Crane battled the big stud, sawing on the bit, and finally swung its head around. He leaped out of the saddle and led the horse deeper into the canyon, stumbling, tripping, cursing in the darkness.
The wind was from the northwest and if he rode into the open it would attack him venomously with all its unhindered power. His only hope was that the arroyo, as it cut deeper into the mountain slope, would offer some kind of shelter.
In that he was fortunate, as though the wind had blown away the cheerless light of an unlucky dark star.
The arroyo walls rose in height as they carved into the mountain, but the wind still slapped and pummeled Crane, hissing like a snake, resentful of his presence.
And the scared buckskin was a handful.
Rearing, trying to turn back, it took all of the marshal’s strength to pull it farther into the canyon. Its mane flying, eyes showing white arcs of fright, the big stud fought the bit, steel-shod hooves thudding time after time into the dirt with the sound of muffled drums.
Crane tried to cuss at the horse, but the wind instantly snatched his breath away, leaving him speechless. A hunk of pine branch slammed into the marshal’s hat brim, then scored down his face, drawing blood. A moment later a tumbling night insect hit his cheekbone, crunching against his skin like a dry leaf.
Battling his horse, Crane struggled deeper into the arroyo, wondering when it would eventually come to an end. He spared a glance at the sky.
The black clouds were being torn apart by the wind and tossed aside in shreds, like an impatient bride-groom rending the undergarment of his beloved.
A blinking moon appeared and its light touched the canyon with a silver sheen, showing Crane the way.
Ahead of him stood a solid wall of rock, but the arroyo made a dogleg to the left and the marshal followed it. Gradually the walls grew closer, barely allowing room for the buckskin to pass. But after twenty yards the coulee abruptly widened again, opening up into a small clearing treed with stunted juniper that grew among scattered boulders.
The area, about an acre in extent, was sheltered by high rock walls and the deranged wind wailed in impotent rage and took out its anger on the mountain, uprooting trees and dislodging loose tumulus that bounced and clattered down the slopes.
Crane listened into the night and heard a small sound of running water.
A search brought him to a cleft in the rock where a thin stream fell from somewhere higher up the wall. Here the floor of the clearing was limestone rock and over the course of years the water had gouged out a shallow tank that held several gallons.
To the marshal’s joy, part of the wall close to the stream was undercut deeply. From sandy floor to the rock roof was only about four feet, but that was room enough for a fire and for him to stretch out in his blankets.
Coarse bunchgrass and wildflowers grew among the boulders, enough for the buckskin, who already had two-dollars worth of oats in him. Now out of the worst of the wind, the horse was much calmer and began to graze.
Dry wood aplenty had fallen into the clearing from the trees on the mountainside and Crane soon had a fire going in the cut. He put on the coffeepot to boil and sliced bacon into the small skillet he’d bought in Rawhide Flat.
Soon the delicious aroma of coffee and the frying bacon filled the clearing. Crane stepped away from the fire and built himself a smoke. It was a strange but pleasant experience to stand in comparative stillness and hear the wind roar over his head like a passing freight train.
A few rags of cloud scudded across the sky and the moon was beaming as though its face had been burnished by the breeze.
Crane turned over his sputtering bacon and when it was done, he set it aside and fried two thick slices of sourdough in the grease. Contentedly, he poured coffee, then braced his back against the wall of the undercut. He brought the smoking sandwich to his mouth—then closed it again with a snap.
A voice, a woman’s voice, was calling to him out of the darkness.
Chapter 12
Irritated, the marshal carefully laid his sandwich on top of his coffee cup and rose to his feet.
There it was again, a small, thin female voice calling from somewhere in the arroyo.
Had Garcia laid a trap for him and baited it with a woman?
Crane pulled his Colt and warily retraced his steps through the arroyo, walking through opalescent moonlight and the raging wind. He heard the voice again, ahead of him.
“Is anyone there?”
The voice was small and the words fluttered like dove wings in the tempest, but Crane heard them clearly enough.
Moving on cat feet, the marshal kept close to a wall of the arroyo where shadows angled. His thumb was on the hammer of his gun. He was ready, his eyes probing the roaring dark.
What the hell was that? An unmoving gleam of white at the mouth of the canyon!
Crane felt an old superstitious dread rise in him. He’d learned such fear young, from the cowboys he’d trailed with, surely the most superstitious of all men. Their talk of ghosts had chilled him to the bone at many a campfire.
“Who’s there?” Crane called out. “And don’t make any fancy moves while you’re talking. From here I can drill ya square in the brisket.”
“Don’t shoot me, Mister.” There was a pause, then, “I’m hungry.” And another, then, “An’ I’m awfully scared.”
“Walk toward me,” the marshal said, his voice harsh.
A girl emerged from the gloom. Not even a girl, Crane saw, more a child, no more than thirteen years old. She wore a sleeveless shift that ended just above her bony knees and her eyes were huge and dark in a pale face. Her small feet were bare.
“What in . . .” The marshal’s words couldn’t keep up with his thoughts. He waited a moment and tried again. “What in God’s name are you doing out there by yourself, child?”
