Trail of Golden Dreams

by Coverstone, Stacey

  Another strange man Josie planned to steer clear of in the future was Wade Kendall. She didn’t like the way he’d stared at her when she rode by the jailhouse. Del, she expected to gape. He’d been sweet on her for years. But the marshal, he was another story altogether. His eyes were as cold and hard as the bullets nestled in the cylinder of his gun. She believed the rumors about him having been a gunfighter. Chill bumps rose on her arm as she wondered how many men he’d killed so far.

  She had just reached under Traveler’s belly to loosen the cinch when she heard the distinct sound of snapping twigs outside the barn. Her back straightened, and she tilted her head and listened. Traveler’s ears twitched. After quietly unbuckling the latch on her saddlebags, she retrieved the little derringer she carried with her at all times. Sliding her hand across Traveler’s rump, Josie slinked next to him as she watched for movement out in the dirt yard. She crossed over to the barn door on quick, silent feet and heard footsteps.

  Her eyes darted in the direction of the pinon tree that had fallen recently during a strong wind. Someone hid amongst the broken limbs. She could hear ragged breathing, and it certainly wasn’t the wind because there wasn’t a hint of a breeze on the air. The fool, whoever he was, would have made a terrible cat burglar.

  Josie raised the derringer shoulder high and peeked around the door. Across the barnyard, the cabin sat in total darkness. She gazed into the sky, which was starless and dark as pitch, and sent a little prayer up to heaven. The gun remained rigid in her hand.

  Traveler made slurping noises while inhaling the grain, and it was exaggeratingly loud amidst the otherwise silent comfort surrounding the night. Suddenly, she heard another branch snap. Cocking the hammer on the derringer she whispered, “Prepare to meet your Maker, whoever you are.”

  A stray cat streaked across the yard, screeching like its tail had been yanked into a knot. While dumbly watching it spring up and over the water trough and run into some tall weeds, Josie lowered the gun and shook her head. Releasing the breath that had been stuck in her windpipe, she mumbled, “Stupid cat. Liked to have scared me to death.”

  She strode back to her mule and flipped open the saddlebags. Her hand stopped in midair. There it was again—the sound of moving feet. She twirled and came face to face with the preacher. Dumbfounded by his uninvited presence, her mouth gaped. The whites of his eyes were red with tiny veins snaking across them. Had he been drinking? She was sure of it once he opened his mouth and his words came out thick and slurred.

  “Evening, Miss Hart. I’m glad to see you made it home safely.”

  She whipped her right arm behind her back to hide the small gun. “What are you doing here, Preacher? I paid Mr. Bailey for the funeral. Did he give you your share?” she asked, taking a step backward. Her mind raced. She couldn’t imagine why he had followed her home.

  “Yes, yes. I got it. Thank you kindly.” Although he talked friendly, his eyes blazed like a wild animal’s. He took a step forward and stumbled over his own boots, but caught himself before falling down.

  “Stay right where you are, Preacher.” Josie stuck her left hand out to halt him. “I’m not sure what you want, but whatever it is, you won’t find it here. You should be getting home. It’s late.”

  He grinned and his hand dropped to his crotch, which he scratched. Tugging at his britches he said, “I’m not tired. And I’m not going home until I get what I came for.”

  Josie’s eyes widened, and her fingers clamped tightly around the trigger of the derringer hidden behind her back. She didn’t want to shoot the preacher, but she would, if he came at her. When he took another step, she said, “Don’t come any closer. I’m warning you. I’ll kill you if you try to lay a hand on me.”

  The preacher laughed, a hearty laugh that filled the barn and might have caused her to smile in another situation. “You will kill me?” he chided. “Why, you’re just a wisp of a little girl. You could barely fill a thimble. How are you gonna kill me?”

  She brought her arm out from behind her back. With the derringer exposed, she replied, “With this. I don’t want to, but I will. I know how to shoot. I’m my father’s daughter, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  For a fleeting moment, the expression on the preacher’s face changed. His eyelids drooped and his lips curved down, like he’d been defeated. Then he lunged. With the swiftness and strength of a lion, he batted the gun out of her hand. Dropping to her knees, she scrambled after it. The preacher kicked the derringer away with the toe of his boot. Then his hand flew to her cheek, and the smack rang through the barn rafters. She fell into a mound of hay and moaned.

