Trail Angel

by Derek Catron

  Once reaching fresh grass, the oxen ambled ahead without more encouragement. As long as nothing disturbed them, they wouldn’t wander, but Caleb wanted them watched. Plenty of cattle thieves in the territories. Besides, that’s what Rutledge paid these fools for. Rich men like Rutledge needed others to do their work, and with the Sambos free, Caleb knew who would be toting the wood, fetching the water and driving the wagons.

  “Get used to it, boys. You are the new slaves.”

  Willis looked bothered. “We ain’t slaves.”

  Clifton nodded. “We’re free to go where we want.”

  “Then why ain’t you in Montana, already making your fortune?”

  Accustomed to dealing with his brother, Clifton had the habit of stating the obvious. “You know as well as us, we got to get there first. We ain’t got no money for that.”

  “So you’ll be a slave until we get to Montana. And if you don’t strike it rich, you will be somebody’s slaves so you can eat and sleep under a roof.”

  Willis looked confused, but Clifton smiled as if he had it all figured out. “We ain’t slaves because they pay us.”

  Caleb laughed. “For the pittance a rich man pays, you are worse off than a slave.” Willis would never understand, so Caleb turned to Clifton. “If you took a woman and had some brats, is a rich man going to pay you any more for the same work just so’s you can feed ’em?”

  Caleb knew that answer only too well, though he didn’t like to think on it, much less talk about it. He had watched men die in terrible ways, but no death troubled him like the one he had not been present to see, the one that happened because he had been too poor to give his sweet Laurie everything she deserved.

  “At least a slave could have a wife and children, if they weren’t sold somewheres else. Maybe even see a doctor when they get sick. Best you can hope for is to save a dollar or two to buy a poke in a saloon and hope your master will have you buried when you die.”

  Clifton’s knitted brows told Caleb the boys still didn’t understand. He was about to let the subject go when the youth smiled slyly and pointed a finger at him. “You ain’t getting paid much better than us. If we’s slaves, you a slave, too.”

  Who was dumber—the bastard getting beat on or the bastard who follows him? Throwing his hands in the air, Caleb stormed off. Let the boys think they got the better of him. Let Rutledge think he had the better of him. Caleb didn’t care. He had his own reasons for seeking salvation in the gold fields that no one else need know. He just had to bide his time and be as clever as Rutledge.

  When Caleb dreamed of Montana, it wasn’t a pile of gold nuggets he saw. No. Caleb dreamed of the look on the faces of men like Rutledge when they learned just how clever he had been all along.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The wagons in the company Annabelle’s father and her uncle Luke had organized were gathered on the outskirts of Omaha. The sprawling camp had grown since the family’s arrival two weeks earlier.

  Annabelle now counted fifteen wagons. She’d lost count of the oxen and cattle gathered around the camp, though her nose always knew they were there. The notion of safety in numbers was especially important to her mother and aunt, who had read too many Beadle books about women taken by marauding Indians. That meant her father and Luke couldn’t afford to be choosy about who joined the wagon train. Southern lawyers and store clerks. Yankee farmers. Would-be miners of undetermined allegiance.

  Every man among them believed it was his fate to be rich, either by panning for gold or by selling something to those who did. The gold made them determined, but it didn’t make them confident of driving teams of ox-pulled wagons across unsettled country filled with hostile Indians and who knew what else.

  Her father had been delighted to meet men in town who not only had made the trip to Montana but knew how to handle themselves in a tough spot.

  It shouldn’t matter that they were Yankee officers who had marched with that devil Sherman, torching cities and homesteads along the way. As her father kept telling everyone, they owed allegiance now only to each other and the shared hope of arriving in Montana quickly and safely. Resentments about the war were best put behind them, he told Yankees and Southerners alike. It was a generous philosophy, but convincing men to buy into it would be another matter.

