With a shake of her head, she remembered being a little girl in Philadelphia and attending services. Whip's family had been Quakers, which had instilled the young man with a wonderful tolerance that benefited him later in life when he had fallen in love with such varied women of different races. He had often told her when he looked at those different women he had never seen their races, only a woman that he loved.
As for Cassie, it had been a long time since she had attended any type of service. She believed in the Almighty, but she also believed a Supreme Being would have created the world and moved onto other matters rather than spending all His time fussing over this one corner of the vast universe she saw over the skies of Cedar Ledge each evening. Despite that though, she had prayed to Him many times when things looked darkest for her and her sisters. The fact that they had come through so many scrapes made her wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, the Lord wasn't keeping an ear out for the goings on in the world after all.
The bark of a dog brought her attention back from such weighty thoughts as her green eyes looked down and saw a Beagle wagging its tail at her. With a laugh, she tossed the apple's core to him and the hound snatched it out of the air before it had a chance to hit the ground. Looking up from the dog, she turned her attention to the center of the main street between the two churches where a circle of the town's colored and Mexican children was surrounding a laughing Catalina and Honor Elizabeth.
The pair had first picked up their cadre of kids about an hour earlier when Honor Elizabeth had begun to attract their attention away from the sack races where they had been looking on forlornly, forbidden to participate due to their colors. One young Negro girl had finally worked up the nerve to approach Honor Elizabeth, who had stood twirling her sun-blocking parasol in her frilly dress that she had spent the small fortune of $75 on and had shipped all the way from Manhattan. Cassandra smiled remembering the girl’s first words.
“Mercy, ma’am. I ain’t never seen a colored woman as fancy lookin’ as you. I swear I was lookin’ at royalty. You gots to be the wife of someone important!”
Another girl had chimed in as more children began to gather around. “Yeah, are you married to that mighty fine man my folks are always talking about—the abolitionist back east … that Mister Frederick Douglas?”
Honor had laughed and explained to them that Mister Douglas was indeed a fine man, but she was not his wife. Instead, she had told them her nice attire had come from being blessed to own a large ranch known as Cedar Ledge. The children were in awe and the questions came fast and furious when Honor had pointed out Cassandra and Catalina as her sisters.The stunned children couldn’t believe that they lived side by side together. Honor had explained to them something the Wildes always liked to say, and that was when everyone was different, no one was different.
By and by the conversation had turned to the four sisters' adventures and had led to where they were now. Catalina was about to give a demonstration of her skill with a bullwhip when a young Mexican boy ran up and handed Honor a glass bottle. Catalina laughed and told everyone to step back. A second later Honor was tossing the bottle in the air, and with her eyes closed, Catalina cracked her whip. To their delight, she shattered it in midair.
As cries of do it again, do it again! rose, Cassandra folded her arms and leaned back content, simply enjoying the day. She did note she was happy to be at this end of the street and have the band drowning out the politician at the far end of the street. Cassie had caught part of his rhetoric earlier, and she didn't like it one bit of it. The senator was saying that there was no room for the Indians in the territory and that they were all deadly and dangerous and needed to be driven out or exterminated.
Cassandra took deep issue with what he was preaching. He had focused in on the bloodthirsty antics of the renegade warrior Black Hawk and his Omegas and was painting all Indians in the same light, ignoring thousands who lived in peace with the white men, good and decent people like her brother, Blue River, and his other sister, Bright Feather. The irony was not lost on her that the senator was the mirror image of Black Hawk who thought all the whites needed to be driven out of Arizona or killed. They were two sides of the same evil coin.
She pushed herself off the wall and was just about to join her sisters and the throng of children when she looked out beyond the nearby railroad tracks that crossed in front of the main street as they made their way towards the depot and the adjoining Wylee-Farmher Hotel. Out on the desert, she saw a huge dust cloud that appeared to be rapidly moving towards the town.
A sandstorm! How she hated those ever since she had nearly lost her life in one years ago when she had first returned to Alamieda. Quickly she hastened towards her sisters with a nagging feeling she could not explain.
“Sorry to say this girls, but it looks like these here festivities are about to be spoiled! There is a large dust storm blowing towards the town!” she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder towards the desert between the town and the Stanton’s Gap mountains.
“Well, that I must say is most peculiar,” Honor replied with a furrowed brow.
Cassandra was just about to ask her how so when it hit her. She had been a detective with the Pinkertons before moving back to Arizona and her skills if anything had sharpened as she had put them to use helping their uncle, the territorial governor.
“You’re damn straight it is, Honor Elizabeth. There is no wind today, not even the slightest breeze. We’d feel something the way that cloud is speeding towards us!”
“Excuse me, kids!” Catalina shouted with an urgency that alarmed Cassandra and Honor as well. As she pushed her way through the circle of children, almost lost in the sound of the nearby band playing was the incessant blast of a train whistle. Cassandra watched as Catalina brought her hand up to her brow to shield the sunlight from her eyes. The lovely Mexican squinted and then her usually mirthful face tightened into a grimace.
“Oh, shit!”
“Language, Cattie! There are children present!” Honor chided as she spun her parasol around in her hand, but Cassandra rose up her own hand to silence her.
