by Lydia Olson
Crane waited a beat—and then he removed his hands and released Tucker. He knew Tucker’s reputation well enough to know that the scoundrel wasn’t above killing a man of the law, corrupt or not.
Crane turned away. “You need to start being smarter, Tucker,” he said. “Otherwise, people are going to start poking their noses in, and I won’t be able to cover for you anymore. Tell me you wore a mask. These women, if they lived, probably won’t be able to identify you if you did that.”
“You asking because you know I despise wearing one?”
“Yes, for whatever suicidal reasons you feel inclined to be that way.”
“Well,” Tucker laughed, “I didn’t wear a mask this time, either. Masks make my face itch, so—I don’t wear them.”
Crane slapped the wall. “Oh, Tucker, you fool!” he barked, though he knew that Tucker did things just for the thrill of it. At the end of the day—everything was a game.
“Just go and fetch those bodies,” Tucker grizzled bandit said as he placed his palm on the doorhandle. “They’re near a stagecoach we held up that was headed here. Get it done. Oh—” he pointed at Crane, a scowl on his face, “—and don’t you ever put your hands on me again.” He nodded toward the smashed whiskey bottle off to the side. “And I’ll be putting a new one of those on your tab.”
Saying nothing more, Tucker left the room and closed the door behind him.
Crane stood there, Tucker’s words about placing a whiskey bottle on his tab falling on deaf ears as Crane wondered if the stagecoach that Tucker had held up was the one that he had put his future fiancée, Sarah Harris, on board. He was concerned about her, not for her safety so much, but more at the prospect of her being alive. He didn’t need her reporting Tucker to the law in some other town. Tucker was a criminal, and Michael Crane was the partner that wasn’t spoken of. You catch Tucker—you catch Crane.
What if she saw his face? Crane thought. What if she lived? She could report this to the Marshalls near Little Rock, and Tucker will sell me out in a heartbeat!
Crane needed to know if Sarah was alive or dead. He worried about that fact. He wanted her to be alive, preferably. But not because he would ever care to love someone—he simply needed a wife to keep up with his status as a reputable man. Having her in once piece was a return on and protection of, an investment.
Nothing more.
Chapter Ten
A sliver of light crept into Sarah’s vision. She blinked twice, the harshness of the light on her eyes rousting her from slumber. She sat up slowly, wincing from the soreness settling over her body from the prior day’s events. For a moment, Sarah thought she had dreamt the entire experience, and looked around her surroundings for a moment, forgetting for a brief few seconds where she was and how she had gotten there—but when she saw David, she remembered everything down to the most minute detail.
David, hunched over the fire, threw another log on and pointed to the bass cooking on top of the flames, where it rested on the fire log, which served as a kind of grill. “We got lucky,” he said with a smile. “Found a bass in the stream. It should fill our stomachs plenty for the next few hours’ trek.”
Sarah, standing and feeling her joints ache, adjusted David’s coat around her shoulders. “Perhaps that’s a sign our luck is turning,” she said.
“Perhaps. Did you sleep well?”
Sarah, having tossed and turned all night and accruing just three hours of sleep in total, shrugged. “More or less,” she said. “Yourself?”
A wry smile formed on David’s face. “More or less,” he answered wryly.
Sarah approached, standing just a few feet shy of David. “Good morning.”
He nodded once. “Good morning.”
Looking around her surroundings, the warm glow of the sun shining over the mountain range off to her left, Sarah said, “What’s the plan today?”
“Well,” David said as he stood up, “I figured we’d eat a quick meal and then continue east toward Clarendon. Like I said before, there are a few towns and a band of local natives that might be friendly to our plight.”
“How far?”
“Four hours, maybe five. We don’t have to worry too much about the local wildlife during daylight hours. Most of them are sleeping, at the moment.”
Sarah looked at the rifle resting near David. She had seen plenty of men toting around their fair share of firearms in her life, but she had never seen one fired up close. She had managed to stay at a safe distance from the sort of lot that engaged in gunfights, only having heard two shots fired from a half-mile distance or more her entire life.
“I see you looking at the rifle,” David said.
Sarah nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Guns intimidate me. I can’t say I’m too fond of them.”
“I understand your concerns. I don’t much relish them myself. But they’re a necessary tool in this day and age, at least for those responsible enough to wield them.”
“Are you … good with that weapon?”
David grabbed the rifle and looked it over. “Yes,” he said, “I can confidently say that I am.” He looked up at Sarah, holding up his hand. “Don’t worry, Sarah. I’ll only use it if absolutely necessary.”
