Riders on the Storm

by Rob Blackwell

  Gilroy grinned at her. It made his appearance ghastlier.

  “Jules,” he spat. “I’ve finally caught up to you. And now you’re gonna pay, you hear me? I’m going to enjoy my revenge.”

  Chapter Six

  “The Kid cut a bloody trail across much of the Dakota prairie. He had a reputation for ruthless efficiency, though he also appeared to earn the fierce loyalty of the gang with which he traveled. Unlike Robert Ford, the so-called ‘dirty coward’ who betrayed Jessie James, the Kid’s men fought with him until the end.”

  — Stephen Kaper, “Legends of the Old West,” 2015

  Jules rolled her eyes. Miranda burst out laughing.

  “Shut up!” Gilroy shouted at Miranda. “Don’t you laugh at me! I’ll kill you right here and now.”

  Jules gave Luke a meaningful look, as if to say, “Take a good look at the man who hired you.” Luke cocked an eyebrow, which she took to mean, “Yeah, but the pay is good.”

  She turned her attention back to Gilroy Tester. Even in the dim light of the fire, she could see his twisted, angry expression. His gun was now aimed at Miranda, something Jules couldn’t allow. Knowing Gilroy, he could trip over a rock and accidentally kill her sister.

  “Pipe down before somebody gets hurt,” Jules said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  “You! You’re the one whose gonna get hurt!” Gilroy said.

  “Uh-huh,” Jules replied. “That’s why I’m shaking like a leaf over here. After all this time, Gilroy Tester has come to take his vengeance.”

  Miranda started giggling again, but at least Gilroy shifted the gun away from her and back toward Jules.

  “I ought to kill you right here, right now.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” Jules said. “But after you fire, it’s my turn. And you know I won’t miss.”

  “You said we weren’t going to harm the girls,” Luke said.

  “Shut up!” Gilroy shouted at him. “Mind your own goddamn business.”

  She gave Luke a meaningful glance again, as if to say, “You’re sure you want to work for him?” He cocked his head to one side, considering.

  “Right,” Jules said. “If you don’t mind, it’s been a trying day. Say your piece and let me get on with my life.”

  “First off, you need to apologize.”

  “For what?” Jules replied.

  “The last time we met, you mocked me. You broke my nose!”

  “Gilroy, I’ve mocked you every time we’ve met. And I think it’s the fourth time I’ve broken your nose. Have you ever heard me apologize?”

  “I got you! I got you dead to rights!”

  “You’re not here for vengeance and we both know it,” Jules said. “So why don’t you skip to the part where you tell me what Rezzor wants.”

  Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Rezzor?” he asked.

  “The man you’re really working for,” Jules said. “He was my father’s right-hand man for many years. Now he runs what’s left of my father’s gang out of Jefferson City. Gilroy here is his least trusted and valuable sidekick.”

  “That’s not true!” Gilroy said.

  “I’m pretty sure Rezzor thinks I’m going to kill you just because you vex me,” Jules said. “I’m not sure he’s wrong. He has always been a decent judge of character.”

  “He wants his property back,” Gilroy said. “You’re to go to Jefferson and meet him there.”

  “I don’t have the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”

  “The key,” Gilroy replied. “You took it. He knows you did.”

  Jules frowned. She’d gone to some trouble to make Rezzor think the Oglala had stolen the key. Clearly, she hadn’t gone to enough. He’d seen through her ruse and now her situation was going to get complicated quickly. She thought about bluffing Gilroy more, but it was pointless. Rezzor was a bulldog. Once he got in his head to do something, there was no talking him out of it. That’s one reason her father had liked him.

  “Tell him I’m borrowing it,” Jules said. “He’ll get it back when I’m done.”

  Gilroy gave a short, unpleasant laugh that sounded like a hyena.

  “Fat chance, Castle,” he said. “The only reason you’re alive is because he respected your dad. Why, he practically watched you grow up. He sees you as if you were his own.”