  He stumbled toward the mule and wrestled to remove her leather bags from the saddle horn, but had difficulty accomplishing the task in his inebriated state.

  The gun had slid somewhere out of Josie’s sight. She ignored the pain from the slap and glanced around the barn searching for any kind of weapon. Keeping an eye poised on the preacher, who cussed in a non-preacher-like fashion, she stumbled to her feet and made a dash to the wall where a shovel hung on a peg. He turned the moment she brought it down on his head. A mangled cry exited his throat before he sunk into a heap on the ground.

  Traveler brayed.

  “It’s alright, boy,” Josie told the mule, rubbing his neck. “It’s all over now.” She dropped to the hay-strewn floor again and madly searched for the derringer. Finding it deep in the hay, she stuck it in the waistband of her skirt and stood over the preacher’s body. He bled from the head, but his chest rose and fell in an erratic rhythm, so she knew she hadn’t killed him.

  “Now, what am I suppose to do?” she asked Traveler. “Ride all the way back to town to get the marshal? Will he believe me when I tell him what happened? What if the preacher wakes up and isn’t here when I return? I don’t think Marshal Kendall is the kind of man who wants his time wasted. I don’t want to deal with him anyway.”

  How she wished Traveler could talk so he could help her out of this fix by giving her some sound advice. His big liquid brown eyes empathized with her—the next best thing. Placing her hand on the saddlebags, she asked the obvious question out loud. “Was this what he was after? There aren’t but a few coins in there. Is the preacher so desperate for money that he’s taken to robbing?” She wondered what the world was coming to when a minister would steal from a young woman after he had just presided over her dead pa’s funeral. She stared down at his unconscious body with a frown on her lips.

  With her ire up and boiling, she took hold of the man’s boots and attempted to drag him to the corner of the barn, but he was dead weight. She dropped his legs and sighed. Traveler’s ears flopped back.

  “What is it, boy?” Listening closely, she could hear the stampeding of horse hooves in the distance.

  Now what?

  She hurriedly untied the mule and led him to the barn door. The animal carefully stepped over the preacher’s body with nary a glance down. “Shhh,” she warned. Her body trembled as she watched a posse ride up to the cabin. She counted four figures, but couldn’t make out their faces, which were shrouded by the cover of darkness.

  Two men jumped off their horses, kicked open the door, and entered the cabin while the other two waited on their mounts. The men who were in her home carried gas lanterns. Through the glass window, eerie light bounced around as they strode between the three rooms. One of them filled the front doorframe with his bulk and hollered, “She’s not in here!”

  “Search for the saddlebags.” A man on one of the horses gave the order. His voice was deep and sounded vaguely familiar. A moment later, the two men exited the cabin. There was not a hint of a breeze in the air. From across the yard, Josie could hear their words as clearly as if they were standing right next to her talking in her ear.

  “They’re not in there. She must not be back from town yet.”

  “She left hours ago,” a third voice said. “Where else would she be?”

  “Maybe she stayed at the hotel for the night.”


  “She didn’t stay in Dry Gulch. We saw her leave town.”

  “Then, where is she?”

  Josie detected three different voices, but the only one she recognized for sure was Del Emmerson’s drawl. She could only assume the marshal was also among them.

  Why are they looking for my saddlebags?

  Her eyes flew to the pouches that still hung over the saddle horn. The preacher had also gone after them. What was in them that had brought her two sets of intruders tonight? In her mind, she swiftly inventoried the items she had thrown in before leaving for town: a pair of pants, an extra shirt, her canteen, and a few personal necessities in case she decided to stay at the hotel after the hanging. There wasn’t enough money in there to shake a stick at, so what was it the preacher and a posse were looking for?

