Crucifixion River Read online

  “No, I wouldn’t feel right…”

  “Please.”

  Our eyes locked-two stubborn, proud women.

  “You’re going away,” she said, “you’ll need it…”

  “I’m not going away and I don’t need it. Joe and I decided to return to the ranch when he’s able to travel. My late husband’s affairs have to be put in order and there are other things that need attending to. After that…well, we’ll see.”

  “Still, I can’t take money from you…”

  “It’s not a gift, it’s a loan. I can have a paper drawn up to that effect if you like.”

  “But you hardly know me…”

  “I know enough. You’re good and honest and caring and you’ve already paid a high price for your sins. You shouldn’t have to pay any more.”

  “I…I don’t know what to say…”

  “Say yes. It will make starting your new life so much easier.”

  She was silent for several seconds. Then, slowly: “Well, if it’s to be a loan…”

  “From one new friend to another.”

  I pressed the pouch into her hands again. This time she kept it, her eyes bright with tears.

  Two stubborn, proud women, one strong, the other learning how to be.

  T.J. Murdock

  In the darkened bedroom I lay waiting for the pain in my bandaged shoulder to ease. It had been a long, rough ride in Shock’s wagon with Nesbitt driving and Annabelle making me as comfortable as she could inside, and the removal of the buckshot and treatment of my wounds had been another ordeal. But all I cared about, then and now, was that Annabelle was safe and unhurt.

  “How’re you feeling, Murdock?”

  Nesbitt. I hadn’t even heard him come in. If I’d been more alert, I might have been surprised to see that he wore one of my old, grease-stained dusters, unbuttoned, over a black broadcloth suit.

  “Drowsy,” I said. “Sophie gave me laudanum.”

  “You’ll have a doctor soon enough. You and Hoover both.”

  “I won’t be in any shape to travel for a few days. You figure on staying here until then?”

  Instead of answering, he said: “Pete Dell’s ready to travel right now. I told your wife I’d help her and Annabelle winch the stage across to Middle Island.”

  “That why you’re wearing my duster?”

  “That’s why.” There was a little silence and I could feel the pain dulling, my eyelids growing heavy. Then he said: “I owe you thanks for saving my life in Crucifixion River. Another second and Shock would’ve blown my head off with that Greener.”

  “I know it.”

  “You could’ve waited and let that happen before you shot him. Some men in your position would have, to save their own hides.”

  “I’m not one of them.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re not. Not the kind of man Patrick Bellright thinks you are at all.”

  “Won’t make any difference to him when you hand me over.”

  “I won’t be handing you over.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “Say that again.”

  “I’m not giving you to Bellright,” Nesbitt said. “Seems I made a mistake…you’re not Harold P. Baxter, you’re T.J. Murdock. Soon as the stage is ferried across, I’ll be heading to River Bend to talk to the sheriff and send you a doctor, then on back to San Francisco.”

  “But…the reward…?”

  “To hell with the reward. I’ve gotten along well enough on a Pinkerton salary and I’ll keep right on getting along. I don’t need a piece of land in the Valley of the Moon.”

  I was too numb to ask what that meant. All I could manage was: “Why?”

  “You saved my life, now I’m returning the favor. Simple as that. And you can quit worrying about somebody else like me finding you. It’s not likely to happen, and, even if it did, it’d have to be before next summer. After that it won’t matter.”

  “Won’t matter? What do you mean?”

  “I checked up on Bellright before I came out here. The old bugger’s dying of cancer. He’ll be gone in six months and his vendetta with him.” Nesbitt went to the door, then stopped again long enough to say: “I hope you keep on writing for the Argonaut and The Overland Monthly, Murdock. I really do enjoy those sketches of yours.”

  Then he went out and left me to the first real peace I’d known in eight long years.

  Free Durt

  by Bill Pronzini

  They were out for a Saturday drive on the county’s back roads when they saw the sign. It was angled into the ground next to a rutted access lane that wound back into the hills-crudely made from a square of weathered plywood nailed to a post. The two words on it had been hand drawn, none too neatly, with black paint.

  FREE DURT

  Ramage laughed out loud. “Look at that, will you? Proof positive of the dumbing down of America.”

  “Oh, don’t be so superior,” Carolyn said. “Lots of people can’t spell. That doesn’t mean they’re illiterate.”

  “D-u-r-t? A five-year-old kid can spell dirt correctly.”

  “Not everyone’s had the benefits of a college education, you know. Or a cushy white-collar job.”

  “Cushy? Anytime you want to trade, you let me know. I’d damn’ well rather be a school administrator than an ad-agency copywriter any day.”

  “Sure. At half the salary.”

  “Beside the point, anyway,” Ramage said. “We were talking about that sign. Whoever made it couldn’t’ve got past the first grade…that’s the point.”

  “You can be such a snob sometimes,” she said. Then: “I wonder why they’re giving it away?”

  “Giving what away? You mean dirt?”

  “Well, out here in the country like this. Why don’t they just spread it over the fields or something?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “And where did they get so much that they have to give it away for nothing? Some kind of construction project?”

  “Could be.” He slowed the BMW, began looking for a place to turn around. “Let’s go find out.”

