The Loner: The Blood of Renegades

by J. A. Johnstone

  He found not three, but four other kittens. Three were tabby and white, and one was all white. By the time the men got them all back with their mother, she had finished giving birth to the fifth kitten, had cut the cord, and was busy licking it clean. “Good kitty,” Jason murmured. “Good Mama.” The kitten was tabby and white, too, although with more white than the others.

  Jason and Ward stood up, and Jason held his hand down to the boy. “Guess we’d best get the lot of you back home!” Ward shifted through the stack of saddle blankets and dug out a relatively fresh one, covering the box snugly.

  “The baby cats can’t go back!” Peter said as he grabbed Jason’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Daddy doesn’t like them. He says he doesn’t like the smell of birth.”

  “Reckon he’s just gonna have to get over it.” Jason tried to hide a scowl. He didn’t much like the smell of Milcher. If Milcher objected to those kittens in his damned house, then Milcher was going to find himself in jail. For something or other.

  Jason lifted Peter up into his arms, then threw a blanket over him. “You all snugged up in there?”

  A muffled, “Yessir,” came from beneath the blanket. With Ward carrying the box of kittens and their mama, the men pushed their way into the storm again.

  The wind hit Jason like a slap in the face, but behind him, he heard Ward say, “Believe it’s lettin’ up some!”

  Jason didn’t reply, forging ahead, toward the Milchers’ place. Thankfully, it wasn’t far, and when he rapped on the church door Mrs. Milcher threw it wide, then burst into tears. “Is he all right?” she cried, pulling at the boy in Jason’s arms. “Is he—“

  “I’m fine, Mama,” Peter said after he wiggled out of the blanket. He broke into a grit encrusted grin. “Louise had her babies!”

  Ward set the box down and lifted the cover. A purring Louise looked up with loving green eyes, and mewed softly.

  Mrs. Milcher cupped her boy’s face in her hands. “Is that why you went out, honey? To find Louise?”

  “Yes’m. And I did, too! She was in the stables.”

  Mrs. Milcher looked up at Jason. “She always wants to hide when she feels her time is here. What a night to pick!”

  “Mrs. Milcher, ma’am? I know you’ve given away kittens before, and I was wonderin’ if—”

  “Certainly, Marshal! Any one you want!”

  Jason smiled. “I kind of fancy the little white one. Got a name for him already and everything.”

  She cocked her head. “But you don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl! Do you?”

  “No, ma’am. Wasn’t time to check. But I figured to call it Dusty. Name works either way, I reckon, and I’ll never forget when it was born.”

  Mrs. Milcher smiled back at him. “No, I don’t suppose you will! Thank you Marshal, thank you for everything. My husband would thank you as well, I’m sure, but he has retired for the night.”

  Jason lifted a brow but said, “I see. Well, take care of young Peter here, and watch over my kitten until it’s ready to leave its mama.” He and Ward tipped their hats, and stepped through the doors at once. Instead of the whip of wind Jason was expecting, they stepped into cool, clear, still air.

  “What happened?” Ward said, looking around him.

  “I guess it quit.”

  “Guess so. You wanna go up and get a drink?”

  “Nope. Wanna go home and wash up.”

  Ward nodded. “Reckon that sounds good, too. Well, you go on ahead, Jason. I’ll have a drink for both of us.”

  Jason laughed. “Just one, Ward. You’re on duty, y’know.”

  Jason turned around and started the walk back to his house. The air felt humid, as if rain was coming. He hoped it was. Nothing would feel better than to strip off his clothes and stand in his front yard, naked. He chuckled to himself. Yeah, there’d be hell to pay if Mrs. Clancy saw him. On the other hand, she wasn’t likely to be awake at eleven at night, was she?

  Jenny’d skin him, though. It was a terrible thing, he thought, to be ruled by women. He pictured Megan MacDonald. Well, there were exceptions to every rule, he thought, and grinned.

  It rained, while Jason was outside, beaming and standing naked in his front yard with a bar of soap in his hand. Miles away the wagon train was getting the worst of the dust storm. The wagons had been tightly circled and the livestock unhitched and taken to the center, but the wind screeched through the wagons like a banshee intent on revenge. Young Bill Crachit thought maybe God was mad at them for giving up on the dream of California, and he huddled inside his wagon, praying.

