The Trail to Trinity (A Piccadilly Publishing Western

by Owen G. Irons

  And do what? Return with her to that stink hole of an outlaw town, Barlow? That must have been a part of the reason behind Gwen Mackay’s fear. To be captured by a black knight of an outlaw and taken to his slovenly castle ... one of many fears the girl probably carried.

  Snapping himself back from conjecture, Sage told her as they packed the heavy tarp away, ‘Maybe Kiebler does have some sort of idea. Maybe he knows some frontier woman who would take you in.’

  ‘And you?’ She had those wide dark eyes fixed on Sage as he closed and latched the side box.

  ‘Me?’ He hesitated and tried to produce a laugh, at which he failed. Leaning against the wagon Sage crossed his arms and said, ‘I’ve got someplace to go, and I’m going to be riding hard and long to get there. There’ll be trouble at the end of the trail. Besides, I don’t know a soul in Trinity, not a decent person, anyway.’

  ‘Trinity... ?’ Gwen’s eyes seemed to glaze over a little; then they brightened. ‘I know people in Trinity—at least I think I do. My mother’s sisters—two maiden aunts of mine—have a little house there.’

  ‘Good luck. It’s a long walk to Trinity,’ Sage said in a manner which was not kindly. He turned toward the back door of the store, felt Gwen’s insistent fingers on his shirt sleeve and turned to look down at her eyes, now hopeful.

  ‘You must have a horse,’ she said.

  ‘I do. I have one crippled-up horse and one rider for him—me.’

  ‘Maybe I can find another one,’ Gwen said with unfounded optimism.

  ‘Not on an army post,’ Sage answered. ‘And the ones they do have wear a US brand and are meant to be kept.’

  ‘But maybe Kiebler knows where I can come by one—or the troopers. Those boys ride far and wide. There must be some small farms around here, some with a horse to spare.’

  ‘You have money with you, then.’

  ‘No,’ Gwen said with a slight stutter.

  ‘That seems to put another kink in your plan, doesn’t it? You’d have to know of a place where you could purchase a horse, walk to it, convince someone to let you have it for no money and avoid Austin Szabo the whole time.’ Sage didn’t mean for that to sound cruel, but apparently it did. Gwen’s eyes clouded up and he thought she was about to cry.

  ‘Szabo,’ she said in a low voice as she studied the ground beneath her feet. ‘That’s right; he will find me.’

  That’s why I advised you to walk over to the commanding officer’s office and ask for help. Not even Szabo would be reckless enough to try to snatch you from the army.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’ Gwen said. ‘You don’t know Austin Szabo very well, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Sage said without reflection, ‘and I don’t wish to or intend to.’

  ‘You’d just give me over to him!’

  ‘You’re not mine to give over, Gwen. I don’t know you either, and I have nothing to do with your situation. I’m only a long-riding, lone man who happens to have got stuck here for a few days.’

  ‘You have something important to do?’ she asked, and now Sage found that she was annoying him with her persistence.

  ‘Yes, I do. It’s very important: I have to kill a man.’

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped as she stepped away from him, her fingers dropping from his sleeves. ‘You’re just one of them, then.’

  ‘I’m not one of anybody. You asked me a question about something that’s none of your business and I answered you,’ Sage said. The girl was getting to be a nuisance and he had no interest in continuing the conversation with her. If it weren’t for those very sad dark eyes ...

  How can a man feel shame about something that’s none of his doing and that he can do nothing to remedy? He could, Sage thought, if he was a fool.

  He put his hand on the doorknob and said gruffly, ‘Wait a minute and you can talk to Kiebler. I’ll see if his soldier customers have all gone.’

  ‘Mr. Kiebler will have an idea,’ Gwen said. ‘He’s a kind man,’ she added, as if it were an admonition.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Sage answered, though he doubted that Kiebler with the best of intentions could figure a way to get a runaway girl pursued by an obsessed thug safely away from a military post without so much as a dollar or a pony to ride.

  The sutler’s shop seemed empty and silent with only a single ring of the cash register’s bell to indicate that anyone at all was there.

  ‘Oh, Paxton,’ Kiebler said, looking up from his till. ‘You startled me a little.’