  “Oh, now, Sam…”

  “Why not? I’d like to know the answer myself. And I’d like to meet somebody who doesn’t know how to spell dirt.”

  She put up an argument, but he didn’t pay any attention. He drove back to the rutted lane, turned onto it. It meandered through a grassy meadow, up over the brow of a hill, and down the other side. From the crest they could see the farm below, nestled in a wide hollow flanked on one side by a willow-banked creek and on the other by a small orchard of some kind. The layout surprised Ramage. He’d expected a little place, rundown or close to it, something out of Appalachia West. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  It wasn’t just that the farm was large-farmhouse, big barn, smaller barn, chicken coop, two other outbuildings, a vegetable garden, the rows of fruit trees, fences around the house and along the lane farther down and marching across the nearby fields. It was that everything was pristine. The buildings, the fences gleamed with fresh coats of white paint. The wire in the chicken run looked new. There wasn’t anything in sight that seemed old or worn or out of place.

  “Whoever owns this may not know how to spell,” Carolyn said, “but they certainly know how to keep things in apple-pie order.”

  Ramage drove down between the fences and into the farmyard. A dog began to bark somewhere in the house as he nosed the BMW up near the front gate. Once he shut off the engine, the noise of the dogs and the clucking of chickens and the murmur of an afternoon breeze were the only sounds.

  They got out of the car. The front door of the house opened just then and a man came out with a dog on a chain leash. When Ramage got a good look at the man, he thought wryly: Now that’s more like it. Farmer from top to bottom, like the one in the Grant Wood painting. In his sixties, tall, stringy, with a prominent Adam’s apple and a face like an old, seamed baseball glove. He’s even wearing overalls.

  As he brought the dog out through
the gate, Carolyn moved close to Ramage and a little behind him. Big dogs made her twitchy. This one was pretty big, all right, some kind of Rottweiler mix, probably, but it didn’t look very fierce. Just a shaggy farm dog, the only difference being that its coat was better groomed than most and it didn’t make a sound now that it was leashed.

  “Howdy, old-timer,” Ramage said to the farmer. “How you doing?”

  “Howdy yourself.”

  “We were driving by and saw your sign down by the road.”

  “Figured as much. Brings visitors up every now and then.”

  “I’ll bet it does.”

  “Interested in free dirt, are you?”

  “Might be.”

  “Can’t get but a couple of sacks in that little car of yours.”

  “We couldn’t use any more than that. You the own er here?”

  “That’s right. Name’s Peete. Last name, three e’s.”

  “Sam Ramage. This is my girlfriend, Carolyn White.”

  Carolyn gave him a look. She didn’t like the word girlfriend. Ms. Feminist. But, hell, that was what she was, wasn’t it?

  “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Buck.”

  “He doesn’t bite, does he?” Carolyn asked.

  “Not unless I tell him to. Or unless you try to bite him.”

  That made her smile. “You have a nice place here, Mister Peete.”

  “Suits me.”

  “Must take a lot of work to keep everything so spick-and-span.”

  “Does. Always something that needs tending to.”

  “Keeps you and your hired hands busy, I’ll bet.”

  “Don’t have any hired hands,” Peete said.

  “Really? Just you and your family, then?”

  “No family, neither.”

  “You mean you live here alone?”

  “Me and Buck.”

  “Must be kind of a lonely life, ’way out here, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I like it. Don’t like people much.” Peete was looking at Ramage’s right hand. “Some trick you got there, young fella,” he said.

  Ramage grinned. He’d been knuckle-rolling his lucky coin back and forth across the tops of his fingers, making it disappear into his palm and then reappear again on the other side.

  “That’s his only trick,” Carolyn said. “He’s so proud of it he has to show it off to everybody he meets.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to her. Her only trick is running her mouth.”

  “Never seen a coin like that,” Peete said. “What kind is it?”

  “Spanish doubloon. I picked it up in the Caribbe an a couple of years ago.”

  “Genuine?”

  “Absolutely.” Ramage did three more quick finger rolls, made the coin disappear into his hand, and then into his pocket. “I don’t see this free dirt of yours, old-timer. Where have you got it?”

  “Barn yonder.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Peete led them across the farmyard to the smaller of the two gleaming white barns, the big dog trotting silently at his side.

  On the way Ramage asked conversationally: “What do you keep in the big barn? Cows?”

  “Don’t have any cows.”

  “Sheep? Goats?”

  “No livestock except chickens. Big barn’s for storage.”

  “Farm equipment?”

  “Among other things.”

  When they reached the smaller barn, Peete unlatched the double doors and swung one of the halves open. Ramage could smell the dirt before he saw it, a kind of heavy, loamy odor in the gloom. It was piled high between a pair of tall wood partitions, not as much as he’d expected, but a pretty large hunk of real estate just the same-ten feet long, maybe twenty wide, by seven or eight feet high. He moved closer. Mixture of clods and loose earth, all dark brown with reddish highlights. Some of it toward the bottom had a crusty look, as if it had been there for a while; the rest seemed more or less fresh.

  “What makes this dirt so special?” he asked the farmer.

  “Special?”

