Equator

by Antonin Varenne

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1871. Pete Ferguson is a wanted man. An army deserter, hunted for murder in Oregon, not to mention theft and arson in Nebraska.

Taking the name of Billy Webb, he is hired by bison hunters, but leaves after a bloody dispute. He then takes the Comancheros Road, which he follows to Mexico, and then to Guatemala . . . Whatever he does, wherever he goes, Pete is a magnet for trouble and seems incapable of making the right choices. The violence that follows him keeps him away from those he loves: his brother Oliver, still on the Fitzpatrick ranch with Aileen, Alexandra and Arthur Bowman.

It is a woman who will change his destiny, an Indigenous woman driven out of her lands. To save her, Ferguson will sabotage an attempted coup d'état and together, they will go to the Equator that has become Ferguson's grail, and where the malevolent forces governing this world must finally be defeated.

Release date: March 7, 2019

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 320

Sample

Lincoln, Nebraska, June 1871

They supported the South on this side of the Platte River. The town was still called Lancaster then; it was renamed in honour of Lincoln after the defeat. The city’s new name was a humiliation for its inhabitants and they never pronounced it without spitting between their boots, even in their own homes. As far as they were concerned, they were now in enemy territory. If a traveller were to enter a saloon in the city and raise a toast to the liberator of the South, he would finish his drink in silence and leave in a hurry.

Lincoln had become the state capital. The city now had a northern governor, a northern postal service, a northern court, a northern school and the Land Office, which offered a plot of land amounting to 150 acres to any American citizen. Free of charge. On two conditions: the applicant had to be at least twenty-one years old and must never have taken up arms against the government. A Northerner, in other words. Former Confederates were not entitled to this federal generosity. Washington, which claimed to be wiping the Civil War from the collective memory by focusing on the conquest of the West, continued to draw up battle lines on the country’s evolving map. Mountains, paths, rivers and grudges all rose up like walls.

Many people in Lincoln dreamed of tearing the Land Office down, plank by plank.

*

For fifty cents a night, Pete Ferguson was renting a room with a view of this little white wooden house, the black lettering above the door spelling out, “US Land Office. Concessions. Purchase and sale”.

After weeks on the road, exposed to prying eyes, it had seemed like a good idea to shut himself up in this boarding house room. Since being here, though, his anxiety had driven him to a sort of paralysis. He had spent days on end sitting in a chair, drinking, lifting up the cotton curtain to peer through the window at the men and women entering the government building across the street. The spectacle of their transformation was the only thing capable of distracting him from his anguish.

Dressed in their Sunday best so they didn’t look like the beggars that they were, worried that those promises of free land would turn out to be another scam, they entered the Land Office as though it were a church and today was their wedding day. The little white house even looked a bit like a chapel amid all those shops, the government representative standing in its doorway like a priest waiting to welcome his new flock. The ritual was at once a wedding and a baptism. Sceptical, their shoes white with dust, the pioneers converged on the Land Office from all directions, then re-emerged with a deed of property in their pocket. A handshake with the servant of the State would make them the equal of all those others who possessed something. Then they would get back on their wagons; wives would look at husbands, each would take a deep breath, and, with tears in their eyes, they would head off towards their 150 acres. Gratitude and pride were clearly visible on their faces. That gift was enough to make them eternally loyal citizens. Patriots. Their long journey was over; their sacrifices and hard work had been rewarded. They had earned their land; their good fortune was fully deserved.

Watching this, Pete remembered what Alexandra Desmond had told him about that Indian chief: a Lakota who had tried to pass on his people’s wisdom to the white men by declaring that the earth did not belong to men, but that man belonged to the earth. He was wasting his breath, Alexandra said, because white men had only come here to make the earth theirs.

Most of the pioneers were his age, with children clinging to their legs or feeding from their mothers’ breasts. Men with puffed-out chests and women with healthy pink cheeks.

When Pete woke, his belongings were already packed. His saddlebags filled, the blanket wrapped around his Winchester, his trunk and his dog-eared notebook – Arthur Bowman’s final gift. He no longer remembered how long he had been here or why he had even chosen this town, only that it was high time he left.

The widow who ran the boarding house counted her money on the living-room table, a flag of the old Confederacy nailed to the wall behind her. She grumbled about all these outsiders taking over the town. She pushed a few cents across the varnished wood towards him: all that remained of his last four dollars.

“Your change, Mr Webb.”

Pete left the coins on the table, threw the saddlebags over his shoulder and walked to the stable. His horse, Reunion, snorted when he put the saddle on its back. Pete led the mustang across the street and stopped outside the Land Office. He read the painted letters one last time before putting his foot in the stirrup.

