A Coffin for Santa Rosa

by Steve Hayes

  Twenty minutes later they reached the farm. The entire property was now fenced in and there was an arched gateway with a sign welcoming travelers.

  Gabriel reined in the team and stared about him in surprise. Beside him, Raven couldn’t believe her eyes either: the new owner, Lylo Willis, who’d once owned the telegraph office in Santa Rosa, had turned the farm into a way station.

  The cabin was now a large two-story wood-frame house, painted gray with white trim. Wooden steps led up to a shady front porch with a fancy trellis from which hung a sign announcing: ‘Hot Meals Available!’ The old barn in which Gabriel had recovered from near death had been enlarged and turned into sleeping accommodations. Next to it were two outhouses with ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gents’ signs on the doors. And beside the well, a well in which Ingrid had once hidden him from the law, stood a modern windmill bearing a sign with big red letters offering travelers water: fifty cents per adult, twenty-five cents per child and one dollar per horse.

  ‘Is that legal?’ Raven asked, shocked.

  ‘It’s their well,’ Gabriel said grimly. ‘No law sayin’ they can’t charge for the use of it. But it sure ain’t neighborly.’

  ‘Well, I’m not paying for water. ’Specially water that used to be mine. And I’m gonna tell Mr Lylo Willis that right to his mean ol’ face!’

  ‘Caution’s the way,’ Gabriel warned softly.

  But Raven had already jumped down from the wagon and was marching toward a tall, paunchy man with thinning dark hair and banker’s spectacles who was talking to a Mexican helper mending a fence.

  Before she could reach him a short, pear-shaped woman wearing a green scarf over her gray hair and an apron tied around her enormous waist came waddling out of the house. Pausing on the porch, she was about to call to her husband, Lylo, when she spotted Raven and broke into a big smile.

  ‘Why, goodness gracious me,’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t believe it. Is that really you, Raven?’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Willis.’ Raven stopped and smiled at the woman. ‘Yeah, it’s me all right.’

  ‘Well, good heavens, child! You come over here and give me a big hug right this minute. Why, I never expected to see you again!’

  Grudgingly, Raven went over and let Mrs Willis hug her.

  ‘Here, let me look at you.’ She stepped back and held Raven at arms length. ‘My o’ my, you’re all growed up. And so pretty. Your ma must be so proud of you.’ Mrs Willis looked at the wagon, frowning as she saw Gabriel instead of Ingrid holding the reins. ‘Where is your ma, child?’

  ‘She passed,’ Raven said.

  ‘Oh, no-o. You poor sweet lamb. When? What happened?’

  ‘Fever took her.’ Raven turned to Gabriel, still seated on the wagon box, her eyes asking him to explain for her.

  ‘Ingrid died a few days ago,’ he told Mrs Willis. ‘In Old Calico, a mining town near Placerville.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it. Out west in California, ain’t it, Mr uh—?’

  ‘Moonlight,’ Gabriel said. He climbed down from the wagon and stood, towering over the women. ‘It was typhoid … there was an outbreak. Had somethin’ to do with the water gettin’ contaminated after an earthquake. Ol’ Doc Guzman did his best to control it, but things got out of hand an’ by the time it’d run its course, a lot of good folks were dead.’

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ Raven put in. ‘So we can bury Momma next to my Dad.’

  Mrs Willis frowned. Subtly, her sunny demeanor changed and she became uneasy. ‘Lylo,’ she called, waving to her husband. ‘Get on over here. You need to hear this.’

  Lylo Willis knew better than to argue with his wife. Leaving his helper to finish repairing the fence, he trotted up to her.

  ‘Yes, dearest?’

  ‘You remember Raven?’

  ‘Why of course. What a delightful surprise. What brings you—?’

  ‘Now don’t get to jawing, mister,’ his wife snapped. ‘The poor child’s lost her momma and she and Mr uh—’

  ‘Moonlight,’ Gabriel reminded.

  ‘Moonlight, have come all the way from California to bury Ingrid next to her beloved husband.’

  Lylo Willis looked at his wife as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. But the scowl on her round, beefy, cherry-cheeked face told him he had – and, more importantly, that she expected him to solve the unmentioned problem.

  ‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ he told Raven. ‘And there’s nothing I’d like more than to accommodate your Momma’s wishes—’

  ‘What’s stoppin’ you?’ Gabriel interrupted.