  “Well, there’s a lot of it, and you keep it in here instead of outside, and you give it away free. How come?”

  “Best there is. Rich. Good for gardens, lawns.”

  “So why don’t you use it yourself, on that vegetable garden behind the house?”

  “I do. Got more than I need.”

  “Where does it come from?” Carolyn asked. “Some place on your property?”

  “Yep. Truck it in from the cemetery.”

  She blinked. “From the…did you say cemetery?”

  “That’s right. It’s graveyard dirt.”

  There was a little silence before Ramage said: “You’re kidding.”

  “No, sir. Gospel truth.”

  “Graveyard dirt?”

  “Yep.”

  “From a cemetery on your property?”

  “Yep. Old Indian burial ground.”

  “Never heard of any Indian tribes around here.”

  “Long time ago. Miwoks.”

  Carolyn asked: “You don’t desecrate the graves, do you? Just so you can carry off a lot of rich soil?”

  “Nope. Do my digging in the cemetery, but not where the graves are.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m sure. You would be, too, if you saw the place.”

  “Miwoks?” Ramage said. “I didn’t think they ranged this far south.”

  “Nomadic bunch, must’ve been.”

  “Nomads don’t build cemeteries for their dead.”

  Peete fixed him with a squinty look. “Don’t believe there’s a burial ground close by, that it?”

  “Let’s just say I’m skeptical.”

  “Prove it to you, if you want,” Peete said. “Take you over and show it to you.”

  “Yeah? How far away is it?”

  “Not far. Won’t take long.”

  Ramage looked at Carolyn.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “count me out.”

  “Real interesting spot,” Peete said. “Artifacts and things.”

  “What kind of artifacts?” Ramage asked.

  “Arrowheads, bowls, pots. Just lying around.”

  “Uhn-huh.”

  “Fact. See for yourself.”

  “Not me,” Carolyn said. “I don’t like cemeteries. And I’ve seen all the Native American artifacts I care to see.”

  “No damn’ spirit of adventure,” Ramage said.

  “You go ahead if you want. I’m staying right here.” She meant it. And when she got stubborn about something, you couldn’t change her mind for love or money.

  Ramage said disgustedly: “All right, the hell with it. I guess we’ll have to take your word for it, old-timer. About the dirt and the burial ground, both.”

  “Some do, some don’t. Suit yourself.”

  “For now, anyway,” Ramage added. “Maybe some other time.”

  “Anytime you want to see it.” Peete gestured at the pile of free dirt. “How many sacks you want?”

  “None right now. Some other time on that, too.”

  Peete shrugged, led them out of the barn into the sunshine. He closed the doors, set the latch, and started to move off.

  “Hold on a second,” Ramage said. And when the farmer stopped and glanced back at him: “About that sign of yours, down by the road.”

  “What about it?”

  “Don’t take offense, but you misspelled dirt.”

  “That a fact?”

  “It’s with an i, not a u. D-i-r-t. You might want to correct it.”

  “Then again,” Peete said, “I might not.”

  He took the dog away to the house without a backward glance.

  Carolyn said: “Did you have to bring up that sign?”

  Ramage ignored her until they were in the car, bouncing down the rutted lane. Then he said, more to himself than to her: “Some character, that Peete.”

  “You think he’s just a dumb hick, I suppose.”
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  “Don’t you?”

  “No. I think he’s a lot smarter than you give him credit for.”

  “Because of that business with the dirt and the Indian burial ground? I didn’t believe it for a minute.”

  “Well, neither did I,” she said. “That’s the real reason I didn’t want to go along with him. The whole thing’s a hoax, a game he plays with gullible tourists. I wouldn’t be surprised if he misspelled dirt on that sign just to draw people like us up here.”

  “Might have at that.”

  “If we’d gone along with him, what he’d’ve shown us is some spot he faked up with Native American artifacts and phony graves.”

  “Just to get a good laugh at our expense?”

  “Some people have a warped sense of humor.”

  “Didn’t look like Peete had any sense of humor.”

  “You can’t tell what a person’s like inside from the face they wear in public. You ought to know that.”

  “I’d still like to’ve seen the place,” Ramage said.

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Satisfy my curiosity.”

  “You’d’ve been playing right into his hand.”

  “Still…I can’t help being curious, can I?”

  He stayed curious all that day, and the next, and the next after that. About the fake Miwok burial ground, and about Peete, too. How could the old buzzard afford to pay for all the upkeep on that farm of his, and give away good rich soil, when he had no help and no livestock except for a few chickens? Crops like alfalfa, fruit from that small orchard? Maybe he ought to drive back out there, alone this time, and have a look at the “cemetery” and see what else he could find out.

  On Friday afternoon, Ramage decided that that was just what he was going to do.

  The snotty young fella named Coolidge said: “I don’t believe it.”

  “Gospel truth.”

  “Graveyard dirt from some old Indian cemetery?”

  “Every inch of it.

  “And you truck it in here and hoard it so you can give it away free. You think I was born yesterday, pop?”

  “Prove it to you, if you want.”

  “How you going to do that?”

  “Burial ground’s not far from here,” Peete said. “Other side of that hill yonder.”