Blood Moon Rising

Chapter Six, I think.

The Red Moon rose between two mountains that reminded him of a gunsight. Shoot for the moon, he thought, musing over Nell and California. Everything felt otherwise though. 

He dismounted on a ridge and went behind a rock. When he got back on he checked the backtrail and damn if that wasn’t a ghost of James half a mile back. No way could he have buried Three in that time. Swane moved off and watched him pass, then went back to check the gravesite. 

He saw his shovel first, standing with the blade half buried, and next to it, Three’s two stockinged feet sticking out of the ground.
Son of a bitch. 
A magnetism drew him back to earth. He tied the horse and tried to remove enough dirt under the dead man’s feet to settle them down, but found a large rock, why James hadn’t gotten the hole deep enough in the first place. He started a new hole a few feet away, probing the dimensions of it to make sure the same thing didn’t happen again. 

By the time he had Three three feet under the moon was high, the earth pale and chilled. His shoulders and back ached and he’d aggravated his foot bad. He used the shovel as a crutch to get back to and up on his horse. 

Another grave. Well. 

He rode with the moonlight, then dawn’s crepuscularity, himself at home in the off light, living in the shadowlands of silver mines and oil sick lamplight, in depths that crushed men’s souls if not their skulls, all for the quest of riches. He glimpsed things, but felt stranded in the dirt, destined to dig and redig carrying the burden of endless dying. Eventually he came to the lights of Virginia City and the whisky din of a hundred bars. 
 


He knocked on Nell’s door the raps she knew him for. Still, it was the double barrel of her Derringer opened the door a crack.   

It’s me. 
The door closed and the chain rattled and she swung the door wide enough.  
You’re back Jimmy Swane. She leaned out the door and looked both ways. 
God, it’s crazy all over, did you hear? Widow Barkley stabbed to death. The sheriff’s asked for you. 
What? 
They don’t know who did it. 
Did what? 
Stabbed the Black Widow Barkley.
Every time he heard the widow’s name he thought about the webbery that made him nauseous. He felt relieved she was dead actually, and he murmured words from the Widow’s black book he didn’t know he remembered. 
.
Let me in Nell, I’m tired. Two men died out there. 

Nell closed the door and chained it. What happened, she said? 
He told her about the arrow through Four’s body, and the messages in his pockets. The twice burying of Three. 

She was distracted. Maybe it was Knutsen, she said. 
What?
Killed the Widow. 
Has he been here? 
She hesitated, looked away from him. Yes. 
When?
Yesterday, twice. 
Swane sat on the bed. 
Ok, he said, well.
Well what, came her faint voice. 
Come here, he said. 



In the morning they put their money together on the bed and lost track counting it. Neither was good with numbers. But they decided to buy two horses for $150 instead of riding the stage. They went to the stables and Nell picked a midnight black, a couple hands smaller than Swane’s Brown, which is what he named his. They bought saddle bags and wool blankets, and Swane bought a scabbard and a Sharps rifle. 
It’s not a lot to pay for independence, said Swane. 

What’s this? Said John Fair when they tied the horses in front of the Bucket O Blood.
Leaving, said Swane. 
For where? 
California. 
Huh. Able body like you Swane should join up the Union. There’s a war on you know. 
Nell watched Swane for his reaction. It was part of her mind Jimmy might fight too. 
Join up yourself, said Swane, and mind your own business.   
Who’s going to bury the dead now, Fair laughed.  
She thought Swane fighting would be the right thing for the country, but not so right for her. 

Thought you’d want to bury the Widow Barkley Swane, good as she treated you least you can do.

Good as she treated you reminded him of the Widow knocking him down in the alley back of the Blood.  
You know she’s got web feet don’t you? As if that pertained to the situation. 
Jimmy Swane that’s not respect of the dead. 
Maybe not, but it’s the truth. 
What her feet is, she still got to bury underground, said Fair. 
Bury her yourself it’s so important. 
You’re still the gravedigger Swane. Subterranean with worms and crawl bugs. Gravedigger for life is my estimation. 


He’s good for his own business is my observation. It was James. Swung out the saloon doors holding a bottle by the neck. 
If it ain’t the Man returned. If it ain’t the little whore girl started the whole thing and got two men killed. 
Whoa, said Fair, what? 
She’s a whore reads the newspapers, said James, stumbling into the hitching post. Three and Four’s both underground because of her. 

You’re underground yourself James you don’t shut up, You wanna take sides go see that newspaper writer Mark Twain wrote the story. Made it all up and put it in the newspaper and folks read it. 

Well it did transpire a resident of Virginia City who also read the Territorial Enterprise lost his life savings and his honor in the eyes of his good wife betting the whereabouts of the Petrified Man and challenged Mr Twain to a duel, to be carried out at the Pleasant Hill Cemetery by way of convenience for the deceased accomplices. The written record confirms the duel never occurred due to Mr. Twain’s abrupt departure for San Francisco. It is further recorded Mr. Twain commented that the majority of Americans are stupid and gullible, so illustrated by his observations you print any such nonsense in the newspaper and they will believe it. 

John Fair slipped inside the Bucket O Blood Saloon and tapped Sheriff Silver on the shoulder and twisted his head to the outside animating communication Silver had business in the street where he went directly. His appearance with his custom silver gripped Colt .45’s canted out and up from his hips for the quickest draw calmed things down faster than mud pig at a barbecue.

Eh, said James, sucking a desert stick, and slunk away down the wagon rutted street. 



Swane had second thoughts about the Widow, riding behind Nell out of town on the Sacramento Trail. Maybe he did owe her. Whatever that, he liked watching Nell’s shoulders sway to the Black’s gait, and decided to let the Widow be.

They pulled up at the top of the hill near the Sierra Nevada Mine entrance. They looked down on the town and listened to the flute music spilling out the mineshaft. 

What’s that, said Nell. 
Miner’s flute, said Swane. Every mine’s got a flute player. 
Like a canary in a coal mine, she said. 
Something like that. 

She sniffed, then blew her nose. Swane saw she was weeping. 
What’s the matter, he asked, spurring Brown alongside Black. 

I’m no good for you Jimmy Swane. I’m a whore, like they said, and I’m pregnant.