Gunsights - Leonard Elmore John - Страница 35

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Franklin sat back, beginning to relax with some liquor in him, glancing around the table to see if everyone appreciated his dialect. There were a couple of chuckles.

“The darkie himself smiled, knowing it was meant only as good-natured parody, and said, ‘If y'all be so kind, jes don't mess the graze and the water. Awright, boss?’

“Now one of our powdermen went over to the wagon where we kept the explosives, got a stick of Number One and pointed it at the darkie, saying-this was not good-natured, though I'll admit it was funny at the time. The powderman pointed the stick and said, ‘How'd you like it if we tie this to your tail, Mr. Nig, with a lit fuse and see how fast it can send you home?’ The darkie, Catlett, said, ‘Yeah, boss, that would send a body home, I expects so.’ He smiled again. But this time there was something different about his smile.”

There was a silence. Those around the table could see by Franklin Hovey's expression he was thinking about that time again, that moment, as though realizing now it should have warned him, at least told him something.

“Did you blow the ledge?” a reporter asked.

“Yes, we did. Though we set off a small warning charge first to indicate our intention. I insisted we do that.”

The reporters waited, seeing the next part coming, remembering the story Asa Bailey, the former contract guide, had told only a few days before.

“Our party was well armed,” Franklin Hovey continued, “and we set a watch that night around the perimeter of the camp. As I've said, we were at about seven thousand feet on bare, open ground. With night guards on four sides and enough moonlight to see by, we were positive no one could sneak up to that camp.”

“They hit you at dawn,” a reporter said.

Others told him to shut up as Franklin Hovey shook his head.

“No, we arose, folded our cots, ate breakfast…discussed the darkie's threat while we were eating and, I remember, laughed about it, some of the others imitating him, saying, ‘Yessuh, boss, ah's gwine strike yo fancy,’ things like that. After breakfast we went over to the dynamite wagon to get what we'd need for the day-you might've seen it, a big ore wagon with a heavy canvas top to keep the explosives dry and out of the weather. One of the men opened the back end”-Franklin paused-“and they came out. They came out of the wagon that was in the middle of our camp, in the middle, our tents and the two other wagons surrounding it. They came out of it…the same colored man and another one and two Indians.” Franklin shook his head, awed by the memory of it. “I don't even see how there was room in there with the fifty-pound cases, much less how they got in to begin with…Well, they held guns on us, took ours and threw them into the canyon…tied our hands in front of us and then tied the eight of us together in a line, arm to arm…while the one named Catlett took a dynamite cartridge, primed it with a Number Six detonator and crimped onto that about ten feet of fuse, knowing exactly how to set the blasting cap in there and gather the end of the cartridge paper around it tight and bind it tight up good with twine. This man, I realized, knew how to shoot dynamite. I said, ‘Now wait a minute, boy, we are only doing our job here, following orders.’ The darkie said, ‘Thas all ah'm doing too, boss. Gwine send y'all home.’ I said to him again, ‘Now wait a minute,’ and the other members of the crew began to get edgy and speak up, saying we were only working men out here doing a job. The darkie said, ‘Y'll doing a job awright, on our houses.’”

“Was Moon there?” a reporter asked.

“I told you,” Franklin Hovey said, “it was the two colored men and two Apache Indians which, I forgot to mention, had streaks of yellowish-brown paint on their faces.

“The other colored man also began to prime sticks with blasting caps; so that between the two of them they soon had eight sticks of dynamite ready to fire, though not yet with the fuses attached. The one named Catlett approached me and poked a stick down into the front of my pants. Again, as you can imagine, I began to reason with him. He shook his head, pulled the stick out and walked around the line of us tied shoulder to shoulder and now placed the dynamite stick in my backpocket, saying, ‘Yeah, tha's the place.’”

Many of the reporters were grinning and had to quickly put on a serious, interested expression as Franklin Hovey looked around the table.

“Well, they were behind us for several minutes, so we couldn't see what they were doing. Then they placed a stick of Number One, which will shatter solid rock into small fragments-they placed a stick in every man's back pocket or down into his pants if he didn't have a pocket. Then came around in front of us again and began drawing the fuses out between our legs, laying each one on the ground in about a ten-foot length.

“I forgot to mention they had found a box of cigars in somebody's gear and all four of them were puffing away on big stogies, blowing out the smoke as they stood about with their weapons, watching us. But not laughing or carrying on, as you might expect. No, they appeared serious and very calm in their manner.

“The tall colored man, Catlett, said something and the four of them began lighting the ends of the fuses with their cigars.

“Well, we began to pull and push against each other. We tried to reason-or maybe I should say plead with them by this time-seeing those fuses burning at eighteen seconds a foot, which seems slow, huh? Well, I'll tell you, those sputtering, smoking fuse ends were racing, not crawling, right there coming toward our legs. ‘Stomp 'em out!’ somebody yelled and all of us began dancing and stomping the ground before the burning ends were even close. The two colored men and the Apaches had moved back a ways. Now they raised their rifles, pointed 'em right at us and Catlett said, ‘Stand still. You move, we'll shoot you dead.’”

Franklin Hovey waited, letting his listeners think about it.

“Which would you prefer, to be shot or blown up?” he said. “If you chose the former, I'd probably agree. But you would not choose it, I guarantee, looking into the muzzles of their guns. I promise you you'd let that fuse burn through between your feet at its pace and by then try not to move a muscle while being overcome by pure fear and terrible anguish. There was a feeling of us pressing against each other, rooted there, but not one of us stomped on a fuse. It burned between our feet and was out of sight behind us, though we could hear it and smell the powder and yarn burning. With maybe a half minute left to live, I closed my eyes. I waited. I waited some more. There was an awful silence.”

And silence at the table in the Gold Dollar.

“I could not hear the fuse burning. Nothing. I opened my eyes. The four with the guns stood watching us, motionless. It was like the moment had passed and we knew it, but still not one of us moved.”

Franklin Hovey let the reporters and listeners around the table wait while he finished the whiskey in his glass and passed the back of his hand over his mouth.

“The fuses,” he said then, “had not been connected to the dynamite sticks, but burned to the ends a few feet behind us. It was a warning, to give us a glimpse of eternity: The tall one, Catlett, approached and said if they ever saw us again, well, we'd just better not come back. They hitched a team to the dynamite wagon and drove off with close to a thousand pounds of high explosives.”

“That's it, huh?” a reporter said. “What was it the nigger said to you?”

“I told you, he gave us a warning.”

“Just said, don't come back?”

Franklin Hovey seemed about to explain, elaborate, then noticed that two of the girls who worked in the Gold Dollar were in the crowd of listeners.

“He said something, well, that wasn't very nice.”

“We see you again, we crimp the fuse on, stick the dynamite stick up your ass and shoot you to the moon…boy,” were Bo Catlett's exact words.

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