Bitterly, he clenched his jaw and looked up at the rising column of smoke feeling afraid and utterly powerless. If only there were some people, someone … anyone that could help them. If there was, he pleaded silently to himself, please bring them here before it’s too late.
***
The Wilde sisters’ journey back to Arizona and the rambling Cedar Ledge Ranch had come to a jarring halt. Moments earlier, as they made their way along what passed for a trail through a hilly expanse of Nevada grasslands, one of the pair of Clydesdales pulling their wagon has been spooked by a snake that had been sunning itself directly in the center of the wagon ruts sunk into the ground.
Honor Elizabeth had been at the reins as she usually was, being the self-professed “best driver” of the four, and despite her boasting, it was true. Catalina rode shotgun next to her while Cassandra and Lijuan flanked the wagon on either side, both astride on their mounts.
When the horse bolted and began charging, its fellow followed suit. The wagon lurched off the trail and started surging through the grassland accompanied by the shouts of all four women. Quickly, Cassie and Lijuan fell in behind the wagon as it made its wild ride through the grass with Honor Elizabeth fighting admirably to regain control.
Catalina clamped her hand down on her hat to keep it from blowing away and gave her sister a crooked grin even as her body was being violently jostled around.
“Sure, you don’t wanna break that there ban on swearin’ you always tryin’ to uphold?” she laughed in her voice rich with a Mexican accent.
Honor tilted her head and looked at her through narrowed eyes. “I do not believe I am quite at that point yet, dear sister!”
Suddenly the front driver's wagon wheel hit a boulder protruding from the grass, and the wagon rocked to one side, slamming Honor into Catalina who had to fight from toppling off her side of the wagon. For a brief moment, the top slab of marble from the stack they were transporting in the broad flatbed of the cart rose upward and then slammed back down as the wheel touched the ground again. The force and the weight were enough to splinter three of the wagon spokes.
“Now I can assure you I am there. God damn it! STOP!!” Honor Elizabeth shrieked as she gave a final jerk to the reins.
The wagon came to rest at the base of a hill, and the two horses finally calmed and halted underneath the branches of a grove of trees growing along the area where the hill met the flat land.
Lijuan and Cassie were now alongside the wagon and Lijuan had a wry smile on her face. Leaning forward in her saddle she chided, “You’re quite the trailblazer, Honor Elizabeth. Not sure what they will call this … Honor’s Way maybe?”
Not one to be bested by her sister, Honor snorted, “Well, Lannie, if you had been driving, this rig would be halfway to Mexico by now!”
Shaking her head at the age-old back and forth between the pair of sisters who seemed to thrive on it, Cassandra decided it was time to lasso them in.
“All right, girls, let’s see how bad it is.”
After dismounting, the pair tied their horses to the tree, the others slid off the bench seat, and the quartet made their way around to get their first look at the destroyed spokes.
“That can’t be good,” Catalina whistled.
“It most surely is not,” Honor replied, setting her jaw. “We shall not be going any farther on this wheel. Not with this many spokes destroyed.
Turning away from the heavily damaged wheel, Catalina found her attention diverted by movement.
“Hey, would you look at that yonder!” She pointed up the hill where a bull was standing atop it looking down at them stamping its hoof and snorting.
“Now what do you suppose that’s doing out here?” Cassie wondered, looping her thumbs into her gun belt.
With a familiar air of nonchalance when something didn't interest her, Lijuan shrugged, saying it was merely another stray. Catalina immediately took issue with that notion.
“No, ma’am … even from down here I can make out a brand mark on its hindquarters.”
Lijuan put her hands on her hips and kicked at a loose rock on the ground.
“Fine! You’ve got great eyesight, and there is a ranch nearby here. Congratulations. I don’t care about that. We have our immediate problem with this wagon. I’m due back at Cedar Ledge by the end of the week. That’s when David’s furlough is up, and he will have to be back at his fort and won’t be able to look after our business interests!”