  ‘I’ve brought something to startle you more. You still haven’t shown me where to store the produce.’

  ‘Back in the rear pantry,’ Kiebler said, his brow furrowing a little with concern, ‘but what do you mean about bringing something that will startle me?’

  ‘He means me,’ Gwen Mackay said, stepping into the store through the back door.

  Kiebler halted his movements. His mouth didn’t exactly drop open, but seemed incapable of forming words. Certainly his eyes widened behind his spectacles. The man was speechless. Sage broke through the silence. ‘You mean that room with the heavy door on the left down the hallway?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Kiebler said in a shaky voice. ‘Near the potatoes.’ He was babbling now, and Sage returned to the wagon without hearing the rest of his rapid, scrambled conversation with Gwen Mackay.

  When Sage returned, a sack of apples over his shoulder, the two were still talking, leaning across the counter of the store. Gwen’s voice was low, pleading; Kiebler’s face was drawn with concern. He was shaking his head heavily. Sage dropped his sack where indicated and returned to the wagon. The two were still talking, Gwen’s voice entreating.

  Sage, himself, saw the problem as unsolvable, and he did not strain to catch their words. He was not a man without compassion, but neither could he offer a solution—besides he had his own problems, his own trail to ride.

  During his tenth load, he saw that Gwen had retreated to a corner chair to sob and feel sorry for herself. Kiebler halted Sage and asked sharply, ‘Well, young man, what do you propose to do to solve this?’

  ‘Me?’ Sage said blankly. He had considered himself relieved of the situation once Gwen Mackay had Kiebler’s ear. ‘What have I to do with this?’

  ‘Certainly more than I do,’ the old man replied. ‘After all, you’re the one who brought her here.’

  ‘I did not,’ Sage said. ‘You were driving the wagon.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know that she was on it. According to the girl, you did.’

  ‘I didn’t turn her in, that’s all. Would you have done otherwise?’

  ‘Charles Mackay is a ... well, maybe not a friend of mine, but a business associate.’

  ‘Then you would have turned her in, even knowing Austin Szabo as you do?’ Both men glanced at the forlorn little woman in the corner chair, her eyes now lifted toward them. ‘No,’ Kiebler admitted heavily. ‘I don’t think I would have done that, Paxton—now what do we do?’

  ‘I could only think to tell her to go to Captain Rowland and explain.’

  ‘You don’t know Rowland, he’d only order her to leave his camp. And he’d give me hell for allowing this to happen. Then he’d start wondering about you and your horse. Rowland is not a bad officer, he just doesn’t like civilians interfering in the orderly operations of his fort. He could ruin me if he really got riled—throw me off the post.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to get her off before he learns anything of it,’ Sage said.

  ‘I, I alone? Then you’re just shrugging off your responsibility?’

  ‘I never had any responsibility in this,’ Sage said with just a little heat.

  ‘And I never had any responsibility in taking you in out of the rain and finding a stable for your horse,’ Kiebler said, his eyes now growing shrewd. Sage sighed heavily. He got the point. ‘Now, then, how do we get her off the post and get her somewhere else, Paxton?’

  ‘We get her off the same way we got her on,’ Sage believed. ‘As to where she might go, I haven’t an ide
a in the world. Don’t you? It’s your territory around here.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kiebler said, mopping at his broad forehead with his handkerchief again. ‘I need to think a little longer about that. Finish bringing in the produce and I’ll try to come up with something.’

  The apples stored, the cherries in their place, Sage stopped for a breather, seating himself on the back porch of the store. The sky was high, clear but for a few straggling clouds, and the air was as fresh as it can only be after the passing of a storm. From somewhere nearby he could hear the sounds of a blacksmith at his anvil and farther away the shouted commands of a drill sergeant. He could not hear voices inside the store. Maybe Kiebler had decided to keep the business closed until this matter with Gwen was solved.

  How, Sage wondered, was his gray horse? Well enough to travel if care were taken to stick to even ground and ride easily? Every hour he delayed was an hour given to his adversary to make his escape. Stagecoaches ran through Trinidad; his man could step aboard one and vanish in no time, extending Sage’s search for days, weeks, years—for surely he would pursue his prey no matter how long it took. Trinidad was the place to catch him, now before his man was alerted and could flee.