  ‘N-Nothing, nothing at all.’ Lylo avoided his wife’s glare and turned back to Raven. ‘It’s just … uhm … I didn’t know Sven was buried here.’

  ‘Over there,’ Raven said, pointing. ‘Behind the barn.’

  ‘Really?’ Lylo Willis removed his spectacles, pinched his nose as if he had a headache, replaced the steel-framed glasses and did his best to look puzzled. ‘Don’t remember seeing a marker when we were rebuilding.’

  ‘Then I’ll show you. C’mon.’ Raven led him and Gabriel to the barn and on, around in back, where Lylo’s 16-year-old son, Cory, was chopping logs into kindling.

  Surprised to see Raven, he lowered his axe and rubbed the sweat from his eyes. ‘What’re you doin’ here? Thought you’n your ma had high-tailed it to Californee.’

  ‘Shows you how much you know, don’t it?’ Raven said.

  ‘Get on with your work, boy,’ Lylo told Cory. ‘Got a wagonload of folks to cook for tonight and your ma’s low on firewood.’

  Raven, who’d been looking around, now frowned, confused. ‘It was right here,’ she indicated, ‘where we’re standing.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Lylo said, uneasily. ‘There was no marker here when we tore the old barn down. Isn’t that right, son?’

  ‘Sure is, Pa.’ Cory kept his eyes lowered and went on chopping.

  ‘You’re wrong, both of you,’ Raven said. ‘You saw it, didn’t you?’ she said to Gabriel.

  He nodded. ‘I watched her mother place flowers on the grave. Only it wasn’t here,’ he said, pointing to his left, ‘it was about ten, twelve feet over there – ground that’s now buried under your barn.’

  Raven’s eyes became saucers. ‘You’re right, Gabe! Dang it, I didn’t think of that. You built over my Dad’s grave,’ she said to Lylo Willis.

  ‘That’s absurd,’ he exclaimed. ‘Your father and I were old friends. I wouldn’t dream of desecrating his last resting place like that.’

  ‘Mister,’ Gabriel said, deadly quiet, ‘I don’t give a hoot about what you’d dream of doin’. It’s what you done that matters.’

  Lylo reddened, indignantly. ‘You calling me a liar, sir?’

  ‘There’s a coffin in that wagon,’ Gabriel continued as if Lylo hadn’t spoken, ‘a coffin containing the body of a fine, gentle woman who’s waitin’ to join her husband. An’ I’ll be damned ten ways to Tucson if I’ll let her rot in the sun while you spin the truth around.’ He pulled his duster back to reveal the Peacemaker on his hip. ‘Now what’d you do with it, Mr Willis?’

  ‘D-Do with what?’

  ‘Sven Bjorkman’s body? Did you dig it up an’ bury it some place else or did you, in your greed to turn a fast dollar, just tear the marker down an’ build right over your “old friend”?’

  Lylo Willis, about to erupt, wilted under Gabriel’s ice-blue stare.

  ‘I’ll take you to him,’ he said. Then to his son: ‘Tell your ma where I’ve gone.’

  ‘Sure, Pa.’ Cory buried his axe into a half-split log and walked past Raven.

  She tripped him, sending him sprawling. ‘Liar! Dirty little weasel!’

  Cory jumped up and took an angry step toward Raven, then he saw the rage on Gabriel’s face and stopped, turned and hurried off to the house.

  Twenty minutes later, with the sun blazing down on them, Gabriel halted the wagon alongside a crude wooden cross poking out of a small pile of rocks at the edge of Lylo Willis’
property.

  The three of them climbed down.

  ‘See,’ Lylo said, indicating Sven’s grave. ‘I done right by him, like I told you. I didn’t have to rebury him, you know. I could’ve – and most folks would’ve – just built right on top of him. But I didn’t. I—’

  Gabriel cut him off. ‘Get movin’, mister.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Start walkin’.’

  ‘In this heat?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘B-But it’s almost a mile to the house.’

  ‘Mile – ten miles – don’t much matter. I’m about to bury a good woman and you, mister, ain’t fit to be in her company. Now, git.’

  Lylo Willis grudgingly took a few steps then turned and glared at them. ‘You’ll be sorry for this.’

  ‘Keep jawin’,’ Raven warned him, ‘and you’re the one who’ll be sorry.’ Reaching into the wagon, she grabbed the Winchester laying beside two long-handled shovels and levered a shell into the chamber.