“What is it, Cattie?”
“I’ve done enough cattle drives to recognize a stampede when I see one! That’s no sandstorm! That’s gotta be hundreds of head of cattle, and they are headin’ right at us!” she swallowed as Cassandra locked eyes on her. Catalina’s were such a shade of deep brown that they were nearly black and they seemed to go blacker still as she delivered the chilling news.
Cassandra whipped around and looked at the main street, packed wall to wall with people and horses. A couple of others around her had noticed the approaching sandstorm and began to hustle away, while a few simply stared at it pointing and laughing, probably people from the east newly arrived in the west who had no idea how dangerous such storms were, Cassandra thought. But what was bearing down on Stanton’s Gap was far more dangerous than any sandstorm nature could throw at them.
Catalina began shouting exactly what Cassandra was thinking. “We gotta get everyone off this street and inside now!” The young woman knew of what she spoke having seen the results of a stampede up close when she had once been forced to start one of her own as a last-ditch effort to stop a group of murderous rustlers.
“You children hurry! You must move now! Run! Go!” Honor Elizabeth began shouting as Cassandra’s head was whipping in all directions, the gears in her mind shifting and working overtime to access a plan of action. She had it once her eyes fell on the church graced by its bell tower across the street!
Stabbing her finger through the air towards the Catholic church she bellowed, "Honor, you get in that church and ring that bell like your life depended on it! Cattie, you do the same with this one! We need to get everyone's attention! The bull horn that blowhard is using down at the end of Main Street is going to come in handy!"
There wasn’t any need to even acknowledge her orders, the sisters put one hundred percent trust in Cassandra as their leader. As far as they were con
cerned her word was law. The only one of them that ever challenged her, and even that was very rare, was Lijuan. As the children began to scramble, Honor Elizabeth tossed away her umbrella and yanked her dress up to her knees and began a dead run for the St. Christopher's church. The swifter Catalina was already bounding up the steps of the Protestant church as Cassandra spun to charge down the main street, pausing only for a second to see confirmation that Catalina had indeed been right. At the base of the dust cloud, she could now make out tiny figures that could only be cattle!
With no time even for a quick excuse me or thank you, she pushed her way through the throngs of revelers knocking many out of the way and eliciting curses as she covered the long distance down the main street. Cassandra only paused once when a young fresh-faced couple were directly in front of her. They couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and the wife clutched what had to be a newborn in her arms.
"Get your woman and baby inside right now! All hell is about to break loose!" The man appeared to be about to open his mouth to form a question but the fierce look of Cassandra’s knitted brow and her teeth grinding together stopped him cold and he began pushing the back of the young strawberry-blonde woman next to him towards the open door of a barber's shop. Cassandra was already in motion again picking up where she left off shoving people right and left out of her way as she, at last, reached the podium and aimed for the stairs to the stage.
“Burn every tepee! Burn every lodge! Burn every village! Until not one of those redskins remains in the fine territory of Arizona!” Senator Cardwell Bronson shouted into the oversized bullhorn in his right hand.
But before he could continue, he caught sight of his bodyguard leaping up from where he sat on a chair next to the mayor of Stanton’s Gap behind the lectern. In seconds, despite his bulk, the large man stamped across the stage and threw himself in front of the four steps Cassandra was climbing at a dead run.
“Stand back!” the bodyguard shouted swinging one beefy hand outward to block Cassandra.
Fucking amateur, she thought, not even drawing a weapon, dismissing her simply because she was a woman. She hadn’t thought it possible to be less impressed by Senator Bronson, but seeing the quality of help he surrounded himself with, now she was. There was no time to waste, so she simply latched onto his shoulders and brought her knee up into the man’s stomach knocking the wind out of him. As he doubled over, she yanked him and sent him tumbling down the stairs where he hit the ground and remained sprawled on the ground.
As she raced the short distance to the center of the stage, shouts of alarm from the crowd below were suddenly drowned out by the ominous tolling of bells from both of the bell towers on the opposing churches. Confused cries joined the cacophony.
“Now see here!” Bronson began as she reached out to snatch the bullhorn away from him, but he yanked it quickly and her hands netted empty air.
“I don’t have time for this! You can arrest me for this later!” Her fist snaked out and drove the Senator’s head sideways, blood shooting out from his mouth as he tumbled away backward. As he fell, she couldn’t resist needling him. “You and Black Hawk should be blood brothers. You’re both insane thinking the answer is to annihilate your enemies!”
Behind her, she ignored the mayor's cries and shouts demanding to know what she was doing. The band had stopped playing and the bells ceased their tolling, falling silent as her sisters watching from the bell towers saw her bring the megaphone to her mouth! The only sound that could be heard was the blaring of a train whistle and the tell-tale clacking as the iron wheels made their way down the track approaching the town.
“Listen to me! Those bells are a warning! There’s a stampede coming our way! Everyone get off the street! Get inside, go up the trees! Get yourself off the ground any way possible!”
