Snake Oil Page 3

  It had been a grim enough business, but as fairly and equitably conducted as anything of that type that Morton had witnessed before. He was wondering what would be a decent interval to let elapse before resuming his pitch when a man came up to him.

  ‘Mr Drake begs the favour of a word,’ he said.

  The man who had just ordered a man’s hanging looked at Jack Morton as though he had just crawled out from under some especially grubby rock.

  ‘Snake oil, hey?’ he asked, his face set and grim. ‘You just seen how we keep this town wholesome and clean. I’m telling you now that we don’t take to bunco artists or snake oil salesmen here in any way, shape or form.

  ‘If you’re still here in an hour, I’m going to get a few of my men to knock you about a bit and maybe smash that van of yours to matchwood. That plain enough for you?’

  ‘I’ve been shot,’ said Morton. ‘You might have noticed.’

  ‘You hadn’t been standing up there on the buckboard, trying to gull folk out of their money for your worthless goods, the bullet wouldn’t o’ struck you. You have an hour.’

  Having seen the utterly ruthless way in which Drake and his vigilantes handled visitors to the town of whom they disapproved, Morton did not feel in the slightest degree inclined towards staying around and seeing if the threat of violence would be put into practice. He knew damned well that Terrance Drake meant just exactly what he meant. All he could do was cut his losses and try his luck in the next town, which was a larger one than this from what he’d heard. After harnessing up the horse Jack Morton shook the dust of that place from his feet and made tracks, heading west to Oneida.

  All in all, Morton thought that things could have turned out a lot worse. It was true that his suit was ruined, but then again, he was still alive. He’d been thrown out of the town, but no intentional violence had been inflicted upon him, and his stock was secure.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d been compelled to make a precipitate departure from a town and he figured that it would most likely not be the last either. That was what this line of work was like; some folk objected to it. He felt no animosity towards Terrance Drake. When all was said and done, the fellow was just protecting the citizens of his town from being skinned by a rogue.

  Morton drove on for the day and then camped off the road for the night. He’d fed his rattler with a plump little baby jackrabbit just a couple of days before, so he didn’t need to fret about hunting anything. He had enough in the van for his own needs and after a light meal he turned in for the night before it was completely dark.

  Chapter 3

  At first light Morton woke and gathered up some dry twigs and branches so that he could boil up some coffee. He needed nothing else in the way of breakfast. There was nothing to delay him, so Morton set out before the sun had risen far above the horizon.

  He had been travelling for two hours or thereabouts when he heard the crack of a rifle ahead of him. This was followed quickly by the sound of pistol fire and then another shot from a rifle or scattergun. He reined in the horse and turned round, pulling out an old army rifle that he kept for emergencies. He cocked this and placed it on the buckboard at his feet. Then he pulled out the pistol that he had usually sported before he’d gone into this line of work and tucked it in his belt. People don’t as a rule expect to see a professor going heeled and so he felt it more in keeping with his persona not to pack iron while peddling his wares. But if there was going to be some lively action now, then Morton sure as hell aimed to be prepared.

  The road to Oneida wove through a series of miniature canyons and gullies, making it hard to calculate how far away the shooting had been. Morton found out when he turned a corner and found himself fifty yards from what he at once took to be an attempted robbery of some kind. He reined in the horse and took stock.

  A covered wagon drawn by four horses was standing in the road ahead. It was an old-looking vehicle; what would once have been described as a prairie schooner. Surrounding the wagon were two riders, both with guns in their hands. They looked round sharply when Morton’s van hove into view, clearly wondering if this new arrival posed any threat to their activities. Another man had dismounted and was in the process of climbing into the back of the covered wagon.

  The two riders watched Morton carefully, trying perhaps to work out if he represented any sort of threat to them. A man lay prone near by and it took no great power of thought to work out that he had been driving the wagon and that one or more of those gathered round had shot him.

