Free Doubtful Canon by Johnny D. Boggs Page A

disappear into his pocket. “Well, by my boots and socks, that just ’bout tears it. Water’s life in this country, chil’ren.” His head shook savagely and he let out a mirthless laugh. “I can hear Scott McKenzie up in Detroit, sayin’ what a fool I am, and I’ve half a mind to agree with him. Ain’t nobody would blame me none if I let you fools fend for yourselves out here, just struck out on my own. Nobody would blame me. They’d say ol’ Whitey Grey finally showed good sense.”
    “I got mine!” Ian Spencer Henry proudly held up his canvas bag and canteen.
    Yeah, I thought, but what’s in that bag? Dime novels and nonsense?
    Unimpressed, Whitey Grey spat. “What do I need you chil’ren for anyway?”
    That’s a question I had always wondered. He stood, his knees popping, and slapped dust off his hat. He had taken quite a violent spill when he had slipped—or Ian Spencer Henry had pulled him—off the train, and his cuts and bruises looked much more fiendish against his deathly pale skin.
    “One canteen. Well, you ain’t havin’ none of mine. That’s for certain sure. Nary a drop. You can fetch some for yourself when we reach Stein’s Peak or Doubtful Cañon. If we reach it…if you reach it…alive.”
    Ian Spencer Henry hesitated, then topped off his canteen with the alkaline water of the lake.
    “We ain’t crossin’ that country,” the albino said, his voice softer now, his wrath lessened. “Not all of it, nohow. We’ll cut south now, head back to the S.P. Maybe I’ll get lucky, for once.”
    And, for once, luck shined on Whitey Grey. We had made it back to the Southern Pacific, began pushing our weary bodies westward along the tracks, benefiting from a cloudy day. Maybe we had walked another mile or two when the albino stopped, stared, rubbed his eyes, then gripped the butt of his revolver.
    The sight took me by surprise, too, when I peered around Whitey Grey’s back and down the tracks lined with telegraph poles on one side, and nothing on the other. At first, I took it to be a mirage, some apparition, as my mouth hung open. Behind me, I felt Jasmine’s arm on my shoulder, then heard Ian Spencer Henry’s question.
    “Should we hide?”
    Two of the oddest conveyances I had ever seen came barreling down the tracks, straight for us. Understand, I had grown up around the railroads but had never spied anything like those two three-wheeled vehicles headed our way, one driven by a man in striped denim britches and an Irish woolen cap, the second by a red-bearded man wearing a dun-colored cap.
    Not exactly bicycles. Certainly not the boxy handcars with pump handles often used by railroad construction crews. Oddly silent. The driver sat between the two-wheeled bicycle-like machine—it didn’t look comfortable—with an axle extending from just behind the front flanged wheel and across the tracks, where the third, much smaller, wheel, also flanged, rolled along the far rail, I presumed for balance. The only noise came from the drivers, grunting from the push-pull motions it took to run the fantastic devices.
    The first man saw us and yelped at his trailing comrade, who stood up a bit on the pedals, then pulled a lever-action rifle from behind his seat. Their vehicles slowed, but the first man, still staring at us, said something else, and the red-bearded man nodded. On they came, slowing as they neared.
    “Hide?” Finally Whitey Grey answered Ian Spencer Henry’s question with a sarcastic laugh. “From salvation?” He stepped forward, releasing his grip on his revolver, removed his battered hat, and waved it toward the men.
    “Hallooooo!” he called out. “You’re a sight for God-fearin’ eyes.”
    “I…how…what on earth?” The red-bearded man removed his cap and scratched his bald head. The man in the striped britches and woolen cap found himself equally at a loss for words.
    They stepped off the vehicles as if dismounting a horse, the red-bearded man keeping his rifle ready,