The young Mexican’s brown eyes that were so dark they were nearly black sparkled with mirth as she slapped Lijuan on the shoulder. Unable to hold back her laughter, Catalina teased, “You didn’t seem to be in a hurry when we left Carson City! I sure remember us havin’ to hurry you along and look what happened when we did that!”
Crossing her arms, Lijuan looked at the young Mexican askance. "That again, Cattie?! I still owe you for that interruption, by the way. I had to stick my head in a bucket of water quickly because there was no time to wash my hair properly."
Cassandra’s eyes traveled over to her petite sister, chuckling silently as Catalina had gleefully related the incident they were talking about on their way out of Carson City. Lijuan, she smiled, our pint-sized businesswoman. She knew there was nothing more in the world Lijuan enjoyed more than running the five-hundred-square-mile ranch that was their family’s legacy. She had been reluctant to come along on this trip to Carson City to pick up the marble, but the other three had persuaded her that they would be back in plenty of time before their brother, David “Dutch” Wilde, had to return to his duties as a cavalry captain.
Hoping to diffuse the often hot-tempered Lijuan she spoke up.
“Relax, Lijuan. This isn’t going to take us long working together to get fixed. In fact, we are in luck to be under this tree. It’s going to make it a heck of a lot easier. Honor, break open the box with the block and tackle in it. Catalina crawl underneath the wagon and unbolt the spare wheel. I’ll climb up in the tree, Honor can hand me up the block and tackle, and I’ll secure it.
They all looked at her bemused. As the oldest sister, she had been bossing them around their entire lives. Where once it made them livid as children, now it was almost endearing. Besides, whenever they found themselves in the crosshairs of danger, which was a frequent happenstance with the foursome, there was no one they wanted to call the shots more than Cassandra.
Not lost on Lijuan that she hadn’t been given an assignment, she looked towards Cassandra. “And what about me? What do I do?”
Their ears caught the sound of Honor Elizabeth chucking as she climbed into the back of the wagon to reach the storage box.
“You can supervise, of course! A role that we full well know that you love oh, so much.” She said as she flipped the lid open.
Catalina’s hand reached out towards her from where she stood along the edge of the wagon. “Hey, pass me the wrench so I can get the spare wheel free.”
Honor plucked the wrench up out of the box and flipped it up in the air and caught it, and then flipped it towards Catalina as if she was throwing one of her knives.
“Whoa, now!” Catalina called out as she caught the flying tool.
“Apologies. A force of habit.”
Catalina winked at her to signal no harm done as she looked up again at the pacing bull atop the hill before she dropped down and crawled under the wagon on her back.
“Oh, sugar!”
With a roll of her eyes, Honor found herself wishing the damn snake had found some other place to sun itself than directly in their path.
“I, for one, surely did not like the sound of that.”
Squatting down, Cassandra peered under the wagon. “What’s going on underneath there, Peppercorn?
Crawling out, like earlier, Catalina’s dark eyes twinkled as she asked, “You still gonna keep callin’ me that nickname Papacito gave me?”
Using her hand to pull Catalina to her feet, she answered, “We all will until the day we die.”
L
ijuan’s impatient voice boomed in the warm air demanding to know what the problem was. Catalina turned and faced her, knowing Lijuan would not like her report. “That extra wagon wheel we keep bolted up underneath the bed of the wagon? It’s not there. It’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone?!”
“I mean vamoosed, moseyed on outta here … gone with the wind. Take your pick, Lijuan!”
Honor Elizabeth hurried over and drew close to them. “How can that be?”
"Stolen most likely," was Cassandra's reasonable answer.
“How? When, and by who?” Catalina wanted to know.
Cassandra tucked a strand of her golden hair behind her ear as she considered the barrage of questions. "The how is easy enough, anyone with a wrench. When could have happened while we were in Carson City or at Cedar Ledge months ago. I mean really, when would any of us have been under the wagon to see if it was still there. It's not something you would think about it."