  As far as Jack Morton’s code of ethics went, he wasn’t called upon to interfere in whatever was happening ahead of him. If those men let him be, then he was happy enough to return the compliment and leave them to their own devices. He wasn’t a one to go looking for trouble nor, for the matter of that, to set out and meet it halfway. Morton checked that his piece was loose in his belt and the rifle ready to pluck up, should need arise. Then he waited to see how matters would develop.

  That was, until he heard the shriek of a terrified woman, which was followed almost instantly by two more shots. Much as he hated to intervene in a quarrel that was no affair of his, Morton was not about to let a woman be molested. With great reluctance he touched up his horse and carried on towards the wagon.

  Something untoward had happened to the three robbers, because the man who had got into the wagon had fallen back out again and was lying on the ground, yelling in pain. His partners in crime were at a loss to know how to deal with this. One of them turned to face Morton as he drew closer.

  ‘You know what’s best for you, you’re goin’ to keep right on, mister,’ said this man.

  ‘Can’t do that, pilgrim,’ Morton replied, in a friendly enough tone. ‘I heard a woman scream and I mean to know what you’re about.’

  What with his friend having apparently just been shot and things not going as planned, the man who had spoken to Morton was seemingly all out of patience, because he pointed his pistol straight at him.

  ‘You hear what I tell you, you whore’s son? Make tracks,’ he said.

  If there was one thing that Jack Morton could not abide at any price it was having men aim firearms at him. He’d had a bellyful of that in the war, and ever since the surrender he had not put up with such a thing from anybody.

  Morton raised his hands defensively.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘there ain’t no call for that, I’m going.’ He fumbled with the reins, then dropped them as though he were panicking. He bent down, but instead of picking up the reins he snatched up the rifle lying there at his feet, brought it up to the mark and fired at once. The ball took the man who had been menacing Morton straight in the centre of his breast.

  Without bothering to check that the man was dead Morton dropped the rifle and at once pulled out his Navy Colt, which was tucked loosely in his belt, cocking it with his thumb as he did so. He drew down on the other rider, but this man, seeing two of his comrades shot, had had enough. Jabbing his mount viciously in the flanks with his spurs he galloped off, leaving the field to Jack Morton.

  The man he had shot was dead. He had toppled from the saddle and crashed to the ground. His horse was grazing placidly near by. In addition to the other dead body there was the man who had, as far as Morton was able to apprehend, been shot just before he came on to the scene. This fellow was writhing around in agony, moaning, over and over: ‘She shot me, she shot me!’

  Morton jumped down and checked that this man was unarmed; he had no wish to be shot in the back, unawares. Then he went over to the wagon to see what had become of the woman whom he had heard screaming.

  As he pulled aside the flap at the rear of the wagon a horrible sight was revealed. A young woman lay on her back amid a heap of household goods and suchlike. It looked to Morton as though she had been moving home. Maybe she was one of those whose husband had claimed a quarter-section under the Homestead Act and they had been moving to start a new life somewhere.

  Whatever her plans had been, she was
not likely to be in a position to bring them to fruition now. Even without any medical knowledge at all it was not hard to see that she had lost at least a quart of blood. At a guess, thought Morton, a bullet had sliced through one of her arteries and she would be unlikely to last more than another ten minutes at best. When the woman saw Morton, she cried in a determined but weak voice: ‘Come here. Quick now, I need to tell you what to do.’

  For a moment, he thought that the woman was mistaking him for somebody else, but then he knew that it wasn’t that at all. She simply knew that she was dying and had something important that needed to be said before she lost consciousness. Morton hauled himself up into the wagon.

  ‘Rest easy now,’ he said to the woman, ‘you’re not alone.’

  ‘No time for that. Over there – in the box – it’s Robert. After Robert E. Lee, you know.’

  ‘Don’t fret about that,’ Morton said soothingly, thinking that she was wandering in her mind. ‘Just lie easy now.’

  ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘Fetch him. Fetch Robert.’

  To humour her Morton crawled over to where she indicated, in the corner. Then he received something of a shock. For there, nestling within a wooden crate, was a baby.