  There was a guffaw from Miranda, but not enough to draw Gilroy’s attention this time.

  “I sincerely hope that’s not true,” Jules said. “He visited my tent once a few years back. His intentions weren’t paternal.”

  Miranda gave her a sharp look.

  “You never told me that,” she said.

  Jules glanced briefly at her, shrugging. “Wasn’t a big deal. I sleep with a gun under my pillow. He didn’t trouble me again, and I thought it unwise to spread rumors. Let him maintain what little dignity he had left.”

  Gilroy cleared his throat, obviously annoyed that the conversation had taken a detour. “Anyway, he liked your dad. He’s sad he’s dead. You bring his property back and you can rejoin the gang, all is forgiven.”

  Jules gritted her teeth and stared so hard at Gilroy that he unconsciously took a step back.

  “My father is not dead,” she said adamantly. “You hear me? He’s not.”

  “Ain’t nobody seen him for three years!” Gilroy protested.

  “That’s not the same thing,” Jules said. “He’s coming back and when he does, I’m sure we can straighten out this business with Rezzor. You tell him that. And tell him if I finish with it before then, I will personally return it to him.”

  Gilroy shook his head. “No, Jules,” he said. “He said to shoot your horse if you didn’t agree to come back right away.”

  Jules took a step forward, baring her teeth at the man, who took another step back. She cocked the hammer on her gun. “You want to watch what you say next very carefully. Or it might be your last words.”

  “All right, all right, have it your way,” Gilroy said. “But the fact is, we’ve got you outgunned. I see your pretty sister sitting by the fire without her bow by her side, and there are two of us. Give me the key, and I’ll take it back to Rezzor. He should let you go.”

  Jules doubted that very much. Rezzor would kill her if he saw her again. Of that she was certain.

  “You don’t have a choice, Jules,” Gilroy said. “Give up.”

  She glanced up at Luke. “Double your pay?”

  Luke gave a quick nod and turned toward Gilroy, aiming his weapon in that direction.

  “What?” the little man said, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. “You can’t do that. I paid you upfront. I—”

  “You paid him upfront? You really are a moron, Gilroy,” Miranda said.

  “You paid me to help you track down the girl,” Luke said calmly. “That job is now finished. I was just hired for a new job, working for her.”

  Gilroy sputtered angrily, looking from Jules to Luke and then back again.

  “Go,” Jules said. “Crawl back to Rezzor and give him a message. If he leaves me alone, he’ll get his precious property back. He has my word on it, and he knows I’ve never broken it. But if he comes after me again, I will feel no such obligation. I will consider it rightfully mine.”

  “You’re dead,” Gilroy said. “You know that, right? This was your last chance.”

  Jules just smiled at him. “I may be young, but I’ve had lots of last chances already. Now leave your gun on the ground and get out of here before I break your nose again for threatening my horse.”

  Gilroy took one last look around, scowling. He obediently dropped his gun in the dirt, backed away and vanished into the night.

  Jules holstered her gun, picked up Gilroy’s weapon off the ground and returned to her dinner, gesturing for Luke to join them. He nodded at her, but waited several minutes, holding his gun and looking in the direction Gilroy had gone.

  “He won’t come back,” Jules said. “He’s a coward.”

  “In my
experience,” Luke said evenly, “a coward is liable to sneak up and shoot you in the back.”

  Jules snorted. “That idiot probably only has the one gun. Even if he has another, he’s afraid to take a piss without Rezzor’s permission. And Rezzor doesn’t want me dead unless he can get what he wants first. We’re safe. Now pull up a rock and have some of this stew. Miranda made extra.”

  The comment drew his attention away from the darkness around them. He stowed the gun and approached the fire.

  “How long have you known I was coming?” he asked, sitting down and taking the bowl Miranda offered.

  “Suspected it since I spotted you in the bank,” Jules said. “You stood out.”

  He gave a small laugh. “I always do.”

