by Paul Bagdon
He tacked up Slick slowly and carefully, as he did every morning, setting the blanket like a mother covering her child. The horse was antsy; he loved nothing more than a morning run and the hours of exercise that followed it. He snorted at Wade’s lack of speed in the preparations and picked at the stall floor with a front hoof.
“You hold on there, boy,” Wade said, grinning. “You’ll get your workout.” As he placed the saddle, the slicker behind the cantle shifted, and Wade snugged the tie strings a bit tighter. Then he led Slick from the barn.
The sky was cloudless and a deep cobalt blue. The hot sun seemed more oppressive than usual, but both Wade and Slick were well used to heat. They’d worked in it every day since Slick’s conditioning had begun. Slick paid it no attention, and Wade little more.
Just then Wade noticed Carlos stepping off Miss Morgan’s porch and waving him over. Rather than mounting, the bronc man led Slick to the house.
“There ees some bad news,” Carlos said. “Jonas Dwyer, Lee’s friend as well as mine and Maria’s, has died. Lee won’ be around much today, an’ I won’ either.”
Wade removed his hat. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. When he was mounted, he added, “Give Miss Morgan my regards. I’ll stop by later to see her in person.”
As usual, Slick wanted to run, and he immediately demanded to do so. The big ebony stallion danced sideways, shaking his head, attempting to capture some loose rein from his rider. Wade chuckled; he enjoyed his daily disputes with Slick, enjoyed his own control of such an awesome amount of power and speed. His hands were gentle on the reins, guiding the horse rather than forcing him. He knew that to get the best from any horse, you must gain the love and trust of that horse. And he knew he had both from Slick.
With a slight bit of leg pressure, he asked for a canter, and Slick bulled into an overly fast and somewhat awkward gait, again asking to run. Wade stopped, made Slick stand in place for a minute or so, and then asked for the canter once again. Slick obeyed this time, but his tail began to spin in anger like the blade of a windmill on a gusty day. Wade laughed at his mount’s sulking, wanting the wild freedom of a long gallop as much as Slick did.
They covered three miles at a lope. Slick broke a light sweat after the second mile but showed no more signs of tiredness than if he had simply turned around in his stall. When Wade gave the stallion all the rein he’d been asking for, the initial blast of acceleration was exhilarating, a sensation of almost impossibly fast motion that thrilled his senses.
Wade then walked Slick a mile into a minor canyon cut by the wind, dismounted and loosened the cinch, and led him a few hundred yards before ground tying him in a patch of grass and scrub. Taking his slicker from behind the cantle, Wade carefully unrolled it and strapped on his gun belt and pistol that had been concealed inside. He set the cloth sack of .45 ammunition on the ground. He tied down his holster and stood straight. The fingertips of his right hand, with his arm at ease and hanging casually, touched the bone grips.
A few small cacti were scattered about in the gulch, and dull brown rocks scrubbed free of dirt by the wind littered the sandy earth. Wade walked away from Slick, leaving him grazing on the sparse grass. The brass casings of the cartridges tinkled against one another in the sack as he strode to a position thirty feet from a fat saguaro cactus.
Flexing his right hand, he stretched the fingers apart and then formed a tight fist. When he relaxed his hand, he let it hang for a moment, fingertips caressing the grips of his pistol. Then the weapon was in his hand, spitting six rounds so rapidly that there seemed to be no pause between the reports that reverberated in the canyon around him.
Slick flinched, watched Wade for a moment, and then went back to tugging at the grass. Several weeks ago, gunfire had almost panicked him. Now he paid it little attention.
The cluster of shots in the front of the cactus was small—perhaps palm-sized—but the soft-nosed slugs had torn handfuls of pulp and moisture, green flesh and needles, through the back of the plant, spreading the debris in a thick spray of mush on the dirt and rocks.
After shaking the empty casings onto the ground, Wade reloaded his Colt. The barely discernable click as he inserted the last bullet and snapped the cylinder shut pleased him. In his mind, his pistol was a thing of beauty. The front sight had been carefully filed away by a master gunsmith, and the tension on the trigger was reduced to the point where a kitten’s breath could unleash a promise of death. The bone grips were carved by a Nez Perce, and it fit the palm of Wade’s hand better than any glove could. It was as if the gun were part of him.