  ‘Lord a mercy!’ said Morton, appalled at the thought that this helpless morsel of humanity was likely to be orphaned in another few minutes. He picked up the child, who was swaddled up in a blanket, and took him to the woman, who, he guessed, must be the mother. He handed the baby to her.

  ‘Here you are, ma’am,’ he said.

  The woman took the child in her arms.

  ‘There, little one,’ she murmured. ‘I have to go soon.’ Her breathing was shallow and rapid. Morton knew the signs; he had seen men suffering so on the battlefield. This woman was very close to the end.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Promise to take my baby to Claremont.’

  ‘Where? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Claremont. It’s a town not far from here. My father is there. Martin Catchpole. Take my baby to him. He’ll know what’s best.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Morton.

  ‘Those men jumped us. They shot Brent. Then they looked in here and I shot one of them. He shot me. Take Robert to my father. Promise me.’

  ‘I’ll do it. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’

  ‘I’m dying. It doesn’t matter. Look after my baby.’

  The woman closed her eyes and her breathing grew ragged. It was impossible to imagine that a human body contained so much blood. It soaked her dress and was pooling on the wooden floor of the wagon. This too was something that Morton recalled vividly from the war; that when once an artery was nicked the sheer quantity of blood was always far more than you’d expect.

  As Morton watched helplessly the unknown woman gave a convulsive gulp, breathed in deeply and then let the air out, until her lungs were quite empty. She didn’t draw breath again and, as if it sensed what had happened, the infant began screaming inconsolably.

  For a minute, Jack Morton squatted there, overcome with horror at witnessing the death of a young mother and the orphaning of her child. Then he recollected the wounded man whom he’d left outside and his wrath rose up, choking him. He had an intense hatred for those who harmed the weak and helpless and there were no words strong enough to condemn a man who would shoot a woman dead.

  He jumped down from the wagon and went over to where the man who had been moaning about having been shot by a woman had been rolling about in agony. It had been Morton’s aim to put a bullet through this villain’s head with no more ado, but he found that he was too late. The man was already dead.

  Looking around him now Morton could see three dead men. He shook his head and muttered to himself: ‘This is the devil of a business!’ The baby, young Robert, was still wailing with grief, hunger or the Lord knew what else. The full implications of the situation began to sink home and Morton wondered what on earth he was going to do. He had never in the whole course of his life so much as picked up or held a baby. How the hell was he supposed to take this one an unknown distance to some town and then find his grandfather? Why, it wasn’t to be thought of!

  The keening cry of the baby was getting on Morton’s nerves and he knew that he would have to do something about it. All else apart, he could hardly leave the living child for much longer, locked in the embrace of a corpse. Although he was the least superstitious and squeamish of men he shuddered at the thought.

  The squalling infant quietened as he saw Morton climb back into the wagon. His eyes followed the man and then widened in pleasure as he was picked up.

  ‘Well fella,’ Morton said, ‘you and me’re going to be travelling together for a space and the Lord only knows how that’s going to pan out. Tell me now, what sort o’ vittles do children of your age thrive on?’

  Morton hadn’t expected, nor did he receive, an answer to his question. Raking through the belongings stowed in the wagon brought to light two jars containing a mushy and unappetizing mess of what looked to be some sort of porridge. He found a spoon and dipped it into this disgusting substance. The baby – he supposed that he really should start thinking of him as ‘Robert’ – took to the mush with relish and Morton carried him awkwardly out into the fresh air. It didn’t somehow seem right to be feeding this little one in the presence of his own dead mother.

  The baby wolfed down a considerable quantity of the food, which Morton devoutly hoped was wholesome for it, then it stopped; a thoughtful look came upon its chubby little face.

  ‘You all right there?’ asked Morton. He brought the child up to examine it more closely, whereupon it vomited up over the front of Morton’s shirt.

  ‘Ah, shit!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s all I need.’