  It struck her like a bolt of lightning. The only other thing in the bags was the envelope Ben had given her. She hadn’t bothered to open it, figuring she would read the letter from her pa later, once she’d gotten back home and had time to give it proper attention. In the jail, he’d told her it wasn’t a letter. If it wasn’t a letter in the envelope, then what was it?

  Whatever it was, the preacher and these men wanted it.

  The preacher began to moan softly. Josie glanced down and wondered if she was going to have to bash him again. His eyes fluttered open briefly, and then closed again.

  “Stay asleep, you drunken fool,” she whispered. She gazed back across the barnyard to her cabin.

  One of the men had gone inside again. When he came out he repeated, “Nothing, boss. Now what?”

  “Light it up!” the stocky man on the horse yelled.

  Josie’s fist flew to her mouth. She bit her lips together hard to keep from screaming. A man on the ground mounted his horse, and he and the other two riders backed away from the cabin as the man on the ground prepared to torch the house.

  “Go ahead, Garrett. Do it!”

  On that command, the one called Garrett heaved one of the gas lanterns through the cabin window. Josie covered her ears as the glass shattered. Garrett ran like the wind and jumped on his horse as her home-sewn calico curtains caught fire. The little place was engulfed in hot, orange flames within a matter of minutes. She watched with a sick stomach as black smoke curled into the sky and licked at the sultry spring air. Mama’s bowl… Her eyes began to well.

  Traveler started to fidget and dance in place. Fire was his only fear. When he called out in his loud hee-haw, four heads pivoted. “She’s in the barn!” someone yelled.

  “Get her!” another man barked.

  Josie planted her foot in the stirrup and hauled herself into the saddle. “Yaw!” she hollered. The mule rocketed out of the barn. She reined him tight around the corner, and he sprang over the downed limbs of the pinon tree. Kicking him hard, she made the split-second decision to head north into the wilderness.

  As her faithful companion high-tailed it down the trail, she didn’t dare look back, even with the thunderous sound of pounding hooves booming in her ears.

  Chapter Four

  Josie hoped to lose the posse in the forest, which she knew like the back of her hand, even in the dark. With four riders to one, the odds were stacked against her for escape, but she depended on her secret weapon—Traveler. Mules needed less water than horses, had stronger, tougher feet, and became less winded. A mule’s tough physical and mental qualities inherited from his donkey father accounted for more durability overall than his horse counterpart. Traveler would not let her down.

  The mule’s pancake-sized hooves pounded the ground as he raced for the trees. “Good boy!” she yelled. “Keep running!” She glanced behind, and was disappointed, but not surprised to see the horsemen remained in hot pursuit.

  Glimpsing the shadowy opening into the forest ahead, she yanked on Traveler’s bit, and he turned on a dime. Trees thick with leaves formed a canopy over the pair as she loped the animal down a wide path littered with pine needles. Pine trees and firs stood like tall, proud soldiers on each side of the path.

  Traveler snorted, but was barely breathing hard. Josie lifted her gaze and saw rays of moonlight streaming through the slim cracks between the dense fence-line of trees. After firing up a prayer for the angels to get her out of this jam, she lowered her weary gaze back to the trail just in time to grab the saddle horn and hang on for dear life. Traveler jumped several feet up and glided through the air like an eagle. After his hooves hit the ground again with a thud, he continued trotting down the path without a misstep.

  Josie looked over her shoulder. Squinting, she tried to figure out what was stretched across the trail that Traveler had just leaped over. With his excellent eyesight and inclination not to panic, he had cleared the rope, or crawling vine, or whatever it was, with ease and prevented them from a serious mishap. She enthusiastically patted the side of his head. “Good boy!”

  She wondered if the posse would be as lucky. They were hot on her heels, but horses were not as cautious as mules. This was exactly the chance she needed. Just ahead was a break in the forest. It was a spot she knew well. Deviating from the corridor she was on, she veered the mule into a dense thicket where they could not be seen.

