“He’s just dreamin’, talkin’ in his sleep,” Molly said, and came to her knees, bent over, and whispered. “We can get out of this town, this jail. You savvy that? We’re free. Now get up before I drag your arse all the way to the Big Blue.”
Constance’s eyes shot open. “What did you say?”
* * *
They sat underneath the bridge that crossed the river, washing without soap, and still wearing their duds in case some travelers or teenage boys might happen by and discover that the two horse thieves that had spent the past six months in the Marysville, Kansas, jail were women, not men. Constance Beckett kept bitching, as she had been doing since they had been caught at the stables trying to saddle a couple of fresh horses.
Molly moved out of the water, found a rock to sit on, opened her possibles bag she had left on the bank, and found what remained of her twist of tobacco.
“You don’t realize how lucky we are, gettin’ catched like we was,” she said. “First, this is Marysville. Pony Express used to ride right through here, so with folks around here appreciatin’ good horseflesh, they could have stretched our necks.” She shoved the last bit of tobacco into her mouth. “Second, they could have tried us, convicted us, and sent us to Lansing. The state pen wouldn’t have been as accommodatin’ as they was here. State pen would’ve identified us as bein’ of the fairer sex. That could’ve gotten you sent up to Fort Kearny and tried for murder.”
Constance ducked under the water, came back up, and stood, walking slowly, her clothes hanging tight against her body, toward Molly.
“Third . . .” Molly looked up at the bridge. “Us bein’ in jail, nobody lookin’ for you would’ve figured to find you in a Kansas jail.”
“So what do we do now?” Constance Beckett just didn’t appreciate all that Molly had done for her.
“We find breakfast. A fittin’ breakfast. Something that ain’t the hog and hominy they been feedin’ us the past six months.”
“We don’t have any money to buy breakfast.”
Molly sighed. “Girl, you ain’t learned nothin’. We beg for somethin’ to eat. This bein’ a Christian community, folks will take pity on a couple of tramps.”
* * *
They had to endure a lecture by Captain Cottrell of the Sons of Temperance on the evils of liquor, and empty the chamber pots, sweep off the porch, and beat out a rug in the lobby of the captain’s hotel, but Cottrell finally served Molly and Constance ham, eggs, biscuits, and coffee outside, in the back of the American House, which Cottrell owned. He even gave them last week’s Marysville Enterprise.
“What do we do now?” Constance asked. A good meal and decent coffee had made her practically sociable.
“I don’t know. You ain’t gonna eat that last bite of biscuit?” She plucked the bread off the tin plate.
“Still try to find that wagon train in Nebraska City?”
“Child, that train pulled out weeks ago.” She washed down the biscuit with coffee, reached for the pot Mr. Cottrell had left on the doorstep, and refilled their cups. Constance picked up the newspaper, started reading. Molly guzzled coffee and looked at the American House’s corral, then at the stables and barn. The horses weren’t bad at all, Mr. Cottrell was upstairs taking his nap, and temperance men usually being sound sleepers, well, the Kansas state line ended just a hop and a jump north of town, and Molly might be able to lose a posse that didn’t care if the two horse thieves were in Nebraska Territory and out of Kansas jurisdiction. They could keep the horses in the shallows of the river for a while. Make their way to Nebraska City, hire on with another freight company.
The page turned. Constance read. Molly eyed the dapple, not for herself, but Constance. Her pard wasn’t that good of a rider—truth is, she wasn’t good at much of anything except sticking a knife into a bastard’s ribs—but Molly felt they were kindred spirits. Women in a man’s world, pretending to be men.
“On my God.”
Molly turned as Constance, her face paling, lowered the newspaper. Her Adam’s apple bobbed, she wet her lips, and with trembling hands shoved the paper toward Molly. Molly saw an advertisement for a drugstore in town. “There.” Constance pointed to a paragraph without a headline.
The bodies of two freighters for the
Sublette & Dixon Company of Leavenworth,
Kansas, were discovered south of The
Narrows on the trail to the Platte River
Road. Both men were riddled with arrows
and brutally tortured by the savage red devils
plaguing the territory. Mr. Dixon also said
the oxen were stolen and wagons destroyed.
