This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AVENGING ANGEL. Copyright © 2022 by Derek Catron. Second edition. Copyright © 2022 by Derek Catron. Minorca Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
SECOND EDITION
She thought watching her husband die would be the worst part. Now she knew better; he’d gotten away easy.
“Take off your bonnet.”
Maria Larsson shook her head. She didn’t trust her voice.
“I said take off your bonnet.”
The man who’d murdered Daniel spoke the words slowly, enunciating each syllable as if only a lack of comprehension delayed her obedience. She breathed through her mouth to keep the stench of him from violating her nostrils and cast her eyes down, afraid to look at his face. His black boots were caked in the red clay he’d tracked into the bed of the wagon. He sat on a trunk packed with her finest linens and the silk gown she’d worn on her wedding day. She felt the weight of him on her heart, each beat strangled a little more until her blood stilled.
The steel blade of his long knife glinted in the light that seeped through the wagon’s canvas cover. He’d been using the point to pick dirt from under his nails, but now he watched her. She knew without looking. She’d been married long enough to know a man’s mind. He shifted his legs while he leered at her, the wooden trunk creaking beneath his weight. His voice came rough and hard, like rock scratching against iron. “I could cut it off, but then you’d have nothing to protect that pretty face from the sun.”
She closed her fingers into fists so he wouldn’t see them shake, her nails digging into her palms until the pain stilled the tremors. She untied the bonnet, pulled it from her hair, and let it fall beside her onto the grass-stuffed mattress. When they were too tired to walk, the children sat on the mattress, which covered boxes and sacks of provisions. The man had asked to see them when he’d led her into the wagon. Now he seemed to have lost interest in the flour, rice, and beans.
“That’s nice. I like yellow hair.” He swallowed. “Now take the ribbon out.”
She did as she was told, feeling his eyes on her as she raised her arms over her head, as if her body were exposed to him through her calico dress.
Bitterly, she recalled that the thought of Indians had terrified her when she and Daniel left Minnesota because of the Dakota War. That had been in 1862, six years ago now. They had made a new home in Illinois, where Danny was born that first year and Astrid the next. They celebrated the end of the Great Rebellion with everyone else and looked forward to better days. Maria thought they were happy. When Daniel had told her his plans to go west, she’d been unable to sleep without recalling tales of scalped settlers during the uprising. Hundreds had been killed by the Sioux, some in ways that not even the brazen newspaper accounts would detail. Daniel had reassured her they would be safe in a large group, and Maria believed him, so long as they traveled with white men. When they departed Council Bluffs, the people in the other wagons seemed kind enough. Most were families like hers looking to homestead in Oregon and California. The others included hard men who’d banded together to reach the goldfields in Montana and soft men looking for work and adventure in the mining camps and cities growing out of the scoured dirt. They were good, God-fearing people, most of them, and Maria had never worried for herself or the children, who took to the two-thousand-mile journey at first like a summer of picnics.
Those days seemed long ago now. Maria sometimes wondered if God had abandoned them. Or maybe they’d abandoned God. For all the misfortune that had befallen them, she wondered if He was deaf to prayers uttered beneath a wagon’s thin canvas cover. The trouble had started when the oxen sickened on the trail west of Ogallala. Daniel had blamed alkaline water from a tainted spring. Even after Daniel had fed bacon grease to the animals to counteract the effects, two of the beasts never recovered. With only a single yoke to pull the wagon, they had to throw out every furnishing they’d packed. Other families offered to carry some items for them, but they were limited in what they could take. Everyone had packed all they could fit into their wagons.
The loss of the oxen had slowed them, and no one could afford to wait. Accounts of travelers who’d arrived too late to cross the mountains before snows set in weighed on everyone. None of the stories ended well. Daniel, always vulnerable to the sin of pride, had urged the others to move on. To assuage their guilt, he vowed to press forward with longer days and no break on the Sabbath. They might meet again at Fort Laramie, where he could buy or trade for more oxen, he’d told them. Yet after the others had departed, Daniel couldn’t push the oxen long or hard enough to make up for the slower pace. Heat cloaked the air, heavy in their lungs and on their weary backs. Daniel had worried the last oxen would break down.
