Wyatt rammed against the door with his shoulder, lungs choking with smoke and heat, but the latch didn’t give. The windows had been boarded over long ago, like darkened eyes.
The hoe. Wyatt grabbed it off the dirty floor and swung it at the boarded window. Again and again, hacking away at wood like Jewel had chopped the outhouse roof. And just as he gasped a lungful of burning air, the window splintered.
Snow—air—wind—and a rush of exhilarating freedom! Wyatt smashed the boards with his bare hands, bloodying his knuckles, and pushed his shoulders through the opening. He lurched forward and landed in a heap on the snowy ground, snowflakes tickling his sweat-stained face as he breathed in lungfuls of air.
Just as the side of the barn collapsed with a roar, taking the roof with it.
Wyatt scrambled away from the inferno, gasping. His clothes charred and blackened, and his hair wild. No hat and no glasses. He staggered to his feet, clutching his bleeding side, and lurched to a stop just inches from a bright object on the ground, half covered with fallen snow.
Jewel’s beaded earring. A tiny feather dangled from it, crusted with snowflakes.
Wyatt paused, heart flailing in his chest, and snatched up the earring from the frozen grass. The men were gone; the woods stood silent. Snow fell all around him in lonesome gusts; tree branches rattled like empty arms. They’d taken Jewel with them, and he was too late.
As usual. Bungling everything into a gigantic mess.
What could he possibly do now? Wyatt rubbed his dirty, ash-stained face in despair, turning her earring over in his blood-streaked hand.
He could still see her there in the firelight bent over the Bible. Her long black hair pulled back into a braid, earrings sparkling. Those elegant Arapaho cheekbones and black eyes, and her long, elegant neck from her French mother.
And now she thought him a traitor, too. Wonderful. Why, she wouldn’t trust him for a minute if he—by some sheer miracle—caught up with Kirby Crowder and his posse. He could probably bring the whole militia and she wouldn’t listen to a word he said.
Still. He had to do something—anything.
A gust of wind blew a piece of burning barn wall so that it swayed and then toppled—landing in a smoldering heap next to Wyatt. He jumped back, catching his breath, and then limped his way through the snow toward the woods to look for the horses.
Samson was gone. Thank goodness for that, or Kirby’s bunch probably would have stolen him—or worse, shot him on the spot. All the gunshots must have spooked him into the next county.
But he’d promised Samson his oats. Wyatt sighed, looking down at his bleeding shirt. He might do a lot of things wrong, but he kept his word.
He called for Samson, whistled. No answer but the shrieking of wind through spruce needles and the soft sound of falling flakes. The barn smoldered over his shoulder, smoke mixing with snow and choking the sky with black haze.
Too bad Bétee was gone, too—wandering among the forested hillsides and lonesome prairie with two hundred pounds of gold strapped to her back. If someone found her at all, before the mountain lions and wolves did, they’d swipe the gold for sure.
But neither of the horses could have gone that far. It made no sense. Perhaps the men were lying; maybe they’d divided the gold among themselves and kept the truth from Kirby?
Wyatt paused there in the icy wind, remembering the way Jewel called her at the ranch. A soft, high-pitched whistle, followed by a shorter whistle, birdlike—and a terse command in Arapaho.
He stood on tiptoe and whistled. Once, then twice. And blabbered something that sounded sort of like Jewel’s command. He might have been quoting the Declaration of Independence for all he knew; at least he’d tried.
He cupped his hand around his ear and tried to hear over the wind. Pine limbs tossed; dry winter grasses rattled together. Wolves howled in the distance, their ghostly voices rising and falling.
Wyatt squared his shoulders and marched into the wind back toward the barn, head down. Hoping he could survive with heat from the fire and make it to daybreak but counting his fading chances like the gold nuggets that had slipped through his empty fingers.
Something whinnied softly from the forest, over the roar of snapping barn planks and crackling flames. Wyatt whirled around, reaching for his empty holster by instinct.
“Bétee?” Wyatt wiped his nearsighted eyes to see better. “Is that you?”
A blur of white and brown nervously trotted through the underbrush, head down, and nuzzled Wyatt’s side. Her hot breath tickled Wyatt’s ear, and he laughed. He patted Bétee’s side and scratched his ear, hugging the pony to his neck.
