North of Forsaken Read online

  I wanted to keep walking, but I knew, especially with my back turned, that someone would ambush me. It’s happened before. All for the honor of a woman who probably had none.

  I turned, head tilted to one side, and looked at them as a schoolmarm might an unruly class. I rested a hand on the butt of my Schofield revolver and said, “Now look, I never saw you people in my life. All I’ve done in this town is have a drink and buy a few supplies. I’m on my way out of here right now.”

  I heard someone shout, “Liar!”

  Then things happened.

  For the record, I didn’t swing first. I do, as a rule, try to swing last. Unfortunately that doesn’t always work out the way I plan. It all depends on what you’re swinging. In your average fisticuffs match, I usually fare well. My fists and my reach are more than most men’s, unless they’re swinging a stout stick. I’ve been hit enough to know what the feeling is like, but for some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, a man who’s hit right above the ear will drop like a sack of wet sand.

  And as rugged as I like to claim I am, I am no exception to the rule. Being a connoisseur of attacks and clubbings, I can usually tell what it is I’m being hit with. This time I’d have to guess it was an ax handle. The weight, the odd-shaped circumference, the solid hickory smack as the handle connected with the side of my head left little doubt that I was about to drop like that heavy wet sack I mentioned.

  The familiar but unwelcome flowering of heat up the side of my head, the accompanying flash of blue-white light, like lightning over distant peaks, the sudden sticky taste of blood in my nose and throat, and always, the same thought occurs to me: How many such knocks can a man take before he goes dotty in the head? If I were a betting man, I’d lay odds I’ll find out one of these days.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I came around in full and dark quiet. As I lay there letting my brain figure itself out, what had happened on the sidewalk in Forsaken dribbled back to me. I did my best to pretend it was a bad dream, tried like hell to convince myself I was rolled in my blankets in a clearing of my own choosing, Tiny Boy hobbled and napping out of sight of the dwindled campfire. I hoped it was the wee hours and that soon I would feel the urge to rise, take care of my business in the alders, then boil up a pot of hot coffee on the fire.

  Yes, that’s what I hoped for, but as Maple Jack told me long ago, “Hope in one hand, mess in the other, see which fills faster.” I groped with my fingers and felt the firmness of a ticked mattress, the smooth wood edge of a well-used cot, and confirmed what I already knew, though I hadn’t let my wishes in on the truth yet: I was in a cell, once again. And near as I could remember, once again it wasn’t my fault. But this time it was more than my hard looks and the fears of locals that had landed me in the lockup. I had the feeling this time there was more to the story.

  I was still fuzzy headed, and passed in and out of a sleeplike daze, thoughts of my childhood flooding unbidden into my mind. Thomas’s appearance and subsequent news served to stir up what I had thought were long-forgotten memories. Now I know they were only sediment settled for a time at the bottom of a deep well. Who knows what else rests there?

  How long I lay like that I’m not sure. Images of who I was, who I am, floated in and out of my head like characters playing parts on a stage. I heard voices, men, women, children, old and young, all chanting names I’d heard hurled my way through the years. From the Yukon to Mexico, from Virginia to California I’ve been called nomad, drifter, vagabond, wanderer, roamer, rover, rambler, restless spirit, no-good tramp, and a few others I can’t recall. And I’ve earned a few of them, I’m sure. The harsher-spirited folks usually prefaced the name with the word ugly. The Blackfeet called me Ocritou, which means ugly one. And I’ve earned that, too.

  On top of it all, I’ve been accused of being born under a bad sign. And while I’m not much for such notions, I will admit I lead a life that sees more than its fair share of hardships and low points. Wherever I go, trouble follows like a half-starved dog after a meat wagon.

  I thought of Maple Jack, the trapper from New England with whom I spend much time and one of the few folks I ever formed a strong bond with. Years before he had taken to calling me Roamer in much the same way an uncle might call a nephew “youngster” or “boy.” I didn’t mind the name. He said it suited me, and, though, I did tell him the name I was given at birth, I preferred to be called something, anything else.

  When a man’s natural inclination is to be left alone, coupled with the fact that a face like mine is more closely associated with outlaws and bad men thinking bad thoughts and doing dark deeds, the suspicions of good folks are naturally aroused. From what I can tell, I lack that most basic of animal tendencies—the urge to be with others of one’s kind, to be part of a community, not apart from it.

  And that’s the biggest reason why I am regarded with suspicion, I would say. I like my own company. I don’t mind being around other folks, but I’m always relieved when it’s time to part. Perhaps one day that will change. But the way I look and the way I feel—is the one responsible for the other?—I’ll be regarded with suspicion for some time to come. And I guess I don’t mind.

  I’ve come close to death on a number of occasions, and for a few days following each time my thoughts will betray me and ride roughshod over the intention I have set out for myself in this life, namely to keep to myself and get lost in the wide-open West.

  It seems that, despite my own stated claims, there is a part of me buried deep who yearns for that which I travel away from—family, friends, the closeness of a community, the predictability of a life lived in one place, the unparalleled companionship of siblings.