  The Saulk family, two wagons down, held their children close, hoping it would just stop. Well, Eliza Saulk did. Her husband Frank was outside. He had the thankless job of trying to hold the wagon’s canopy in place: the train had already lost three to the torrent of grit and dirt and cactus thorns. Out of nowhere, an arm of saguaro hit him in the back like a bag of nail-filled bricks. He went down with a thud. A moment later he was helped to his feet by Riley Havens, who yanked free the cactus stuck to Frank by its two-inch spines.

  Blood ran down Frank’s back in a hundred little drizzles, soaking his shirt as Riley helped him back inside the wagon. “Saguaro!” he shouted to Eliza. “Get those thorns out!”

  Never letting go of the children, she moved to her husband, gasped, “Oh, Frank!” and immediately began to ease him out of his shirt.

  Riley left her to take care of her man and struggled to the Grimm’s wagon next. Their canopy had blown off earlier, before the wind came up so damned hard. It had taken four men to chase it down and get it tied back in place. He doubted they could repeat their performance.

  All was well with the Grimms, except their dog wouldn’t shut up. A cross between a redbone hound and a Louisiana black-mouthed cur, the wind had brought out the hound side of him, in spades. While he yodeled uncontrollably, the Grimms had covered their heads with blankets and quilts, trying to hold off the noise of him and the storm. Riley hollered, “Shut up!” at him a few times, but it made no difference, so he moved on to the next wagon and left the howling beast behind.

  The raw wind raked at his ears, even though he’d tied his hat down with one scarf, then covered his nose and mouth with a second one. But the crud still got through somehow, working its insidious way into his mouth, and up his nose. His eyes were crusted with it, and his ears were stuffed. I must look like hell, he thought, then surprised himself by smiling beneath the layers. The whole world looked like hell. He wasn’t the only one.

  The wind picked up—although how it managed, he had no idea—and he felt one of the horses rear. They were circled twenty feet away, in the center of the ring of wagons, but he knew what had happened. Somebody’s gelding or mare had fallen prey to another of those thorny chunks of cactus the wind seemed intent on throwing at them.

  He made his way through the roar, falling twice in the process, but at last reached the distressed animal. Lodged on its croup was a fist-sized chunk of jumping cholla, which might have jumped all the way from Tucson as far as Riley knew.

  He pulled it free, then pulled out what spines he could see. It was all he could do, but the horse seemed grateful.

  Staggering slowly, he made his way to a new wagon to check in and give what reassurances he could—which weren’t many. He swore this was the last train he was going to ferry out or back.

  He was done.

  Chapter 2

  In Fury, it was still raining come the morning, although it had settled into a slow but steady drizzle. It didn’t take much water for an Arizona inhabitant to forget the dust, Jason discovered. Walking up the street to the office, he didn’t pass a single water trough that wasn’t filled to the brim—and grimy—from gritty, dusty cowhands helping themselves to a free bath. Jason pitied the horses that had to drink from those troughs.

  Surprisingly, there hadn’t been much wind damage. To the town, anyway. Ward Wanamaker told him, before he went home for the day, that the east side of the surroundin
g stockade wall looked like God had been using it for target practice.

  Jason didn’t feel like walking around the outside of town, so he passed the office and continued all the way down the central street, to the steps that would take him to the top of the wall. His father had taught him every wall had to have places from which men could defend the interior, and this one did, around all four sides. When he reached the top, he stood on the rails running around the perimeter, and looked down.

  Ward had been right.

  Cactus—clumps, arms, and pieces—covered the outside of the wall. At the base was enough vegetation to start a small forest—if anybody in their right mind would want a forest of cactus. He got to thinking a forest of cactus just might be a good thing for the outside of that wall. He knew cactus would send down roots and take off, if you threw a hunk of it down on the ground. And they sure had a good rain last night, that was for sure. The stuff was probably rooted already.

  He decided to leave it. It’d be just one more deterrent for Apache, and he was all for that.