With the sun high overhead, they had stopped for a midday meal and to allow the animals to graze and rest. Daniel had been unyoking the oxen when Danny saw riders approach. He called out in his excitement. At first Maria had welcomed the idea of company; riders might know how much farther it was to the fort. Then she got a look at them. She called back Danny and picked up Astrid and put the children in the wagon while Daniel had gone to meet the newcomers.
The three riders reminded Maria of the miners who had traveled in the train: rough-looking men wearing leather belts with holsters and guns at their waists. Each led a mule packed with goods. The oldest one, the one who did all the talking, had streaks of gray in his beard that reminded Maria of a wolf.
He had ridden directly to Daniel and introduced himself as Lucas Stoddard. The others were his brothers, Cyrus and Sean. Lucas Stoddard’s lips stretched back into a wide smile, speaking with a hearty voice while his pale eyes surveyed their camp until they found Maria and pinned her to the spot.
The men had expressed gratitude when Daniel offered to share a meal. “It’s not much,” he had told them. “We don’t cook a big meal when we stop in the middle of the day, but the animals need the water and time to graze.”
The strangers helped Daniel gather water and see to the oxen. Together the men led the animals to a nearby field. Danny gathered dried buffalo chips, and Maria started a fire to make coffee and warm a pot of oatmeal and a stew of dried apples. She set out hardtack, and since there was company, she fried up some bacon. The sweet smell of the sizzling meat helped put her mind at ease.
The men had returned and washed up at the water barrel tied to the outside of the wagon while Daniel told the brothers of their hardships on the trail. His voice had rung with a cheerful tone when he told her Mr. Stoddard said the brothers would join them as far as Laramie.
The gray-bearded Stoddard, standing at Daniel’s shoulder, doffed his dusty hat to Maria. She smiled uncertainly. “Won’t that slow you down, three men on horseback?”
He offered his broadest smile, but his brows narrowed and his gaze sharpened like a blade. “We’re not in such a hurry that we would strand a family in the wilderness.” He turned to his brothers. “I don’t think we could live with ourselves if we did.”
The pair nodded in eager assent. They were smaller than their brother, thin and hungry looking, the runts in the pack. The youngest—she thought it was Sean—didn’t look old enough for a beard. He had a large Adam’s apple that bobbed in his throat with every swallow. Cyrus sported a wispy blond mustache that reminded her of a caterpillar. Both were too shy to meet her gaze, and she had tried to assure herself it would be good to have more men around to share the labors of the trail. A larger group would be safer, would it not?
With the food ready, Maria had excused herself to fetch the children. Astrid had followed after her brother in gathering more buffalo chips. Maria found them on the opposite side of the wagon, Danny flinging the patties toward his squealing sister. She was about to chide the boy when she sensed a presence at her side and shivered.
It was Sean, his throat practically spasming with unstated agitation.
“You startled me,” she said.
She eased away from his sudden closeness, but he stepped forward, his voice a whisper hot against the bare skin of her neck. “Better leave them to their play, ma’am.”
Confused, she followed his gaze back toward the campfire where Mr. Stoddard had filled a plate with food. He offered it to Daniel, who initially objected before acceding to the newcomer’s insistence. Her husband looked her way and smiled while raising the plate a fraction to acknowledge their guest’s manners, as if to reassure her that all would be well. Maria had wanted to return the expression, but something in Sean’s manner left her throat tight and lips pursed.
With the plate in Daniel’s hands, Mr. Stoddard reached down as if to wipe his hands on his trousers. Sean gripped Maria’s arm when she stepped toward them. The strength in his thin-boned fingers surprised her. She turned to the younger man, noting only in the corner of her eye how Mr. Stoddard’s right hand came up with a pistol. She blinked, confused to see him hold the gun to Daniel’s head. It happened so fast her brain hardly had time to note the strangeness of the gesture before she shuddered at the pop that echoed across the clearing like a single handclap. A puff of smoke rose from the barrel of Mr. Stoddard’s gun, which he returned to the holster on his belt in a movement so smooth he somehow managed to take the plate from Daniel’s hand before her husband, open-mouthed with surprise, slumped to his knees and collapsed to the ground.
With the plate in hand, Mr. Stoddard turned to Cyrus. “No sense wasting a meal he won’t enjoy.”