  As they waited for the guides, the men clustered in tight groups split nearly on geographic lines. Luke stood with the rest of the Southerners, mostly bookkeepers, bankers and businessmen who failed to find work after the war. They were only too aware of the limits of their frontier skills, but that didn’t mean they had given up their pride.

  Like quarantined patients, the women and children had been left on the other side of camp. Though it chafed her to have to act so, Annabelle took a pot of coffee that had been warming on a stone next to the fire and sidled among the men, smiling prettily so none would be offended at having her privy to their discussions.

  “You’re not bothered by all these Yankees?” one of the men asked as she poured coffee into her uncle’s tin cup.

  “It’s only for the journey,” he said. “Where we’re going, it’s practically a southern colony. Why do you think they call it Virginia City?”

  “That ain’t half of it,” one of the others said. “They wanted to name it Varina, after Jeff Davis’s bride, but some Yankee judge went and changed the paperwork.”

  Annabelle noticed her father watching as she circulated. With a nod, she alerted him to a man grousing about the former slave who traveled with the guides.

  “I heard they got a Sambo with ’em.”

  “A freed slave,” her father corrected.

  “His name really Lord Byron?”

  Her father shrugged. “They encouraged him to take a free man’s name. As the Colonel tells it, this was the freest-sounding name the man knew. It’s a tale I believe he enjoys telling.”

  “I didn’t know Yankees had a sense of humor,” another said.

  Annabelle moved to where the northerners were clustered. Most were farmers, drawn by the prospect of homestead land. They hoped to make a good living feeding the burgeoning population around the gold fields. Miners had to eat, and most of their food had to be hauled in from Salt Lake City and other distant parts.

  “If it’s a guide we need, why not hire a single man?” one of the Yankees said. He was red-faced with drink and his voice carried above the rest. “Do we need to hire three?”

  Annabelle motioned to her father, who hurried to the man’s side. Her father’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, a vain effort to have the red-faced man match his tone. “We’ll be thankful for the extra labor when we must watch the stock at night.”

  “I’ll be thankful for the extra guns if we run into trouble,” another man said.

  Annabelle drifted toward the third group in their company, the one her father called the bachelor miners because none traveled with families. They were the poorest of the lot, mostly southerners, though none seemed to hold loyalty to any cause but getting rich. That made them the most eager to reach Montana, feeling every day they were in camp was another day somebody else might find the gold they already deemed theirs.

  Her ears perked at mention of the gunman who served alongside the Colonel. He had such an outsized reputation even Annabelle heard stories in town.

  “What kind of name is Josey Angel?” asked the youngest of the miners, a boy from Indiana.

  “It’s not his real name, Nancy-boy.”

  The youth ignored the insult. “Well, what is it?”

  The older miner looked peeved to be pinned down on something he didn’t know. “It’s Josef something. Something Polish, even harder to speak than Indian.”

  Seeing the youngster’s uneasiness, another miner started in. “I heard he killed his own troops ’cause they couldn’t say his name proper.”

  “They would have hung him for that,” the boy said. He didn’t look certain.

  “I heard he killed the witnesses.”

  The man
laughed and others joined in, a game to see who could stretch the tale to the most ridiculous lengths. They might have talked all night, swapping opinions like poker chips because that was all they had.

  Everyone fell silent when the two riders arrived. Annabelle watched, wondering if everything she had heard was really nothing more than tall tales.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Josey Angel was nothing like Annabelle expected.

  The afternoon light was fading as he rode up with the Colonel, and the newcomers were silhouetted as they dismounted. Stepping from the shadows of one of her family’s wagons, Annabelle followed the younger man with her eyes as he picketed the horses in the grass. He was smooth-faced and slender, like a childhood beau she had known from church. Yet there could be no mistaking him.

  He wore twin gun belts, one at his waist like a cowboy, the other one higher, near his ribs, so that the gun handles pointed forward. The butt of a rifle extended behind one shoulder. He looked ridiculous to Annabelle, like a boy playing bandit, but the men stood back when Josey Angel passed.

