Trail Angel

by Derek Catron

  The reverend emerged next. His back toward them as he stepped from the ravine, he took aim with a revolver and fired. He turned and ran. Last came Wands, his hulking frame impossible to mistake. He brandished his rifle like a club, swinging down on an unseen target. Damn you, man, where’s your pistol? Josey moved to a kneeling position and took careful aim past Wands’s shoulder. He fired, cocked, fired again. The first Indian to emerge from the ravine dropped.

  More followed.

  Run faster. Josey tried to focus. Just keep shooting. The steady fire gave the Indians pause, but the soldiers’ run for water had stirred them and there were too many to be held off. Josey reloaded. The soldiers returned, the buckets hastily set aside while every man grabbed a rifle and joined the defense, everyone shouting for the chaplain and lieutenant to hurry.

  The Colonel directed the newcomers to positions around the corral. Josey finished loading and twisted the rifle barrel back in place. Wands drew closer, but the Indians were gaining. Josey couldn’t see past the lieutenant for a clear shot—until Wands twisted and fell, his arms flung forward as if leaping for the shelter of the wagons, still at least ten paces away.

  Josey fired once, twice, three times. The Indians were close enough to return fire, and Josey had to roll into a nearby rifle pit to avoid an arrow that caught in the bed of the wagon overhead. Some of the Indians had rifles, too, and the cloud of smoke from the exchanged fire hovered over the field between them, the smell of gunpowder burning his nostrils. Most of the Indians fell back or took cover. Everywhere he saw movement, Josey fired, his mind empty of any thought but the mechanical movements of aiming, firing, reloading. He rolled right at the sight of new movement.

  “No!”

  The Colonel and a fat driver emerged from cover of the wagons, scrambling in a crouched run toward Wands. An arrow protruded from his leg. They managed to lift the big lieutenant, each slinging an arm over his shoulder, and dragged him toward the wagons, Wands using his good leg to hop between them. They just might make it. Josey rose and stepped from between the wagons, not caring that he made himself a target. Advancing before the wagons, he fired off two shots at an Indian with a rifle.

  “Hurry up.”

  The Colonel and the driver nearly had Wands back to the wagons. Josey moved toward the ravine, looking for any sharpshooters.

  He heard the horses before he saw them, felt the pounding hoof beats. He turned with a sense of dread. Three warriors on horseback charged toward Wands and the others. They had raced around the backside of the corral. The Colonel and the private increased their pace, too fast for Wands on his one good leg. He stumbled, dragging the others down before they recovered their balance. Josey raised his rifle and fired. One of the braves dropped his lance and veered off. The remaining horsemen were nearly upon the others as Josey fired again.

  A second rider fell off his horse.

  Josey cocked and fired again.

  Empty.

  He cursed, cast the rifle aside and drew two revolvers at his waist, firing wildly until his guns emptied, more in hopes of distracting the attacker than hitting anything.

  It was too late.

  With a deft swing of his arm, the third warrior clubbed the Colonel from behind, sending the old man tumbling into the deep grass even as the driver pulled Wands to cover. Josey screamed with all the voice he had, and the horseman turned toward him, his club held high as he whooped in triumph.

  Time stopped. Josey saw the flare of the white-faced bay’s nostrils. The muscles in its flanks pumping with effort. The Colonel lying motionless. The fat driver stepping out to pull the old man clear. All of it perfectly clear as if the scene hung before him in a frame.

  Josey fell to his knees. His eyes turned skyward, closed against the blinding sun. I feared death the first time I faced it, but death never stalked me. It was failure. I never thought to outlive the war because I never wished to live to see the day I failed him.

  The ground shook under Josey as the rider charged. The pistols dropped from his hands as he extended his arms wide. He heard the soldiers behind the wagons call to him, begging him to run. Josey felt as if he were floating above the scene. Opening his eyes, he saw the wispy Indian brave, pale with wavy, dark hair plaited into two braids that framed a delicate, handsome face. A single hawk’s feather twined in one of the braids, a pebble tied behind his ear.