“I’m hungry, Mister. And frightened.” She looked around her, blond hair tossing in the wind. “It’s a terrible storm.”
Crane stepped closer, still holding his Colt. The nipples of the girl’s tiny breasts budded against the thin material of her shift and he thought he saw her shiver, but whether from cold or fear or both, he didn’t know.
He stretched out a hand and the girl flinched away from him, her face showing sudden fear.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. He placed his hand on the girl’s upper arm and it was icy to the touch. “You’re cold,” he said.
“And hungry.”
“Well, I guess you better come with me.”
The girl hesitated. She was so frail, the wind was bullying her, pushing and shoving, teasing her mercilessly.
“You’ve got a star on your chest,” she said.
“I’m a lawman. Deputy United States Marshal Augustus Crane.” For a moment he thought he saw a gleam of recognition in the child’s eyes, as though she had heard his name before.
But the moment passed and she said, “My ma, when she was alive, said lawmen were safe when you were in trouble.”
“Safer than most, I reckon.”
He smiled, amused by the absurdity of talking to a frightened little girl in the middle of a dark, far-reaching wilderness where humans were few and the only thing that moved was the wind.
“I’ll go with you,” the girl said. “I’m scared.”
“I know. You’ve said that before.”
“Well, I am.” A little flash of fire.
“And hungry.”
“That too. Maybe most of all.”
“Bacon an’ bread set all right you with you?”
“It’s better than I’m used to. I’ve never tasted bacon.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sarah.” She offered no other.
Crane gave a little bow and extended a hand toward the rear of the arroyo. “Well, Miss Sarah, shall we dine?”
Crane draped one of Masterson’s blankets over the girl’s shoulders and seated her beside the guttering fire. He handed her his sandwich and coffee, then gloomily sliced mo
re bacon into the pan as he watched her eat his supper. Sarah was famished and the bacon and bread disappeared quickly.
She sipped the coffee and made a face. “I don’t like that.”
“You don’t like coffee? Who doesn’t like coffee?”
“I don’t. I like cold buttermilk.”
“Sarah, you must have led a sheltered life.” Crane grinned. He saw hurt in the girl’s eyes, then said quickly, “Hey, I was only funnin’.”
“It’s all right. Really it is.”
Crane built his sandwich, his stomach growling in happy anticipation. The girl was looking at it hungrily and he stopped the sandwich halfway to his mouth.
“Surely you can’t still be hungry,” he said.
“I’ve had nothing to eat since yesterday morning, and then it was only corn mush.”
The marshal looked at his sandwich, the smoky bacon still sizzling between the bread, then at the girl’s thin face. He sighed and handed it to her. “Eat,” he said. Then, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, “It will do you good.”
Crane watched Sarah eat, then resignedly began to slice bacon into the pan again.
“Want to tell me how you got here?”
Crane poured himself coffee, watching the girl’s face. Firelight played on Sarah’s pale skin, lending her a rosy glow that made her look even younger.
“Of course, if you don’t want to tell me, then that’s up to you.”
“I ran away.”
“From where?”
“A man called Reuben Stark. Him and the others.” She pushed blowing hair from her eyes, her hands fluttering like white moths.
“You know where Stark is?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Who are the others?”
“The people he will save from the avenging angel.”
“The Archangel Michael?”
“Yes, him. He will destroy the Comstock, all the mines and the miners and all the towns and cities. No one will be spared but those who bear the mark.”
“What mark?”
The girl lifted her right arm. A crude X had been branded into the underside of the arm where it would not show. “This mark.” She made a face. “Oowee, it hurt at the time, but it doesn’t now.”
“Why did you run away, Sarah? I mean, yesterday and not before?”
The girl rested her chin on her knees. Her voice grew smaller even as her thin body seemed to shrink. “Mr. Stark wanted to take me as wife. He already has three wives in camp but he told me he needed to bed a younger woman and I was perfect. He said, ‘Lass, you’re a scrawny one, but the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat.’ ”
Sarah shuddered. “I don’t know what he meant by that, but when he told me tonight”—she pointed downward—“this night, would be our wedding night, I ran away. I didn’t want to be the wife of a smelly old man. And he’s cruel. Once I saw him whip one of his wives because she put too much salt in his stew. He ripped off all her clothes and whipped her until she bled, right there in front of the whole camp.”
Crane let that go, but he felt a chill of revulsion he knew would be cured only when he put a bullet in Reuben Stark. He said, “Where are your parents?”
“They’re both dead from the cholera. I was an orphan and a farm family took me in. They made me work and beat me and”—she pulled out the thin material of her shift—“and never bought me any pretty clothes. And they never fed me much, said rich food would make me even more lazy and impudent.”
Recalling his sandwiches, Crane was about to say, “You sure made up for it tonight,” but the girl didn’t need any more hurting, so he said, “The sodbusters who took you in, are they with Stark?”
“Sodbusters?”
“Farmers. Are they with Stark?”
“Yes, since maybe two months ago.” She managed a wan smile. “There are a lot of . . . sodbusters . . . in camp.”
“Where, Sarah? Where is the camp?”
