The former slave did not waste a moment. As soon as he saw he hadn’t killed Diamond, he had spun the horse around and kicked it forward. The animal charged the station, shied as he neared the wall and tried to throw the rider.
Isaiah had expected as much and was already out of the saddle and charging through the open front door, rifle in his hands now. Diamond was wincing with pain, still trying to regain his feet, still clutching Bonita, still holding the gun.
“Drop it!” Isaiah shouted, aiming at the forehead of his former master. “Drop it or I will, I swear, forget that I am a human being!”
Diamond did not hesitate. He let the Colt fall to the floor.
“Let my wife go!”
Diamond obeyed. Crying from joy and fear, the woman ran over and hugged her husband hard around the waist. She was smart enough, and seasoned enough, to bend lower than the barrel of the rifle.
“I love you,” she said. “I never gave up hope!”
“Go outside to our boy,” Isaiah said. “I got words for this fella.”
She kissed her husband on his neck and ran out, scooping up her son who had kept the horse from running off and was standing beside it.
Isaiah’s eyes burned into Brent Diamond.
“For more than two thousand miles I swore to kill you,” Isaiah said. “Now—you don’t seem worth the complication it may give me down the road. So here’s what I’m offering instead. Go. Now. Take what you need, get on your horse, and don’t come back, ever.”
“No Colored comes into my own station and tells me to run!” Diamond shouted, causing blood to pump from the wound.
“You’re thinking of slave-Coloreds,” Isaiah told him. “There ain’t no more of those. Not here.”
Diamond didn’t move. Isaiah came closer. “I’m giving you a chance to live,” he said thickly. “That’s more’n you gave my father.”
With surprising swiftness, Diamond reached for the fallen Colt and swung it toward the man standing over him. Isaiah kicked it away and put his foot down on the man’s wound.
He looked at the Colt and smiled.
“You better shoot me!” Diamond said fiercely. “I will come for you!”
“I know that,” Isaiah said. “Reason I didn’t put a bullet in you is there’s something you are going to do for me. First—I’m gonna patch you up, like I used to do with your whipped slaves.” Still looking down, he added, “This may hurt.”
* * *
Outside, Bonita and Joshua were standing behind the well, with the horse, their backs to the station.
“It’s quiet,” Joshua said. “You think Pa’s all right?”
“I guess we’ d’ve heard if he wasn’t,” she said, more hopeful than certain.
More than a few minutes later they heard boots crunch on the dirt and turned. Isaiah walked over to his wife and son and hugged them both. Bonita held him around the chest, Joshua around the right leg.
“Everything’s okay,” he said quietly. “Our old lord and master is having a whiskey before he leaves.”
“How’s—how’s Mama?” Bonita asked.
“Last I saw, she was safe with some nice folks from Whip Station,” Isaiah said.
“The O’Malleys?” Bonita asked.
“That’s them.”
“Then she’s fine.” Bonita smiled with relief.
“Pa, will we have to leave, too?” Joshua asked.
“No, son,” Isaiah said.
Bonita was pushing her cheek to her husband’s chest, loving the feel and musk of him, when her face felt something crinkle. She pulled away. “What’s that?”
Isaiah grinned. “Our future.”
* * *
Whip Station had never seen so much activity without a stage being present.
The stagecoach arrived shortly after noon. Even the hot sun could not bake away the invisible clouds of pride and new love that trailed behind.
Joe rode with B.W. and Slash sat inside next to Clarity, their horses having been returned to the United States Cavalry. Willa was beside the younger woman, fidgeting restlessly.
“Had that gun for so long, for so many miles, I don’t know what to do with m’self,” she complained.
Fletcher Small was uncommonly silent as he wrote fast, tight little lines in his notebook. Reverend Michaels was also silent, though he did nothing but sit and look out the window.
During the ride, Clarity decided to tell Slash about what had happened to Young Thunder. He winced at the news—but did not show more in front of the others. She took his hand. He squeezed it tightly.
“I don’t ever want to hear bad news again without this hand to hold,” he informed her.
“Then we will see to that,” she replied.
When the stagecoach pulled up, Jackson, Sarah, and Gert ran out, unsure who would greet them . . . what news. Dick Ocean limped out on a crutch Jackson had made from a busted rake.
They all saw Joe right off and Sarah began to weep, even as she and the others sought Slash. The young O’Malley jumped from the coach like a deer and helped Clarity out. He was wearing the same smile he’d had on back at Salt Creek.
Slash hugged his mother, sister, and father and then Joe came over and did the same. Fighting back his own tears, he helped Willa from the stage. He introduced her to his family as Small and Michaels climbed out.
