Winter's Touch

by Hudson, Janis Reams

  “You said that two days ago.” Frowning, Bess studied the dust coating her skirt, then tried her best to shake it off. “I do believe I’m wearing a sizeable portion of this territory of yours on my skirt.”

  Not for the first time since deciding to move what was left of his family to Colorado, Carson felt his gut tighten. Was he doing the right thing, uprooting two young girls from everything familiar and bringing them out here to this wild, unsettled land?

  It had to be the right thing, he told himself for the hundredth time. The war had taken everything and left the girls and Aunt Augusta living off the kindness of friends, with barely enough food to eat. He couldn’t make things better for them in Atlanta. The plantation that had once supported more than a hundred people was gone. Atlanta, indeed most of the South, lay in ruins.

  Carson’s father had been killed in the fighting. Megan’s mother was dead. Augusta’s husband.

  So many. So many dead. The four of them, Carson, Bess, Megan, and Augusta, were all that was left of the once sprawling Dulaney clan.

  All they had left was each other, and the ranch that Carson’s father had started just before the war.

  Edmond Dulaney had lost interest in life when his wife died back in ‘54. He turned the running of the plantation over to Carson, and in ‘58, when rumors of a gold strike in Colorado made their way to the Eastern newspapers, Edmond had headed west.

  Carson remembered the letters his father had sent home describing the bitter cold, the back-breaking work, the thefts, the murders, the claim jumping. The exorbitant cost of goods, so high that it took nearly every ounce of gold dust a man managed to find just to buy enough food to eat. Bad food, at that.

  It hadn’t taken Edmond long to realize that a man could make more money supplying good beef to the miners than he could mining for gold. Carson was grateful for his father’s intuition on that matter. Edmond Dulaney had scrounged up enough cattle to make a modest start at a cattle ranch in the southern part of the territory. He’d been making a pretty good go of things until he’d headed east to fight for the Confederacy.

  Carson had thanked God at the time that his father had arrived too late to join the 12th Georgia Regiment until after McDowell in May of ‘62. Cocky sons of the Confederacy they’d been, those Georgia boys, Carson among them. They’d been assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Lee himself. They’d fought at Rich Mountain that first summer, then Cheat Mount that fall. In the spring of ‘62, when Edmond had been on his way east to join up, the 12th Georgia had joined General Jackson, ol’ Stonewall, on his triumphant campaign through the Shenandoah.

  We were good, Carson thought of the 12th Georgia. Too damn good, and too damn cocky, as it turned out. At McDowell they were the only out-of-state unit with the Army of Northern Virginia, yet were given the most vulnerable part of the line to hold. The onslaught of Yankee fire had been terrible. When ordered to pull back to a more defensible position, the 12th Georgia’s reply, to a man, had been, “We did not come all this way to Virginia to run before Yankees.”

  They should have run, Carson had admitted later, but they’d held steady in the face of wave after wave of Union blue.

  Yes, they should have run. Of all the Confederate casualties that day, a full third had been from the 12th Georgia. There hadn’t been much left of those cocky boys by the end of that day.

  Jesus, but Carson had been glad his father had not been there. Surely, he’d thought, nothing could ever be that bad again.

  How naive he’d been. It was incredible how naive a twenty-three year old man could be, even after that month back in ‘62.

  More men—including Edmond Dulaney—had poured in to fill the ranks decimated at McDowell. Side by side, father and son, along with neighbors, friends, and strangers who had come to rebuild the ranks of the 12th Georgia, followed General Jackson to hell and back. Trouble was, far too many hadn’t made it back.

  In the rare quiet times between the bloody battles at Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness, Edmond had talked of his ranch. Colorado was a splendid place, he’d said. Wild and free, with land for the taking. A huge land, with room for a man to spread out without worrying about neighbors. Air so crisp and clean you almost expect it to snap in the breeze.

  He wanted Carson to join him. Wanted him to bring the rest of the family after the war. Wanted to build the ranch into a real showplace.