The deceased, Mr. Dixon said, were
H. Coleman of Kansas, and K. Shishkov, a
foreigner.
“Well, damn, if we ain’t the two luckiest folks around.” Molly tapped the paper with her pointer finger. “Luckier than ol’ Harv and the Bulgarian.” She turned, grinning. “You realize what this means, pard?”
Constance blinked.
“We can go back to Leavenworth. Get back to work. Don’t have to worry about those two connivin’ dogs to turn you in for no reward.”
“What if they told Mr. Sublette or Mr. Dixon . . . ?”
“I’m not a damned fool. I ain’t going to work for those two crooks. Besides, they wouldn’t hire us back nohow. But there’s lots of outfits in Leavenworth that could use somebody who knows how to handle a whip like I do. And it’s likely a hell of a lot safer goin’ south than north right now.”
“That’s a horseshit plan,” Constance said. She was coming along in the profanity department.
“No.” Molly grinned. “It’s genius.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
A bullet had grazed Andrew Shaps’s side, Sam Ireland took a ball through his left hand, Dalton Combs’s earlobe had been shot off, and a ball had lodged against Luke Price’s thighbone. Those had been the only injuries—except for the death of the newspaper reporter. José Pablo Tsoyio cauterized the ear and side wounds with the heated blade of a butcher knife, pulled a whiskey-soaked silk bandanna through Ireland’s hand, and bandaged the injuries with some sort of smelly poultice. He couldn’t do much with the leg wound other than give the Texas cowboy a jug of the rustlers’ whiskey.
Nelson Story read over the grave the boys had dug for Mr. Brian Cromwell, and carefully wrapped all of the personal items found in the newspaper writer’s pockets in a spare shirt, announcing that he would mail the package with a short note to Robert Tracy—Story hoped he remembered the name right—editor of the Troy Reporter. Some of the boys fashioned a cross and stuck it at the head of the grave.
The rest of the dead were dumped inside the cutbank of an arroyo. Peña and Stubbings collapsed dirt to cover the bodies. No warning to other trail thieves, no marker, no bodies left swinging from tree limbs, and it would not take long for coyotes or wolves to sniff out the dead and get to feasting. Funeral over, the volunteers from the Baxter Springs herds rode out, pulling the drunken, singing Price on a travois. Story jammed the hat on his head and ordered his men to get their cattle and crew moving.
They rode not toward Baxter Springs, but northwest, following the wandering course of the flooded Neosho River.
* * *
“How long we gonna keep goin’ this way?” Ryan Ward griped.
“What difference does it make?” Ernesto Martinez said.
“Because Kansas City is thataway.” He jabbed his finger across the river.
Jameson Hannah rode up and barked, “You get paid by the month. Longer we ride, more you earn.”
“And the less time we have to drink whiskey,” Jody Barley said.
Boone couldn’t understand that logic.
Nor could he understand Nelson Story, when the iron-willed man told Jameson Hannah the next morning, “I’ll catch up with you in a day, maybe two. Keep them along the river.”
When he rode off, Boone turned and asked Kelvin Melean, “Where do you think he’s going?”
/>
“Why the hell would I care? Maybe the hard-rock bastard won’t come back.”
* * *
He swam the black across the river, rode casually, uncertain, and recognized that rare feeling of nervousness. Eventually, Story spotted smoke coming out of the chimney in a soddy, and he rode up easily, hands in clear view of the open door, and called out, “Hello, the house.”
“Yeah.”
All Story could make out was the muzzle of a shotgun.
“Looking for Centreville Township.”
“Turn you horse north, mister. You should come across a wagon track. Follow that three miles, you’ll find your township.”
“Would you happen to know where a family named Trent lives?”
“Can’t help you. But it’s not much of a town.”
The farmer hadn’t been kidding, but Story didn’t need to ask directions, for he saw a little girl rolling a hoop in front of another sod hut on the outskirts of what some might call a village. He turned the black east and rode to the soddy, noticing how little of the quarter section had been broken by plow. The hoop wobbled, spun, and toppled, and the girl stepped back.