“Did my boy happen by here?” she asked of the three O’Malleys. “He was headed to some other station to get his family back.”
Joe explained what she meant as Malibu and Sisquoc came from the posts they had held since Joe’s departure. The old plainsman paused to shake the hands of both men, thanking them for their loyalty.
“What happened those from Washington?” Sisquoc asked.
“They’ve been taken to Fort Yuma where they will remain until their trial,” Joe said.
While everyone was having their reunion, B.W. had made his way from the box, walked stiffly to the horse trough, and plunged his head inside. He returned looking and smelling like a wet dog, but smiling.
“It’s been a day,” he told Ocean.
“Where’s the baggage?”
“Out on the prairie,” B.W. said. “Gotta collect it on the way back.”
Ocean shook his head. “Brother, I told you not to go without me.”
“My very words not two hours ago.” B.W. winked. “I vow I won’t do it again. We need a good wheel repair. You be ready to ride shotgun in the morning?”
Ocean just smiled.
Breaking away from Slash and his family, Clarity walked to the back of the station. She had seen her brother go there and found him standing by the garden, staring at a row of beans.
“If you are staying, I am staying,” he said without looking up.
“You don’t need to do that,” she said.
“We have been together for so long, endured so much. I—I want to be a part of the joy and also whatever tribulations lie ahead. I want to know your children.”
Clarity smiled broadly.
The reverend looked up, his eyes misty. “I want to be the one to marry you to the man you truly love.”
“You can see it?”
“Clearly, sister.”
The young woman threw her arms around his neck and hung there.
“God surely has His way of getting us where He wants us to be,” the preacher said.
* * *
Fletcher Small was already at the table, reading back through his notes, when the others entered. B.W. looked at him as if, for a moment, he had no idea who he was.
“You been pretty silent for a while, Mr. Writer,” the driver said.
“Been writing,” Small said. He held up the notebook and smiled with a twinkle of condescension.
“What’s your plans?” the driver asked.
“Oh, I’m leaving whenever you do,” he said. “I intend to complete this fascinating journey for my article. Though I’m thinking it will now be articles, plural, and secure a more prominent place in our publication than I�
�d imagined.”
“Corruption is carrion for sensational journalists,” Gert remarked.
“And readers,” Small said. “If they didn’t buy it, we would not print it.”
“Perhaps more would buy if you printed thoughtful stories?”
“Many men with lofty ideas have lost considerable amounts of money thinking like you.”
Joe had gone in with the women, helped to get Willa settled in a comfortable chair—which she cherished audibly—then left when Gert and Small started up. He would talk to her about his experiences with Baishan, the Apaches, and Tuchahu.
“Dad, you have to eat, rest,” Sarah said, laying a hand on his arm as he headed back out the door.
“I will,” he assured her. “There’s something I have to do first.”
Joe went to the stable where Jackson had gone with Malibu and Sisquoc to saddle their horses.
“You’ll eat before you leave?” Joe said.
“You have many mouths as it is,” Malibu said.
“Yeah, an’ most of ’em are moving too much, not with chewing,” Joe said. “You come in and keep me company. I want to hear more about this Major Howard from the San Diego Barracks. You know him?”
“We do, but not well. He is higher rank,” Sisquoc noted.
“Right, but you should try and—I don’t know. Get transferred or something. I think there’ll be some investigations at Yuma. Mud will splash.”
The Indians thanked him.
“I also have a favor to ask,” Joe said, and explained what he needed from the two Mission Indians.
“Of course, we will do this,” Malibu said.
“C’mon, Jackson,” Joe called over his shoulder as he put his arms around the backs of the two Indians. “The saddling’s gonna wait.”
“We’re spoiling these boys,” he said of the two horses. “This is prob’ly the longest they haven’t had to work.”
“Y’know,” Joe said, “I do envy them.”
As they crossed the dirt and hay floor, the four men flashed with sunlight that fell jaggedly through cracks in the old wood.
And Joe loved every horse-smelling, dust-spraying, eye-blinding step of it.
* * *
The sun was setting on as beautiful a vista as Bonita Sunday had ever seen in her life.
Her own place. A home belonging to her and Isaiah and Joshua. Her husband had convinced Diamond to sign over the deed in exchange for not revealing what he had discovered.
The gun Diamond had drawn had an ivory handle with the initials BIA engraved on the side. He had been in business with the Indian agent. Diamond could not have known, as yet, that things did not go the way the Easterner had planned.
“I do know that he has powerful forces who found him out and is turned against him,” Isaiah had said. “You might not want to remain in these parts. There will be a reckoning.”
Isaiah allowed him to take a carpetbag with gold coins and clothes. The former slave knew that the gold had been the product of his own labors but that was in the past. What mattered now was the future. He even let the man keep the gun, though he emptied it of all but a single bullet.
