Maps of Fate

by Reid Lance Rosenthal

  Sarah’s puffy eyes widened, “Reuben has a gold map too?”

  “No, his maps were drawn by a scout. One concerns getting across the country, and the other maps out a perfectly suitable ranch,” she laughed, “on the flanks of Las Montanas Rojas.”

  Sarah looked at her, speechless.

  “Reuben told me that there was another map, too, a map that spoke of…”

  Something clicked deep in Rebecca as she spoke. She could feel her eyes widen, and her heart race. She straightened up on her knees, reached over, and grabbed Sarah’s arm. “When did Jacob first get this map?”

  “He had it in New York, when we first got on the train.”

  Rebecca pointed at the map. “What is that darker stain? There, in the fold.”

  Sarah unfolded a portion of the map. “I noticed that right off, too. I had come to the conclusion, knowing Jacob, that its blood…” She looked up. “You mean...?”

  Rebecca nodded. “Yes, I have a feeling. Reuben and I shared our maps the day after we…”She looked down, smoothed her hands down the front of her riding skirt. Inga’s habit! She looked up at Sarah, “The day after we first made love. There’s a name in the lower righthand corner of the map. It’s the signature of the scout his father and uncle hired.”

  Sarah’s shoulders slumped, “Well then, its Reuben’s map.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t think so, Sarah. I think he might look at it differently. We’ll take a look at it together and compare the names, but right now we have another problem,” she nodded at the corpse.

  Sarah clapped a hand over her mouth, “I didn’t even think of that.”

  Rebecca looked at Sarah. “Obviously.”

  Rebecca settled back down to her heels. “He’s much too heavy for the two of us to move. We would be here all day, and leave a blood trail that anybody could follow. Perhaps we should just tell Reuben what happened. You were defending me. Another few seconds and he would’ve…”

  She felt his fingers inside her. A bitter taste rose in her mouth and she felt suddenly sick. She leaned over to the side and retched. Sarah scooted to her and put her arms around her shoulder, “It’s okay, Rebecca. It’s okay. The important thing is he didn’t. You weren’t raped. You are very much alive, and you aren’t…thank God, you aren’t pregnant with his child.”

  Rebecca straightened up and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist.

  “I don’t think we should tell them, Rebecca,” Sarah said. “The news will be all over the wagon train in a flash. Zeb calls it the ‘sagebrush grapevine.’ People will inquire. They will want the whole story.” Her voice fell. “They will find out I was raped, and am now carrying the bastard child of that bastard. It will be all over Cherry Creek. She reached over and grabbed Rebecca’s hand, “I don’t think we should. Really.”

  Rebecca looked at her friend, thinking. “We could roll the body into the creek. I wish it was a bigger river, but he might flow downstream far enough that nobody would notice.”

  “I have an idea,” Sarah interrupted. “Let’s…”

  The women suddenly raised their heads. They froze at the distinct sound of muted splashing—a horse walking in the creek, headed downstream towards them.

  CHAPTER 43

  MAY 18, 1855

  SACRED PACT

  Sarah’s heart beat wildly and she knew her look mirrored that of Rebecca’s, whose eyes were wide and fearful. The horse grew closer.

  Wobbling, Rebecca stood and grabbed the Sharps. “Sarah, get my canvas bag. Make sure you pick up the knife. Let’s get back in those trees.” Still unsteady on her feet, she tripped, almost falling. Sarah clutched the canvas bag and, knife in one hand, put her arm around Rebecca’s waist and the two moved into the protective cover of the cottonwood stand. They crouched behind a large tree, breathing heavily, hearts racing.

  A squirrel in the tree above them chattered angrily as the sounds of the horse splashing through the water grew louder. “It’s Zeb,” Rebecca hissed. Sarah nodded, transfixed by the scene, her mind racing in a jumble of thoughts.

  Buck stepped up on the bank just feet from the body. Zeb lifted his Sharps from his lap, and settled the rifle’s buttplate on his thigh. Horse and rider stood silent and still, Zeb glancing keenly around the body, then out from it, his head and shoulder rotating slowly. He dismounted, his rifle at the ready, and knelt on one knee. He nodded and Buck backed up five or six steps.