Almost as one single organism the assembled crowds the entire length of the main street turned and looked out towards the edge of town where a huge dust cloud was looming and the bellows of the charging steers could now be heard mixed in with the train whistle. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman let loose with a solitary scream that was quickly echoed by another until Stanton's Gap erupted into one continuous roar of panicked screams and shouts. Up in the tower, Catalina and Honor resumed the tolling of the bells as the crowds began to surge in all directions except for the one that would bring them headlong into the charging mass of bulls.
Children were snatched up by screaming parents, men shouted for their wives as women shrieked their husband’s names! Pandemonium reigned supreme as many began shoving and pushing each other in a desperate attempt to flee. Some people were knocked to their feet but pulled back up by those around them before they could be trampled by their fellow humans as opposed to the mob of Longhorns barreling their way towards the town.
On the podium, Cassandra let go of the bullhorn, the sound of it striking the wooden stage lost in the din of the fleeing mob. With dread in her eyes, she feared it was too late. Scores would never get clear in time. If there was a God still up there that hadn't moved His attention along to His next work of wonder, she hoped He was watching the happenings on this mote of dust and moved to intervene.
CHAPTER 13
* * *
The wild ride since the Grand Western locomotive had swept down from the mountain now had become only jumble of sights and sounds to Captain Dutch Wilde that flashed in and out of his mind. Chief among them had been the horrific moment when they were steaming toward the switch and he had shouted a string of curses that at the fort would have landed him in the stockade for conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.
A grim-faced Lijuan had asked him what else could possibly be happening to them now when he shouted to her they all had forgotten about the switch on the other side of the gap, the one they were now approaching as the landscape hurtled by them on either side, cactus and boulders alike becoming near distortions.
Lijuan had started to cry out the question as to whether they should abort the attempt or not but she never finished. They both knew they would never be able to stop in time. For the second time within the span of a half an hour, they were facing death yet again. That had been when an overjoyed Dutch had looked ahead and seen two figures, one of which he would know anywhere, not far from the water tower engaged in some type of activity. He had no idea what they were doing, but if Bright Feather was there then it was she must have realized that they had forgotten about the switch. His hand had yanked on the whistle cord repeatedly as they watched the two figures push something over the edge of a small ravine that ran parallel to the railroad.
“I have no idea what your lady love is doing, but she’d better have thrown the switch! If she did, I’ve got to slow us down to make the curve into the merge!” Lijuan hollered as her well-muscled arm had yanked on the bar controlling the brakes. Instead of derailing, to the pair’s relief, the train shot onto the new tracks and barreled past the water tower heading for town. With love in his heart, he watched as his woman made the sign declaring their love. But before he could return it, the Indian maiden and the man he now saw was the railroad agent Pierce were swept from his view.
Dutch had continued shoveling coal into the mouth of the boiler, but even after he closed the clamshell-like doors, the cab was growing ever hotter as the engine labored under Lijuan having brought it back once more to full speed. There was no doubt in his mind they were setting some type of new record that would never be recorded anywhere. It didn’t matter, though. All that did was reaching the town before the cattle.
He mopped his forehead with a rag the train's real fireman had left hanging on the wall of the cab and looked at the boiler. Most of the gauges had been smashed in the mini-avalanche, but the sheer heat emanating from the boiler told him that he didn't need them to know it was taxed far beyond its specifications. The undamaged pressure gauge was now past the two hundred and twenty-five-mark heading towards its ultimate numeration of two hundred and fifty. His constant thought was whether the boiler wou
ld explode when it reached that mark or before it.
Forcing his attention away from the gauge, he looked out the side to see here and there they were passing random cattle that were no longer running but just milling about as if uncertain what to do. Lijuan had noticed them, too, and shouted to him that they were likely either the youngest or the very oldest. Whatever they were, they were the outliers. The bulk of the herd was continuing its charge towards Stanton’s Gap that was now looming large through the window in front of Lijuan. He could make out the steeples of the two churches. He’d been to Stanton’s Gap Founder’s Day weekend enough times to know they marked the entrance to the town.
Now at long last, they had passed Jim Cauley and his men in their desperate bid to catch up with the herd. As they did he allowed himself a moment of amusement to see Lijuan smile and wave at the astonished foreman, his mouth agape as the train shot by them with the young Asian woman at the controls, her hair whipping madly about her head. Moments later the train was pulling up alongside to the rear of the heard.
“We’re doing it! We’re going to overtake them!” he shouted, his pulse quickening more than it already was. He began blowing the train’s whistle repeatedly hoping it would cause some sort of alarm to be raised in the town.
Lijuan nodded enthusiastically as the train pulled up neck and neck with the horde of Longhorns and gradually began to pull ahead of the vanguard of the cattle. Their smiles faded when suddenly a rivet burst from the boiler grazing Dutch’s temple and he staggered backward.
“David!”
“Don’t worry about me! We’re almost there! Here comes the curve!” he yelled forcing her to return her attention ahead. He wiped away the blood and leaned over her shoulder to look out at the sight before them. As the rail bed began its loop that swept by the main street of town they could see people scattering in all directions but there was too many of them, far too many of them. Over the cries of terror, they could hear church bells tolling relentlessly away.
Sing The Death Song: Dutch Wilde & Bright Feather Western Adventure (Half Breed Haven Book 6) Page 10