  People had their reasons for calling him what they did. Angel of Mercy. Angel of Death. The choice depended on which side a man fought. Some said Josey Angel had killed more than a hundred men. Others, that he slaughtered that many in a single day in Kansas. Or maybe it was Georgia. In one telling, after he ran out of Confederates he turned on his own bluebellies and killed them, too. Any Southerner could appreciate that story.

  While Josey Angel saw to the horses, Annabelle turned her attention to the Colonel. He approached with an old cavalryman’s walk, bowlegged, his booted feet tender against the ground like he trod on hot coals. She stepped up on the tongue of the nearest wagon for a better look.

  The settlers had built a fire to ward off mosquitoes, and in its orange glow she saw the Colonel had a lean, weathered face and a gray mustache that drooped over his mouth like a perpetual frown. He wore a buckskin coat like the trail guides in dime novels, and Annabelle wondered if he dressed that way to reassure prospective clients.

  As her father introduced him one of the miners called out, “What do we need with Union cavalry?”

  That set off a flurry of exchanges that required all of her father’s diplomacy to quell. “The war’s over,” he said. “These men have been to Montana. They can help us.”

  “Why do we need anybody?” one of the Yankees said. “The trail’s been traveled so many times, it’s practically a road.” A few others found sense in that. Before her father responded, the Colonel stepped forward.

  “That’s true enough,” he said in a voice so mild some of the men asked others to repeat what they heard. Those in back crowded near while the Colonel filled a pipe, his movements deliberate, like he had all night to complete the task. His long nose and sharp gaze reminded Annabelle of a hawk, but his eyes, alight with the fire’s flicker, twinkled with good humor.

  His pipe filled, the Colonel continued. “Following the Platte will get you through Nebraska, into what some people are calling Wyoming. What will you do then?” He leaned in, drawing a piece of kindling from the fire to light his pipe.

  “Take the South Pass?” Annabelle wasn’t sure who had spoken. It sounded more a question than statement, but others took up the idea. One said he had read about the South Pass in a guidebook.

  The Colonel turned his head. “Have you ever been through the South Pass?” No one said he had, and the Colonel continued as if that were the answer he expected.

  “The pass cuts through the biggest mountains you’ll ever see. The trail’s so steep at points, you’ll need ropes to pull your wagons up, one at a time. Other times, you’ll have to put both big rear wheels on one side of your rigs to keep ’em from tipping down the mountainside. It’s hard going.”

  “But that’s how every wagon gets west,” the oldest miner said. He turned to his fellows. “Why should we be afraid? Other men, no better than us, have gotten through.”

  “I don’t doubt your qualities,” the Colonel said, his voice just as mild as earlier. “The South Pass is the lowest point you will find in the mountains, and it’s the way I would take you if you were Mormons headed to the Salt Lake or homesteaders going to Oregon. If you weren’t in a hurry, I’d tell you to wait for the railroad. Some say it will be done in a year or two.” He grinned at the miner. “But I reckon all the gold will be gone by then.”

  A hush fell over the men. They stopped moving and shushed anyone who interrupted. The Colonel drew on his pipe as if daring to be contradicted. He took another draw.

  “The problem in reaching Montana is that the South Pass takes you south and west,” he said, looking to the miner as he emphasized the word. “You want to go north. That means you’ll have to double back to reach Montana’s gold fields.”

  He raised his voice as he addressed the full crowd. “You’ll be crossing those mountains, not just once, but twice if you take the South Pass.” This stirred the men. The Colonel looked to the one who had spoken earlier. “What does your guidebook say about that?” The man looked away.

  While the others talked among themselves, Josey Angel appeared at the Colonel’s side, his hands fidgeting like it was an effort to stand still in a crowd of strangers. He listened as the old man whispered something. Nodding, Josey Angel looked to be taking a head count—or choosing targets. The others fell silent.