  “Wasn’t your skin color,” Jules said. “You were paying too much attention to me. And to be frank, you seemed far too capable inside the bank. This wasn’t your first rodeo.”

  He nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “I figured Rezzor hired you to track me,” Jules continued. “Makes sense. His little band of thieves never had a good tracker. I didn’t realize Gilroy was involved, but it’s not exactly a surprise. Rezzor often likes to send him on errands.”

  Luke nodded and tasted the stew. His look of surprise caused Jules to laugh. “Good, isn’t it?” she said. “Not expecting that, I’ll warrant.”

  Luke gave Miranda an appreciative look. “Where did you find cinnamon around these parts?”

  Miranda’s face lit up. “I ran into a trader from San Francisco a while back,” she said.

  They ate their stew in silence, with Jules waiting for what came next. She figured Luke would get there eventually. But he finished his meal, went off into the darkness and came back with his horse and pack. He unrolled his bedroll without another word.

  “That’s it?” Jules finally asked. “You’re not going to ask what the job is that I hired you for?”

  He regarded her impassively. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready. No need to know before then.”

  Jules turned to Miranda. “You could learn a thing or two from him.”

  She frowned, but otherwise didn’t reply.

  “Okay, well now I’m ready,” she said. “Tomorrow we head out for Stanton. I figure we can make it in one day if we get an early start.”

  He nodded, unconcerned. Not a complainer, either. For a decision she’d made on the fly, Luke seemed likely to work out well.

  “We need to deliver a package to the man who hired me,” she said. “After that, I’m hoping for a new assignment. I’ll need all the tracking skills you can muster.”

  Luke regarded her without a word, but Miranda leaned forward, interested. Jules had purposely kept this information from her, but now was the right time to reveal it. If she was going to make a fuss, best to be out here in the wilderness.

  “Are you finally going to tell me what this is about?” Miranda asked. “Why we’ve been running all over Hell’s half acre? Who are we tracking?”

  Jules took a deep breath and met her gaze. She had the discomfiting feeling that Miranda already knew. That didn’t surprise her. It was probably in one of her accursed dreams. What did shock her was that she hadn’t raised the subject until now.

  “We’re going to track down our father.”

  Chapter Seven

  “What makes the Kid all the more intriguing is that we don’t know his fate. There are very few contemporaneous press accounts of his exploits, and sometime in the early 1860s, his trail goes cold altogether.”

  — Stephen Kaper, “Legends of the Old West,” 2015

  Their father had tried to sneak off without saying goodbye.

  That was the part of his disappearance that bothered Jules the most. Trent Castle had kept many things from his daughters, but his plans and stratagems weren’t generally among them.

  It had been Miranda who tipped Jules off.

  “He’s gonna run off,” she whispered at camp that morning. “I saw it in a dream.”

  Jules had laughed out loud. The idea of their father sneaking away was ludicrous. But she’d also kept an eye on her old man just the same. If there was one thing about Miranda’s dreams, it was this: they often came true.

  She watched her father all day. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and built like a stone wall. He had a tangled mess of black hair and a thick black beard that he let grow to his chest. Some whispered that his eyes were black, or maybe they were just reflecting his soul. In truth, his eyes were normal brown, but there was an intensity to them that tended to put people on edge.

  Whatever else could be said of him, he was built for the role he played. He looked like a bandit, and even when they were on supply runs with no intention of stealing, people tended to act as if he was robbing them anyway. They gave him nervous glances and hurried up their business like he might suddenly lash out with violence.

  And violence was something he excelled at. His punches could knock a man’s teeth out and his bulk was such that he tended to easily absorb any blows landed on him. But physical prowess wasn’t his only skill. Trent was a quick draw and an even better shot. There were reasons he was still a legend in the Dakotas.

  As much as Jules wanted to ignore it, her father was acting strangely. She watched him silently load up his packs and saddle his horse, even though they didn’t have a job that she knew of. He gave orders, too, sending Gilroy scrambling to obey his wishes and outlining something a week in advance for Rezzor.