  I thought of the two brothers who had robbed me a few years before. As vile as they seemed, they meant something to each other. I, on the other hand, meant something only to myself, and perhaps, also, to Maple Jack. But when had it ever been otherwise? My entire life had been lived largely in solitude. Even as a child when I was among a good many people, I was a lone figure.

  In that cell I wondered how many people’s lives were determined largely by news they learn in the span of two minutes. News they were not supposed to hear. The awful truth of my life was concealed from me until the night before my thirteenth birthday. I overheard Mimsy, the head cook and the woman who had raised me. She was in her cups as she was most evenings by that time, warning the newest chambermaid, Polly, to refrain from any conversation with me. She said I was a bad seed and it would only lead to her being let go from her position.

  I felt as though I’d been kicked in the gut by a mule. An anger I had never before known washed over me, and to date it hasn’t left me. I was seconds from bursting into the room and demanding to know why she said such harsh words. But she had continued speaking. I checked my youthful impulse and instead I listened. And it was in those next two minutes the entire course of my life altered.

  I learned that night that I am eldest of two children by a woman for whom the word “mother” was as inappropriate as the word “pretty” would be in describing me. She was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, and she married a well-titled young Italian man with some vague military standing. From what I’d gathered through the years, he did little in the way of officering and much in the way of justifying the incredible amount of time he spent entertaining.

  According to Mimsy, I was so unattractive at birth, the woman who bore the shame of having given birth to me refused me immediately. I was supposed to have been given the full family name of my father and my father’s father, and so on back through the line. But I was not the child they had expected and was instead disowned, ignored as the firstborn son.

  They stuck me with the name Scorfano, a cruel joke in itself, as it described my unfortunate features and none of my lineage. Their only largesse? They allowed me to be raised as an orphaned servant boy in my own ancestral home. I supposed I should be grateful they had not had me killed at birth. I was not.

  As I lay there dazed in the
Forsaken jail cell, I recalled the collision of emotions I’d experienced all at once, outside that door so many years before. I was not wanted by the people who bore me, and I was secretly mocked among the servants I’d always considered my friends. I recall feeling disbelief, outrage, and shame, all at once.

  As the servant boy, I was called simply Boy, though I was named Scorfano. As I mentioned, I was not pretty and I never will be. The difference between then and now is that I am secure in the knowledge that the blunt name given me is enough. On that night fifteen years ago, the eve of my thirteenth birthday, when I discovered the truth about my lineage, I holed up, an unwanted animal, in my own head. And it was in that cold, rock-walled cave of anger that I dwelt for years afterward.

  I made up my mind that night that I could not spend another night of my life under that roof. Since they who were my family did not want me, I did not want them. Except for a few souls about that Virginia estate who had always shown me kindness, Witter the stableman among them, I was not of that place and owed no one there a thing. Indeed, I justified my next moves based on the notion that it was they who owed me.

  I took payment for my shame and humiliation in the form of items that might prove useful to me. From the kitchens, I made off with food, and from the stables, a sheath knife, a broad-brim hat, a coat, and a horse to carry it all, plus me, as far and as fast away from there as I could make it run.

  I put that hunter through its paces for weeks following my departure. I suspected they would not follow me because they would be glad to be shut of me. One less horse in return for such a bargain would be tolerated. I hoped.

  Because I was large for my age—nearly a grown man’s height, though it would not be for another four years before I reached my full height of six foot four and full size—I was able to pass for a young man years beyond my true age, if I kept to myself and kept quiet, averting my eyes from others.

  This was easy to do because I had no intention of getting to know anyone personally ever again. I had been treated ill and the singular embarrassment that comes with discovering such duplicity stung like nothing else. Intellectually I fancied, not wholly wrong as it turns out, that I was the match of many men I might encounter. I had been taught to read at a young age by Mimsy, for despite her “cursed desire for the drink,” as she called it, she was as much a mother to me as anyone had ever been.

  She was Irish born and bred and had a deep and abiding love of books, and she passed that to me. I read and reread everything in her own meager collection, and because she was a well-liked family retainer she was allowed to borrow books from the family’s vast library, books that she passed to me to read.

  By the time of my departure I had read most of the works in that special room, a feat I’ll wager those who dwelt in the upper halls to this day have not equaled. All that reading put me in good stead for a great many situations I was to face in the following years.

  It was in this manner that I was able to survive so handily on my own with little molestation. It was also this behavior that kept me from forming any lasting friendships with anyone. A monkish mode of living served me well and appealed to me. I took to the singular life of a lone traveler on the open road as a colt takes to running. I scissored my wandering legs wide and covered a great deal of earth, fascinated and afraid all at once.

  This was before the long and hellish war that gutted the nation, and the West was a place of grandeur and awe well beyond the Mighty Mississipp, as I’d heard so many people refer to that flowage. Early days into my journeying, a talkative fellow with whom I reluctantly shared a campfire one evening outside of Saint Louis, said, “The great open West is a place where a man might lose himself forever.” I slipped into sleep that night with a smile on my face for the first time in many years. I knew where I was going and I knew what I wanted. I was heading West and I would lose myself there. Forever.