“I was about to close. What can I do for you?”

Pete looked at the tall man standing in the doorway, grinning at him.

“I still have a few minutes, if you’d like to come in.”

Pete climbed the front steps and went inside. The man hung his hat on the wall, gestured at a chair facing the desk, then went behind the desk and held out his hand.

“George Emery. How can I help you, Mr . . .?”

“Billy Webb.”

George Emery shook his hand so energetically that Pete felt as though his organs had shifted inside him.

“Are you looking for land, Mr Webb? A concession? Are you a farmer? A cattle breeder? A miner? Do you have a family or are you planning to start one? That’s your right, a man of your age. Maybe you fought in the war, Mr Webb, so you’re even more deserving of one of these plots of land. Did you fight in the war, Mr Webb? What I mean is . . . which side were you on?”

“The winning side.”

George Emery blinked.

“Of course! Where are you from, Mr Webb?”

Pete eyed the shelves behind Emery, where maps were rolled up and land registers filed.

“Oregon.”

The Land Office employee followed Pete’s gaze before turning back to his client.

“A state loyal to the Union. But tell me what you’re looking for, Mr Webb, and together we’ll work out what the United States government can do for you.”

The employee had no doubt that the government would be able to satisfy the desires of a young man like Billy Webb.

“So, you’re giving land to anyone?”

“To all those citizens who . . .”

“To anyone at all?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The whole country is yours?”

Pete walked around the desk and over to the maps. He took one, lifted it to his face and sniffed the paper. Then he put it back in its place and opened a register. George Emery cleared his throat.

“I should make it clear that only the first one hundred and fifty acres are free. And that the plots still available in this county are increasingly distant from the Platte River. There is still good land to be had, but it’s not easily accessible. And most of it is not well-irrigated. What exactly are you looking for, Mr Webb?”

Pete put the register on the desk and walked over to the window. He looked outside at his mustang and Lincoln’s main street.

“Do you ask them what they’re going to do once they’re in their new home?”

Emery leaned his neck sideways to loosen his shirt collar.

“I don’t understand your question.”

“How they treat their wives and children?”

“What do you mean?”

Pete turned to face him.

“Do you ask them who they are?”

“Who they are?”

“About their morality. That’s what you’re offering here with your property deeds, isn’t it? The right to do what they want in their own home.”

Emery stood up and spoke in a voice that filled the room.

“Young man, from the smell of your breath I’m guessing that you’re not sober. You should probably go get some rest.”

“Have you ever lived under the roof of a man who had the right to do anything, Mr Emery?”

“That’s enough!”

“Give me your money.”

The Land Office employee frowned. The young man facing him was stocky, with round shoulders but a powerful chest.

“Listen, you should leave before you wind up in trouble.”

“When I was a kid, I thought that God was on the side of my father because he was strong, and that He would be with me when I grew up.”

George Emery opened a drawer in his desk and took out a pistol.

“I don’t know what your problem is, son, but you should leave now.”

Pete stared at the gun.

“You know, possession of a gun is one of those responsibilities that they shouldn’t let just anyone have. Like the right to do what you want in your own home.”

He slowly reached inside his jacket and drew out a Colt .45.

“It brings . . . consequences.”

He relaxed his arm and let the revolver dangle by his side.

“Mr Emery, do you understand the threat that you represent to us? The courage that we must show to face up to it?”

The Land Office employee raised one hand in a calming gesture while the other held the pistol aimed at Pete. He looked as though he were swearing on a Bible.

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret, kid. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

“I don’t like negotiations. You should stop talking. Do something.”

“I’ll give you the money and that’ll be an end of it.”

George Emery took a leather wallet from his waistcoat, tossed it onto the desk and took a step backwards.

“I want you to leave me alone now.”

“What?”

“Go out the back door and leave me alone.”

“I can’t do that. Just take the money and go.”

“Put down your gun and leave, before we both lose our courage and anger takes hold of us.”

George Emery licked his lips with his dry tongue, put his pistol on the desk, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door next to the shelves full of maps. He turned back to the young man, memorising his face and the details of his clothing.

“They’re gonna come for you, son.”

He left without closing the door. Pete staggered. He took a flask of whiskey from his jacket and downed it. He pocketed the wallet and went over to the maps. He leaned down to sniff them again, then lit a match on his jacket sleeve and touched the flame to a pile of rolled papers. He watched the flames spread from one map to the next. The wooden rack began to turn black. The office flickered yellow and orange and clouds of smoke rolled up to the ceiling. Tears ran down his cheeks. Outside, his horse became agitated.