  “Hey, Son!”

  Standing shoulder to shoulder with his father, Carson barely heard the shout. Day after day of unrelenting, continual cannon and rifle fire had nearly deafened them all. “Yeah, Dad?”

  “Did I tell you it was quiet in Colorado?”

  Despite the hip-deep blood and gore and the threat of imminent death—or perhaps because of them—Carson chuckled. “What’s that? I can’t hear you! It’s too noisy!”

  “I said—” Edmond Dulaney turned his head just enough to see his son’s grin, and laughed.

  A volley of fire from the advancing Yankees had them ducking down into their trench.

  “So,” Edmond called out, “you comin’ back to Colorado with me, or not?”

  Carson, using the time to reload, glanced at the overcast sky, then at his father. “I suspect I’ll give it a try.”

  “Good. That’s good, son.”

  Reloaded, they stood and fired.

  A minute later Edmond Dulaney had slumped against Carson’s shoulder, one more dead Reb out of the ten thousand who had died that May of ‘64 at that Godforsaken crossroads before the courthouse at Spotsylvania.

  As soon as possible after Lee’s surrender, Carson had kept his promise and come west to see this ranch of his father’s. He’d found it abandoned, the house in desperate need of repairs, cattle scattered to hell and back.

  But the possibilities…the possibilities, along with his father’s dreams, had infected him. After the devastation of so much of the South, this land was like heaven.

  And it was quiet.

  Not so much here, in Pueblo, but the valley where the ranch lay. A healing quiet he had desperately needed. Still needed.

  Carson had spent the better part of a year fixing the place, rounding up stray cattle. He’d brought Frank Johansen and Beau Rivers with him to help. Like him, they had lost everything in the war.

  At least Carson still had some family, he thought, looking down at Bess and Megan, thinking of Aunt Gussie.

  Frank and Beau were there now, at the ranch, waiting for him. He was going to pick up where his father left off. He was going to build his father’s dream, a new home for the Dulaneys.

  He wished Aunt Gussie had come with them. What the hell did he know about raising girls? Not a damn thing, he feared. Gussie, his father’s sister, had not been able to bring herself to leave her lifelong friend Lucille, who was dying in Atlanta, but had promised to join them later.

  So here they were, Carson and Bess and Megan. It didn’t matter if he didn’t know how to raise girls. He loved them both, would do anything for them, so he guessed he’d be learning.

  The problem with Bess, he knew, was that she hadn’t wanted to come. It was evident in the quarrelsome tone in her voice. Plus, he figured she was still in a tiff because he had limited her and Megan to one single trunk each for their belongings. Carson touched a finger to her chin until she looked up at him. “You promised to give it a chance, Bess.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. Her shoulders heaved on a dramatic sigh. “You’re right. I promised. I’m sorry. I’m just tired, I think.”

  “I’m thirsty,” Megan whined.

  There was another one who was tired, Carson thought with sympathy. Traveling by stage, particularly for two young girls, was an exhausting experience.

  “I think what we all need it a good meal, and something to drink,” he added, touching the tip of his finger to Megan’s tiny nose. “And a good night’s sleep in a hotel.”

  “On a real bed?” Bess’s eyes lit. “Not a cot?”

  “On
a real bed. Not a cot.” Pueblo was a thriving community. Finding a decent hotel would be no problem.

  The clerk at the stage depot pointed out three hotels down the street, any one of which, he assured, would serve their needs. Hoping the man was right, Carson arranged with him to have their luggage sent over to the nearest one. After taking the girls there and checking in, he escorted them to the restaurant three doors down for the promised meal. By the time they finished eating both girls were barely able to keep their eyes open.

  Truth to tell, he was ready for a good night’s sleep himself. He’d learned during the war to sleep whenever and wherever the opportunity arose. Even afterward, when the nightmares started, he’d at least slept some. But on this trip, knowing the safety and comfort of the girls was his sole responsibility, his sleep at the various stage stops had been in fits and starts, and very, very brief. He didn’t like the girls sleeping on cots in the same room with a bunch of strange men. He didn’t much care for sleeping in a roomful of strange men himself, for that matter.