  Rising, abandoning his circular thoughts, Sage went into the store. Gwen was alone, still sitting in the corner of the room, hands knotted together. A small, pitiful creature, the sight of her tugged at Sage’s heart just a little. A woman expecting no help, waiting for her brutal suitor to track her down.

  ‘Where’s Kiebler?’ he snapped. Gwen winced as if he had slapped her.

  ‘He went out,’ she answered, expressing the obvious.

  ‘To see Captain Rowland?’

  ‘We saw Captain Rowland ride out with a patrol not a few minutes ago.’

  Then where? As if in answer to his unspoken question, Sage heard a horse, walking slowly, approach the store. Peering out the curtain, Sage saw Kiebler leading his saddled gray toward the store. The horse was not limping noticeably, but it moved gingerly, its right haunch still obviously bothering it. That was one problem solved—Sage had had no idea how he was to cross the yard, retrieve his horse if fit for travel at all and return without the first sergeant, Rowland or someone else noticing and questioning his presence on the post.

  ‘He’s walking it around back,’ Sage said to Gwen, who gave no response, just sat there silently in her misery.

  Walking toward the rear of the store, Sage could hear the slow heavy clopping of his horse’s hoofs and saw Kiebler appear around the corner of the building, leading the gray.

  The little man looked serious and anxious as he had the right to be. He drew the gray up at the rear hitching post, tying it loosely. Sage’s first thoughts were on his horse and he walked to the animal, stroking its muzzle before going to its hind leg to feel the tendon there.

  Kiebler spoke with unexpected force. ‘Turn the wagon around and break out the tarp again.’

  ‘We’re leaving?’

  ‘We are,’ Kiebler said.

  ‘Going... ?’

  ‘Turn the wagon around and break out the tarp again,’ Kiebler repeated, breaking out a tone of command which seemed totally foreign to the mild storekeeper’s usual manner. Sage turned away from his own horse.

  ‘What did you tell Rowland?’

  ‘The captain rode out with a small party of troopers. I told the first sergeant that Mackay had made a mistake in his count and that I was going to have to go back up to his farm.’

  ‘My horse—’ Sage began, but this was not the day for Kiebler’s patience to endure.

  ‘Do what I told you, Paxton! You must see that we have to get the girl off the post before the captain returns.’

  Sage only nodded and set to his tasks. With the wagon turned and the tarp spread out over the bed, Kiebler glanced once from the back door and then, taking Gwen’s elbow, hurried her toward the wagon. The girl slid up on to the rough wagon bed and was hastily covered with the tarp. Sage wondered if the troopers at the gate might challenge him, but then remembered that they had seen him already once this morning and had not bothered to ask who he was or what he was doing there. So leaving the wagon and its living contraband to Kiebler, Sage hesitantly mounted his gray horse and walked it slowly toward the gate.

  They were passed without incident although Sage seemed to feel the eyes of the sentries probing him, seeking to penetrate the secret hidden beneath the canvas tarpaulin. No one spoke. Kiebler raised a hand in greeting as always; the wagon went on without any cries of alarm being shouted. Then they were out on the open land again, and after two turns of the road they found themselves on the lower ground near the river where no eyes from the fort could see them. They were free.

  Free? An odd word for it. Free to do what?

  Kiebler had halted the wagon to allow Gwen to slip from under the tarp and on to the bench seat beside him. Sage walked his ill-used gray horse up beside them and asked both of them, ‘Well, have we any idea of where we’re headed yet?’

  ‘What does it matter to you?’ Kiebler grumbled. ‘You’ve got your horse back.’

  ‘I can’t say why it matters,’ Sage said honestly, ‘but it does.’

  Gwen was sitting, hands folded, watching Sage curiously with an expression he could not read. He turned his own gaze away to watch the Vasquez River, still frothing and running from bank to bank with the run-off from the storm, as it rushed southward. Above the mountains, he noticed there was a legion of newly arrived storm clouds. Running into another storm would not do—he could not risk being again stranded on the plains. He had to make Trinity or at least reach some settlement he could hole up in.