Sarah walked over to David and sat down next to him, feeling a shiver travel up her spine as she examined the polished wood and metal trimmings on the rifle. “I don’t relish saying it,” she began, “but after yesterday’s events, I’m glad that we have that with us.”
David looked away. “Was that your first time?”
Sarah tilted her head. “My first time with what?”
David looked her square in the eyes. “Seeing someone killed.”
Her heart raced as her thoughts dwelled on the fallen members of their stagecoach party. “Yes,” she said solemnly. “I’m afraid that it was. I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of it, though, having been in the war, and all.”
Shaking his head and laying down the rifle, David said, “I have, but it’s not something you ever become accustomed to.”
“I always wondered how men who fought in the war coped with such things.”
“Some did better than others. There are plenty of men in this world who actually enjoy taking another person’s life, it seems.”
Images of the bandit who had nearly taken their lives consumed Sarah’s thoughts. She started to tremble, seeing the man’s face clearly as the sunrise in the distance. I’ll never forget that man, she thought. Never. “That bandit,” she said, “was certainty one of them.”
David drew a breath—slow, methodical. “Yes,” he said, “without question.” He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking as to who he may be. There are quite a few outlaws that have made a name for themselves in these parts.”
“No name comes to mind?”
“No,” David said, “but once we get to Clarendon, I’m sure that we’ll discover who he is. It may well be a lawless time in some regards, but as the years go by, men like him are slowly being taken care of, so to speak.”
The idea of crossing paths with said bandit plagued Sarah, her mind coming up with all types of hypothetical scenarios of herself and David running into him during their voyage. “Do you think that we’ll see him again?”
David took a beat. “No,” he said, “I don’t think that we will.”
Sarah sensed that David was not being entirely truthful—but she appreciated his attempts to remedy her concerns nonetheless.
David, checking the state of the bass cooking on the fire, gestured to it and said, “I think we’re nearly finished.”
Sarah inched closer to the fish to take a better look. She saw that David was only cooking it on one side, and said to him, “You should turn it over.”
David looked at Sarah. “Turn it over?”
“Yes. You’ll want to cook it a little more evenly on both sides.” She pointed to the stick David was using as a tong. “May I?”
“Of course,” David said as he shuffled a little to his right.
David laughed. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always been a lackluster cook. I suppose that stems from my mother always being the one who prepared our meals—my father’s and mine, I mean.”
“There’s not much to it,” Sarah said. “It’s quite foolproof.”
“I’m sure you’re being modest. There’s plenty I could learn. I think I’ve just been so accustomed to eating beans and vegetables out of a can that I never bothered to learn the finer points of cooking.”
Smiling, Sarah gestured to the rifle next to David. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, “you teach me how to shoot, I’ll teach you the basic elements of cooking.”
“Really?” David said with an air of skepticism in his tone. “You want to learn how to shoot?”
Sarah nodded. “I don’t enjoy saying that, but yes. I think I should know how to do it, just in case something should happen.”
“Okay,” David said as he extended out his hand, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Sarah took David’s hand into her own and shook it—and for a moment, she felt a slight thrill sensation akin to a feather being traced up her spine, as a result. Withdrawing her hand, she said nothing as they waited for the bass to finish cooking and then set about consuming it as the sun started in on its final stages of ascension in the sky.
***
The cold and clear water ran through Sarah’s hands as she washed them in the stream. She was adamant to bathe, even if it meant washing up with nothing more than a bucket and a rag to get the job done. But she knew it wasn’t an option. In a way, being out in the elements with David, with such an experienced man like he was, she felt the need to acclimate to her surroundings in an attempt to try and toughen herself up.
David, donning the jacket Sarah had returned to him, cupped sand between his hands to throw on the fire to put out the last of the flames. “Okay,” he said, “we should get moving.”
“East, you said?”
“Yes, east. Just stay close to me. If you spot anything out of the ordinary, don’t hesitate to say so.”
Sarah nodded. “I will,” she said as she joined David at his side and began the first leg of their journey.
The pair walked for two miles in silence, David scanning the terrain with a watchful eye, the rifle gripped in his hand. Sarah, though she was becoming familiar with the man, sensed that he was walking and composing himself like he did back when he was fighting in the war. Be it the fatigue of their journey, or merely to just start conversation, she asked, “What was it like in the war?”
David looked at Sarah like she had asked him a mathematics equation. “What do you want to know?”
Sarah shrugged. “I only heard a handful of stories from men I knew who fought. Most of them were reticent to say much of anything.”
“Believe me, it’s hard for anyone who took up arms against another to speak on the subject. It brought about an incredible amount of strife.”