“Well, I’ll be. The gold’s still here, too.” Wyatt patted her bulging saddlebags and nuzzled her neck. “You’re the smartest one of all of us—you know that? What did you do, hide out in the thicket until it was all over?” He combed his finger through Bétee’s silky mane and gathered up the loose reins. “You might have tried to save me, you know. I’m no good to you dead.”
Wyatt tried to climb on bareback, the way Jewel always preferred to ride, and caught a glimpse of the beaded earring in his hand. The feather lifeless, fluttering in the wind.
Those knotheads in Idaho were going to hang an innocent girl, and he’d helped them do it. Wyatt shook his head. If anybody deserved to die, it was Jean-François and Kirby—not Jewel.
“Why don’t you ask God for a chance to stand up and be a man like your father?” Jewel had said.
A line of horse tracks led from the barn and forest toward a sparsely wooded trail. Half obscured by freshly fallen snow.
“I’ve no light, Bétee. No gun. There’s nothing I can do, even if there were ten of me.” Wyatt climbed up awkwardly and swung himself over her slender back. She was smaller than Samson; lithe. “And I’d probably faint anyway.” He wiped the blood from his face with a ragged sleeve. “But by George, we’re going to try. Aren’t we? Even if it is impossible.”
Bétee whinnied and tossed her head.
Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
The Red Sea parting. A childless old woman giving birth. Jewel leaning over the family Bible, listening to line after line of impossible stories.
Wyatt squinted and leaned forward, trying to make out the soft indentation of horse tracks in the snow. He was blind as a mole and half frozen—nothing like the gallant Amos Kelly with burly muscles and fiery eyes.
“You are not your father,” Uncle Hiram had said. So did everybody else.
But he could die trying to be.
Wyatt pulled on the reins, urging Bétee into a trot.
Chapter 12
The trail curved through the woods, through gusting wind and blinding flakes. Snow had been falling wild and thick; Wyatt leaned down and squinted hard to measure—it came nearly to the top of Bétee’s hooves.
“Faster,” whispered Wyatt, urging her into a gallop. “They can’t be that far.”
Branches flew past him, slapping him in the face, and Wyatt saw stars. The only thing he could see, ironically, in crisp detail.
Up ahead, the road curved into an open plain, white with snow. Brooding clouds hung down over the land like a mist, obscuring the trees.
And as far as he could see in a nearsighted blur, nothing else. No horses, and no Jewel. Evening began to darken, a sullen blue.
“Bétee,” Wyatt spoke sharply, firmly, “we’ve got to find Miss Moreau. Jewel. Do you hear me? She’s in trouble, and I can’t see worth a lick to catch up. I want you to go as fast as you can.” He leaned forward. “Do you understand?”
Bétee tossed her head, nostrils flaring, and for a moment Wyatt felt like a fool, talking to an Indian pony that Jewel had bought for a few cents from an unscrupulous dealer. Uncle Hiram nearly went through the roof when she’d brought it home. “A waste of money, that idiot pony,” he’d snapped. “That girl’s got no more sense than a tree branch when it comes to buying horses.”
He reached forward to grab the reins and pull her to a
stop, to turn back toward the homestead—when suddenly the ground began to move. Shake. Ripple beneath him.
Wyatt’s legs turned to rubber as he groped to grab hold of the reins. Stars and trees and snowflakes swirled in dizzying lines, faster and faster—so fast the horse’s feet seemed to lose contact with the ground. He was flying, floating.
The velocity forced his head back, chin up, and Wyatt felt his lips flap in the wind as he struggled to hold the reins, nearly losing them altogether. He groped, grasped, unable even to scream. “Stop,” he croaked, his hair flying out like a madman and bottom sliding on Bétee’s sleek rump. “Stop! You’re going to kill me!”
Bétee didn’t ease up. If anything, she flew faster—jostling Wyatt’s bones and organs together in a miserable heap. He cried out as his wounded side throbbed, leaking fresh blood, but she didn’t slow her pace.
Hills blurred, and snow crusted in Wyatt’s hair and eyes. He choked, gasped, slid sideways. The reins slipped out of his frozen hands, and he jolted forward, grasping desperately for Bétee’s mane. His fingers found her thick strands of silk and clung to them like a drowning man grasping at a floating plank.