  The brave’s war cries were cut off as his sad eyes met Josey’s. Josey felt the horse’s approach, its breath on his outstretched arm as it passed. Why run when I can fly? Oh, sweet release.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Standing near the ridge the soldiers called Pilot Hill, Annabelle saw Fort Phil Kearny as if it were laid out before her on a map. Two crystal streams meandered through a valley between high rolling buttes that buckled and folded into the horizon. A thickly wooded island lay between the streams. The whine from a pair of sawmills and crash of falling timber carried across the valley.

  The fort was mostly a collection of tents, though the men had marked its borders with a stockade of heavy pine trunks imbedded into the ground. Blockhouses, with portholes for howitzers, protected the corners. Mountains of board planks were piled inside, and the men had staked out locations for barracks, officers’ quarters, warehouses and the other buildings that would make the fort more like a small village in the lonely valley.

  From the amount of work that had been done, Annabelle would have thought the soldiers had been on the site for much longer than three weeks. A threat of Indian attacks makes a wonderful motivator.

  Such threats are not conducive to hospitality, however. Colonel Carrington, the commanding officer, sent word that the emigrants could camp in the valley near the fort, but not so close that their stock would compete for the same grasslands as the fort’s horses and cattle. After Annabelle proved a pest in seeking word of the second train, his officers compounded the insult by making it clear soldiers would come to them once news arrived.

  The travelers occupied themselves with washing, baking and repairing the wagons. Even though they were safe, Annabelle did not relax as she worried over Josey and the second wagon train. An invitation from the fort commander’s wife, Margaret Carrington, saved her from going mad.

  Eager for new company, Margaret, as she insisted Annabelle call her, organized a picnic on a warm August afternoon for the officers’ wives and the young women from the wagon train. They took their rest where a dashing stream near a thicket of chokecherry shrubs and cottonwood trees offered some relief from the August heat. A detachment of a half-dozen soldiers from the fort stood nearby as sentries.

  “We found gooseberries growing wild on the other side of the valley, but I’m afraid we picked them clean,” Margaret said. She maneuvered through the thicket, Annabelle close on her heels. “Gooseberries make a better pie, but at least we won’t have to mind their thorns.”

  Annabelle gathered a small handful of the dark chokecherries. She tried one, surprised at how sweet it tasted. She wondered how to discreetly dispose of the seed until she saw Margaret spit hers to the ground. “You’re not in Charleston any longer, my dear,” she said, grinning like a child, lips stained by the berry.

  Margaret was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, though too thin in Annabelle’s judgment. A chronic cough that she hoped the dry air of the west would cure inhibited her natural energy.

  The soldiers spread blankets and erected a canvas cover with poles to shade the ladies from the sun, and they enjoyed a cold meal of chicken and bread. One of the soldiers used the grinder built into his carbine to start coffee, while another built a fire for the little pots called muckets.

  Taking shelter in the shade, the women found no shortage of common elements in the stories of their journeys. Annabelle shivered to hear of the hardships the soldiers’ wives endured during the past winter in Nebraska as they set out. Mrs. Bisbee, a lieutenant’s wife, elaborated on the overland trek for more than a thousand men, a twenty-five piece military band, seven hundred
head of cattle and some two hundred wagons, including the mowers, sawmills and sundry construction machinery needed to build the fort.

  “My husband called it ‘Carrington’s Overland Circus,’ ” Mrs. Bisbee said with a birdlike twitter.

  All the gay chatter kept Annabelle from dwelling on her worries, but they were never far from her mind. Her downcast demeanor, faraway gazes and inability to follow the conversation at times gave her away. Following lunch, as the women explored along the river, Margaret held back so they were alone.

  Accustomed to being guarded in the company of women whose husbands were subordinate to hers, Margaret took to Annabelle like a long-lost sister. Annabelle laughed to hear stories of Margaret’s two young sons, Jimmy and Harry, and their boyish squabbles over Calico, the small Indian pony their father had given them. She cried hearing Margaret tell of four children who died as babies.

  “I did not wish to make you weep at my sorrows,” Margaret said, offering a fresh handkerchief from a pocket in her dress.