  Since his fetching up in the little town of Endurance, it had to be said that Jack Morton’s appearance had deteriorated sharply. It was hard to see, in the dishevelled figure squatting by that dusty track, the dapper and elegantly turned out Professor Cornelius Murgatroyd. The shirt he was wearing was torn and bloodstained by the injury that he had received to his rib, the pain of which had scarcely abated. Now, he had gobbets of partially digested food dripping down in his shirtfront as well.

  Well accustomed as he was to the repartee of the audiences that he faced, Morton could only too well imagine the jeers that would greet him if he tried to peddle his snake oil while showing evidence of an injury like this. He could almost hear the cries of: ‘Is your medicine any good for bullet wounds, Professor?’ and the gales of laughter that would greet such a sally.

  It was the irritation of having the baby sick up over him that first put into Morton’s mind the idea of disregarding the vow he had made to the dying woman and, instead, trying to offload this baby on to somebody else at the first opportunity. His conscience was by no means a tender organ and he felt that he had been rather buffaloed into making that promise to undertake a journey of unknown length and duration in order to deliver a child that was no concern of his to somebody to whom he owed nothing at all.

  Oh, he wouldn’t just abandon the child by the roadside; he wasn’t such a cur as that, but he was damned if wouldn’t find somebody else who might wish to care for the brat and fulfil the woman’s dying wishes.

  His rib was throbbing from the exertion of hopping in and out of the wagon, and this didn’t perhaps make Jack Morton’s temper any the sweeter. He laid the baby on the ground and climbed back into the wagon, averting his gaze from the dead woman, who presented a ghastly aspect. Near the box in which the baby had been placed for a cradle he found a bunch of clothing, including what he supposed were diapers. There was also powdered grain, which Morton thought would need to be mixed up with water, along with a flagon of milk.

  Before he clambered down again it struck Morton that maybe he should say a prayer or something for the bloody corpse who until a matter of minutes ago had been a living, breathing human person. As always, he felt a sense of awe when in the presence of death, mingl
ed with an uncomfortable sense of his own mortality.

  ‘I’ll make sure to take your baby to those as are best able to take care of it – I mean him,’ he said aloud. ‘I’m not really the man for the job, but I make no doubt that there’ll be somebody in that town I’m heading for, will be able to do the job a sight better than I am able.

  ‘I hope that the Lord takes care of you and all, that you are in heaven and so on.’ Morton didn’t know if he should conclude this brief statement with ‘Amen’ and decided in the end to omit it. There was a limit even to the hypocrisy of a snake oil merchant.

  Outside the wagon the baby was starting to grizzle again, so Morton stepped down, carrying all the clothes and other bits and pieces. He stowed these in the back of his van, then went back and picked up the baby, who seemed to be comforted by the contact with another human body. With the infant seated on his lap, and holding the reins in one hand, he set off for Oneida.

  Although it took only two hours to reach the town the journey seemed to Morton to last a good deal longer than that. This was because the baby on his lap kept up a more or less continuous caterwauling, which went right through Morton’s head. He was not sorry eventually to see scattered farms and then closely packed houses, which told him that he was approaching a substantial town.

  There, on the very edge of the town, stood the answer to Jack Morton’s prayers. A grim-looking building surrounded by high railings announced itself on a board at the entrance to be the Oneida Orphans’ Asylum. ‘If this ain’t what’s needful,’ muttered Morton to himself, ‘I surely don’t know what is!’ He reined in the horse and climbed down from the buckboard.

  Jack Morton’s conscience wasn’t altogether clear about fobbing the helpless infant off on to somebody else. At the back of his mind he knew fine well that he had promised the dying woman in that wagon that he would himself undertake to care for her baby and take it to the town of Claremont; Morton’s morality, however, was flexible enough for him to believe that he would still be fulfilling this vow if he only found others to engage to take on the task. If he left the child in this here orphans’ asylum and gave them the name of the dead woman’s kin, then wouldn’t they deal with the matter at least as well as he might himself have done? Whether or no, that was what he planned to do.