  He figured the stuff stuck to the wall would eventually fall off, leaving spines and stickers behind to discourage anyone who might try to climb in, too. If they made it past the cactus forest, that was.

  “Oh, get a grip on yourself,” he muttered. “Stuff only blew in last night, and here you’ve already got it six feet tall!”

  Shaking his head, he went back down the steps and started toward his office. He paused before going inside, wondering if he should have a word with Rafe Lynch. He decided to put it off. Frankly, he didn’t want it to turn into a confrontation and he was afraid Lynch could do that pretty damn fast.

  Actually, he was afraid Lynch could rope, tie, and brand him before he even knew he was in the ketch pen.

  He walked into the office, expecting one hell of a mess that needed cleaning up. To his surprise, Ward had spent a busy night with the push broom and the cleaning cloths.

  Hell, Jason thought. This place ain’t been this clean since we built it! When he stepped out back, he found even the bedding from the cells had been hung out in the rain!

  “Wash and dry in one move,” Jason said with a chuckle. “That’s Ward.”

  Southeast of town, Wash Keogh was looking like mad for his gold vein, the one he was certain was going to make him rich, and the one from which he carried a goose egg-sized chunk in his pants pocket.

  He’d been searching all morning, but nothing, absolutely nothing showed up. It had drizzled long enough after sunrise that the desert was still wet, washed free of its usual cover of dust. He had expected to find himself confronted with a shimmering wall of gold, the kind they wrote about in those strike-it-rich dime novels.

  But no. Nothing.

  Had somebody been there before him and cleaned it all out? It sure looked that way. Maybe the chunk he’d found had simply been tossed away like so much trash.

  He growled under his breath. Life just wasn’t fair! “What did those other boys do right that I done wrong?” he asked the skies. “I lived me a good life, moved settlers back and forth, protected ’em from the heathen Indians! I worked with or for the best—Jedediah Fury, Whiskey Hank Ruskin, and Herbert Bower, to name just three. All good, Godly men! I brung nuns to Santa Fe and a rabbi to San Diego, for crimeny’s sake, and I guarded that preacher an’ his family to Fury. All right, I do my share of cussin’, some say more. And I like my who-hit-John, but so do them priests o’ yours. What more do you want from me?”

  There was no answer, only the endless, clear blue sky.

  Another hour, he thought. Another hour, and then I’ll have me some lunch.

  He set off again, his eyes to the ground, keenly watching for any little hint of glittering gold.

  Jason had let his sister Jenny sleep in. She was probably tuckered out from the storm. He knew he was.

  The girls—Megan MacDonald was with her—woke at nine, yawning and stretching, and both ran to the window at the sound of softly pattering rain.

  “Thank God!” Jenny said loudly enough that Megan jumped. Jenny didn’t notice. “Rain!” she said in wonder, and rested her hand, palm out, on the window pane. “And it’s cool,” she added in a whisper. “Megan, feel!”

  She took Megan’s hand and pressed its palm against the pane, and Megan’s reaction was to hiss at the chill. “My gosh!” she said, and put her other hand up next to it. “It’s cold!”

  Ever down-to-earth, Jenny said, “Oh, it’s not cold, Meg, just cool. I wonder if Jason’s up?”

  She set off down the hall to wake him, but found his room empty except for an absolutely filthy pile of clothes heaped on the floor, dead center!

  “He’s gone,” she said to nobody. Meg hadn’t followed her. Turning, she grumbled, “Well, I hope he had the good sense to take a bath,” and walked up the hall toward the kitchen, where she heard Megan already rooting through the cupboards.

  A little while later, after both girls had washed last night’s grime out of their hair and off their bodies, and had themselves a good breakfast, they walked uptown toward Solomon and Rachael’s store.

  The storm hadn’t shaken Jenny’s hens, who had taken shelter in the low haymow of Jason’s little barn, and subsequently laid a record number of eggs. The girls’ aim was to sell the excess eggs and find a new broom and dustpan, which Jenny had needed for a coon’s age, but hadn’t gotten around to buying yet. It seemed like the time, what with the floors of the house nearly ankle-deep in detritus.