  Lylo Willis paled, turned and hurried off.

  ‘I should’ve shot him,’ she grumbled to Gabriel.

  ‘It’s a thought crossed my mind, too,’ he admitted.

  ‘Yet you let him walk away?’

  ‘Got to thinkin’, a fella like him ain’t worth the price of lead.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Despite the broiling heat Gabriel wasted no time in digging up the coffin holding Raven’s father, Sven. Next he insisted Raven choose the place where she wanted her parents buried. It took her a few minutes to find the right spot. But eventually she picked a shady area at the base of a nearby rocky outcrop and then together they dug a grave wide enough for the coffins to lay side by side. Raven then said a brief prayer asking God to take care of her folks and to arrange for them to ‘meet again in heaven.’

  As she and Gabriel concluded the prayer by murmuring ‘Amen,’ the Morgan seemed to sense Raven’s sadness. He came up and nuzzled her with his soft black nose, making snuffling sounds as if trying to say he was sorry for her pain. She stroked his forehead, whispering softly to him.

  Meanwhile, Gabriel filled in the grave and covered the fresh-dug dirt with rocks to prevent scavengers from digging up the bodies. Then throwing the shovels in the wagon he prepared to start back to Deming.

  ‘Aren’t we going to make a cross?’ Raven asked.

  ‘No point in that.’

  ‘Then how am I going to remember where my folks are buried?’

  Gabriel drew his Colt and fired three shots at the rocks directly behind the grave site. The bullets ricocheted, each one chipping off a piece of rock before whining aimlessly into the desert. Pointing at the three silvery streaks the lead had left on the stone, he said: ‘Now you got a permanent marker. Not one that, come next spring, will get washed away by rainstorms or floods.’

  She looked at him, big dark eyes shining with admiration. ‘Reckon you weren’t behind the barn, either.’

  For once he was caught off-guard. ‘Barn?’

  ‘When they were givin’ out brains.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ he said, pleased. ‘So some things do sink in, huh?’ Fondly tousling her hair, he climbed onto the wagon-box and picked up the reins. ‘C’mon. Jump up. Want to get rollin’ while there’s still daylight left.’

  After they had traveled west a few miles the trail narrowed and snaked through a natural gap in the low rock-strewn hills. Known as Pasa duro de Piedra, or Hard-Rock Pass, it was a perfect site for an ambush. Gabriel, remembering the bushwhackers, instinctively looked up at the rocky slopes looming on both sides of them. Everything looked normal and he wondered why his belly was knotted up – a sure sign of pending trouble.

  Seeing his uneasiness Raven said: ‘More broomtails?’

  Gabriel ignored her sarcasm and kept his eyes peeled. They rounded a bend that curved between two giant boulders and there, confronting them, was a line of riders blocking the trail. Raven counted ten of them, all armed with rifles that were aimed at her and Gabriel.

  ‘Gabe—!’

  He’d already seen them. ‘Easy does it,’ he warned. ‘Don’t do anythin’ foolish or sudden.’ Reining up, he kept his right hand away from his Peacemaker and looked behind him.

  Ten more armed riders appeared, blocking off their escape.

  Facing front again, Gabriel wrapped the reins around the wagon-brake, rested his hands on his knees and waited for the inevitable.

  ‘Who are they?’ Raven whispered, ‘rustlers or lawmen?’

  ‘Neither,’ Gabriel said as the riders slowly closed in on them. ‘They’re Double SS boys.’

  ‘Mr Stadtlander’s men? How’d he know we were here?’

  ‘Lylo Willis told him, most likely.’

  ‘That snake,’ Raven said angrily. ‘I knew I should’ve shot him.’

  John Welters, the foreman of the Double SS, now rode out from riders and confronted Gabriel. ‘I’ll take your iron,’ he said, extending his hand.

  Then, when Gabriel didn’t respond, ‘We got orders to shoot if you don’t cooperate – you’n anyone with you.’

  ‘You’d fire on a girl?’

  ‘Not on purpose.’ Welters, an erect ex-cavalry man in blue denim whose sun-strained gray eyes were almost as pale as Gabriel’s, turned and indicated the riders. ‘But the boys know how deadly you are with that Colt and they ain’t goin’ to be too particular about who else gets hit once they start shootin’.’

