by S. K. Salzer
“Do you have some reason to think the lines might be down?” the agent said. Odalie, lost in thought, did not answer. After several minutes of restless waiting, she said, “Can I rent a horse at that livery stable?”
The agent showed surprise. “Well, Horace Stubbs has a horse to let, but she’s an old bag of bones. I hope you’re not thinking of riding back to Buffalo, miss. It’s nearly forty miles. You won’t make it before dark.”
Odalie picked up her bags.
“Miss,” the agent called. “You’ll freeze!”
But she was already out the door.
Billy Sun
Billy Sun and Pat Comstock were enjoying a meal of bacon and beans when Hi Kinch and Nestor Lopez rode up to the line shack in the late afternoon. It was spitting snow when they arrived, and by the time the beans and bacon were gone it was coming down hard. The men passed the cold evening before the fire. Kinch and Comstock played cards, Lopez cleaned his gun, and Billy wrote in his journal.
“Russ and Carlos and the boys will be here Friday, before maybe,” Lopez said, squinting down the barrel of the Smith & Wesson army revolver he had won at cards off a drunken deserter from Custer’s Seventh Cavalry years before. “Then when Faucett and his nabobs come, me and Carlos will show him what a couple of Mexicans can do. He won’t be calling us greasers no more.” Lopez smiled to himself as he pushed an oily rag through the barrel.
There were only two bunks in the shack. Billy and Kinch took those while Comstock and Lopez spread their bedrolls on the dirt floor. At dawn, Billy was first to wake. As he stoked the dying fire, Kinch climbed out of bed, pulled on his boots and picked up the bucket.
“I’ll get us some water,” he said, pushing aside the feed sack that darkened the window and peering out. “Damn me. There must be two foot out there.” Snowdrifts twice that deep were banked against the cabin walls. Kinch had a fight just to get the door open because of the snow piled high against it. When at last he succeeded, he admitted a blast of cold air that made the two men on the floor groan and turn in their blankets. Kinch whistled to himself as he crunched through the frozen crust toward the creek, about fifty feet down the hill. As he passed the barn, where the horses were stabled, he heard a voice.
“Who’s that?” Kinch said. “Someone in there?”
“Shut up and keep walking, old man, and you’ll live another day.”
Kinch kept on toward the creek, feeling a worm of fear crawl down his spine. As he walked he heard footsteps following, close behind. Once he turned his head halfway to see a young man, with white-blond hair and a thin, beardless face, carrying a rifle. “Don’t try anything stupid,” the young man said. Kinch thought he looked familiar, but he could not place him. Once they arrived at the creek he found two others, wrapped in colorful Mexican blankets, in a miserable, cold camp. One rose and spoke to the gunman.
“He the one we’re after? This old buzzard?” Kinch recognized a Texas accent. Kinch hated Texans.
“No,” the young man said, jabbing Kinch in the back with the business end of the rifle. “Is Billy Sun in that shack, old timer? You’ll tell the truth if you know what’s good for you.”
“Yeah, he’s there.”
“Who else?”
“Pat Comstock and Nestor Lopez.”
“Any others?”
“Just them.”
“They on the list, kid?” the Texan said. “Say, maybe this old buzzard’s on the list. What’s your name, Granddad?” The Texan gave Kinch a tobacco-stained smile.
“H.I. Kinch. Folks call me Hi.”
“Do they now?” The Texan’s grin widened.
The boy consulted a folded paper from his pocket. “Those names aren’t on it,” he said, shaking his head. “None of those. It’s only Billy Sun we want.”
“Well, damn, let’s go take the son of a bitch,” the second Texan said. “We shoulda done it last night while they was sleeping, like me and Jess said. Jesus H. Christ.”
“No,” the boy said. “We’re not supposed to kill him, just hold him till Canton and the others get here.”
“The hell,” Jess, the first Texan, said. “You two are all warm and cozy in that barn while me and Andy are freezing our balls off down here. We don’t care what Frank Canton and Lord what’s-his-name say. C’mon, let’s go finish it.”