  “Whoa, boy.” She reined him in, and he stopped. Quietly catching her breath, she waited and watched. Her chest burned, and adrenaline surged through her body. Just as she hoped, the four horsemen were unable to change course quickly enough. The terrified whinnies of their mounts pierced the night as the horses ran full force into the line and collided with one another. Three of the four men were bucked off their horses and tossed to the ground. One was trampled as the frightened animals stomped and panicked amidst the chaos. Peering out from her hiding place, Josie watched as one horse ran off, dragging what looked like a long rope behind him. His rider limped after him on an injured foot. She assumed the rope was what had been stretched across the path. If it was, she was pretty sure someone had intentionally set a trap. But who had set it? And why? And for whom was the trap intended?

  Her gaze rotated from side to side, and she froze. Wild imaginings of who or what might be lurking in the forest suddenly filled her head. If a renegade Indian was nearby, she had far more problems on her hands than the posse wanting her saddlebags.

  Josie’s gaze jerked back to the men when she heard Del say, “Harp’s hurt bad, Wade. He’s bleeding and I think he’s got broken bones. I need help getting him onto his horse.”

  The man who had been chasing his runaway animal limped over. “I’ll help ya, Del.”

  “Are you sure you can put weight on that foot to lift him?”

  “I think so.”

  Del jumped off his paint, and the two of them maneuvered the injured fellow over his own saddle, with his nose pointing to the ground. Josie heard no moaning or groaning coming from that man, so she didn’t know if he was dead or alive. She watched as Del tied his horse to the man’s appaloosa before he hauled his weight back onto his steed.

  The lame man on the ground stumbled and cursed a blue streak. “Dammit. I think my foot’s busted! That saddle cost me a month’s wages, and I paid thirty dollars for that daggone mare. What the hell am I supposed to ride now?”

  “Shut up, Garrett, and get on the back with Emmerson, unless you want to camp in the woods tonight.”

  Josie recognized that deep voice. The man barking the orders definitely was Marshal Kendall. He’d been the only one to stay in his saddle and was apparently in no mood to listen to whiners. He reined his horse next to Del’s paint. Garrett shut his mouth and hobbled over to Del, who offered him a hand up onto the back of his horse.

  Garrett was the one who’d burned her house down. Josie ground her teeth together as she recalled a boy she went to school with by the name of Jimmy Garrett. He’d been a shy kid, and everyone had called him Slim Jim because he’d been so tall and spindly. She hadn’t seen Jimmy in years, but now she was sure it was the same person. He had destroyed her home and now he suffered from a busted foot. “What goes aroun
d comes around, Slim Jim,” she mumbled under her breath. “That’s what you get for turning to a life of crime.”

  Traveler twitched beneath her. She patted his neck and prayed for him to stay silent. When she looked up, she saw Kendall staring into the thicket. Even in the dark, she could feel his cold eyes searching her out. She didn’t dare move a muscle.

  Del broke the silence. “We lost her, Wade. She’s long gone. What are we gonna do now?”

  The marshal’s voice sounded as hard as gravel. “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go back to Dry Gulch and get some fresh horses.”

  “Then what?” Slim Jim inquired. His legs dangled below Del’s horse’s belly, and he leaned back with his hands planted on the paint’s rump.

  “Then tomorrow morning, we’re returning for her. She has no home left. Her pa’s dead. That young thing won’t know where to go or what to do. She won’t get far. We’ll find her, and we’ll take what we came for tonight.”

  Del spoke up again. “What if we don’t find her? She’s a mighty good rider. She’s probably already miles down the road.”

  “Then, we’ll track her,” Kendall growled. “She’s just an itty bitty girl. Do you really think she can outsmart three grown men?”

  Del and Garrett both gazed at the fourth man, Harp, who was slung over his horse. Obviously the marshal didn’t count on him being of much service the next morning.

  “I grew up with that girl,” Del informed Wade. “She knows every inch of this forest and the desert beyond. She’s been on her own a long time. Josie’s basically raised herself. She’s smarter than you might think.”

  It was evident by Kendall’s response that he’d heard enough excuses. His voice was as thick as grit. “As I said, we’ll follow her prints.”

  Del, apparently not knowing when to shut up, dared to disagree further. “Are you sure we shouldn’t keep moving tonight and try to flush her out? I don’t know about you two, but I ain’t that good of a tracker.”