  Her father cleared his throat, drawing attention away from the heavily armed newcomer. “Colonel, you’ve spoken to me of the Bozeman Trail, your shortcut, but the men here have heard it’s closed.”

  “It was closed, to settlers, at least.” The Colonel studied the pipe’s bowl as if he’d tasted a bad leaf. “It’s going to reopen this year. The government’s treating with the Indians, and the army plans to build three forts along the trail this summer. They might be open by the time we get there.”

  “Indians? It sounds dangerous,” said a banker from Atlanta who traveled with his family.

  “Every trail west is dangerous,” the Colonel said. “But more men die from accidents, disease or stupidity than Indians.”

  Caleb Williams spoke out. A thick-limbed handyman who had worked for Annabelle’s husband before going off to war, his wife died in childbirth while he was gone. He returned home as Annabelle’s family prepared to leave. After her father hired him to drive one of the supply wagons, he seemed eager to display his worth.

  “We don’t need these Yankees to protect us from Indians,” he said. “Don’t we all have guns? Aren’t we all men?”

  “Some of us have families,” a lawyer from Savannah said.

  The men renewed their argument. The Colonel didn’t seem concerned, puffing at his pipe and whispering to Josey Angel again. After the men talked themselves out, the banker with two children spoke up.

  “How do you know the Indians will make peace?”

  The Colonel emptied his pipe with a few raps against the heel of his boot. “I don’t, not for a fact. Any man who tells you otherwise is not to be trusted. That’s why a sensible man takes precautions.”

  He looked at Josey Angel as he said the last part, then stood to his full height and crossed his arms, like posing for a photograph, his message clear to Annabelle. Whatever we’re paying them, he means to show it’s a bargain.

  “Even with peace, the trail’s not easy,” the Colonel continued. “It’s not marked like the Oregon trail. There are deep ravines that run into cliff faces so steep they can’t be crossed. There are badlands where, if you don’t know where the springs are, the alkaline water will poison your stock.”

  He paused and looked at the faces of those gathered nearest. No one spoke.

  “If you know where you’re going, you will pass through the richest hunting ground in the world. Great herds of buffalo, elk, mule deer and antelope. Fat prairie chickens, grouse and quail.” He let those words sink in, seeming to enjoy the look on the men’s faces as they imagined themselves stalking such game.

  Then he finished with a flourish that left every
man’s eyes alight with a different kind of hunger. “Follow me and you will come to the gold fields of Montana having saved four hundred and fifty miles and at least six weeks through the mountains.”

  He looked at his empty pipe, seeming to deliberate whether he had time for a second smoke and deciding against it. He looked to have no doubt of the company’s verdict, even as the men moved off to discuss what they had heard.

  Annabelle came to him and offered coffee, hoping to hear what he discussed with Josey Angel. The Colonel declined with a wave of his pipe, as if he could indulge in only one proclivity at a time. Josey Angel, still silent, looked past her as if she weren’t there.

  Standing so close, she saw that his cheeks were thin and his shirt loose, like a son who takes his father’s clothes before he can completely fill them out. He was older than he appeared at first, probably close to her age. Weariness hung over him, like he had seen more years than he lived. His eyes were just as restless as his fidgeting hands, sweeping across the people before him.

  Men with guns didn’t frighten Annabelle. She had known many soldiers, but a gunman seemed different. A soldier was told when to fight, and after the battle he put down his rifle. A gunman always had to be alert, the fight never done. Not until he was dead.

  Annabelle shivered at the thought as Josey Angel’s eyes found her. She felt herself turning red through the chest and face and cursed her foolishness for reacting so.

  The whole time she had been watching Josey Angel, his face had been blank, as if all emotion had bled away from an unseen wound. When she looked back to see his eyes still on her, she realized this wasn’t true. The tiniest twitch at the side of his mouth betrayed him, a movement so slight it would have gone unnoticed on anyone else. Yet on Josey Angel’s blank face it registered as—what?—a smile? An involuntary shudder chased the heat from her face.