The Drop Edge of Yonder. Rudolph Wurlitzer

Annie May Shook, and I’m here to sell my pelts.”

      The clerk nodded, not looking up as he took off his glasses and rubbed his strained red-rimmed eyes.

      Annie May rapped on the desk with the barrel of her shotgun. “I want both ears when I’m talkin’, Mister. Where be the major?”

      The clerk took his time placing his glasses over his nose. “Major Poultry sold out last winter. You’ll deal with me now.”

      “Always was partial to the major,” Annie May said. “Dealt with mountain folk straight up.”

      “Business is business,” the clerk said with measured patience. “Whoever be the buyer or seller.”

      Annie May scratched her head, took out her pipe, began to light it, then shoved it back inside her buffalo robe. “All right, then. What be the price of pelts?”

      The clerk looked down at Annie May as if her presence was an annoying fly. “The bottom has fallen out of the fur market. It will never come back. That said, I’ll give you fifty cents a pelt. Take it or leave it.”

      She stared up at him, unable to comprehend. “The hell you say.”

      “The numbers come down from St. Louis, Ma’am. Trade or cash.”

      Her voice rose to a shout. “Two dollars a pelt, Mister St. Louis. And my usual loan on ’baca, cartridges, and flour. That’s the way it’s been for these thirty years, and that’s the way it’ll be. Nothing more, nothing less.”

      The clerk shut the ledger with a loud snap. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

      “Well then, Mister St. Louis, let an old mountain sage hen show you her possible bag.”

      Annie May waved her shotgun at the clerk, then at a window, then at a row of pickle jars.

      The terrified clerk backed away, bumping into Zebulon who shoved him against a shelf of canned goods, sending him and the cans crashing to the floor.

      This was more like it, Zebulon thought, looking around the room. This was what the old Spirit Doc ordered when he needed to stir things up. He reached behind the counter for a jug of liquor, uncorked it and took a long pull, then tossed it to Annie May, who caught it in one hand. As the clerk staggered up from the floor, she smashed the jug over his head.

      “Hurrah fer mountain doin’s!” she shouted.

      Hauling herself onto a table, she fired her shotgun into the air. The pellets struck an overhead gas lamp that exploded when it hit the floor, sending a rush of flames roaring toward the ceiling.

      “Hurrah fer mountain doin’s!” Zebulon shouted.

      He yanked off a large gold nugget that hung from a string around the clerk’s neck.

      “For settlement,” he said.

      Then he picked up an ax handle and knocked over a shelf of air-tights and smashed a window as customers grabbed whatever goods were close to hand and started for the door.

      Zebulon found Annie May slumped underneath the table, a bullet through her chest. As he gently gathered her into his arms, a barrel of kerosene exploded behind them, collapsing the ceiling, blowing out windows, killing two miners, and setting the building on fire.

      Zebulon carried Annie May outside and laid her on the sagging wooden sidewalk. Around them, a line of men were hand-rushing buckets of water to pour on the flames.

      Annie May’s voice faded to a whisper. “Deer is deer… elk is elk and this mountain oyster is a gone coon… I done you wrong a time or two, son, as you did me… but that’s family.” She raised herself up, trying to see him as her eyes clouded over. “Always figured I’d go out the old way. Straight up and on my own breath… But we caused a commotion in this town, did we not, son?”

      “So we did, Ma,” he answered.

      “Did I ever tell how Hatchet come to be with us?”

      “You never did,” he replied, even though she had told him endless times.

      “Pa won him from a Mex at a rendezvous down on the Purgatory… Everything was in the pot, everything the Mex had—his traps, horses, pelts, and even little Hatchet as a throw in. No more than a stump, he was. When Pa palmed the last card, he got caught, which bothered him enough to carve the Mex up for callin’ him out. Pa took Hatchet back with him out of guilt, and maybe because he thought he could use another hand. He was always one for slaves, your pa…”

      Her voice stopped and he thought she was gone, until he heard her again.

      “Are you with me, son?”

      “I’m here, Ma.”

      “All right, then. Hatchet was a weird boy. Always tryin’ to drown you in the river. And then you tried to do the same to him, just to get even… When you find your pa… tell him… Hell, don’t tell him nothin’. He never did a damn thing for us except bring misery. And now he’s trotted off to the gold fields. The old cocksucker.”

      She looked up, her eyes pleading with his not to ever let her go, and then she died.

      He sat holding her as the lines of water buckets were passed back and forth. When the fire was out, the sheriff and the owner of the trading post, along with several clerks, surrounded him with drawn pistols. One of the clerks carried a rope with a noose tied at the end.

      As Zebulon was pulled to his feet, Hatchet Jack galloped through the crowd, pulling a saddled horse behind him.

      Shots were fired, but before anyone could mount up to follow, Zebulon and Hatchet Jack had disappeared down the street.

      Ten miles outside of town they parted company, Zebulon for old Mex, Hatchet Jack for California, where he figured to make peace with Elijah.

      When Zebulon reached the high desert he hesitated, then rode back to the mountains. Two days later he arrived at the cabin in the middle of the night. His ma’s deck of cards was still spread out on the table. He removed a card and pushed it back into the deck without looking to see if it was the queen of hearts. What’s done is done, he thought, lighting up her clay pipe and sitting down at the table. And none of it was coming back. No more mountain doin’s. All gone. Forever gone.

      Not able to sleep in the house, he went outside and built a small fire. When the first light of dawn prowled like a hungry predator over the mountains, he picked up a burning stick and tossed it inside the door. Then he walked around the burning cabin, yelling to his ma his last mountain goodbyes: “Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh!”

      When he reached the end of the valley, he turned for a last look. All that remained was a thin cloud of smoke drifting into the sun.

      From then on, it was a fast ride across the high desert toward Mexico, with a pause in Alamogordo long enough to hold up the town bank—an act that he performed with such careless disregard for his own safety that he not only escaped without a scratch, but with half a saddlebag of gold coins. Continuing south by southeast, he heard distant gunshots and shifted his direction, narrowly avoiding a band of White Mountain Apaches trapped inside a basin by a platoon of black cavalry. The next day he crossed the Rio Grande, then rode east across Chihuahua toward the Gulf of Mexico and down to Vera Cruz, where no one asked or cared who he was or where he came from.

      In Vera Cruz he rented a room in the best hotel, spending his money on the sultry passions of a one-armed saloon singer who played with his broken spirit like a seasoned cat before a kill. Never mind, he told himself; Miranda Serenade, for that was her billing, healed the cravings of his body if not the confusions of his heart. Within a week, he had moved into Miranda’s room above the saloon; his only excursions were nightly visits downstairs, where he gambled compulsively and bought wall-to-wall drinks after each set of his lover’s sentimental love songs.

      Miranda was pleased with him, at least for openers, as he was handsome and profligate enough to ease her constant insecurities about money and advancing