  Reaching out one hand, he felt around Jacob’s corpse, not touching the body but seeming to feel the ground, letting his hand linger in certain places. He relaxed and stood, the Sharps now cradled in the crook of his arm. With his eyes glued to the ground, he took a few paces, cast a glance left, then right, then knelt down and felt the earth again. His head rose and his eyes followed their route into the trees. He stood. “Rebecca and Sarah, come on out.”

  The two women looked at each other. Rebecca’s eyes were wide and bloodshot, her scar pronounced against the pallor of her skin. She started to rise, but Sarah pulled her down. “Let’s wait. Maybe, maybe he’s bluffing.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “He knows, Sarah, he knows. Maybe he will help us. He is likely the person who detested Jacob the second most on earth. And we both know that was prompted, in part, by you.”

  “Yes, but now? After I killed a man using his knife? And what happens when he finds out I’m pregnant?” Sarah fought the confusion and the surreal cold emptiness that gripped her. There is no choice. She sighed. “You’re right, Rebecca.”

  They rose together and walked out to Zeb. He watched them, one hand busily stroking his mustache. They reached him and Sarah looked down, ashamed. “Zeb, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

  She was interrupted by the feel of his fingers under her chin slowly lifting her face, his long arm fully outstretched. “Sure you did. He had it comin’! If you hadn’t, I probably would’ve and if I hadn’t, somebody else certainly would’ve.”

  He swung his gaze to Rebecca, “Are you all right?” Rebecca’s face was pale, but her eyes had that fiery look that Sarah had learned to respect since the very first night on the trail.

  Zeb nodded behind him. “Looks like he jumped you from behind and pushed your head underwater ’til you passed out.”

  Rebecca’s eyes widened, “Yes, Zeb. Exactly.”

  “Did he…” Zeb looked down at his moccasins, embarrassed, a latent seething just below the surface.

  Rebecca reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “No, he didn’t, but another few seconds and he would have, and afterwards he meant to kill me.”

  She reached over to Sarah, grabbed her hand and squeezed, “Sarah saved me, Zeb. She saved my life, and my honor. She was very brave.” Rebecca turned and looked Sarah square in the eyes. “That’s the second time you’ve come to my rescue in little more than a week.”

  Zeb turned his head sideways to examine the corpse for a long moment. His eyes moved back to Sarah, “My knife?” He smiled. “That pleases me. Sarah, sounds to me like you were here when you needed to be. Let’s go tell Reuben.”

  “No!” Sarah took a step towards him and rested her palm on the leather at his chest. “No, Zeb, I don’t want to. There’ll be too many questions.”

  Zeb looked at her for a moment, then turned to Rebecca. “What do you think, Rebecca?”

  “I think Sarah’s right. The less people know, the better. It’s not like there’s anybody who will mourn or even miss him. Why should the heroine of the day,” she gestured at Sarah, “be put in a situation of compromise and stress?”

  Zeb’s fingers worked his mustache as he looked from one to the other. “Anybody could happen on this body.” He looked down at the ground, his eyes following where they had walked from the trees. “A child could read the sign.” He looked down at Sarah’s moccasins, then his own, and finally at Rebecca’s boots.

  “Got an idea.” He whistled softly. Buck pricked up his ears and took the few steps necessary to stand next to them. Zeb handed Sarah his S
harps, “Hold this for me.” He moved down Buck’s flank, opened a saddlebag, and withdrew an arrow broken in two.

  “Is that the arrow that…”

  “Yep, sure enough is.” He looked down at Jacob’s corpse and spit. “I think that son of a bitch is who killed poor Mac. The sign was clear, but his boot prints didn’t match the story in the dirt. Kept this for evidence, but don’t need that anymore.”

  Sarah’s head jerked up. “He has, I mean had, two pairs of boots.”

  Zeb nodded slowly, “I suspected he might. I talked to Reuben about doing a search of his wagon, hoping to turn the bastard into the Army at Cherry Creek. Anyways, for me to ponder about this plan, I gotta have a smoke.” He reached inside his buckskin shirt, pulled out a small suede tobacco pouch, extracted a slip of rolling papers from his leggings pocket, and began to roll a smoke. Sarah and Rebecca glanced at each other. Zeb flicked his eyes up to them as he sprinkled tobacco on the paper. “Don’t look so startled. He ain’t going nowhere.”