  Tonight would be different. A bath, a private room, a real bed and a change of clothes would improve the girls’ moods better than anything else.

  Not that he would be much more at ease about their safety, but at least they would be more comfortable than they’d been since they’d left the train in Kansas and had taken the stage the rest of the way.

  If the talk he’d heard before he’d headed east to get the girls could be credited, there would soon be a railroad in Colorado. Someone up in Denver had supposedly formed the Denver Pacific Railway, with plans to lay track more than a hundred miles between Denver and Cheyenne, where it would connect with the Union Pacific. From there, a person could go anywhere in the world.

  Of course, Carson thought wryly, even a railroad clear to Denver wouldn’t negate what lay ahead of them between Pueblo and the ranch. He dearly hoped the girls enjoyed their a night or two in a hotel.

  “How long will it take us to get to the ranch from here?” Bess asked.

  It was uncanny the way his baby sister could sometimes seem to read his mind. He wasn’t used to this. The last time he’d spent much time around her had been before the war. She’d been about Megan’s age. Now she was thirteen, a young lady.

  Once again his mind mocked him. What do you know about raising girls? And once again, the answer was, nothing.

  Watching him, Bess tilted her head in the way their mother used to do. She must have inherited the gesture. She’d been less than a day old when their mother had died.

  “Carson?”

  “Sorry.” He smiled at her. “I was just wondering when you grew up on me.”

  “I grew up,” she said softly, “while you and Daddy were off fighting Yankees.”

  Carson forced his smile to stay in place, although God knew there was nothing about that cursed war to smile about. May I never live long enough to take the life of another man, he thought fervently.

  He still carried a rifle. The trusty Maynard that had seen him through the war was in his hotel room with the rest of his belongings. In this wild, unsettled territory a man never knew when, or from whom or what, he would have to protect his own. But Carson would be damned if he would do like so many men in Colorado did and wear a sidearm. Rifles were for hunting, or killing wild animals in defense, and sometimes, when your country called, they were for war.

  Pistols, on the other hand, existed for one thing and one thing only—killing men. There was no other purpose for them. His was wrapped in leather and tucked away in the bottom drawer of his bureau at the ranch, and that was where it would stay. Carson Dulaney had killed his last man. He wanted no more dead or dying eyes following him into his sleep. He had enough, more than enough, already.

  Which was why the talk he was overhearing from the other tables concerned him. Indian trouble, people were saying. Three people had been found dead a half day’s ride south of Pueblo. Cheyenne had done it, they said.

  Carson’s father had told him that the Kiowa and Comanche were gone from the territory, and the Southern Arapaho pretty much kept quiet in the area, but the Cheyenne still liked to cause trouble. But as a rule, none of the tribes roamed up the river to his ranch.

  But getting home from Pueblo might prove to be a challenge if the talk Carson was hearing now was to be believed.

  Damn. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t put the girls in danger by exposing them to possible attack.

  “You said we would have to go by wagon from here.”

  “That’s right,” he answered Bess, pulling his mind into the present. At least she seemed unaware of the potential danger. He didn’t intend to enlighten her. “I’ll see about that in the morning. A wagon and team. We’ll need supplies, too. It might take a day or two before we’re ready to leave.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we head home. It’ll take us a couple of days to get there.”

  “A couple of days of sleeping out in the open.”

  He didn’t much care for the disapproval in Bess’s voice. “Probably one night.” He started to remind her again that she had promised to give Colorado a chance. To give them a chance, him and Megan and herself, to be a family. But Bess was tired, and so was he, and poor Megan was about to fall asleep in her plate—and then there was the threat of Indians along the way—so he let it go.

  “Come on, let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. There had to be a way to get them safely to the ranch. All he needed to do was find it. “I bet we could arrange for you to have a bath.”