He jumped into the saddle, rode down a back alley, and fled Lincoln along a parallel street, a line of small gardens and the backs of shops flashing past. Night fell over the eastern path. His leather waistcoat was still hot from the fire.

The mustang stretched its muscles. It ran more smoothly now, faster, breathing in time with its stride. Horse and rider left the main path and headed through the long grass of the plain, a long grey swell under the first stars. A few black shapes – round hills on the horizon – guided them southwards.

At dawn, exhausted, they came to a stop. Pete drank a flask of water and rolled into the hollow of a depression in the ground, while Reunion grazed on dew-wet plants.

Pete woke, drenched with sweat, under the copper disc of the noonday sun. He stripped down to his trousers and climbed, barefoot, to the top of the highest hill, a bottle of whiskey and George Emery’s wallet in his hands. Sitting cross-legged, he contemplated the endless flat landscape. Then he counted his loot, wedging a rock on top of the banknotes to protect them from the wind.

His head fell forwards, his shoulders slumped. The sun burned his back and warmed the whiskey. Pete Ferguson, wanted for theft and arson in Nebraska, wanted for murder in Nevada, was the possessor of a grand total of seventy-eight dollars.



My brother.

After the Old Man, the person you hated most in Basin was Billy Webb, and you hated him even more once he was dead. Because that little shit had become a hero and nobody would ever say that Billy Webb was a nasty rich kid who spat in the faces of us Ferguson brothers.

The day he died, you wished you were in his place – with the other fathers who went off to avenge the Red Indians who were hunting on our land. But it was Billy who went to the Warm Springs reserve with his new rifle and his horse, while you had neither. The Old Man was part of that expedition. He hitched the cart and, drunk like the rest of them, yelled that they’d need a hearse to bring back the corpses of the Paiutes. They all laughed and fired their guns in the air outside the farmhouse. I was scared and you were mad that you couldn’t go with them.

It was young Webb that they brought back in the Ferguson manure cart, all them poor bastards too drunk and too stupid to fight the Indians. They didn’t think it was such a great idea then, that stinking cart.

When they got back to Basin that night, after the town had rounded up the sheriff and the soldiers from Fort Dalles, the Old Man stood on the doorstep, swaying, and stared at us. I’ll never forget what he said. “Here, we defend our land and our families. You know what they’ll say in Basin? They’ll say that the Ferguson boys weren’t up to the task. That they did nothing to defend our farms and that Billy Webb is a hero.”

You stayed at the farm to look after me, Pete, because I was too small and I was scared.

I still have a scar on my head from the beating that the Old Man gave us that night. While he was hitting me, you took his rifle and you put the barrel to the back of his neck to make him stop. Anger made your voice sound strange to me: “Stop hitting him or I’ll blow your head off.”

The Old Man stood up and you held out as long as you could when he told you to let go of the rifle. You knew you’d let it go and you knew what would happen after. But he had stopped hitting me.

You spent three days in bed after he knocked you out, but nothing was ever the same at the farm after that. All three of us knew that something had changed.

Years later, when we went off to war and Rudy Webb bought what was left of the farm, he got his revenge for that: in the Ferguson family there were two living sons and no father, while in his house there was a father but no son.

Now you have a good horse and a good rifle. That’s all you have left.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re not alone and that you can find somebody other than Billy Webb you can talk to. He forgave you long ago for wishing him dead the day that the men left for the reserve.

Dodge City, Kansas, September 1871

That night, a few soldiers from Fort Dodge stayed in town, at Hoover’s Saloon; George Hoover had opened it just for them one year before, when Dodge City was nothing more than a row of stakes in the ground. Not that the bar’s owner was such a patriot that he wanted to sell beer to soldiers in the middle of nowhere just to keep their spirits up. No, even then, he knew that the railway would pass through there.

Since then, three more buildings had been constructed in Dodge City. First a general store, then a hotel – whose male population was not yet numerous enough to lure any prostitutes. But they were on their way, along with maybe a few pioneers’ daughters who would make good wives. After that, a laundryman, hairdresser and barber moved into town, and he too was hoping that some ladies would arrive so the men in the area would start taking greater care over their appearance.

It was no secret that here in Kansas there were, for as far as the eye could see, green plains that would give harvests worthy of Eden as soon as the first ploughs came along. Pioneers had already passed this way, en route from Missouri and Texas. But the train was something else. A river of steel, sleepers and rocks flowing straight westwards, with farms growing up alongside it instead of trees. The Santa Fe Railway increased the value of the plots of land around it. But for the future of Dodge City, what mattered most was not the farmers. What mattered were the great Texan landowners who would load their cattle onto train carriages to send them off at high speed in all directions. Or, rather, the only two directions that America cared about: east and west. Hundreds, thousands, millions of longhorns would be transported. So Hoover, who had a nose for these things and friends at the Santa Fe Railway, had erected his first whiskey tent five miles from Fort Dodge, where the station was going to be built. One year later, the train stopped directly outside his saloon. People left the saloon and they were right on the platform; they got off the train and went right inside the saloon. The train didn’t look like much: a new locomotive, a coal wagon, a passenger carriage, a freight wagon, and that was it.