The way the Plains Indians rode in all their glory across Nebraska and Wyoming, bareback and proud, mastering the buffalo and subduing the bear and the wolf. Until white settlers encroached on their land, making and breaking treaties. Replacing the mighty buffalo with the weak and sickly dairy cow and spreading diseases that nearly wiped out entire tribes.
His people had not been entirely hard-hearted; some sat in on war councils and traded fairly. But clashing civilizations always left someone in the lurch. Someone like Jewel, who—when it was all over—had no place to go.
Bétee leaped over a ridge like a deer, barely jostling Wyatt, and landed gracefully on all four feet, still running. She rounded the corner, snowcapped trees jutting into her path, her hooves pounding the ground and throwing up snow.
Bétee made one more giant leap, straining and puffing, and then lurched to a sudden stop.
Wyatt shouted—grasped vainly at Bétee’s mane—and felt himself hurtling through space. He landed in an undignified heap, facedown in the snow, just inches from a blur that looked like Jean-François Boulé—who looked up from where he squatted, fixing a drooping saddlebag. The other horses jammed up behind him in a dead stop, rearing and snorting.
Jean-François let out a squawk and jumped out of the way.
“Wyatt Kelly?” he snarled, fumbling for his pistol and shouting in angry French. “What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”
Wyatt jerked his face out of the snow and scrambled to his feet, attempting a clever reply. “Well, hey, boss.” He tried to smile, his lips shaking, and held up Jewel’s feathered earring— blabbing the first ignorant thing that came to mind. “You forgot something.”
Muskets blasted all around him, exploding the snow into white fireballs, and Jewel screamed. Bétee reared. Wyatt lunged for Bétee’s reins and pulled her to a stop, dodging whining bullets, and he ripped open the saddlebag with the tips of his fingers.
He tugged on the strap and slashed at the burlap, and out poured a rain of gold nuggets. Down into the snow, glittering in the half light of musket fire and Kirby Crowder’s lantern.
For a moment utter stillness descended on the field—so still that Wyatt heard the almost inaudible clink of snowflakes hitting the buttons on his coat. Musket fire ceased. Jaws dropped, and one man slid from his horse as if in a stupor.
“The gold,” Jean-François croaked. “You found it. You really found it.”
Bétee backed up, snorting, and a rain of nuggets tinkled, like sifted wheat.
Wyatt hauled the saddlebags, still dripping gold, off Bétee’s back and hurled them as far as he could. Which meant … oh, a good four feet away. They splayed in a snowbank with a smattery splut, facedown.
All the men leaped from their horses, shouting, and descended on the saddlebags with a flurry of boots and lantern light, knives and fists flailing. A noisy fray of grasping, hollering, and scooping up nuggets.
Jean-François pulled up fist after fist of gold, his openmouthed profile visible in the yellow glow of the lantern.
“We’ve hit pay dirt, boys!” Kirby exclaimed in shrill tones, digging through the snow. “We’re rich!” He giggled gleefully, almost like a child. “I’ll build a new cabin. Two new cabins! Buy the best horses. And thanks to Mr. Kelly, I’ve got a fine idea—I’ll buy that Cheyenne land and open up a coal mine!”
Kirby let out a shriek of exhilaration, and Wyatt froze. Oh no. Not the land. Not that.
“Will you hurry up?” Jewel hissed from the horse, reaching out her boot and nudging Wyatt in the shoulder. “While they’re still occupied with the gold?”
“Sorry. I just … sorry.” Wyatt awkwardly pulled Jewel down off her horse, dropping her in the snow several times, and borrowed a knife from Kirby’s saddlebag to clumsily slit her ropes. None of the men noticed; nobody even seemed to care.
“Thank you.” Jewel coldly handed him the rope. “Now excuse me while I take Kirby’s horse. He’s the fastest of the lot; he’ll get me back to Nebraska in a few days.”
Wyatt’s mouth dropped open. He swayed, reaching for Bétee’s spotted rump to steady himself. “You’re going … where? Back to Nebraska? But I thought …”
“What, that you could collect the bounty on me yourself?” Jewel snapped, jerking at a tangle of reins and leads. “Well, forget it.”