  Bess’s eyes lit. “A real bath? In a tub?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Megan, wake up,” Bess said swiftly. “We’re going now.”

  A decent meal, a bath, and a good night’s sleep did the trick. The next morning both girls were their old cheerful selves again, much to Carson’s relief.

  His relief was short lived, however, when, after breakfast, he took the girls with him to the livery to see about buying a wagon.

  The livery was several blocks from the hotel. Carson escorted the girls down the street, walking between them and the wagons and horses that raised dust on their way by. He passed several saloons, a barber shop, a boarding house, two small churches, and a general mercantile along the way.

  Bess was not impressed. “This is the whole town?”

  “It’s young still, but it’s growing. Don’t worry, we probably won’t have occasion to come back here in the near future.”

  Bess looked over her shoulder and gave a delicate sniff. It was such a perfect imitation of Aunt Gussie’s method of showing disapproval that Carson nearly smiled.

  “Thank goodness,” Bess muttered.

  Carson followed her gaze to see what she found so particularly disparaging. All he saw of note was a big bear of a man in fringed buckskins a few yards behind them. What people would have called a mountain man in the old days, from the look of him. With this man, Carson wasn’t sure if the appellation referred to the man’s assumed preference for living in the mountains, or to the size of him. His shoulders were massive, and even without the big floppy-brimmed hat that left the upper half of his face in shadows, he topped Carson’s own six-foot height by several inches.

  “But you’ll remember,” Carson said, facing forward again, “I told you before we left that we won’t be living anywhere near a decent-sized town.”

  Bess heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Yes, you told me.”

  “Bess,” he warned.

  “I know.” She sighed again. “I promised to give this a chance. I just don’t see why we had to come all the way to Colorado, that’s all. Why couldn’t we have been a family in Atlanta?”

  “You liked living on charity?”

  Bess’s face flushed. She lowered her head and studied the boards of the sidewalk.

  Carson knew she had hated losing their home, not having any place to call their own. It had stung her young pride to have to live off of friends. The once proud Dulaneys reduced to accepting
handouts. It damn sure would have stung his pride, too.

  “Come on,” he said, hoping to cheer her. “After we see about a wagon and team, we’ll go to the mercantile and you can help me select our supplies.”

  As he’d hoped, the prospect of shopping, or perhaps of having her advice sought, seemed to brighten Bess’s mood. Her gaze lingered on the window of the mercantile as they passed it.

  Then she stiffened and abruptly stared straight ahead. “Is that man following us?”

  “What man?” Carson glanced over his shoulder to see that the man in buckskins was still a few yards behind them. “He’s probably just minding his own business. There are a dozen people headed the same direction we are.”

  The livery was located a block away from what appeared to be the edge of town. The girls stood to one side while Carson approached the man who was cleaning out a stall. “Are you in charge here?”

  “I am.” The man propped his pitchfork against the side of the stall and stuck out his hand. He was of average height, maybe thirty years old, with a balding head. His face was long, his teeth big, giving him a look amazingly similar to the horses around him. But his handshake was firm and friendly. “Lester Bacon’s the name. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m in need of a wagon to haul people and supplies.”

  “Well, now.” Lester beamed. “Believe I can help ya.”

  Taking Megan by the hand, and with Bess beside him, Carson followed the man back outside to the alley beside the stables.

  “Sturdy as the day is long.” Bacon slapped a hand against the blue-painted side of the platform spring Studebaker.

  “Looks like an Army wagon,” Carson noted. If nothing else, that Yankee-blue paint was a dead giveaway.

  “Yes, sir. U.S. Army surplus. Took it in on trade last week from the man who bought it from the Army. Greased the axles myself, I did.”

  “What do you want for it?”

  “Well, now, I think fifty dollars would be fair.”

  Carson snorted. “Only if you’re throwing in the team and harness with it.”

  Lester Bacon’s eyes sharpened with the glee of a man who loves to haggle. “Well, now, you want a team, too, do you? Well, now, then, we’re talking a sight more money.”