Tapping her fingers along the rim of the wagon bed, Lijuan looked angry. "Well, if it did get stolen at Cedar Ledge, I got a pretty good idea as to whom. Remember that pair of brothers I fired about a month ago. I told them to be off the ranch by sunup. I bet they stole it!"
This firing was news to Cassandra, and she needed to hear more. "I'm sorry. About that time, I was doing some undercover work for Uncle Nate near Flagstaff. I missed this occurrence. What happened?" she asked as she leaned against the wagon. Cassie had long been a special undercover lawman for their Uncle Nathanial Duvalier, the Arizona territorial governor, employing her various skills left over from her days as a Pinkerton detective.
As she answered, Lijuan paced along the side of the wagon, getting heated all over again at the thought of the pair of men.
"Stupid pair of jaspers. It got back to me from some of the other lumberjacks working our timber operation that these hands were talking out of turn about Cattie here. It seems they don't have a very high opinion of Mexicans."
Cassie nodded in understanding. All her younger siblings, save her brother, Dutch, who was white like her, were occasionally the target of some very bigoted talk. It was rare if it happened among the employees that worked the family's two primary sources of income, the cattle ranch and the profitable timber operation headed up by the youngest member of the Wilde family, the half Yavapai brave Blue River. To this day it always amazed her that Cedar Ledge employees would ever talk disparagingly about any of the different races that made up their unique family. It was a guaranteed ticket off the ranch.
“Naturally, I told Blue River to fire them and without pay. Was late in the day, so I thought I was at least doing them a kindness letting them stay the night, but they were gone by morning. Others in the bunkhouse told Catalina that they’d vowed to get compensated somehow. They could have been the ones to have stolen it,” Lijuan said relaying the rest of the unfortunate tale.
“Definitely a theory,” Cassandra admitted as Honor Elizabeth sighed next to her.
“Unfortunately, that does little to help us in our situation of being dreadfully stranded out in the Nevada countryside a long way from ho-”
Honor never finished her sentence as the four women swung their heads around to look up at the top of the hill in response to the shouts of a man crying out, “There you are, damn it!”
Catalina’s curiosity overtook her at last and she went charging up the hill as the man was swinging a rope in hopes of looping it around the bull’s head. It quickly became clear the uniformed man was not your rank and file cowboy. His garb was one of a private in the Union Army. As she neared the top of the hill, the man tossed the rope and missed. The bull angrily stepped away but remained on top of the hill.
“Here, let me!” Catalina shouted to the man in Union blue.
The private's eyes grew wide, as he had been so intent on the bull he had not seen the woman coming up the hill. His eyes traveled past her and fixed upon the other three women surrounding the wagon at the bottom. Catalina took delight as his eyes widened further. Without fail, the sight of a Mexican, mulatto, Chinese, and a white woman in each other's company always generated surprise that turned to outright astonishment when they revealed they shared blood. Whereas Cattie always took amusement in it, she knew such a reaction greatly irked Lijuan. She of little patience, Cattie liked to chuckle.
“Ma’am?” the private managed to say through his shock.
“The rope! Give it here, and I’ll get that steer for you. C’mon now. This is how I make my livin’!
Now that she was close to the animal, she saw that it was a steer, not a bull. From a distance, the difference hadn’t been visible.
Still staring in disbelief, he dumbly handed her the rope, and a split second later it was already spinning in the air as she drew close to the steer. Stomping its feet, it began to bolt to one side. But Catalina had anticipated the animal's movements, and the rope dropped over its head, and she cinched the noose close. The animal began to pull immediately. He wasn't a big steer and indeed not a strong as some she had encountered, but the beast did manage to jerk her slightly forward as it tried to pull away.
“Now where are we goin’ with this thing?”
An hour or so later, the group found themselves in the crook between two hills about a quarter of a mile from their wreck, where a wide creek flowed freely through, and a detachment of cavalrymen had set up camp to allow a small herd of about twenty cattle to graze and water.
