Authors: James M. Cain
Past All Dishonor (17 page)
Then she made a mistake. If she had stayed outside where she was, maybe the mail clerk, what with the shooting, the cord, and all, would have figured the excitement was still up front. But she had it in her mind she was to get in with the baggage and lock the baggage man out if she could, and even if he was left behind in the wrecked passenger cars she still supposed that’s what she ought to do. But the mail clerk saw her through his peephole, and did something he wasn’t ever supposed to do. He came back there. “Young woman, what are you doing here?”
“They’re robbing the passengers back there! They’ve cut the train, and there’s a wreck. Can’t you hear the people screaming?”
“I asked you what you’re doing here.”
“I came to warn you.”
“Why didn’t you warn the conductor?”
“I thought he was up here.”
“Where’s the baggage man?”
“I don’t know.”
He took a quick look out back, then ran back in his compartment, opened the door in the forward partition, and hollered at Caskie. In a second he, the Wells, Fargo man, and Caskie were all back there, and of course when Caskie saw her he fitted it all together, like he had before. “Trying it again, hey?”
“Go to hell, Caskie.”
“The last time, though.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. And it’s not going to be any legal hanging either, with maybe a reprieve at the last minute. You’re going to get just what your deadshot friend up there gave George Brewer. You’re going to get it and he’s going to get it. You’ll be given your chance to run, and then when you do I’m going to shoot you both, and get commended by the grand jury for doing my duty, just like he was. That’s a little trick they got down in Mexico, and very good it is.”
“That’s what you think you’re going to do.”
“But first we need a little help.”
He slapped her all over to see if she had a gun, but she didn’t. I had figured these hombres were all fast on the draw, and for her to try to shoot with them was practically the same as suicide. So when he was satisfied, he turned her around so her back was to him, pinned her arms behind her, and began hiking her through the mail compartment up toward the front end door, the one he had opened for shooting purposes.
But me, up front in the cab, I didn’t know about any of that. When Caskie began to shoot, I ducked back of the drop gate, and I just caught one flash of the wreck, and heard some screaming, before I began to shoot back. And then there was some yelling back there in the baggage car, and Caskie ducked away, and the shooting stopped. I just had time to reload when I heard her scream, and then here they came, Caskie carrying her by her elbows, which he had bent behind her, and holding her in front, for a shield, so I couldn’t shoot, while she screamed and kicked and tried to bite. But it wasn’t himself he was screening. It was the mail clerk, who dropped on the floor out of range and began to screw down the brake. And to cover him the Wells, Fargo man got behind Caskie and began shooting at me over Morina’s shoulder.
I kept low and crawled around and closed the throttle. If they were going to stop me anyway I might as well save steam. We slowed down, and as we were coming to a stop, I kept out of sight near the tender and dropped to the ground. The Wells, Fargo man kept shooting, each shot banging against the drop gate like a chunk on a wash boiler. I kept close under, near the wheels, and when they came up even with me, instead of Morina being a screen I had a clear shot. The mail clerk was still screwing the brake, Caskie was too close to Morina, but the Wells, Fargo man, who was the only one shooting, was framed in the door. I dropped him with one shot. Caskie let go of Morina and reached for his gun and she tried to hold on to him. I told her to let go and she did and I drilled him through the heart. That left the mail clerk, but he was already flattened against the car with his hands up, hollering he’s not armed, he’s got no gun, for God’s sake don’t shoot because he can’t do anything. I let him have it in the head, and he toppled over frontwards against the brake and then down the steps to the ground.
“Christ, are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Held me, that was all.”
“We got to hurry.”
After I threw the two dead men on the car to the ground beside the mail clerk, I took her with me up to the cab. But before I could move I had to throw on some wood, because the gauge was dropping bad. Then I ran on down to where the horses were, about a mile. They were in a willow grove beside the river, with packs, saddles, and everything ready for her, and she had practiced a hundred times what she had to do. Then I ran down to the ditch, filled my hat with mud, and climbed back in the car for what was next. I wasn’t going to try to lift that iron box full of gold. In my pocket I had powder, that she had sewed into a little silk bag, and a couple of feet of fuse, and some caps. I figured to bust it open and load the money into the saddle bags direct. So I began shaping my mud. But then I noticed two other boxes in there that might have something in them, but what to do with one charge of powder I didn’t know. But at a time like that your head goes like you were crazy. I dragged them over to Caskie’s box, and pushed the three of them together, so two of them were end to end and the other one jammed up to the joint, like you lay bricks. Then I mud-capped the T, so my shot would bear down on all three. I had just lit the fuse and jumped clear when here she came, with the horses. She hopped down, peeled down to the men’s overalls she had under her dress, changed to riding boots, and put on a man’s hat. She had just finished when she gave a scream. I wheeled with my gun out, but it wasn’t a man she was screaming about. It was the train, with our gold on it. It was moving. It was only then I remembered, they sometimes have two mail clerks, and all the time I’d been mud-capping, the second man must have dropped out his side door and crept up the track to the locomotive.