“Ma,” she called out. “Pa. We got . . .” The grin brightened her face. “Company.”
Story removed his hat, but stayed in the saddle. “Do you remember me, Jeanette?”
Suspicion quickly darkened her sunburned face, and she stepped back to what was beginning to resemble a garden. A milch cow brayed and moved aimlessly over the prairie, its red-tinted bell clanging. A dog growled from inside the house of earth, and Story had to grab a firmer hold on the reins as the black snorted, twisted his head, and flattened his ears.
The man stepped out of the sod house, holding a rifle, which he leaned against the mound of dirt, shook his head, and withdrew a pipe from the rear pocket of his denim trousers. “Frances,” the balding man said to someone inside the house. “Make yourself presentable and say hello to our son-in-law. Theodore. Hush.”
The growls stopped. The girl, maybe five years old, stepped around the hoop.
“Are you . . . Ellen’s beau?”
Story almost smiled. Beau. Well, that was something. After wrapping the reins around the handle of a plow, Story moved closer to the sod house, where Matthew Trent brushed his hands on his dirty jeans. Frances stepped out, followed by two other young’uns.
“Where’s John?” Story asked after shaking the farmer’s hand. John was the oldest of the Trent brood.
“Got a job.” The man’s grip remained as hard as ever.
“Would you like coffee, Nelson?” Frances called from the soddy.
Story wasn’t about to drink up these poor folks’ coffee. Besides, he had grown accustomed to the Mexican cook’s brew.
He remembered those first meetings with Trent, trying to sell him some firewood.
“That wood’s green, boy.”
“Yes, sir, but it’ll be dried out by the time hell’s moved on.”
“This be Kansas, boy. Hell don’t never leave.”
“I’ve been in Kansas enough to know that here, hell gets mighty cold, especially come January and February.” Nodding toward the stack of wood. “Oak and sugar maple, sir. Burn hot and long. Give you a good bed of coals, too.”
“What the blazes would a boy from Ohio know about oak and sugar maple—other than what you might’ve read in books?”
“There are trees in Ohio, sir. Lots of them.”
Mr. Trent: “Uh-huh.” The long stare would follow.
That had led to Trent hiring Story to do some chopping and hauling of wood on Trent’s own spread, then on Little Stranger Creek. Breaking sod, chopping timber, hauling wood. And he remembered seeing the black-haired girl with the haunting eyes, which diminished the sweat, and cuts, and aches from the bottoms of his feet to the back of his neck, but mostly in his back and shoulders, and the blisters on his hands despite working with thick gloves.
* * *
He did accept well water, brackish and hot, for himself and the gelding, and they found a place in the shade. The mutt of a dog stared warily at Story.
“New dog,” Story said.
Trent stared at the mongrel. “Had him about a year now.”
“What happened to the old one?” Story asked.
“Dead,” Trent said. “Kiowas.”
“You don’t know that for certain, Matthew,” Frances said.
Story swirled his cup, watching the grains of sand dance in the funnel.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a tintype of that baby girl?” Frances’s voice was hesitant, maybe fearful. “Of . . . our . . . grandbaby?”
He shook his head, made himself sip the water. Hell, he hadn’t seen his daughter himself. He tried to think of something to say, something about the girl, or Ellen, or even Virginia City, but he kept thinking about the cattle, and those damned grangers.
“What’s your plan for here?” he asked the old man.
“Prove it up. Sell it to some big dreamer with plans of a million acres of wheat or barley. Retire with servants and shade trees.”
“And a swing for me,” Jeanette said.
“And a swing for you,” her mother said.
He realized, although he had known it before he even left the herd, that he never should have come here. He didn’t know how to talk to these people, or any people, any . . . family. And the old dog was dead. He thought about that dream. Nelson Story digging a grave for a dog. After making himself finish the water, he handed the cup to Frances, and rose.
“What’s Montana like?” Jeanette asked.
Story stared at the girl. “Cold in the winter. Nice enough in the summer. Mountains all around. Not like here.”