“If I am pushing you too hard—”
“No, not at all,” David cut in as he waved her off. “We have plenty of ground to cover, and I consider myself,” he stopped to think, “what is the phrase?”
Sarah furrowed her brow. “An open book?”
“Yes, that’s it—an open book. So, tell me, what do you want to know?”
“I … guess I’m not entirely sure. You said you didn’t fight that long, yes?”
“Yes, only a brief period of time.”
“You said you took a bayonet to your back?” Sarah said.
“Yes,” David replied. “I remember that day quite well.”
Biting her lip from the nerves she was experiencing, Sarah said, “Can I ask what happened?”
David took a moment, his breathing a little shallower as a glossy quality came into his eyes. “The Battle of Poison Spring. It occurred in Arkansas on April 18, 1864. My regiment was led by a man named Major Steele. We were moving from Little Rock in the direction of a place called Shreveport, Louisiana to assist a man by the name of Major Banks, but we were running short on supplies at the time, so my commander sent me and a few others led by Colonel Williams to try and gather more. Not long after we departed, we were attacked by the boys in gray. It was a terrible fight, ghastly. We lost a significant amount of men. Many of them were Black men who were tortured after they were captured. I managed to retreat back to our original location, but on the way back, I was speared by a Confederate soldier. I would have been killed, had it not been for a friend who fought alongside me, Private Asa Barnes. He saved my life and managed to get us back safely to Major Steele’s position. I owe Barnes my life. I still correspond with him, every once in a while.” David pulled up the back of his shirt and showed Sarah a six-inch scar that ran up the lower part of his back. “I got lucky,” he said. “The bayonet managed to miss all of my vital organs, though I still lost a lot of blood. It took about four weeks for me to get back on my feet.”
Sarah’s heart skipped a beat as she examined the wound, equally horrified as she was astounded at David’s resilience. “Heavens,” she said. “That is quite a harrowing tale.”
“I was almost certain I was going to die,” David said. “Perhaps a higher power was looking after me.”
“I would think so. And I’m glad that you made it through in one piece.”
David grinned. “So am I,” he said before nodding ahead. “Come. We can take a short break up ahead. I think I see a stream.”
As Sarah followed after David, a few paces behind him, she wondered for the briefest of moments what she would have said if it were David instead of the deputy asking for her hand in marriage. Do not dwell on that, she thought, blinking herself out of her daydream.
Just keep moving.
Chapter Eleven
David began to worry that the towns and residents in the nearby surroundings were no longer there. He and Sarah and been walking for several hours with no signs of any life other than the two of them. It was hot, the sun overhead bearing down on them, and in turn, they were perspiring freely.
David could tell that Sarah was thirsty. She was fanning herself with one hand and using her other to cover her head from the sun.
“You shouldn’t do that,” David said.
Sarah looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Fan yourself with your hand. It’s actually causing your body temperature to rise slightly.”
Sarah ceased with the fanning and forced a smile. “Good to know,” she said as she took a look around. “How far are we?”
David stopped as they came to the edge of a ravine that looked down some forty-odd feet into a valley. Nothing was in sight, save for brush, trees, and what appeared to be a brook surrounded by greenery about two miles off in the distance. Tarnation, he thought. We’re not going to find any shred of civilization by sundown, and we’re running low on energy.
David sighed. “I might have misjudged a tad.”
“In regard to …?”
“Local life. I was certain we would have crossed paths with someone by now.”
Concern clouded Sarah’s expression. “Should we worry?” she asked.
David shook his head. Don’t frighten her. She is strong, but she still needs as much reassurance as I do. “No,” he said, “not at all. I’m inclined to think that it will be relatively smooth sailing for the duration of our journey.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Come. Let’s head to that brook and take a break for a spell.”
They continued their walk, making their way to the edge of the brook and settling down beside it. David couldn’t help but welcome the reprieve. He was ready for a rest and opportunity to catch his breath as a breeze began to blow softly through the trees. He looked over at Sarah, watching as she closed her eyes, letting the wind filter t
hrough her hair and ripple it like the water in the brook. She is very lovely, he thought. But she is spoken for by someone else.
After a few moments of silence, the clouds overhead began to build into a large grey mound that slowly covered the sun like a curtain on a stage, with a chill setting in and causing Sarah’s arms to develop goose bumps.
“Are you cold?” David inquired.
Sarah nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Even the slightest chill seems to make me so.”
David glanced around, noting bits of dried wood from a fallen tree resting near the edge of the brook. “I’ll start a fire,” he said. “We can afford to rest for a couple of hours.” He stood, moving toward the tree and rubbing his hands in anticipation of starting the fire.