“In case you are of a mind to turn it on me,” Isaiah told him, “Bonita will see it is your last killing.”
As he saw the man to the trail, Isaiah left him with one more thought.
“If you return,” he warned, “I will smell you coming. I will feel it. I always did, on the river. You get to know a skunk by more than just his stink. You come back and I will kill you. Day or night, sun or storm, I will know you and end you.”
Isaiah did not know how much of what he said or how he said it had actually frightened Diamond. He did not know if the man would return some day. What he did know is that he would figure out a way to keep this station on the Butterfield route. The O’Malleys and B.W. would help him, he was sure of that. And he would see them soon, he was certain.
They had his mother. He wondered if she had ended up in San Francisco—and if she would decide not to come back. B.W. seemed an honorable man. He would see to her in Isaiah’s absence. He would not seek out the O’Malleys, or news of Willa, until he was sure his wife and son were safe here. That Diamond was truly gone.
Isaiah had his answer to one of those questions when he went to join his wife by the well. Joshua had been playing with a frog he found in the creek out back when he came running around the station.
“Comp’ny!” he shouted.
Isaiah at first thought to get his rifle—then decided against it. He was no longer in the wild, on the run. He was a man of property with a right to be here.
“I’m going to get the rifle,” his wife said.
Isaiah didn’t stop her. Bonita was a wise woman with the instincts of a fox. She might be right.
The family stood there, side to side, as a family. It had never been mentioned but they knew they would rise or fall in that unity.
Three figures were approaching with the setting sun to their back. The light was obscured by the oaks behind them on either side of the Butterfield Trail. None of the Sundays could make out any features of rider or horse, but the travelers seemed to be in no rush.
“Could it be some o’ those Rebs you was talkin’ about?” Bonita asked.
“They look whupped enough,” he said, noting the rounded shoulders of the figures on either side.
With Bonita holding the rifle, her husband stepped forward.
“Isaiah—” she cautioned.
“We are hosts, now, and these are travelers,” he said. “We have to get used to this.”
He continued forward and then stopped. From where he stood, the sinking sun outlined a familiar spindle of a form, a rifle under her arm. Isaiah’s eyes, then his mouth, then his arms went wide. He ran forward.
“Ma!” he cried. “Ma!”
Malibu and Sisquoc had been riding close to either side, the calico nudged between them, since the tired woman did not seem interested in actually directing her horse. The two Mission Indians stayed where they were, Sisquoc steadying Willa’s horse lest the man’s approach frighten it.
Barely slowing, Isaiah squeezed between the animals. As his mother reached out with one arm—the other still wrapped around the rifle—he ducked his shoulder beneath it and swung her into his arms.
Bonita arrived, shouting and sobbing, moments later, followed by a beaming Joshua.
Willa’s stony exterior cracked, fast. She handed the rifle to her grandson, who laid it against one of the oaks, then threw her arm around Bonita and the boy.
“God, thank you,” the older woman rasped through her tears. “Good Lord, bless you.”
Isaiah’s own damp eyes sought out Malibu and Sisquoc. He broke from the others to shake their hands in turn. “Thank you, too,” he said. “How—how is Slash and his family?”
“They are well,” Malibu replied. “Cavalry came to take them, Indians come and save—most unusual day.”
“The shaman?”
“His enemies, Apache, take him back to Serrano tribe,” Sisquoc said.
“Most unusual day,” Malibu added.
“The men who started this?” Isaiah pressed. “What of them?”
“They are in jail at fort,” Sisquoc replied. “I wish to be there in time to talk at trial. Then see them hang.”
“Can I offer you food and drink before you go?” Bonita asked.
“They ate enough at the O’Malley place,” Willa said. “We all did. Won’t need food till I’m eighty-one.”
“We go,” Malibu said, looking around before urging his cavalry pony forward.
“Man of Colored own this place?” Sisquoc asked.
“He does,” Isaiah replied.
Over his shoulder, Malibu said, “Most unusual day” as he rode out of the sunset.
Author photo courtesy of the National
Cowboy Symposium & Celebration
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of over 85 novels, DUSTY RICHARDS is the only author to win two Spur aw
ards in one year (2007), one for his novel The Horse Creek Incident and another for his short story “Comanche Moon.” He is a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the International Professional Rodeo Association, and serves on the local PRCA rodeo board. Dusty is also an inductee in the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame. He currently resides in northwest Arkansas. He was the winner of the 2010 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction, for his novel Texas Blood Feud, and was honored by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2009.
www.dustyrichardslegacy.com
Massacre at Whip Station Page 26