Wade reloaded his weapon once again and dropped it into its holster. He walked toward a man-tall cactus, the arms of which grew upward like the supplicating arms of a person pleading for mercy, and stopped twenty-five feet from it. He used his thumb and forefinger to ease his pistol out of the holster and gingerly began to extend it to the imaginary lawman. His middle finger and a flick of the wrist propelled the weapon to his left hand, where the chamber struck his left thumb. He grabbed at the gun again, but caught it by the barrel. Disgusted, he swore loud and long enough to attract a glance from Slick.
It took three more tries to get the move—called the border shuffle by gunmen—right. He’d used it once in Dodge, and it had saved his life. Since then, he’d developed a few new tricks. Again he drew his pistol with thumb and forefinger, barrel pointing downward. His index finger snaked into the trigger guard, and his thumb tapped the grips just behind the hammer. The cactus began spewing seeds and pulp. The six rounds he fired slammed into what would have been a man’s chest, had the plant been human.
When the reverberations of the shots died, the silence of the prairie closed in. Wade hated the silence. During times like these, his memories were the most strident. Scenes from Gettysburg deluged him, appeared before his eyes brutally, cruelly, as if he were there again. He saw Emil, the thirteen-year-old drummer boy, flop about on the bloody ground, the Confederate flag he’d carried so proudly a battered rag, pierced by bullets and wet with his blood.
The memory of the army’s final charge on the third day of the battle caused Wade’s body to shake uncontrollably. The insane, headlong run of the Rebel troops up the impossibly long and exposed killing field ran crazily in his mind. He heard again the waves of rifle fire and cannon fusillades that swept the best and bravest young men of the South to their graves. He choked on the hot, painful breaths filled with gun smoke. He felt the sensation of his boots trampling over the bodies of fallen comrades.
For the first couple of years after Appomattox, Wade avoided silence as much as he could. If he wasn’t on a horse, he was in a saloon or in a fight. Now, that had changed. That fury still constantly burned in him. But most of the time, he was able to conceal it from others, even though it was always there, directing everything he planned or did.
Wade Stuart, he believed, had died at Gettysburg. But at the same instant, a new Wade Stuart had been born. The new Wade Stuart’s only job, only reason for being, was to exact retribution from the world and everyone in it.
* * *
6
* * *
Lee Morgan felt like a child, alone and frightened.
Her home seemed larger than usual and was filled with a heavy silence. Ben, Carlos, and Maria were gone, and although she’d wanted solitude when she’d had the company of her friends, now the emptiness of her home seemed oppressive.
So much death on the frontier—death in Burnt Rock, death on the prairie. It seemed to her as if the West was so angry that it couldn’t contain itself, that it had to strike out. Her eyes rested on the Winchester 30.06 that stood inside her front door. The rifle was as familiar an object in her home as the overstuffed couch in her living room or the cooking stove in her kitchen. An image of the handcrafted little bedside table in her room flashed in her mind. On the table lay a Bible, with a fully loaded Colt .45 in the drawer facing her bed. The weapons were in her home only as precautions, but the stark reality of what they were for
struck Lee like a quick slap across the face. Am I hard enough to live like this? Even the man I’m developing feelings for—strong feelings—deals with violence and death every day, and his pistol is never more than a few inches from his hand.
Lee began pacing. She stopped next to the table in the kitchen, picked up the coffeepot, and considered putting the cups and saucers and plates into the sink to soak. Instead, she turned away to the window and looked out toward the barns.
Maybe the frontier isn’t for women at all. Maybe it’s just too coarse and hard, too deadly and hurtful and full of tears.
A ruckus broke out in the big barn—horses were squealing, and a hoof thudded against the heavy wood planks of a stall. A male voice thundered above the arguing animals. “Whass the problem here, eh? You wan’ I come in there an’ geeve you a problem? Hush up now—bot’ of you!”