After receiving thanks from the group's leader, one Lieutenant Jeffrey Washburn, for helping them get back one of the steers that had run off, he had explained his troops' presence to the newly arrived females over a meal he had graciously provided for them of bacon and biscuits. The men had just made a purchase on behalf of their fort and were heading back with the steers that would keep their outpost supplied with beef as well as a couple of cows to produce, milk, butter and cream for the men for a good while to come. The fort was still at least a day's ride away and scouting off the same trail the Wildes had come on, they found their current location as an excellent spot to nourish and rest their cattle for the night. Unfortunately, they had two problems on their hands. The first had been the stray that had run off. Several men had been sent to look for it, and the private they had encountered had been the one to find it.
The second issue facing the men was that one of the cows about to give birth imminently and none of the fifteen men had any sort of experience in such matters. Catalina had graciously offered to assist them in the delivery since she had helped birth so many calves she could probably do it in her sleep. A very appreciate Washburn had gladly taken her up on her offer.
Cassie had watched with a bit of pleasure as she witnessed the sparks fly between the dashing lieutenant and her younger sister. While it was true Cattie preferred the company of women, every so often a handsome male like Washburn would catch her eye, and she would go with where it took her. She couldn't blame her. The man was a perfect male specimen with his broad shoulders, lantern jaw, nicely trimmed brown hair, and blue eyes that seemed electric. While she was pleased for her sister, that didn't solve their immediate problem.
Washburn had been apologetic when he told her that the one wagon that they were traveling with had no spare wheel, either, that could be loaned out to the women so that they might be on their way. He did, however, advise them that he was aware of a small settlement about two hours ride away in a valley known as the De La Santa Barbara, where maybe they could get a replacement or at least get some new spokes.
The four quickly came to the consensus that this would be their plan to get their return to Cedar Ledge back on track. The soldiers had loaned them their packhorse along with one of their saddles so that Honor would have something to ride. Strapping an undamaged spoke from the wagon wheel to Cassie’s horse to present as an example of what they needed, the trio said goodbye to Catalina and set out on their search.
The day was hot, but a cool breeze swayed through the grasslands providing a measure of relief
for the riders as they headed in the general direction Washburn had given them. The threesome rode side by side with Cassie in the middle. Honor was finding the borrowed horse somewhat difficult to control, as its life had been spent as a packhorse and was not used to bearing a rider. Despite this, she joined her sisters in keeping an eye out for a small mountain shaped like a haystack that the lieutenant had said marked the entrance to De La Santa Barbara Valley.
They passed the time making their usual small talk, Honor going on about the new dress she was going to buy to replace the one she was wearing now. Lijuan had needled her that she wouldn’t have to keep replacing them if she gave up her habit of insisting on always wearing one, even when they were out on horseback like they were right now.
Honor Elizabeth had gone to the most exceptional all-colored finishing school in far-off Manhattan, and the training she had received there stuck with her. She always insisted it had made her a lady, and a lady she would ever be. Nothing says a lady like a dress. She was often fond of telling them while she waggled her index finger.
Cassie had joined in on the ribbing by asking her sister how many ladies could drop a man with a knife at a considerable number of yards away. Honor Elizabeth had shrugged it off as the backhanded compliment that it was. She fully intended to have her fun with Lijuan, however, who had started it. Leaning forward she looked across Cassie at her Asian sister, with a twinkle in her eyes, Honor Elizabeth casually commented, "You know … if we were to examine our current predicament truly, one could come to the strong conclusion that you, Lannie, are in fact to blame for our present circumstances."
“Me?”
“Yes, I find it most ironic that for being the one to be in a rush to get us back to Arizona, as our dear little Peppercorn pointed out, you were the one who made us late leaving Carson City. Delaying us towards the inevitable moment when we were in the right time and place for that snake to cross our paths and make our rig go haywire.”
Into The Lair 0f Los Rey Lobo: Wildes 0f The West (Half Breed Haven Book 9) Page 2