  The wind at their backs lifted the fine hair from Kiebler’s scalp as he wiped off his brow prior to replanting his hat again.

  ‘I’m thinking we could give Mike Currant’s place a try,’ the sutler said, glancing at Gwen and then again at Sage. ‘There’s not much of Mike to brag about, but his old woman, Ellie, is the salt of the earth.’

  Kiebler had obviously not discussed this with Gwen, who now sat wooden-faced, as enduring as an orphaned Indian. What could the girl say? She had to be somewhere; it seemed as if where no longer mattered to her.

  ‘I don’t know this Mike Currant,’ Sage said, ‘don’t know where his place is, but if we’re going to go there, we’d better start moving. It looks fearfully like it’s going to storm again overnight.’

  Kiebler nodded, slapped the reins against his horses’ flanks and the wagon began creaking forward, Gwen looking vacantly ahead. Sage shook off that occasional guilt feeling he was carrying and rode on again, keeping the still-injured gray to the slow speed of Kiebler’s team, though the gray seemed to wish to move on at a quicker pace, perhaps not realizing the seriousness of its injury.

  They traveled on an easy two more miles, no one speaking, until, at a place where the river slowed and flattened due to the land opening up, they saw a small house standing in a gray mirror of storm runoff in the low valley ahead.

  They just about got themselves flooded out, didn’t they,’ Kiebler said, apparently to himself.

  ‘It was more rain than anybody could have expected,’ Sage said. He might have been speaking to himself as well. No one answered.

  There were four scraggly willow trees in front of the house, all tilted away from the prevailing north wind. Nearing the house, they saw a scowling man with a beard, a heavy straw broom in his hands, sweeping the storm’s residue from the front porch. Gwen stiffened, seeming not to like the looks of the man at first glance, and if first appearances were anything to go by, Sage didn’t either.

  Slovenly, in oversized twill pants and red suspenders wearing a blue shirt which showed stains across the front as if he had spat tobacco juice on himself, his hair was lank and greasy. He didn’t look as if he’d shaved for at least a week: salt and pepper whiskers decorated his slack jowls.

  Tilting his broom against the wall of the house, he stepped off the porch and came forward to meet Kiebler’s halted wa
gon, thumbs hooked into the waistband of his trousers.

  ‘Nothin’ to sell, nothing I want to buy,’ he said to Kiebler, though his eyes were not on the sutler, but on Gwen.

  ‘I wasn’t here on business,’ Kiebler said. ‘Is Ellie around?’

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ Currant said. ‘She won’t be comin’ back.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Kiebler asked, looking toward the house.

  ‘Because she’s dead. She died dead all of the sudden and just left all of this housework to me, keeping me from my regular chores,’ the man complained.

  Glancing around the place, Sage couldn’t see what work he was being kept from. No soil was turned for planting and there wasn’t a sign of any sort of livestock that might need tending.

  ‘What’s that small package you got there, Kiebler?’ Mike Currant asked, leaning nearer to study Gwen more personally.

  ‘Just someone who needs a place to stay for a while. That’s why I was asking about Ellie.’

  ‘As I told you, Ellie’s gone ... but I could use a girl to cook and clean around the house for me,’ Currant said. ‘She could work for room and board.’

  Sage saw Gwen quiver slightly as the leering man looked her over too closely. Sage answered before Kiebler could. ‘No, thanks, that won’t do. We’re looking for a place with a woman to care for her.’

  Currant’s eyes shifted to Sage as if noticing him for the first time. The gaze they held was not a pleasant one and Sage let his eyes drop, looking away from Currant’s angry eyes toward the long-running river. This was no time for more trouble. The road to Trinity was beckoning and the man at the end of that trail still needed killing.

  Chapter Four

  Mike Currant’s little mouth formed a sort of twisted imitation of a smile. The man’s eyes remained hard. It was obvious what Currant had in mind. Perhaps he had thought he could wheedle or bully Kiebler into doing as he wished. The tall man on the gray horse appeared to be a different proposition altogether. He didn’t like the nearness of his hand to his pistol, nor his steady gaze. Currant gave it up.