Last One Standing Read online

Someone fetched the doctor – Andrei Mikhailov – and Andrei examined my mother and Jia and then me. He told me I’d been shot twice. I said I reckoned I could be a doctor because I knew that already.

  He said I was losing a lot of blood.

  I said I knew that already, too.

  He asked me what I thought he ought to do about the bullet wounds, if I was such a good doctor.

  Apparently, I never answered. I passed out.

  We had a new judge in the territory. A handsome man who wore a fine suit and was well groomed. He had arrived about the same time as Jia. Isaac Parker was his name, and by the time Marshal Vincent Jenny delivered Jakob Schmidt to Judge Parker, our new judge had already found fifteen men guilty of murder. In time, young Schmidt would be the sixteenth.

  My mother told Jia and I how the Schmidts had arrived just as Nash Lane had finally had enough of her saying no to him and, according to Nash, belittling him.

  ‘It was the Devil and the deep blue sea,’ my mother said. ‘Nash let himself into the house, came into the kitchen, and told me that enough was enough, that I’d been teasing him for too long. He was drunk, but I knew this time he was serious. I think the fight with you last week pushed him over the edge. He wanted to get back at you as much as he wanted to rape me.

  ‘He didn’t notice the Schmidts come in behind him. The young one – Jakob – walked up to Nash and cut his throat. Just like that. For about one second I was thankful – and then I realized that I’d been cast into the hands of devils.’

  My mother looked at Jia as she spoke.

  ‘He told me they’d killed you. Both of you. Said he’d burned you both to death. I was devastated. After that, I didn’t care then what they did to me. Or at least I didn’t think I cared. Once they started . . . .’

  ‘He just wanted to make the moment worse for you,’ I said. ‘That’s what he does . . . what he did.’

  ‘When you kicked in the door . . . .’ My mother shook her head. There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.

  We were in the kitchen. My mother, Jia and I. My leg was bandaged – both legs. My torso, too. I’d lost a lot of blood but I was lucky according to Andrei. Three bullets over the last few days, he’d said, and no damage. I told him I didn’t feel lucky and he said what did I know, I wasn’t a doctor. A couple of my mother’s friends had helped scrub the blood from the floor in the kitchen, on the landing, and in the bedroom, and when I was stronger I would fix the bullet holes and the window.

  Jia and I told my mother what had happened in the few days we had been gone. We told her about One Leg and about the fire. We didn’t tell her about us – but I think she knew.

  At one point Jia mentioned the vision her mother had had about killing Moose Schmidt. ‘It was that vision that gave her the courage to go after him,’ Jia said. ‘In the vision . . .’ she paused. ‘In the vision she strangled Moose with a rope. That’s why she wanted to get so close to him.’

  My mother said, ‘It was you, wasn’t it? In her vision? You look like her, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jia said. ‘It was me. I know that now. The vision was true.’ Again she hesitated and I could see in her eyes that she was wondering if her mother had had to die after all. Then she said, ‘But maybe it had to happen this way.’

  We drank some whiskey – all of us – and we toasted Samuel Johnson and One Leg Hawk. We toasted Yellow Jack, Liu and Chen. We toasted Yu Yan, Jia’s mother.

  Then Jia drank all her whiskey in one go, put her glass down a little heavily, and told us tomorrow it would be time for her to go home.

  I loved her, but it had never been, could never be, anything more than what it was. I guess I had always known that, although I had probably refused to accept or believe it. Jia had wanted, and had needed, revenge. As did I. As, it turned out, so did my mother. Together we had all played our parts.

  The morning she left, I walked Jia to the livery and I helped her with her horse. We brought the saddled horse outside and we stood next to it, Jia holding the reins. The vast horizon and deep blue sky over her shoulder looked too big to me. New York was so many thousands of miles away that it seemed impossible that this girl, on her own, on a horse, could ever get there.

  ‘It will be easier than what we’ve done this last week,’ she said.

  ‘I’d be happy for you to stay,’ I said. ‘I would love for you to stay.’

  She smiled.

  ‘I could love to stay, too, Cal. But it’s not our destiny.’ She took my hands in hers. Her skin was warm and soft and I felt tears in my eyes and a massive sense of coming loss in my heart. ‘Yuánfèn,’ she said.

  ‘You told me,’ I said. ‘It’s fate that we found each other.’

  ‘It can mean that. But it can also mean more. It can mean fate without destiny.’

  ‘Fate without destiny?’

  ‘It means we were right to find each other at the time we needed each other, but we are not destined to stay together.’