  ‘Let her ride on out,’ Gabriel said, ‘an’ I’ll surrender peaceably.’

  ‘Can’t do that. Mr Stadtlander said I was to bring in all—’

  ‘It’s OK, Gabe,’ Raven said, rising. ‘I don’t mind keeping you company.’ Calmly, she climbed into the rear of the wagon.

  Gabriel, sensing she was up to something, slowly drew his Colt and handed it, butt first, to Welters.

  ‘And the rifle.’

  Gabriel reached behind him, picked up the Winchester and gave it to the foreman.

  For a moment Welters and the riders relaxed, as if danger had passed.

  In that moment Raven leaped from the wagon onto Brandy’s back, kicked the startled Morgan into a gallop, and charged straight at the riders milling around behind them.

  Caught off guard, they tried to close ranks. But they were too late. Raven and the stallion burst through them and were in the clear before the riders could even think of shooting her.

  A few half-heartedly raised their rifles, but they were basically decent men and no one could pull the trigger.

  ‘Too bad,’ Welters said, watching Raven ride off into the desert. ‘Out there, she’s buzzard meat.’ He turned back to Gabriel, adding, ‘Boss has been waitin’ a long time for this.’

  ‘That makes two of us, John.’ Gabriel took the makings out of his shirt pocket and began rolling a smoke.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Raven kept Brandy at a full gallop until she was several miles from the pass; then a quick look back told her she wasn’t being pursued. Only then did she slow the Morgan to a walk so the powerful stallion could regain his wind.

  Ahead and on both sides of them was empty, open wasteland dotted with cacti, mesquite, and greasewood. Much of it was monotonously flat. But here and there gullies and low rocky hills broke the landscape while in the distance mountain ranges made up the horizon. The sun was starting to sink below their glowing peaks, warning that night was approaching. But Raven, though alone and without food or water, wasn’t concerned. She felt at home in the desert, having grown up here and spent much of life learning how to survive in the wilderness.

  Most of her knowledge came from the Mescaleros. They had no equal when it came to existing in this vast, harsh terrain and, though she was unarmed but for her slingshot, she had no fear of going thirsty or hungry.

  But she was afraid that Gabriel would be killed by Stadtlander. From what she’d overheard Gabriel telling her mother, and what little he’d told her himself, his former employer was a ruthless, powerful rancher who was determined to
hang Gabriel for shooting his only son, Slade.

  It didn’t matter to Stadtlander that Slade had been a gutless, drunken bully hated by almost everyone in Santa Rosa; or that he and his worthless whiskey-sodden pals, the Iverson brothers, had raped and killed Gabriel’s former girlfriend; or even that Slade had cowardly shot Gabriel in the back first, before Gabriel whirled and gunned him down. No, none of those things mattered: all that the ageing, crippled rancher cared about was seeing Gabriel, a man he’d once loved more than his son, dangling from a rope.

  ‘Somehow I’ve got to save him,’ Raven thought aloud as she guided the Morgan eastward. ‘And I got to do it fast.’

  Brandy pricked his ears at the sound of her voice then tossed his head, flared his nostrils and snorted as if ready to do battle.

  Raven responded by rubbing the stallion’s ears. At the same time she desperately tried to think of how she could rescue Gabriel. Nothing came to her. And as she rode on, she became more and more despondent.

  It was then she heard a screech high above her. Looking up, she saw a bald eagle drifting on the thermals. She’d seen bald eagles before, though not often, but on those occasions the huge black, white-headed birds were soaring over the Rio Grande Valley or winging toward the mountains.

  This one seemed to be deliberately hovering above her. Reining up, she watched it for a few moments, wondering as she did what was causing the eagle to remain overhead.

  Suddenly, the huge bird folded back its wings and dived toward her. Surprised, Raven watched it plummeting straight down, talons extended, its savage cry reaching her ears. It never dawned on her that she might be the target. She knew golden and bald eagles snatched lambs and piglets from farms and on rare occasions were known to go after small dogs, but never a grown human being. Yet, even as she kept her gaze fixed on the eagle, it continued to dive toward her. In seconds, she realized, it would be upon her; and though she couldn’t believe it, when it still kept coming she was forced to accept that she was its prey.

  At the last instant, just before the eagle attacked her, Raven slid off the Morgan and ducked behind some rocks.