall gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful ri-i-ver….

  I remembered the day they had left, too, less than two years later. That day there had been no singing. As I ferried them across the slough, the faces aboard the wagons were bleak and stoic against a cold gray sky. I wondered again, as I had many times, what had happened to them, if they’d found their Utopia elsewhere. I hoped they had.

  The Fosters and their wagon were off-loaded now, and I could see Sophie waving as they clattered up to the Middle Island levee road. She threw off the mooring lines, raised and secured the apron. Even before she signaled, I had bent again to the windlass. The
barge would be waiting here on the eastern shore when the stage arrived.

  By the time Sophie and I had it moored tightly to the shore, the first drops of rain had begun to fall. The roiling clouds had moved closer, their underbellies black and swollen, and the wind was a howling thing that lashed the slough water to a muddy swirl. The air had an electric quality, sharp with the smell of ozone.

  Sophie rubbed a hand across her thin, weathered face. “What’s keeping Annabelle? She should have been home long ago.”

  “Some sort of delay in River Bend,” I said. “No cause for concern.”

  “The storm is almost here.”

  “If she hasn’t left by now, she knows to wait it out in town.”

  “She won’t. She hates River Bend more than she does this place.”

  “Then she’ll be here before the worst of it.”

  “If she isn’t, how will we know she’s safe?”

  “The stage is due any time. Pete Dell can tell us if he’s seen her.”

  “And if he hasn’t? What then?”

  We were both thinking the same. River Bend was more than a dozen miles distant and the levee road would soon enough be a quagmire. If the downpour came fast and heavy and lasted long enough, the levees might give way at some point and render it impassable. More than one traveler had been stranded, more than one conveyance swept away in the turbulent waters.

  “Thomas…maybe I should saddle Jenny and ride toward town…”

  “No. If she’s not back soon, I’ll go.”

  There was more rain now, the drops blown, sharp and stinging, by the wind. I took Sophie’s arm and hurried us both to the shelter of the roadhouse.

  Caroline Devane

  I heard the rain begin when the coach had traveled only a few miles from River Bend. The threatening storm had been a topic of conversation between the driver and station agent in River Bend, but they had decided to continue on schedule in spite of it. I unbuttoned the side curtain to note that the sky was now dark with heavy, gray clouds. It was cold and damp in the coach. Perhaps we should have remained in town.

  When I rebuttoned the curtain, I saw the young man and woman on the seat opposite me looking at each other, their eyes full of concern. “What if the storm prevents us from crossing to Middle Island?” she asked him in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “We’ll get across.” His tone wasn’t reassuring, however. He was as tense as the woman, who had clasped her gloved fingers together and held her hands under her chin in an attitude of prayer.

  “I wish we could have taken the steamer,” she told him.

  “You know why we couldn’t.”

  They both lapsed into silence as the wind and rain buffeted the coach, causing it to rock heavily in its thoroughbraces. The storm was now full-born.

  I felt some unease myself. Clinging Carrie, my brothers and sisters had called me as a child. But as an adult woman I had sinned, suffered, and lost so much that it would take far more than a storm to unnerve me.

  Time passed slowly, it seemed. It was impossible to read or crochet in the jolting coach, so I studied the man and woman on the opposite seat. He was handsome in a raw-boned, strong-featured way; locks of brown hair that matched his mustache crept out from under his hat. She might have been beautiful, with her upswept auburn hair and large blue eyes and full lips, but her face showed lines of strain and dark circles underscored the eyes’ loveliness. She had a prosperous look while her companion, although dressed well enough, had the weathered features and work-roughened hands of a ranch hand.

  When they’d boarded the coach at the delta town of Isleton, I’d been disappointed that I was to have companions. I had taken the stage from Sacramento, rather than the river steamer, because I wished to be alone. I was starting a new life, and I needed time to prepare myself.

  I had overcome my unhappiness at their presence, however, and introduced myself. After some hesitation the woman had said that her name was Rachel Kraft. “And this is my…cousin, Mister Hoover.”

  That hesitation in Rachel Kraft’s voice had told me a great deal: the man was not her cousin. But what affair was that of mine? We were merely fellow passengers.

  I closed my eyes, trying to picture the ranch in San Joaquin County where my sister Mary lived with her husband and seven children. Mine would be a Spartan existence there, filled with hard work-very different from the comfortable life I had enjoyed in Sacramento. But that life with my husband John and my two sons was over now; I was being thrust into exile. I knew neither Mary nor her husband Benjamin wanted me. They were only offering me shelter because I had nowhere else to go.

  Fallen woman, divorced woman, shunned woman. Woman deprived of her children. Who would want such a creature?