Wyatt remembered—vaguely—how to talk. “You must be joking. Surely you don’t think I’d follow you all way in the snow and nearly get myself shot—with my side already busted open—only to turn you in?” He glanced down at his bleeding side, which had leaked onto his pants. A few red-brown droplets stained his leather boots. “For pity’s sake. I’m not going to turn you in. I told that fellow about the bounty to save your life.”
“Save my life? They want to hang me in Idaho!”
“But he’d have shot you on the spot if I didn’t think of something.” Wyatt sneezed, sniffling as he stood there in the snow. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“How am I supposed to know if I can trust you or not?” Jewel turned, her beaded necklace jingling.
“You said it yourself. Look at my character and see.” Wyatt scrubbed a sleeve across his runny nose. “And here. I brought you your earring.”
He held it out on his bloodstained palm.
Jewel swallowed, looking from his hand to his eyes. “You expect me to think this means something?” Her voice shook, and her words came out softer than he expected.
“Sure it does. It’s your heritage. Your past. Part of who you are, even though you’ve changed and moved on. You’re still Arapaho. You still carry your father’s blood.” He glanced over at the men digging in the snow. “And if you don’t hurry up and get on your horse, it might be the earring you wear when they stand you on the gallows.”
Jewel took the beaded feather and tucked it into her ear. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Wyatt tried to reply, eyes fluttering, and sneezed twice. His boots and pants hung damp from snow; his teeth chattered. Smoke had stained his bloody shirt an ugly gray-black. He sneezed again, and Jewel took off her shawl and wrapped it around his shaking shoulders. Drawing him close and fitting the folds snug around his neck.
“You can’t see a thing, can you?” Jewel said in a soft tone. “No matter. I’ll get you home. Bétee will lead the way.” She bent down and picked up the severed rope on the ground and then looped it around the bridle of Kirby Crowder’s solid brown mare, whispering softly in her velvety ear.
“Miss Moreau?” Wyatt tried not to sneeze again. “Pardon, but what on earth are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Right. And let those guys follow us and cut our throats? No thanks.” Jewel grunted as she tied the rope and patted Kirby’s horse on the muzzle. “Hurry, will you? Give me the reins of that big stallion back there so I can tether her to my lead.”
“By jingle,” Wyatt whispered hoarsely. “You’re right. None of Kirby’s men are paying a lick of attention.”
“It’s either that or we shoot their horses. But I’d rather not.”
Wyatt scrambled for the reins, tearing a revolver from one of the saddles and tucking it in his belt. Then a rifle, and finally a slender pistol. He shook his head at the melee: Jean-François scooping up fistfuls of nuggets, Kirby frantically scooping away snow with his hat and digging in the underbrush. Laughter and fumbling in the snow, curses and brawls.
“Now, Mr. Kelly!” said Jewel, clucking to the horses and pulling the lead. “Get up behind me, and hurry!”
Wyatt reached for her hand, coughing up something bloody, and she pulled him up behind her on Bétee’s rump. She gave a sharp command, and Bétee surged forward—with all the other horses on the lead trudging along obediently behind her. All laden down with packs and rifles.
Wyatt craned his neck to see over his shoulder, not quite believing what he saw. A line of horses moving forward in a blur of snow, and Kirby’s men oblivious. Shouting and pushing.
Well. For a second anyway.
“What in the Sam Hill do they think they’re doing?” Kirby hollered suddenly, looking up from a crouch and jerking his pistol from his holster. “Son of a gun! They got our horses!”
“Uh-oh,” Wyatt whispered, ducking. “Here it comes.”
Bullets whizzed past them right and left, dropping tree limbs, and the horses reared and whinnied, nearly knocking Bétee over. Wyatt yelled and held on for dear life, feeling his teeth knock together. Jewel dug her heels into her pony’s side, giving an urgent command in Arapaho and making a soft sound to the other horses. Soothing and guttural, reassuring. Bétee surged forward under a thicket of tree limbs, and the other horses trotted together, faster and faster.
Ducking into the woods and down a deserted trail, until the noise of gunshots and Kirby’s men died into the sibilant whisper of wind and pines.
Yellowstone Memories Page 10