  Annabelle took it and dabbed at her eyes. “It’s not that, not just that.” Before she knew what had overtaken her, Annabelle found herself confiding about the loss of her baby, her determination never to marry again—and her sense that her resolve on that matter was eroding. Margaret proved an ideal confidante, mature beyond her years, but still largely a stranger. Nothing said between them could follow Annabelle as a secret to be divulged.

  “This specialist who said you could have no more children, did you seek another opinion?” Margaret asked.

  Annabelle admitted she hadn’t. “I didn’t feel up to seeing anybody. I didn’t even tell my mother,” she added, realizing how horrible that sounded.

  “You should see another doctor. I would never trust the opinion of just one, especially about something like that. Men like to think they know more than they do, and that’s a subject they are ill-equipped to master.” Though too choked up to laugh, Annabelle appreciated Margaret’s efforts to humor her. Then Margaret’s voice turned solemn again. Though Annabelle never mentioned Josey by name, her new friend intuited the real problem.

  “I suspect the ignorance of doctors is not your only concern. You are worried about your man.”

  Startled by her frankness, Annabelle flushed. “My husband is dead,” she said automatically. As for Josey, Annabelle didn’t know how to explain their relationship. “I am promised to no one.”

  Margaret chided her. “Perhaps not in any fashion that would be recognized in the drawing rooms we grew up in,” she said, pausing to look at Annabelle. “We are not children any longer, and this—” with a sweep of her arm she took in the Bighorn Mountains and a horizon empty of any human presence “—is not a drawing room.”

  Annabelle smiled. She told some of what passed between her and Josey, though some things shouldn’t be shared even between friends. “Until I know he’s unharmed, I can hardly think of anything else,” she said. She wiped her eyes again and breathed deeply to calm herself. “I am being silly. As a soldier’s wife, you must endure this every day.”

  “You mustn’t think yourself weak for your concerns. You’ve already lost a husband. Of course you fear the worst.”

  “My relationship with Richard was . . . different,” Annabelle said.

  “He is gone. That is my point. My Henry never served on a battlefield. His talents were better suited to raising troops and organizing them to fight. I think sometimes he wishes he had been bloodied. Some men won’t trust an officer who wasn’t. For my part, I was relieved I had no need to send him off, wondering if he would return to me.”

  She reached out and took Annabelle’s hand in hers. “I admire your strength.”

  “You wouldn’t call it strength if you knew my thoughts,” Annabelle said.

  “Admitting our fears does not make us weak,” Margaret said, slipping her arm around Annabelle’s waist. “It is only through them we discover the bounds of our strength.”

  Her new friend’s words were still in Annabelle’s head when the second wagon train arrived late that day. Annabelle insisted on going straightaway to the fort, but a rude and balding captain with alcohol on his breath barred her from entering.

  One of the guards took pity on her, and she learned the Colonel had been wounded and taken to the hospital tent. Certain Josey must be with him, Annabelle returned to her wagon, confident he would come soon. When he hadn’t come by the time the emigrants readied for bed, she decided to sleep outside. She didn’t want her parents to hear when she stole away with him.

  Beneath a blanket of stars, sounds that usually blended into a lovely lullaby stood out as discordant as church bells at night. Crickets chirped in the meadow. A light breeze rustled through the branches of the pine trees. Big Piney Creek murmured as it cascaded through a gorge. Wolves howled back and forth from the tops of ridges at either end of the valley. Annabelle heard everybody who woke to nature’s call, their furtive footfalls echoing like hammer blows in her mind. She listened to everything but what she longed to hear.

  Josey never came.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  The second wagon train arrived at the fort late in the day. Doc Hines offered to allow Caleb to stay in a hospital tent, but Caleb wanted to get back to the wagons. He would find no peace until he knew about the gold.

  The light from the cook fires led Caleb to the camp. The sound of wolves snapping and howling, drawn near the fort by the scent of the butchers’ discarded offal, kept him moving. He had overestimated his strength, and the long walk over uneven ground in the gathering darkness exhausted him.