  That alone was worthy of concern. Trent never revealed his plans to anyone besides Jules a moment before it was necessary. He said he wanted the strategy to be fresh in their minds, but Jules suspected it was because he didn’t trust his second-in-command. So why outline a robbery now?

  Jules played it casual. She did her chores for the day—which mostly involved shooting at targets in the far distance and cleaning her knives—and pretended to go to bed alongside Miranda.

  But she sneaked out not long afterward and waited in the darkness near her father’s horse. Sure enough, long past midnight, with her beginning to fear she was losing sleep for nothing, she heard the distinctive sound of his footsteps. She watched as he quietly untied his horse and led him away from camp. She followed until he mounted in the dark and prepared to ride off. Jules jumped forward and grasped the reins.

  Her father looked surprised. He had trained her to sneak up on people in the dark, but the man had the hearing of a hawk.

  “Going somewhere, Father?” she asked.

  She could hear his scowl as he replied, “What the hell are you doing here, Jules?”

  She didn’t answer, waiting for him to suss it out himself. She was just eighteen, but she’d hit womanhood fast and hard four years earlier. She’d shot up in height, leaving her tall for a woman at just under six feet. She had a slender build and a relatively flat chest, which still allowed her to pass for a man when she needed to. At the moment, she had long, flowing blond hair, but she could cut it short if need be.

  She had inherited some of her father’s strength, too. When Trent tried to buck the horse forward, she held fast to the reins.

  “It was some dream of your sister’s, wasn’t it?” Trent asked.

  Jules didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Her father was the only other person who knew about the dreams. It would have been unwise to let that rumor spread among the crew. People tended to be superstitious—and they would react poorly to someone with the skill of prophecy.

  “Let me go, girl,” he said after a moment. “I have business, and it’s not for your ears.”

  “Funny business, wouldn’t you say?” Jules asked. “You sneaking off in the dark without a word to your only kin?”

  “I aim to be back quickly,” he replied. “And the less you know of this, the better.”

  She continued to hold the reins in the dark. It wasn’t smart to argue with her father, not with words. He responded better to actions.

  “Dammit, Jules!” he said after a few moments. �
��Let me go!”

  “Go where?”

  “Stanton,” he replied. “Need to see a man.”

  “About?”

  “About something I’m not inclined to discuss yet,” her father said. “It’s likely nothing.”

  “And you’re leaving without saying a word why?”

  “I don’t answer to you, girl.”

  Since she’d turned eight, she was usually the first one to know his plans. If there was a heist to pull off, her father had included her in his “war councils,” as he called them. She was allowed, even encouraged, to ask questions. By ten, her father had let her plan a few of the smaller raids, only weighing in if she got something wrong.

  “Did you tell Rezzor what you were up to?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t tell that man if I planned to take a piss,” her father replied.

  “Such language,” Jules said, affecting the Southern belle accent she’d only recently given up after an extended job out East. “I do declare my heart will burst at your salty talk.”

  Her father didn’t laugh, which disappointed her.

  “I should have left you in Chicago,” he said.

  She stepped back from the reins as if he’d hit her.

  “Fine,” she said. “Go, then. Sneak off like some damn coward.”

  “Jules, you’re taking my words the wrong way.”

  “Oh, am I? How’d you mean it, then?” Jules asked.

  He sighed. “You were happy with the boy. I don’t know that it would have lasted forever, but I’ve been wrong in the past. I should have left you there to find out on your own.”

  “His name was Will, not ‘boy.’ And you didn’t leave me there. In fact, you rather vigorously insisted on me coming with you, as I remember.”

  “Maybe I was wrong,” he said.

  She wished he could see her expression in the dark. The look of shock and surprise was worth a painting. She laughed bitterly.

  “Fine time to tell me, Father,” she said. “But it’s not the business at hand, is it?”

  Trent sighed again, louder this time.

  “It’s old business. Something I thought was long buried,” he replied. “Has to do with when I rode with the Kid.”