The words hadn’t completely registered in Maria’s mind. No sensible thought could, for she hadn’t believed the images her eyes had captured, a blurry daguerreotype displaying a scene that could come only from a fevered nightmare: her husband’s body—corpse?—lying in the red dirt beside the campfire.
“Daniel!”
*****
Maria had lost track of time after going to Daniel. She hadn’t believed what she’d seen until she held him, his lifeless eyes staring at her with an emptiness that hollowed her, his blood on the hand she raised before her face confirming what she had witnessed. She covered his body with hers, rocking on her haunches as if she might shake him awake. Death had conveyed a great weight to him, as if he were no more animate than a stone. She disbelieved life could so quickly be extinguished—even a fire left a vestige of heat or smoke—but her doubts fell away with tears shed to no effect. She looked to the heavens. A high level of flat, ruffled clouds had moved in, blanketing the sky like a flouncy quilt and obscuring the sun. Were God’s eyes so easily veiled to the treachery of man? How could He have allowed this to happen?
The men had left her to mourning as they tore through the camp, taking whatever they wanted. Thoughts of her children brought Maria back. Her mind had become so untethered from the moment she didn’t know if the children had heard her screams or the gunshot that had killed their father. She stood to look for them, unsteady on her feet, forgetting Daniel’s blood on her hands as she smoothed the folds of her dress, leaving smears across her waist and hips. She heard their squeals coming from the other side of the wagon and realized they must still be at play gathering buffalo chips. Her world had irretrievably altered, yet it was as if no time had passed at all.
With her attention diverted, Cyrus had dragged Daniel’s body into the nearby brush. Clumps of moist red mud where Daniel’s blood had soaked the hard ground were all that remained of him. She had turned from the sight and stumbled. Mr. Stoddard had caught her elbow and guided her to the wagon. Her legs functioned, but she had no awareness of their movement. “Will you allow me to bury him?”
“You can do whatever you want after we leave.”
He had forced her to hand over the key to the strongbox where Daniel kept what little money they had. He hadn’t believed her when she said they had no other valuables and made her show him the inside of the wagon. She had cringed to watch him rifle through the trunk that held her wedding dress, his murdering hands pushing aside the silk folds in search of something he might sell. She might have explained that they’d turned over what few bits of silver they’d owned to others to carry after the oxen died. How at that point flour and rice were more valuable than heirloom cutlery. But she had grown numb, her body cold to the world despite the afternoon heat and the suffocating air beneath the canvas cover.
She had heard Mr. Stoddard promise not to harm the children and to leave them with enough food to survive, but his voice sounded far away. She had nodded absently, her head woozy from heat and grief. Her focus returned only once it became clear Stoddard wasn’t done taking.
*****
Maria untied the ribbon and pulled the pins, allowing her hair to fall about her shoulders. She shivered despite the heat after a loose strand grazed her neck. Stoddard watched, his red, wet mouth like an open wound between the hoary beard.
“No need to be afraid. This is nothing you haven’t done before. Just do what comes natural and no harm will come to you or those little ones.”
He shifted again on the trunk and leaned forward, closing the distance between them. She could smell on his breath cheap tobacco and the brandy she’d kept in her medicine bag. He gestured with the knife. “You won’t be needing that apron.”
She nearly choked on the bile in her throat, her mouth too dry to swallow. Her hands shook as she reached behind her, and the knot she’d tied that morning with steady hands defied her.
“Let me help.”
He hovered over her, his arms reaching so that even though he didn’t touch her she felt smothered by the stench of body odor and dried horse sweat. He took his time in untying the apron strands, his breath hot against her neck. Gripping the apron like a prize, he leaned back, a triumphant expression splitting his beard. White flakes of spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth. She tried to avoid his eyes, but they seemed to hold her in place as he stared, and she flushed through her chest and throat beneath the blue calico dress that buttoned up to her neck.
“Those are a lot of buttons. Do you want to unhook them or shall I?” He turned the knife in his hand, looking eager to test its edge.
She managed to swallow. “Please, just take what you want and go.”
His eyes, pale as river ice, looked her up and down before locking onto hers again. “I mean to do just that.”
Her body tensed as he started toward her. She closed her eyes and held her breath. The knowledge that this man wouldn’t stop taking until she had nothing left crushed whatever hope remained within her, and she cursed God. She felt Stoddard looming over her when a voice from outside the wagon stopped him.