The girl turned and pointed behind her. “That way, a place Mr. Stark calls Sunrise Pass. It’s a canyon that cuts straight through the mountains.”
Crane remembered seeing the canyon and now he wished he’d stayed longer and scouted the place. Stark and his sons were probably there since the old man was eagerly anticipating his honeymoon. Only the wind had stopped him searching for Sarah.
Crane suddenly felt uneasy. Suppose there had been no wind? Stark could have smelled his fire and attacked the canyon in force. He looked out at the clearing where the junipers were wildly tossing their heads. The wind that had driven him into the arroyo in the first place could also have saved his life.
Sarah was looking at Crane intently. “You seem worried. . . .” She smiled at him. “What do I call you? Marshal?”
“Augu—Call me Gus.”
“Gus. That’s a nice name, got a ring to it.”
“What do I do with you, Sarah?”
The girl poked a stick further into the fire, her head bent. “I’m not going back there, Gus. I’d rather wander the wilderness and get killed by wild Indians or eaten by hungry wolves.”
“There are no wild Indians, at least not any longer, though I reckon there are a few wolves.”
“Then I’ll just have to take my chances, won’t I?”
Crane built a smoke and lit it with a brand from the fire. “I’ll take you back to Rawhide Flat with me. Maybe we can find you a home.”
“I want to stay with you, Gus. You’re a lawman and safe.”
“That’s not possible. A marshal travels a lot. When my work here in Rawhide Flat is done, I’ll be moving on.”
Sarah opened her mouth to say something, but Crane stopped her. “When the wind drops, Stark will be out looking for you, and he won’t come alone. We’ll ride out at first light.”
“I don’t have a horse.”
“My buckskin can carry us both.”
Sarah stared into the darkness. “What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“Your buckskin.”
Crane shrugged. “He doesn’t have a name. I just call him horse.”
“Can I call him Buck?”
“Call him anything you like. He don’t care.”
“Buck . . . Buck . . . here boy,” Sarah whispered into the clearing.
The horse did not appear.
Crane threw the butt of his cigarette into the fire. “We’d better get some sleep. We’ve got an early start.”
He spread the blankets, lay down and turned his back on the girl. She snuggled against him, her head on his shoulders. “You feel like a big, cuddly bear,” she whispered.
“You ever sleep with a bear?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know I feel like a bear?”
“I just do.”
The girl’s thin arm went around the marshal’s waist and a few moments later he heard her soft breathing as she dropped off to sleep with the ease of the young.
Crane smiled.
All at once it felt nice to be a bear.
Chapter 13
The night felt wrong.
Startled awake, Crane opened his eyes to darkness, the fire a circle of dull red embers. He rose, stepped over Sarah’s sleeping form and walked into the clearing.
The wind had dropped to a whisper, the trees were still and a foreboding silence twined around him like snakes.
He slid the Henry from the boot and walked into the arroyo. The moon watched him, its bland face revealing nothing, and to the south a star hung in the purple sky like a distant lantern.
Heavy, lacking the fine balance of a Winchester, the Henry felt awkward in his hands. It was a weapon he had never favored, though there were a few men of his acquaintance who swore by the rifle and used it well.
But, alone in the night, sensing the menace of something unseen crouching in the darkness like a predatory animal, he took great comfort in the Henry, for all its faults.
Crane reached the mouth of the arroyo, then slipped into the shadows, his eyes scanning the gloom. Fo
r the moment the moon was hidden, but as soon as the cloud slid past, the brush flats were bathed in fragile, crystalline light.
A horseman sat his mount a hundred yards away, his face a pale oval in the silvered gloom.
At that distance, Crane could make out only the shape of a tall man on a tall horse standing like a tower of darkness. Perhaps the rider was dressed all in black or it was just a trick of the light.
“Friend or foe?” Crane yelled.
At once he realized how ludicrous that sounded, like a scared picket during the War Between the States.
He tried to make amends.
“I got me a Henry rifle here and I ain’t sitting on my gun hand.”
The mysterious rider made no answer.
The old campfire talk of ghosts and phantoms prickled at Crane’s insides and he touched a tongue to suddenly dry lips. His fingers opened and closed on the rifle. If it came right down to it, he’d shoot first and make his talk afterward.
Suddenly Sarah was at his side.
“What are you doing here, girl?” he said snappishly. “Go back to sleep.”
“Who can sleep with all the shouting going on?” she said. “What’s out there?”
Crane nodded into the darkness. “Him.”
Sarah took a step forward, her eyes searching. “Who is he?”
“Damned if I know. But if he don’t speak up soon I’m going to shoot him right off that big hoss.”
As though he’d heard, the rider kneed his mount and rode twenty yards closer before he drew rein.
Sarah’s fingers dug into Crane’s arm and he felt her tremble. “Get behind me,” he said. “If our friend there starts shooting, you’ll be an easy target in that white shift.”
The girl did as she was told and the marshal watched the rider. As far as he could tell the man’s hands were empty, though that didn’t mean he couldn’t reach for a gun in a hurry.
Watching intently for any sign of fancy moves, Crane moved the butt of the rifle closer to his shoulder and waited.
“What’s he doing?” Sarah whispered.
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