  They had barely reached the mercantile and were staring in the window, when the skies suddenly opened again! Rain began to pelt them in huge, hard drops. Megan grabbed Jenny’s hand and yanked her. “C’mon!” she hollered.

  But Jenny put the brakes on, and skidded along the walk behind Megan, the egg basket swinging from her hand. “Wait! The door’s back the other way, Meg!”

  “Come on!” Megan insisted, tugging Jenny for all she was worth. “The mercantile’s closed!”

  “It is?” Jenny began to run alongside Megan then, realizing where Megan was headed. It wasn’t a very nice place—it was Abigail Krimp’s. Any port in a storm, she told herself. It surely beat standing out here. Her skirt was already soaked!

  Abigail was holding the door for them, and they ran directly inside, laughing and giggling from the race, not to mention where it had ended. It was the first time either one of them had so much as peeked inside a place like Abigail’s—just the location made them giddy!

  But Abigail was just as nice as Jenny remembered from the trip coming out. Why, she didn’t look “sullied” at all! That’s what Mrs. Milcher always called her. It occurred to Jenny that she didn’t even know what sullied meant. And she had the nerve to call herself Miss Morton’s assistant schoolmarm!

  Abigail put a hand on each girl’s shoulder and said, “Why don’t you young ladies have a seat while you wait it out? I declare, this weather of late is conspirin’ to put me outta business!” She led them to the first of three tables and sat them down. “You gals like sarsaparilla?”

  Jenny’s mouth began to water. It had been ages! She piped up, “Yes, ma’am!” and Megan nodded eagerly.

  But Jenny’s money sense moved in. “We don’t have any money, Miss Abigail. But thank you anyway.”

  Megan looked at her as if she’d like to toss her over the stockade, and Jenny stared down at her hands.

  “Not everything in here’s for sale, you sillies!” Abigail laughed. “I thought we’d just have us a nice, friendly sody pop. Been forever since I just got to sit and socialize.” And she was off, behind the bar.

  Megan and Jenny exchanged glances, but Abigail was soon back with three bottles of sarsaparilla, three glasses, a bottle opener, and a small bowl of real ice! The ice itself opened up the first topic of conversation, and Abigail told them she had a little cellar dug far underground, under the back of the bar, where she kept a barrel full of ice when she could get it. This was the last of her current stash, which had come down from the northern mountains
with the last wagon train to stop in Fury.

  Jenny was transfixed, but Megan was halfway through her first glass. Having put enough ice in the glass, her bottle was enough to pour out twice. Jenny looked away from Abigail long enough to ice her glass, then fill it with sarsaparilla. It bubbled into fizz when it hit the ice, and she was giggling out loud, which started Abigail, then Megan, laughing as well.

  Abigail lifted her glass. “To old friends,” she said.

  Jenny and Megan followed suit, then clinked all three together and drank.

  Until her dying day, Jenny would swear that was the best sarsaparilla she ever drank.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on out here? A hen party?” asked a new voice, male and jovial, but pretending to be cross.

  Jenny and Megan twisted in their chairs to see the speaker. Over six feet tall, he was coming out of the hall behind him, all clanking spurs, hip pistols, and worn blue jeans with nothing up top except his long johns. And his hat, of course. Jenny didn’t understand why in the West, no man took off his hat, not even to greet a lady. Not even in church. Just a touch of the brim was the most she’d seen since they left Kansas!

  But this man—who Jenny liked already, just on general principle—not only took his hat clear off, but bowed to the table! Then he swept his hat wide, and said, “Good morning ladies! I trust everyone came through the night in one piece?”

  While the girls tittered, he looked at Abigail, raised his brows, indicating the empty chair at the table, and asked, “May I?”

  “Certainly,” she said. She was on the edge of laughter, herself.

  The man sat down—right next to Jenny, who nearly fainted.

  He had wavy, sandy hair cut fairly short. His eyes were blue, but not regular blue, like hers, nor sky blue, like Jason’s. They were a deep, deep blue, as blue as she imagined the ocean would be if you swam down so far your lungs were ready to burst. And he was, well, gorgeous, if you could call a man that.