A smile crossed Lee’s face even as tears started in her eyes. Carlos’s threats to the horses sounded brutal, even threatening—and the man had never raised a hand or a quirt to a horse in his life.
Lee looked down at the coffeepot in her hand. It still contained a cup or so of now-cold coffee. She took her mug from the table and filled it at the stove, sipping, enjoying the harshness as she swallowed. She began to walk again.
Her last conversation with Jonas attempted to force its way into her mind, but she pushed the memory away by thinking of Uncle Noah and Jonas as younger men, when she was still a few years shy of her teen years. That’s where my love of horses came from—the way those two men handled and treated and worked with horses. And the independence of both of them! They were wild as hawks, veering away from what other men did, away from the cities, away from the lives that any sane man would have chosen. Instead, they bred and raised horses and lived on ranches where they were always in contact with the animals they so loved. Jonas and Uncle Noah didn’t know the meaning of the word compromise ...
“They were men, though,” Lee said aloud. “They could . . .”
She walked through the parlor and up the stairs, the creaking of the third and fifth steps as familiar to her as the sound of her own breathing. Her tears ran freely now, and great, hiccupping sobs wrenched her chest. Cold coffee sloshed from the mug she held, and she leaned forward and set it on the floor of her bedroom.
There’s a crossroad here. I need to go one way or the other. If I can’t take the frontier, I have to get out. I could sell the ranch and the horses and move to ... where? A big city? A place where I’d be like other women? If I stay, I’ll have to live with being different, being the woman everyone thinks is more than a little strange.
Lee dropped back onto her bed, her thoughts coming rapidly, pictures and scenes skittering in and out of her mind. She saw herself alighting from a carriage, a superbly dressed gentleman reaching out to her with a hand every bit as soft as her own. She saw herself in a group of other stylishly dressed ladies, sipping tea and discussing the poetry of the British Romantics and wondering when, if ever, the United States of America would be mature and civilized enough to produce such poets. Then Lee saw herself in a steamy kitchen, with pots and pans covering the surface of a stove and several hungry children tugging at her long skirts, whining for attention.
And suddenly, Lee laughed through her tears. The pain in her heart wasn’t lessened, but somehow she felt rejuvenated.
This was her life. This was where she belonged.
When Wade knocked on her door that evening, she was sitting in the dark, in the half-sleep state where thoughts are closer to dreams. As she sat up straight from her slumped position, her eyes fought the darkness and a quick yelp escaped her before she could stop it. Jonas had been in her mind, but there was another person too, a man she couldn’t quite see. He was on horseback ...
The knock sounded again, and Lee stood and lit the lamp on the table next to her. She opened her door to Wade Stuart.
His eyes widened. “Miss Morgan ... are you OK? You look . . .”
Lee beckoned Wade inside. “I was just catnapping,” she said, forcing a smile. “It’s been a difficult day.”
“I know that. I wouldn’t have knocked except for the light in the kitchen. I’ll stop in another time, Miss Morgan.”
“No, no—let’s sit for a moment.” She led Wade into the parlor and lit a second lamp. Hat in hand, he sat on a high-backed chair in front of the window.
“I’m sorry about Mr. Dwyer,” he said. “I didn’t know him, but the boys say he was a fine man. I know you were good friends, and I just kinda wanted to say ... well ... I’m sorry he got killed ...” His voice trailed off awkwardly, but he looked into Lee’s eyes.
Lee shuddered the slightest bit. Wade’s eyes seemed empty, devoid of any emotion. “Thank you for your sympathy,” she managed to say.
Then, irritated at herself for what probably had been a trick of the flickering lantern light, she added, “Jonas spent his entire life preparing himself to meet the Lord. He was a good man and a loving man.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sure he was.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow to visit with Mrs. Dwyer for a couple of days, Mr. Stuart. Anything you need from me before I leave? Any problems with Slick?”
“No, ma’am, no problems at all.” He paused for a moment. “Carlos is going with you?” It was more an assertion than a question.
“No, I’ll be going alone. There’s too much going on here for both of us to leave.”