The five or six soldiers from the fort and the thirty inhabitants of Dodge City would get drunk while choosing – if they had a hundred dollars in their pocket – their future: a hotel, a hardware store, a restaurant, a furniture workshop, or a brothel. George Hoover would soon be offering loans, as the dollars continued pouring into the cash register of his bar. Towns like this had grown up out of nowhere before, and it was always the first man to open a bar who became the mayor, the first to build a fence who became a senator, and the first to sell hammers who ended up owning entire streets.

Hot on the heels of this first wave of inhabitants came men from the east and the south: cattle traders and envoys from the biggest livestock farms. That night in Dodge City, including the railway workers, there were about sixty people packed into Hoover’s Saloon. The table where they all wanted a place was presided over by the Santa Fe Railway representative, who had become the King of the West in only a few hours. The meat traders formed the first circle around him, with the discussion swiftly becoming an auction: whoever offered the highest price per pound of merchandise would have his product delivered by the next train. The prices rose faster than a newborn’s fever. A trader from the North Western Fur Company elbowed his way through the crowd and finally banged his fist down on the table.

“At that price, there’s no point in us even transporting our furs! We’d be better off sticking to our wagons. At fifty cents a fur, we may as well let them rot here!”

The Santa Fe Railway representative crossed his arms over his belly. “It’s not our company’s fault if you can’t pay.”

The fur trader turned to the cattle breeders: “You can’t hold out for long at those prices and you know it. You’re playing the railway’s game and it’s the small businesses like us who are going to suffer. Either we join together or they’re going to bleed us dry!”

The representatives of ranches in Texas and Kansas, bunched around Henry Sitler, the biggest cattle breeder between Dodge and Junction City, could not have cared less what the man from the Fur Company thought. Cattle were worth a lot more than furs, and since the end of the drought and the war, prices had just kept going up. The country was gobbling up more and more meat every year.

The man from the North Western Fur Company shook his head, called them all madmen and left Hoover’s Saloon. He went past the train platform towards the hunters’ camp, where six-foot-high piles of furs were strapped to the wagons. There were about twenty men there, standing around a campfire. Bob McRae, the oldest among them, asked the trader how things had gone.

“I have no choice. If you want to load your furs on that train, I can’t offer you more than two dollars a fur. If I give you three dollars, you’ll have to deliver them to Atchinson yourselves.”

“At two dollars, we’ll go bust. We’ve got men to pay, equipment to buy for the winter. Even at three dollars, we won’t make a single cent in profit.”

“Two dollars. That’s all I can pay you if you’re transporting them by train.”

Bob McRae gave it some thought.

“So, it’s the cattle guys who are driving up the price?”

“They don’t even have anything to send yet, but they’re outbidding everyone else to make sure that they have the train to themselves in the future. The guy from the railway just sits there drinking while the prices rise.”

“And that carriage on the tracks now is still empty?”

“Yep, and the train leaves tomorrow.”

“And it’s the cattle guys who are stopping us loading our furs on that train?”

The North Western Fur representative nodded. “Half the town is hoping to work with the guys from Texas and the Sitler ranch. They don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.”

“How much can you pay for the train?”

“Ten cents a fur max., and I’ll pay you two dollars ninety for each.”

“Give us three dollars and we’ll throw in three extra furs, each one worth at least twenty-five dollars.”

The representative held out his hand. “Works for me.”

Bob McRae looked at the hunters around him. They understood without him speaking a word. When he set off, the others followed him – managers, butchers, cooks and mule-drivers – towards the lit-up saloon.

On the train platform, under an oil lamp swaying in the wind, a man stood, hands in pockets, eyeing the locomotive. He was a tough-looking young man, with a bowler hat on his head and a fur-collared jacket under one arm.

McRae drew close to him. “Kid, if it’s your job to watch over this train, I would advise you to go for a walk.”

The man turned to face McRae and the hunters. “I don’t work for the railway.”

“Well, take a hike anyway.”

“I go where I want.”

The young man was holding a bottle. He turned away from them to look at the locomotive again. The other hunters went on their way, but McRae remained where he was. He smiled. “You looking for work?”

“Depends.”

“What can you do?”