“No,” the boy said. “When this one doesn’t return, Billy Sun will come looking for him. That’s when we’ll take him.” He turned to go back to the barn.
“So me and Jess keep on freezin’ our balls off down here, with Granddad for company?”
The boy did not reply but raised a hand over his shoulder as he walked back up the hill. Kinch watched, trying to think where he had seen him before.
Jess looked up at the lowering sky. “Looks like more snow, Granddad. Damn, if I’d a knowed how damn cold and snowy it was up here I wouldn’t a come. It’s like the goddamn North Pole. Jesus H. Christ.”
“Keep thinking on the money, Jess,” Andy said. “Just you keep thinkin’ on that.”
“I guess.” Jess settled back on the ground and wrapped himself in his blanket. “May as well sit, Granddad,” he said. “You’re gonna be here a spell.”
* * *
Billy looked out the line shack’s lone window. Hi should be back by now. Even if he’d stopped to answer nature’s call, he should at least be on his way. Billy had a bad feeling.
“Something wrong?” Pat spoke from his bedroll on the floor.
“Could be. Kinch went for water and it’s taking too long.”
“I’ll go see what’s keeping him. I gotta take care of business anyhow.”
“I don’t know,” Billy said. “Maybe me or Nestor should come with you?”
“Naw,” Pat said, pulling on his boots. “I don’t need company for what I gotta do. You just get coffee going and fry up some bacon. Me and Hi will be back in no time. Mind if I borrow your coat? Mine’s still wet.” He shrugged his broad shoulders into Billy’s sheepskin and stepped out into the cold morning air. He took three steps when a bullet whistled past his head and smashed into the side of the cabin. Pat turned back, wild eyed with fear, when the second shot came. The back of his head exploded in a red spray of blood and brains.
Odalie
Odalie’s heart sank when she saw the rental horse available to her, an elderly, swaybacked mare with one milky eye. “Have you nothing else, Mr. Stubbs? I doubt this one will go the distance.”
Horace Stubbs spat a jet of brown tobacco juice on the hay-covered floor. “Bella, here, is a fine, gentle palfrey for a delicate lady like yourself, Miss . . .” He waited for her to offer her name, but when she did not he continued. “Anyhow, what kind of distance are we talking about?”
“I need to get to Buffalo tonight.”
“Haw!” Stubbs laughed. “Buffalo tonight!” He wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand. “Do ye now?” He turned to two other men lounging in the stable, inviting them to share his amusement. They were regarding the beautiful, well-dressed woman with slack-jawed amazement.
“Yes, Mr. Stubbs.” Odalie spoke impatiently. “Can you help me or not? I can pay.”
At the mention of money, Stubbs’s rheumy eyes narrowed. “Well, now, let me think a bit, let me think. Yes, I might be able to come up with a sturdier animal, but it will be a hardship, such short notice, don’t ye know?” He moved toward her. “How much are you willing to pay?”
Odalie felt a red burst of panic. Her ladies’ pistol was in her bag, hanging from her arm. Could she hold these three men at bay with it? Would she even be able to get it out before this brute jumped her? She took a step backward.
“Well, miss?” Stubbs smiled and came closer. “How much?”
To Odalie’s great relief the door opened with a bang, and the ticket agent walked in. “I’m sorry, miss, I was delayed.” He looked from her to Stubbs, then back again. “Is everything all right here?”
Odalie flew to his side and took his arm. “No, I don’t think it is.�
�
“Stubbs?” the agent said angrily. “Have you done something to frighten this woman?”
“Hell no, Rob. No.” Stubbs shifted from one foot to the other. “Me, I was only tryin’ to help her out, rent her a horse. We was just negotiatin’ my fee. No need to get riled up.”
Odalie laughed derisively. “He was preparing to rob me.”
“No, Rob, I wasn’t.” Stubbs forced a smile. “That ain’t how it was, was it, boys?” He appealed to the two gray men who stood silently by. “Tell him, boys. Tell Rob how it was.”
“Never mind, Stubbs. Your services won’t be needed after all.” He picked up Odalie’s bags. “Come with me, miss. I believe I’ve found an answer for your problem.” Together they walked from the dark livery stable into the sunlight, where Odalie drew a deep, sweet breath of relief.