  Someone must have brought word of the wagon train’s return, and soon familiar faces surrounded Caleb. Langdon Rutledge embraced him like a prodigal son. Willis Daggett pounded him on the back with such enthusiasm the brotherly blows nearly felled him. Blanche Swift tenderly cradled his face in her hands and kissed him. No one but Laurie had ever appeared so delighted to see him.

  He stood before them weeping, as much for joy as guilt, realizing even now he couldn’t divulge his secret. As they guided him to a seat by a fire, filling his hands with food and drink, Caleb sensed their apprehension. As pleased as they were to see him, the absence of the Colonel and Josey Angel filled them with a dread that muted the joy of his reunion.

  “Where’s Annabelle?” he asked. Hers was the one face missing from the group.

  “She went to the fort,” her father said. “She wouldn’t wait once the soldiers brought word that your wagons had been seen.”

  Caleb was relieved he wouldn’t have to explain to Annabelle what had happened. Before he said another word, the settlers peppered him with questions, and he told them about the Indian attack, his narrative disjointed, his ability to explain unable to keep pace with their curiosity. In their befuddlement, they pressed Caleb for more details. How can I explain to you what I don’t even understand myself?

  He wasn’t sure he conveyed the desperation of the final fight. The only thing that had saved them from being slaughtered to the last man was the Indians’ reluctance to make a concerted charge. While they waited for the men to return with the water, the Colonel had explained it just wasn’t in the Indians’ nature to sacrifice even a few of their braves to overwhelm and wipe out a foe.

  Not all the soldiers believed that. They were a chastened lot by then. They had been full of themselves coming west: the army that had bested Bobby Lee now confronting nothing more than lice-ridden savages, fighting with bows and clubs against rifles and cannon. Their error proved a deadly lesson, and now they had an understanding of the ruthless opponent they faced.

  Fearing the worst, a few of the men removed their shoelaces and tied them together, fashioning a loop at one end to go around their foot. They tied a smaller loop at the other end and attached it to the trigger of their rifles. The tortured soldier at Dry Creek was too fresh in their minds. If the corral were overrun, they would stand up with the muzzle of the rifle under their chin. The Indians wouldn’t take them alive.

&nbs
p; Caleb couldn’t tell the settlers these things. Instead, he told them how the Indians melted away into the hills once Jim Bridger and the mounted soldiers from Burroughs’s wagon train appeared from the north. His listeners made him go back to the beginning, so he told of the ambush, the desperate run for water. Gaps in his story tested their patience.

  “What about Josey? And the Colonel?” Mary Rutledge’s face pinched with worry. He told them how the Colonel had been struck down, how Josey Angel left the cover of the wagons, firing his weapons until exhausting his ammunition.

  “Then what happened?”

  He thought the woman might shake the answer from him. “He fell to his knees. We thought he was praying, at first.”

  The soldiers had watched helplessly as the pale Indian charged at full gallop toward the kneeling man, expecting to witness Josey’s slaughter. Belatedly, a few thought to fire at the rider, but none could hit such a fast-moving target. To Caleb, it looked like Josey Angel was offering himself, whether to God or the Indian brave, it wasn’t clear.

  Just as his horse came upon Josey Angel, the Indian slid off to the side, reaching out to clasp Josey Angel’s outstretched hand with his. The contact lasted for only a moment, but the momentum of the charging rider twisted Josey Angel in a half-circle, so that he was left facing the rider as he retreated toward the ravine, the hand that had touched his foe raised triumphantly as he whooped to mark his victory.

  “He was counting coup?” Langdon Rutledge sounded no less amazed than Caleb had been at the time.

  “That’s what the soldiers figured.” No one had been able to explain it, and Josey Angel never spoke about it.

  When he returned to the corral, the men parted wordlessly before him, like he had been touched by something more than an Indian. He fell to his knees beside the Colonel, who was unconscious but still breathing. For a moment Josey Angel looked to the skies again, his eyes closed against the day’s glare. Then he lowered his head so that it rested against the Colonel’s forehead.