  Sarah watched Rebecca dip her head, a smile playing on her face, then look up at Zeb. “I have a question for you. Might be out of place, but how on earth did you pack enough tobacco for this whole trip?”

  Zeb grinned at her. “See them red willows over there,” he gestured behind Sarah. “Up along the banks from the direction that me and Buck rode in from? Yep, see those spindly bushes over there? One is golden and those others are reddish barked. In case you ladies ever take up smoking, you don’t need to buy tobacco. You just scrape the bark off them red willows and let it dry.” He raised the paper to his lips, licked it, and held up the cigarette to them. “Best damn tobacco there is.”

  Sarah began to laugh and Rebecca joined in. Zeb chuckled, too.

  “So here’s my plan.” He turned and stood over Jacob’s body, holding the arrow with the stone broadhead secured to its tip by rawhide. The work of Pawnee hands, Sarah thought. He knelt down, raised his arm, and drove the arrow into Jacob’s back.

  Her stomach turned. She bent over and vomited. Rebecca was quickly at her side, holding her shoulders.

  “Oh. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking,” said Zeb, looking concerned. “She’ll feel better.” He stood and surveyed his handiwork, glancing from time to time at the last half of the arrow. He turned it over in one hand, stroking his mustache with the other. He broke the half arrow more or less in thirds, and laid the pieces haphazardly by Jacob’s side. He folded one of the dead man’s arms over his back, bent at the elbow, and then rolled Jacob’s body on top of the three pieces of arrow. The dead man’s chest was strangely raised where the press of the broadhead through his spine and his arm arched his back from the ground.

  Zeb stood back, the cigarette smoking in his mouth. Regarding the scene with a critical eye, he cocked his head from side to side. “Yep, poor Irishman came down here and got bushwhacked by Pawnees,” he pointed across the stream, “probably from the other side of the creek. The bastard, clawing at his back, broke the arrow in the three pieces as he hit the ground.”

  “Sarah,” he said, “please get me that knife.”

  Sarah still felt queasy. “It is back by the cottonwood where we were hiding.”

  “Okay, go fetch it. Don’t step in the same track you made coming in and out of there. You can bend grass once, but you walk on it more and that track will be around for a long time.”

  Sarah felt as if she were in a dream. She walked, light-headed, back to the cottonwood, taking care to step only on untrammeled grass. She returned with the knife. Zeb put one moccasin foot on either side of the body, taking care not to get blood on the leather. He bent down, knife in one hand, Jacob’s head lifted by its hair in his other.

  He turned his head sideways at the two women, “You best look away.” Sarah and Rebecca’s eyes met and they quickly turned their backs. There was a wet, rasping sound, then again, and then a small splash in the creek.

  “Okay—done.”

  When Sarah looked again, Zeb was wiping the knife on Jacob’s pants. “Yep, and then after the ambush they came across the creek, leaving no track in the water, and scalped the poor Irishman. Then they snuck over to those trees,” he pointed where Sarah and Rebecca had hidden, “to spy on the wagon train and came back the same way.”

  He looked at Rebecca’s boots. “Take those off, Rebecca. Yours is the only sign we got to cover. I will put you up on Buck, get you back close to the wagons, and then you can put the boots back on and walk into camp from a different direction.” He walked over to a small cottonwood and broke off one of the low-lying branches. He carefully backtracked their trail, taking care to brush out the track of Rebecca’s boots, but leaving the moccasin tracks belonging to him and Sarah.

  He scooped Rebecca up and put her on Buck. “Just so happens, I took his shoes off two days ago. Two of ’em was bothering him. Truth is, I think he’d rather run unshod anyway.” Buck flipped his muzzle up and down. “Leastways until we get to Cherry Creek.”

  “Zeb, I think that horse is the most important thing in the world to you, and you to him,” said Rebecca, smiling slightly.

  Zeb nodded, then turned his eyes to Sarah, softness in his deepset stare. “I may be to him, but he’s second most important to me now.” The mountain man reddened and cleared his throat, and Sarah fought the impulse to bury her head in his leathers, and cry.