“What a horrible man! However can I thank you, Mr. . . . ?”
“Hardy. Robert Hardy. Call me Rob. I should’ve warned you about Stubbs, but you were in a hurry. Stubbs used to be all right, but he took to the bottle when his wife died. Anyhow, I shut down the offices and came fast as I could. But I meant what I said, I think I can get you to Buffalo, if you really mean to go.”
“I mean to go.”
“All right then. My sister, Anna, has a buggy and a strong pair of horses. I believe she’ll give me use of them. I think you’re right about the telegraph lines. I haven’t had any traffic from the north for hours. That’s not normal.”
Odalie put her hand to her head. “Yes, I was afraid of that. I pray we’re not too late!”
Hardy put his hands on her waist and lifted her easily onto his horse, then Hardy mounted behind her. They rode to his sister’s ranch, a tidy, well-tended place two miles west of town. A widow, Anna was five years older than her brother and harder. She refused to lend her buggy and team and did not soften, even when Rob told her lives were at stake.
“What do I care?” she said. “Those people up north don’t mean nothing to me.” With disapproving eyes, she took in Odalie’s tailored traveling suit and veiled, narrow-brimmed hat. “And you neither. Why should we put ourselves out for the likes of them? They wouldn’t do for us.”
“Anna, we can’t let innocent people be slaughtered. The lines are down, and there’s no way to warn them.”
Anna would not budge until Odalie said, “I’ll give you two hundred dollars.” She reached into her purse and pulled out four fifty-dollar gold certificates, each bearing the sour likeness of Silas Wright. “Take the money,” she said, offering Anna the limp currency. “This is all I have with me.”
The woman’s faded eyes gleamed. “Well, all right then. I guess you can use them.” She took the bills in her calloused hands and stuffed them in her waist pocket. “But Robbie, you see to it I get those horses back in good shape. If they ain’t . . .” she turned to Odalie and patted her pocket, “I’ll be needing more of this.”
Within minutes, Rob and Odalie were settled in the buggy, a sturdy rig previously used by Anna’s late husband, a drummer, and on their way north to Buffalo.
Lorna
Dixon had moved Nate’s body from the floor to his operating stand. He had been dead for hours and rigor mortis had begun, his neck and jaw stiffening in unnatural positions. Nate had died from a crushing blow to the back of his head. The killing instrument, an iron doorstop, had been found beside him on the floor, with bits of hair and brain matter adhering to its surface. Dixon struggled to make sense of it. Who had done this? And where was Cal?
An examination of his son’s room showed Cal had left with packed bags. Dixon stood by his son’s unmade bed and surveyed the room’s contents: a table with a stack of books, including some of his father’s medical texts, a sketchbook with a charcoal drawing of Lorna on the top page, a deck of well-handled playing cards. Under the bed he found a cigar box containing a dusty doll with a head of painted bone and limbs of twisted leather. Though he had not seen it for years, Dixon recognized the thing. Biwi made it for the children when they were very small. Why had Cal saved it, and why was it hidden? Dixon took the doll from the box and examined it more closely. It wore a garment of faded fabric cut from one of Rose’s dresses. The sight of that fabric, a pattern of tiny yellow flowers against a blue background, kindled such powerful memories Dixon’s hand shook.
“What does it mean, Pa?” Lorna’s voice startled him. He had been so lost in the past he had not heard her enter. “Did Cal do that to Nate?” she said.
Dixon shook his head, unable to speak. His world had gone sideways, he could make no sense of Nate’s death and Cal’s disappearance. Lorna stepped close and put her hand on his arm, a gesture of tenderness her father did not expect from her.
“I don’t know what’s happening, Pa,” she said, “but I’m sorry for it. I’m sorry for you, me, Cal, Billy—all of us. I’m scared.”
Moved, Dixon covered her hand with his. Perhaps there was a heart under his daughter’s shrewish exterior after all. “Is there anything you can tell me, Lorna?” he said. “Anything at all?”