  ‘All in one word?’ I said, feeling that coming loss creeping closer.

  ‘Yes, that’s the beauty of our language.’

  ‘I should learn it,’ I said, forcing my lips into the shape of a smile.

  She smiled too, but didn’t tell me that my learning her language was a good idea.

  ‘You have family?’ I asked. I knew that she did. Aunties and uncles, cousins. We had spoken of such things in our time together the previous week.

  ‘Yes. And you have your mother and I’ve been in St Mary’s Gap long enough to see there are lots of pretty girls.’

  ‘None like you.’

  ‘And you’re handsome when you smile.’

  She let go of my hands and suddenly that loss felt real, as if it had arrived deep inside me with the force and suddenness of an unexpected clap of thunder. It hurt more than my bullet wounds.

  Then she put her hands on my shoulders and she kissed me on the lips.

  ‘I will never forget you,’ she said. ‘Or your mother or One Leg. Thank you for helping me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not crying.’

  Then she smiled one last time, climbed on her horse and rode away, leaving me alone in the street, feeling as if I was the last one standing in the whole world.

  My story doesn’t end there, although you could argue that story does. A week after we had killed Moose Schmidt – who had already come to be known as the Monster of the Territories – I rode, freshly bandaged, to Fort Smith to see Judge Isaac Parker.

  It took three days of waiting before I gained an audience with Parker – and to this day I believe that delay was a test of my determination. But eventually I sat down with him in his office and we drank tea and I told him my story. I told him of my father, and I told him of One Leg Hawk and of Lin Wu Jia, and I told him of Moose Schmidt. He already knew about Moose Schmidt, of course. By then Jakob Schmidt was already in a cage somewhere in Fort Smith.

  When Parker asked me why I had come, why I was I telling him my story, I looked him in the eye and I said, ‘I would like a job, sir. I believe you’re hiring deputy marshals to police the Territory.’

  Outside Schmidt’s office, and across the yard, they were building the huge scaffold that would come to be infamous in due course through all the multiple hangings that would occur there.

  Judge Isaac Parker looked at me and said, ‘You went after and killed the monster, yes?’

  ‘Not just me, sir. I had help.’

  ‘I know. You were very gracious and complimentary about them in your telling of the story.’

  ‘They deserve it.’

  ‘Could you have done it on your own?’

  I wanted the job. I had come to realize that my destiny, my own Yuánfèn, was to honour my father and continue his work. That’s what he had trained me for – without my realizing it until these last few days. And thus, I wanted to answer ‘yes’ to Parker’s question. But I knew that he would see through the lie.r />
  ‘No sir, I couldn’t have done it on my own.’

  He nodded.

  ‘You said your father travelled with a Cherokee scout?’

  ‘Yes sir. One Leg Hawk. Tawodi.’

  ‘You speak Cherokee?’

  ‘No sir.’

  He smiled. ‘I like you, son. You’re more honest than most I take tea with.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’ll probably die out there. You know that?’

  ‘I’ll do my best not to, sir.’

  He paused. I paused. Eventually, in the gap, I asked, ‘Does that mean I have the job?’

  He picked up his cup, realized it was empty, frowned and put it down again. He looked at me, although it was more studying me than merely looking at me. ‘I know someone who could use a little help out there this summer. It’ll give you chance to see how you like it.’

  I could tell from his expression that what he really meant was that it would give him chance to see how I did.

  ‘Thank you, sir, I won’t let you down.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll do your best not to.’

  ‘Who is this person?’ I asked. ‘Where do I find them?’

  ‘He’s probably in the saloon right now. You can’t miss him. He’s a tall man with a big moustache and a suit almost as nice as mine. He’ll probably be playing cards. My advice is not to play cards with him.’

  ‘I’ll go and track him down,’ I said.

  Parker smiled. ‘He probably won’t be happy with me sending him an assistant. But tell him you’re the one that killed Moose Schmidt. He’ll be impressed.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘One other thing. He’s black. I’m guessing you won’t have any issue with that, on account of Lin Wu Jia and Tawodi. Seems to me you get on well with all colours and creeds.’

  I was impressed that he had remembered One Leg’s and Jia’s names. But I didn’t say that to him. He knew it was impressive anyway.

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Welcome on board.’

  He stood up and held out his hand. We shook and his grip was firm. As was mine. And that was how, the summer after we had killed Moose Schmidt, I ended up riding the Territories with Bass Reeves.

  But that’s another story.