She got to the steps of the baggage car first, and that was when we had the one piece of luck we had all morning. He was too anxious, and when he opened full throttle, stead of going ahead he spun his wheels and the car ran up on the coupling. She lifted the pin and the engine shot ahead like a colt in a meadow, once the wheels took hold. But then she began to say my name in a way that made me turn cold all over. Because in pulling the pin she lost her balance, and there she was, hanging over the rail by one hand, with the car rolling up on her. I didn’t grab for her. If I dropped her she’d lose her legs. I ran up the steps and screwed down the brake, fast. The car stopped. She dropped to the ground and I caught her in my arms. And that was when my mud-cap went off.
Catching those horses, where they broke for the river when that powder went up with a roar, while from Sacramento by now a train must be coming with a posse to get us, and on its way to Folsom was our locomotive that would be coming back with another posse soon, that was one hell of a ten minutes. And yet I’ll remember that sight, of the baggage car spilling its inside out on the bank beside the track, the little time I’ve got left to live. Because the mud-cap busted the boxes all right, but it busted the car floor too, and out on the dirt, in the morning sunshine, came a river of gold, as well as diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and pearls that were in the other two boxes I found. And I’ll never forget the sight of her, either, on her hands and knees clawing that stuff into the bags, with a look on her face like she was some harpy drinking blood. She was still on her hands and knees, and her fingernails were running blood, when I finally had the horses and was ready to go. I said something to her two or three times and she didn’t answer, just kept on digging. Then I stooped down and put my head on the rail. I could hear a hum. “Come on.”
“But there’s more in the ditch.”
“I said come on.”
“Oh! There’s a diamond!”
“Come on!”
I
T WAS ONE HELL
of a day and one hell of a night, because when we made camp around sundown we didn’t have the Folsom posse headed, like I thought we would. They had us headed, because I could hear them talking to each other, off there in the hills, and there was no way we could pass them and get to the high country. That meant we had to double back by moonlight, cross the railroad and the river, and sneak away on the other side. But at last, just before dawn, we hit a clump of woods where we could lay up for the day, and at least it seemed like we might be safe. That was when she lay close to me, and said nothing for a while, like she was thinking, and then popped at me: “Roger.”
“Yes, Morina.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“I killed three of them.”
“Yes, but that last one. The one you didn’t have to kill. The one that kept saying he didn’t have any gun. The mail clerk.”
“He had seen us. He’d know us.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“When we come right down to it, we don’t know how much they know. The baggage man saw you, and probably the other mail clerk that stole our engine. But whether they know that you had anything to do with what was done, that we don’t know.”
“Yes we do.”
“Why take chances?”
“The baggage man knows all there is to know, and he wasn’t even on the car we stole. He was left behind. You didn’t have to kill that man.”
“At least, I thought I did.”
“Roger, you’re a liar.”
“If so, why?”
“You killed him for me.”
“If I did I wouldn’t admit it.”
“So we can have one more night, like that night in the mine, when we first found out what living could be like.”
“It’s morning.”
“Then one more morning.”
“Take your mouth away.”
“Kiss me. ... Kiss me again.”
A week later we had worked around Folsom, past Sonora, and up a river I figure to be the Stanislaus. The night of the first snow, day before yesterday, we bedded down in this charcoal-burner’s shack where I’m sitting here writing. She spent the night by the fire, sorting out all those jewels, then putting rings on every finger and every toe, pinning broaches in her hair and every place she could find to put one, then wrapping herself in the blankets with me. Every place I touched her something stuck me, but she just laughed and I had to laugh too it was so comical. Then in the morning she thought she heard dogs, and I went out to look. I got out my gun and crept to a rock where I could see the whole valley, and sure enough some men were circling around down there, on horses, with dogs baying.
But then a deer shot out of a thicket, and they were after him. I had been trembling, because I’d had the feeling we had a good head start and could make it, and I hated it, that they’d get us now, when we had practically won out. I relaxed, and started to climb down.
A twig cracked behind me. I wheeled and fired. And before I even saw her, my wife, my love, my life, was sinking down in the snow, a red velvet wrapper around her, diamonds and jewels all over her fingers and hair, and a little smile on her face before her head fell over.
I’ve been sitting here, all day and all night and all day again, writing it down. Writing down how it came about that a boy that went to St. Anne’s in Annapolis, and believed what he heard there, should turn into a traitor, a killer, and a thief. I don’t know why. Falling in love with Morina, that had something to do with it. But Virginia City had something to do with it too. Maybe they were wrong about the devil. Maybe he didn’t move out like they said he did. Maybe they just thought he did. Maybe he found a new way to conjure. Maybe he found if you give people everything they want, and nothing they ought to have, that’ll wind them up in hell, too. Anyhow, for me it’s all over. I could make Nevada, and the river, and Mexico, if I tried. But I can’t try. I’m at the end of the plank. Other dogs will be along soon, and they won’t be chasing deer. They’ll be after me. But when they get here, I’ll be out there with her, where she’s covered up from the birds and wolves, in the snow, with the gold piled up at my feet, and this story at my head.
Here they come.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1946 by James M. Cain. Renewed © 1973 by James M. Cain
Introduction copyright © 1984 by Thomas Chastain
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-9166-5
This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