She giggled. “I meant my . . . ?” Her head turned to her mother.
“Niece. Montana’s your niece. That means you’re her aunt.”
“I can’t be an aunt, Mama. I’m only five years old. Aunts are old.”
They laughed. Story tried to smile. The black looked like he wanted to run, and Story longed to feel the wind in his face.
“We’d love to have you stay for supper,” the old man said.
“And spend the night,” Frances said. She looked bone-tired, worn to a frazzle, and now he knew why he was so determined to get this herd to Montana, to make his fortune, to put Ellen Story in a house not made of dirt, and where she could have servants cook for her, clean the damned house, and, hell, wash her feet if she wanted her feet washed. Like Ellen would ever allow that to happen. But she wasn’t going to work herself to death like Frances Trent. Story didn’t mind working himself to death. In that regard, he wasn’t a whole lot different from Ellen’s old man.
“Well, ma’am.” Story made himself stand. “I’ve got to be moving on. I’m eager to get back to Virginia City. See my baby girl.”
“Can I come with you?” the girl asked.
Frances smiled. The cowbell clattered. The wind kicked up dust. The dog growled.
Story did not look at the kid, or any of the Trents. He gathered the reins, swung into the saddle, and debated if he should offer the old man money. Like Matthew Trent would have accepted any handout, especially from his son-in-law.
“I want to see my sister,” Jeanette wailed. “I want to see Ellen. I want to see my . . . my . . . cousin.”
“Niece.” He could picture Frances smiling.
Story kicked the black into a walk. He turned the horse west, toward the Neosho. Behind him he heard Jeanette’s screams, begging for him to take her with him, to see Montana—the territory or the baby, maybe both, Story didn’t know. He gave the black his head, tugged the hat tighter on his head, and rode away. He did wave, just so they couldn’t say he was rude. Though he never looked back.
* * *
Blue skies replaced the gray clouds. The rain stopped. The wind blew. They left the river and turned west.
“Now where are we going?” Ryan Ward asked at supper one evening.
“San Francisco, by God,” Sam Ireland said. “
I bet they’re dyin’ for beef there. Ain’t nothing else to eat in San Francisco except seals and Chinamen.”
“We’re riding around the quarantine line, you knuckleheads.” Jameson Hannah pointed at Ireland’s bandage. “Unless you want a matching hole in your other hand.”
* * *
The sun turned the skies more white than blue. Mile after mile, day after day, they rode into the wind. Wind that never ceased. It burned faces worse than the sun. Irritated noses, eyes, chapped lips. All they knew were cattle, saddle sores, and that son-of-a-bitching wind.
* * *
Moving north now. Bawling cattle. A blistering wind. Waving tall grass of fading green but a massive sea of brown to the west. The brown moved like ocean waves. Mountains? Mud? The men shielded the sun from their eyes and stared.
“Buffalo,” Story explained.
“I’ve seen buffalo in Texas,” Jordan Stubbings said. “But nothing like that.”
Story laughed. “That’s not even a big herd.”
“I hear buffalo tongue is tasty,” Ryan Ward said, “if it’s pickled.”
“I don’t want no pickled tongue, but some meat would settle in my stomach better than more beans,” said Kelvin Melean.
“What do you think, Mr. Story?” Dalton Combs called out.
“You want to shoot a buffalo, go ahead. But wherever you find a herd of that size, you’ll probably find an Indian. A lot of Indians. Comanches. Kiowa. Cheyenne.”
The banter stopped. Replaced by cylinders on revolvers being checked.
Pushing north, they skirted a wide loop around the buffalo herd.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The clouds to the southwest looked ominous, and after all that rain, a twister at this time of year—even one monster hailstorm—would be bad for farmers in Greenwood County. Just ten minutes ago, Mrs. Hartly explained how her dream last night portended a bad day, even though the crazy old bird hadn’t told R. R. Turner exactly what she had dreamed. Everyone in Eureka knew Mrs. Hartly to be mad as a hatter, but that cloud could mean trouble. Still, Sheriff R. R. Turner smiled.
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