“Jack of all trades, master of none.”

“Ha, you really know how to sell yourself! You’re hired.”

“To do what?”

“Come with me into the saloon.”

“And after that?”

“We’ll talk about it if you can walk out of there in a straight line.”

The young man lifted up the bottle. “I’m not scared of whiskey.”

“You won’t have time to drink any. It’s your muscles I need.”

“What are you going to do in there?”

“Negotiate the price of this train that you can’t stop looking at.”

*

The hunters shouldered their way through the crowd to the table where the Santa Fe Railway employee sat. Beside him, Henry Sitler had ordered a bottle of Hoover’s best whiskey. The negotiations had been completed and they were celebrating. Bob McRae said to the railway representative: “These men and I have a load of furs outside on our wagons and we’d like to know what we can do to get them in your train so we can go home and start working again.”

Henry Sitler did not give his neighbour time to respond. “I don’t think that should be a problem, Bob. All you have to do is pay and the carriage is yours.”

“The train will go faster than our wagons and we’re willing to pay the difference. But only at ten cents a fur – not more.”

“That wouldn’t really be fair, now would it, Bob? Given what we have to pay for our merchandise.”

“With all due respect, Mr Sitler, you know we can’t afford the prices that you have fixed so high. And who is going to clear your prairies of bison if you put these hunters out of business?”

“You should talk about that with your buyers, Bob. It’s nothing to do with us or the railway company.”

Bob McRae turned to the Santa Fe representative. “Listen, we have a load ready to go. Your train is about to go off empty. Surely it’s better to get paid ten cents a fur?”

“The company has settled on the prices, sir. I can’t help you. Mr Sitler is right: this is something you should discuss with your trading partners.”

“Our trading partners? Sir, we’re offering you three hundred dollars and we’ll load the furs on the train ourselves. It’s not like we’re trying to force you into anything, it’s simply a fair price.”

Voices rose around them. Some said McRae was right, that it was a fair deal, while others said there was nothing fair about the hunters paying less than everyone else. Sitler stood up and bellowed: “Gentlemen, Dodge City will soon be a major cattle city and it’s the market that has fixed the price of transportation. It’s the same for everybody. Does Mr Hoover sell his whiskey at different prices to different customers?”

Laughter. More shouting.

“Hell, who do them bison hunters think they are? Why should they get a better deal than us?”

“Throw them out the door!”

“Lower the price of whiskey!”

“McRae is right – nobody else can pay what them big ranches are paying!”

“The train is for everybody!”

“Let them load their furs!”

The saloon was soon divided in two, and each side was yelling at the other. McRae leaned down close to the railway employee. “Three hundred dollars. It’s a good deal and you know it.”

One of Sitler’s men grabbed his sleeve. “We told you to drop it, McRae. You’re not welcome at this table.”

McRae ignored the man and kept talking to the railway representative. “Alright, this is our last offer: three hundred and twenty dollars.”

“Forget it, McRae. You and your scavengers should get the hell out of here!”

The Santa Fe representative no longer knew what to do. The saloon was in a tumult now. Everyone was shouting and the drinkers outside were trying to shove their way in. Hoover, standing behind the bar, yelled at everyone to calm down. The railway workers and the cattle workers rolled up their sleeves. Sitler’s employee tried to push McRae away from the table. The tough young man that McRae had just hired knocked him out with a punch to the side of the head and fighting broke out as suddenly as if someone had lit a match in a mine full of gas.

The Fort Dodge soldiers, whom no-one dared attack, stood looking at one another in the middle of this mob, drained their glasses, and then threw themselves into the fray. A few shouts gave a general idea of the two sides’ aims: one side wanted to throw the hunters out of the bar, the other wanted to be allowed to load their furs on the train. But the battle was far less clear-cut: fists landed on allies and adversaries alike. The only ones with a defined objective were the cattle workers, who had their sights fixed on the group of hunters standing together in the centre of the saloon. Tables were picked up and passed over heads then thrown into the street along with all the chairs to make space for the fighting. The Santa Fe Railway representative crawled behind the bar, which Hoover and his barman were defending with pickaxe handles. Planks were torn from the walls and floor and transformed into weapons. The ranchers and the hunters finally collided and the violence redoubled in intensity. Heads were split open, ears and calves were bitten. A soldier climbed onto the bar, ran along it and dived into the brawling mass. The hunters formed up in a line and, linking their arms, advanced until they had driven the cattlemen into a corner. Chair legs and planks were raised above heads. The tough young hireling punched his enemies until his knuckles were raw and kicked them once they were down on the floor. The hunters had lost several men but soon they were the only group left standing. Si. . .