  Hugh had, in the beginning. Hugh Branson, the lover I’d taken in my unhappiness, and cherished, and eventually found wanting. After my husband discovered our affair, the fabric of my life was torn asunder. My children were taken from me in the divorce proceedings, my former friends and acquaintances turned their backs to me, and Hugh-I’d lost Hugh as well. I’d tried to find work-I had some medical training-but word of my transgression had spread and no respectable physician or nurses’ service would have me. Life in Sacramento became unbearable. The only solution was to leave…

  The coach lurched and slid on the levee road, which by now must have been slicked with mud. Rachel Kraft cried out and clasped Mr. Hoover’s arm. The driver shouted to the horses, a sound barely audible above the voice of the wind, and the stage steadied. Mr. Hoover patted Rachel Kraft’s hand and said: “Don’t fret. We’ll be all right.”

  “If there’s an accident…”

  “There won’t be an accident.”

  “The storm’s getting worse. What if we can’t cross on the ferry…?”

  “Hush up.” It was a command, not a soothing phrase.

  The coach lurched once more, and Rachel Kraft stifled a cry. Her companion comforted her as he had before, then cast an oddly guilty glance at me. There was something wrong with the pair, I thought. She panicked at the slightest provocation, and he wavered between solicitousness and tense distraction.

  I closed my eyes again. My fellow passengers’ troubles were of no concern to me, as mine were of no concern to them. Except for their sake and that of the driver, I would not have cared if we were cast into the slough and drowned.

  Fallen woman, divorced woman, shunned woman. Woman deprived of her children.

  It would have been a fitting fate.

  James Shock

  An hour after I was ejected from River Bend, the skies opened wide and it began to rain like billy-be-damned. Well, it had been that type of day. A slip of the hand, an angry citizen crying-“Cheat!”-a hard-hearted sheriff, and here I was, out on the lonely road again in the midst of a storm. Instead of a dry livery and a warm meal in that swamp town’s only eating house, Nell and I were forced to weather the weather, as it were-where and under what precarious conditions we’d yet to find out. Pity the poor traveling merchant!

  The rain came busting down in side-slanting sheets, finding its way inside my slicker and chilling me to the marrow. Late afternoon and the sky was black as sin and the daylight all but blotted out by the deluge. The wagon lurched as Nell slogged on. Careful driving from now on, I reminded myself, to forestall an accidental plunge down the embankment to certain death. On both sides of the levee road, slough water boiled and bubbled up over the banks like soup in a witch’s cauldron. If the storm grew much worse, the road would be swamped. It wouldn’t do to be stranded out here at the mercy of the elements.

  My luck had been running fine until River Bend and the sharp-eyed citizen and that hard-nosed sheriff. There were store boats plying this delta country, but not so many that a wagon seller couldn’t make a decent living for himself. Farmers and their wives in need of clasp knives and pocket watches, writing paper and bottles of ink, saddle blankets, good maguey rope, bottles of liniment and cough syrup and female complaint medicine, needles a
nd thread, pots and pans, spices and seasonings, yards of calico and gingham. Town citizens, too, eager to buy when their local mercantiles ran out of the goods I carried in this old red and green, slab-sided wagon with the fresh-painted words on each side:

  James Shock-Fine Wares, Patent Medicines, Knives Sharpened Free of Charge

  And here and there, now and then, a few dollars to be promoted by other means. Yes, and a lonely wife or a comely young miss with a yearning for sachets and perfumes and silver Indian jewlery, and an eye for a bold young banjo-strumming traveling man.

  Oh, it was a good life most of the time. Freedom. New places and new sights, and seldom the same ones twice. Even a touch of danger, and not only from the elements. For an itinerant merchant was prey to thieves who sought his money and penniless scoundrels who attempted to pilfer his wares. Not that any of them had ever succeeded in relieving Ben Shock’s son of what belonged to him, no siree. The nickel-plated revolver I carried under my coat, and the Greener loaded with shells of ounce-and-a-half shot beneath the wagon seat, had seen their share of action since I inherited the wagon from my old man six years ago. And would again, I had no doubt.

  The wagon bucked and skidded again, and I drew hard on the reins and braced myself on the rain-slick seat. “Steady, Nell!” I called out to the old dappled gray. She’d been a fine horse in her day, but that day was nearly past. I would have to replace her soon, before she fell over dead in the trace-as the old man had fallen over dead while mixing up a batch of worm medicine that afternoon in Carson City. It was a sad thing to watch animals and folks grow old. I was glad to be young and hale. Yes, and, if I had my druthers, that was how I would die.

  But not today, and not from the fury of a gullywasher.