She shook her head. “Cal hardly talks to me anymore. I never know what he’s thinking; I don’t know what’s important to him.” She looked at the doll in her father’s hand. “I haven’t seen that in years. Where did you find it?”
Dixon pointed to the cigar box on the table. “In that box, under the bed.”
“Whatever made him dig that old thing out?” Even as she spoke, Lorna thought she knew the answer. Cal was saying good-bye to the things of his youth, the things he used to love. She turned and hurried from his room to hers, knowing what she would find there. On her bed was a letter. She tore it open.
April 6, 1892
Dearest Sister—I am sorry you are learning things this way. It’s not what I intended, but nothing in my life has turned out as I intended. The only thing that’s been constant is you.
Some time ago, Lord Richard Faucett offered me five thousand dollars to kill Pa. I took the money. It would give me a clean start and he would find someone else if I said no. Mrs. MacGill found Faucett’s letter and threatened to tell Pa so I smothered her with a pillow. It was the night of your party. I told myself she was dying anyway, but I hate myself for what I did. I can’t stop thinking about it.
When the time came I didn’t go through with killing Pa, I don’t think I ever really intended to, but I went for Nate instead. His name was on the list—you’ll hear more about Lord Faucett’s list—and I hope it might do me some good, but it could be I’m dead, too. I’ll know soon enough. To tell you the truth, I don’t much care anymore.
You will want to know why I’ve done these things, and I don’t have a good answer. I wanted the money and I wanted to get away, but, even more, I wanted to matter. I was always invisible to everyone but you and Biwi. She saw my future and suspected what I would come to be. She tried to change me but she couldn’t. Biwi knew me best of all, and she loved me anyway.
Good-bye, dear sister. I hope you will be able to remember some good about me. Cal
The letter trembled in Lorna’s hand. Cal took Faucett’s money to kill their father? Yes, she and Cal had drifted apart, but could it really be possible she knew her own brother so little? He was the person with whom she had shared her childhood and, before that, their mother’s womb. She sank to her bed, sick with grief. How could a life that held so much joy and promise at its onset come to so little? She mourned her poor lost brother, but at the same time, even as she wept, she was grateful to him. Her father still lived. And so did Billy Sun.
Billy Sun
“Get up, Nestor.” Billy nudged the sleeping man on the floor with his foot. How could a man who’d been stone-cold sober the night before sleep so heavily? “Dammit, Nestor, get up and get your gun.” Billy returned to the window and peered out, carefully keeping to one side and holding his rifle close to his body. They were in the stand of trees down by the creek. Billy couldn’t make them out, but he saw one flash and then another as the rising sun reflected off
an object, a gun barrel maybe or a pair of eyeglasses.
“What is it?” Lopez was fully awake now, sitting in his blankets. “What’s going on?”
“Pat’s shot.” Billy spoke without turning from the window. “Kinch went to the creek and he ain’t come back. Somebody’s down there by the water; I can’t make them out.”
Lopez jumped up and grabbed his rifle, joining Billy on the other side of the window. His eyes bulged at the sight of Pat’s body, lying faceup on the bloody snow. “Poor Pat,” he said. “Probrecito. He was just a kid.”
“He didn’t deserve to die that way.”
Lopez shook his head. “He wasn’t smart but he was un hombre, sabes? A good one to ride with. Should we go for his gun?” Pat’s rifle lay beside him in the snow.
Billy shook his head. “Don’t try it. Whoever’s down there has a good eye.”
They waited in the bright early morning sun, eyes trained on the dark stand of cottonwoods. They were quiet until Lopez audibly broke wind. “Jesus, Nestor,” Billy said, “if you’re—”
A bullet crashed through the window, hitting Lopez in the jaw and showering both men with glass and bits of shattered teeth. Lopez screamed and fell to the floor, twisting in pain while Billy flattened himself against the wall next to the broken window. At first, he saw nothing. Then a man he did not recognize stepped from the trees, holding a rifle. Lopez’s shrieks were loud enough for all to hear.
“Billy Sun!” the man called. “Come out now before anyone else gets hurt. You’ve already lost two men; you don’t want anything to happen to old man Kinch here, do you?”