  I am still trying to do that. The war did more than delay my excursions, it nearly put an end to them. I did my best to remain impartial, but I could not. It was a complex war fought for valid reasons on both sides, but oppression of one man for another man’s gain was and is a repugnant notion to me. So I found myself wearing blue in the conflict, though even there I was a man apart from the rest. The intervening years have only served to accentuate the differences between me and my fellows. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  I lay like that, bouncing from thought to thought, in and out of sleep, for an eternity. The wet, slapping cough of another cell’s occupant pulled me finally to a state of wakefulness. I saw, fingertips pressed to my temples, arrow-straight shafts of early sunlight wheedling their way into a barred window set in the wall at head height. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable rattle and clang of cups on steel. I didn’t have long to wait.

  I cursed myself for dwelling too long on unimportant matters and pushed slowly on weak arms to a sitting position. Despite my precautions, my dim but visible surroundings lurched and shifted as if I were viewing them from atop a green mustang. The spot above my right ear was fire to the touch, swollen and jellylike. It would take time healing.

  The image of the brown-coated man danced in my brain and helped me regain perspective. The others, the dandified man and his equally tarted-up, fat female companion, were obviously either mistaken about me or hucksters of the lowest order. Was it merely that I am a stranger to Forsaken and that I look the part of a lout? Or was there more to it?

  What had been different about my day? Certainly the only answer there was Thomas’s recognition of me for whom I used to be. Those people did not seem familiar in the least, and so I must assume that they want something more, something to do with Thomas himself, perhaps? Then why would the brown-coated man warn them I was on my way outside? That had little or nothing to do with Thomas, surely. And why go to great pains to accuse me of a crime, unless it is an elaborate trick to get me out of the way?

  All of this pointed back to Thomas. He had said something in the street, something about needing help. Was he truly in danger? Why hadn’t he told me?

  I cursed myself again. You idiot, Roamer. Of course he’d been trying to tell you, but you rebuffed him at every turn, refused to listen, refused to let him speak. It could well be those people were the danger, and did not want competition for his attentions.

  I needed another conversation with Thomas. I had more questions than answers and I felt confident he could fill in some of the blank spaces in my thoughts. Before that could happen I had to deal with the pesky problem of being jailed.

  Again, I didn’t have long to wait. Keys rang together like it was raining coins outside, and into the cell block hallway stepped Thomas, my little brother.

  “Scorfano!”

  He stood next to a thin old man with a tarnished star weighing down the breast pocket of a rough-cloth shirt. Next to him Thomas looked like a visiting dignitary, out of place in his starched white shirt and black-and-gold-trimmed brocade vest. Amazing. At that distance, and coupled with one whopper of an aching head, his garb was annoying.

  The thought occurred to me then that I may have ultimately gotten the better end of the stick in this deal—I could have been raised to wear such foppery instead of the more comfortable, practical raiments of a woodsman.

  They advanced on my cell, and the old man said, “Back off’n the door a bit, fella.” He worked the keys in the metal lock, clanging and jangling, and swung the door wide. He held an ancient cap-and-ball pistol trained on me, so I stood in the middle of the cell, my hands to my head, and waited for someone to tell me what was going to happen next. I sure as hell didn’t have the strength to make anything happen.

  “Surely you don’t need that,” said Thomas, nodding at the outdated cannon in the man’s gnarled old hand.

  “Can’t hurt.”

  “But he’s free to go. I’ve paid the fine, and the lady withdrew her accusations.”

  “Man in a jail cell is a prisoner till he ain’t.”

  “He’s r
ight, Thomas,” I said, the sound of my own voice cracking and ringing in my head like an echo in a box canyon. “Will someone tell me,” I continued, in a near whisper, “what I was accused of having done?” I touched my rubbery head with tender pats.

  No one spoke. Not that I cared. Even the silence was painful. I wasn’t particularly pleased to hear the woman had withdrawn her accusations, whatever they might have been. After all, there had to be a reason, but I wasn’t about to make an issue of it . . . yet.

  One step at a time. I needed to get out on the street, head for the livery, then to freedom. The sooner I hit the trail heading northwest, the sooner I could forget about Forsaken and the young dandy facing me. I kept my mouth shut and toddled down the dim hallway.

  I was buckling on my gun belt in the outer office before I gave in to my curiosity again. I am nothing if not persistent. “Why?”

  “Pardon me?” said Thomas.

  I knew he was busting to tell me something, anything, about his rescue of me, but didn’t know where to begin.

  “Why did she decide I didn’t attack her?”

  “We came to an . . . agreement.”

  “What sort of agreement, Thomas?”

  He didn’t answer me right away.

  “What was the agreement, Thomas?”

  He looked at me and there was that little-boy shine, as if someone set a diamond glinting in his eyes.

  “It was all quite odd, really. It seems they didn’t realize you and I are old friends. Apparently the fact that I am, as the kind lady put it, a gentleman, well she naturally assumed that my vouchsafing for your presence with me was sufficient to convince her she was mistaken. The unfortunate aspect of all this is that I still don’t have a way through the wilderness myself.” He dropped to silence and admired his reflection in a half-shaded window. Subtle, he is not.