  “Okay, let me walk around here a little bit with you on him and then we’ll ease outta here up the creek and leave the site of this horrible ambush. If it is meant to be found, then Spirit will make it so.”

  Sarah watched as the mountain man created the scene he wanted. Then he led Buck over to her, lifted her up on the horse in front of Rebecca, and then splashed up the creek leading Buck. When he was satisfied with their location, he led Buck out of the creek. “Rebecca, let me help you off. Best you put on your boots here and walk.”

  They made their way through the cottonwoods until they could see the wagon tops through one narrow alley in the trees.

  He helped Sarah down. “I suggest, Rebecca, you lend Sarah your jacket to cover the blood on her sleeves.” He looked them up and down critically, then tried to joke. “Pretty clean for the mess you made, Sarah.” She bit her lip, trying to hold back tears, but she could feel them trickling down her cheek. She stepped forward and laid her head into his chest. “Thank you, Zeb. Thank you.”

  “So what are we going to do or say if the body is found?” Rebecca blurted out.

  Always practical, thought Sarah. Zeb looked at them. “What body?”

  The two women exchanged looks. Sarah wondered if her expression appeared as puzzled as Rebecca’s. “Jacob’s body.”

  Zeb peered at them, his eyes slowly moving from one to the other, “Jacob’s body? I don’t know nothing about no Jacob’s body. The red-headed lady, she’s been down here with her dark haired friend gossiping or whatever it is women do at the river. The only folks know about any corpse is the Pawnee that killed him. Since we don’t know about the Pawnee,” he spit, “we can’t know much else.”

  Zeb looked from one to the other and stretched out his arm, his hand extended, palm down. “Sarah, put your hand on mine, palm down.”

  Sarah reached out her hand and put it on top of Zeb’s, stunned at how small her delicate fingers were compared to his.

  “Rebecca put your hand, palm down, on top of Sarah’s.” Rebecca did as he asked. Zeb looked from one to the other. “This here’s a sacred pact. We don’t know nothing about nobody.”

  The two women looked at each other.

  “Say it.” There was an impatient edge to his voice. In unison, Sarah and Rebecca sang out, “We don’t know nothing about nobody.”

  “And finally, we know nothing about no Pawnee ambush, so we don’t know nothing about nothing.” Both she and Rebecca didn’t hesitate repeating the words this time.

  He dropped his hand and flicked his finger in the direction of the wagons. “I suggest you just head on straight from here. I’m going to mosey up the river and come
in the other side.” He looked at Sarah, “What’s for dinner?”

  Sarah felt her smile growing, “Whatever you want Zebbariah Taylor. Whatever you want.”

  He nodded, swung easily into the saddle, and without looking back rode off into the cottonwoods towards the creek.

  CHAPTER 44

  MAY 27. 1855

  CHERRY CREEK

  Reuben smiled at Sarah and Rebecca as he saddled Lahn. The women stood shoulder to shoulder. Sarah was still in her sleeping gown, clutching a heavy shawl around her shoulders. Rebecca was already fully clothed in her brown riding dress and wearing one of Reuben’s jackets, which she had grabbed when she scrambled out of the wagon. Her full skirt flared beneath the jacket, flowing around her boots as she walked.

  After fastening the cinch, Reuben stood and looked around camp. “Quite the day,” he said to the women, feeling a difference in the morning bustle, an anticipation that permeated the air and ran with a stiff breeze of excitement from one wagon to another. Pioneers talked with louder voices than normal, no one attempting to be quiet. There didn’t seem to be a soul still left in any wagon. All were busy—sorting supplies, huddled over a few breakfast fires, or standing in groups, talking.

  Over the eastern-most wagons in the circle, tendrils of clouds glowed with morning fire, tapering into a golden halo that rimmed the broken terrain, forming the horizon and signaling the coming sun. To the west above the rugged foothills and the sharp ridges of the high Rockies, retreating indigo danced around jagged snow-covered peaks, the last of the night clinging tenaciously to the spine of the continent. It’s grudging retreat signaled a welcome to the wagon train.

  Reuben watched the Kentucky boy, Abraham, limping, and his father harnessing up the team to Jacob and Sarah’s wagon.