“It’s kind of a long ride for a girl to go alone, was all I meant, ma’am.” He stood from his chair.
“I’m a woman, Mr. Stuart. I haven’t been a girl for a long time. I’m as good with a rifle and a pistol as most men and better than many. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.” The words sounded harsh to Lee, so she softened her tone and offered a small smile. “Thanks for your concern, though.”
Again, the light seemed to play tricks with Wade’s eyes. “Yes, ma’am. Well, I’ll be going to look in on Slick and then get some sleep. That sun comes awful early.”
Lee walked Wade to the door and then watched him as he strode toward the barn until the darkness enveloped him. In a minute or so, she heard a couple of horses nicker a greeting and saw the white blaze of light as Wade lit a lantern. She closed the door, turned, and returned to the parlor—and again shuddered without really understanding why. She climbed the stairs to her room, doubting that she’d sleep, but knowing she needed the rest.
Lee usually was able to fall into a deep and restful sleep as soon as her back hit the bed. Tonight, though, that bed was a devious enemy, hiding comfort from her. She wrestled with the light sheet that covered her, turning from side to side, refluffing her pillow, growing more wakeful by the moment. And when sleep finally did come, it was sweaty and troubled.
She woke with the first faint light of dawn. The sky was still quite dark, but the darkness had that eerie quality it takes on when the sun begins to threaten it. Scratching a lucifer, she touched the flame to the wick of her lamp and carried the light downstairs.
When she was ready for her journey, she walked out to the barn, carrying a valise and her Winchester. Carlos had Meg, a five-year-old mustang mare with a sweet disposition and an easy gait, between the traces of a small surrey with its top rolled back and down. Carlos also had a steaming mug of coffee for Lee, and he’d placed a pair of freshly filled canteens on the surrey floor.
“I don’ like thees so much,” he said.
Lee accepted the coffee gratefully, took a long sip, and smiled at her friend. “Don’t be such an old woman! I’ll be with Margaret before dark.”
Carlos grunted noncommittally as he checked the load on Lee’s rifle and slid the weapon into the boot behind the driver’s seat. He took an army Colt from where it was tucked inside his belt and handed it to Lee. “Thees is for in your bag. You can reach it queekly, no?”
Lee began to protest and then saw the set of Carlos’s jaw. She took the pistol and slid it into her traveling bag. Meg snorted and stomped a forefoot, impat
ient to get started, so Lee stepped up to the driver’s seat and unwound the reins from the brake lever.
“I’ll stay a day and drive back on the second,” she said to Carlos as she finished her coffee and handed back the mug. “Quit your worrying and take care of the ranch.” She grinned.
“I should ride with you,” Carlos grumped. “Ees not safe—”
“Of course it’s safe! I’ll see you in two days.” Lee lightly tapped the reins on Meg’s back, and the mare started ahead, jerking the surrey a bit in her haste to get moving. Carlos called “Vaya con Dios” as Lee turned the rig down the dusty path to the main trail.
The prairie swallowed Lee and her surrey; within twenty minutes, she could see only the rutted trail she followed and the awesome vastness that surrounded her. She wondered if there would ever come a time when there were enough people in the West to shrink the hugeness of it, so she could see signs of homes and farms and ranches and good roads where there was now nothing but cactus and tumbleweed. She doubted it; the immensity of Texas was almost beyond human comprehension. And she couldn’t think why people would come to this area. Few places had adequate water to sustain life, much less support the needs of a farm or a livestock operation. There was simply nothing here to draw people and the cities they’d build. Nothing.
As she was thinking on this, a shallow puddle of black liquid ahead sent gleaming shards of sunlight at her, and she eased Meg to one side to avoid the muck. Strange, she thought. There seems to be quite a few of those puddles around.
Lee alternated Meg’s gait between a canter and a fast walk, giving the mare long periods at the walk between much shorter stretches at the canter. At midday, Meg showed no signs of fatigue, and she grazed contentedly when Lee pulled in to rest at the shaded side of a slope. The silence around them was profound. It was as if the sun had baked all the sound out of the air, so that not an animal, a bird, or anything else could penetrate the stillness.