“Lucas. Rider’s coming.”
Atticus Grieve saw the wagon from the trail and rode toward it, hoping he might get a meal he didn’t have to cook himself. The long hours in a saddle over so many days had numbed his legs and ground his backbone to a nub. His arm ached from holding the tether rope on which a pack mule trailed behind the tall palomino stallion he rode. He’d named it Deuce because it was the second golden-skinned horse he’d owned. This one had been through hell and back and was the closest thing to family he had left. Deuce deserved a feedbag and rest even if he didn’t.
On approaching the wagon, he was surprised not to see more behind the first and called out a hesitant greeting. Not many wagons traveled alone. Then again, there weren’t many lone riders on the emigrant trail, either. Riding into a camp could be a tricky thing, and the smaller the camp, the more nervous its occupants might be. Grieve reassured himself there was safety in numbers—provided no one got shot in the introductions.
They were waiting for him when he drew up. Three men who, by the looks of them, had been on the trail as long as he had. A rustle of movement from inside the wagon alerted him to at least one more, but he held his eyes straight. He was the stranger here; better he check his curiosity until everyone felt at ease. His right hand rested on the saddle horn, near enough to the Colt ’60 on his hip if it came to that.
The man in the middle stepped forward. He looked about forty, close to Grieve’s age. He had a head of dark, unruly hair beneath a dusty dome-shaped hat. Gray speckled his wiry beard. A revolver hung butt forward from his belt on the left, as if he were accustomed to drawing while on horseback. Grieve wondered if he could shuck that six-shooter as quickly from the ground. Just in case it mattered.
“A good day to you,” the man said, touching the brim of his hat.
Grieve returned the salute with his left hand. “Evening.”
“What can we do for you?”
“It’s getting late. I thought maybe I could share your fire.”
Grieve allowed himself a glance around the camp. Despite the hour, it looked like they’d let a fire burn out. Beyond the wagon, a pair of oxen grazed in a picked-over field at the base of a sandy ridge. Three horses and three mules were picketed nearby to find what they could among the coarse grass and brush. A lot of horses for a single wagon. Their ribs showed through their flanks, and Grieve wondered if the riders had run out of oats for their mounts.
The men didn’t look so well put together themselves. Their clothes were so dirty Grieve figured they hadn’t been washed or changed since they’d come on the trail. The speaker was the biggest of the trio. His hair hung to his shoulders so that the back of his neck never saw the sun. Or a bar of soap. He had a bulbous nose and pale eyes that never wavered from Grieve. The others were thin-boned young men with nervous eyes that alighted everywhere but on Grieve. These three plus whoever’s in the wagon. With the canvas top pulled tight in the back, Grieve couldn’t see inside. Maybe one man, he calculated; the wagon looked light from the way its wheels barely dug into the soft dirt off the trail. His back itched with uncertainty, as if a scattergun were pointed his way.
“I can feed myself,” Grieve said, “even have some to offer if you don’t mind plain fare.”
“That’s awfully kind of you.” Despite the gun on his hip, the big man’s manner was as hearty as a preacher working up to the offering. “Got a name, stranger?”
“Atticus Grieve.”
“Where you from?”
There it was. An innocent question once, now rife with portents. Grieve didn’t doubt his voice would give him away in time, so he saw no sense in lying. With the truth, he at least stood a halfway chance of a friendly reception. His odds might be even better than a coin flip. Maybe the men hadn’t fought in the war. Maybe they asked just to make conversation. Three years had passed. A lot of people had gotten on with their lives. Some hadn’t. Grieve knew that better than anyone.
“Georgia,” Grieve said. “Near Macon.”
The man nodded as if he’d guessed the truth. “I’m Lucas Stoddard. These are my brothers, Cyrus and Sean. We’re from Arkansas.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Grieve waited. The younger men looked toward their brother, who seemed lost in thought. Grieve gestured toward the field where the animals grazed. “Guess I’ll just picket my mule and horse over with the others.”
It could have been a question the way he phrased it, and he waited a beat before Lucas Stoddard nodded again and spoke: “I suppose we’ll need to gather fuel for a fire.”
Grieve took a wide berth around the camp. As he rode past the back of the wagon, still imagining the hidden scattergun, movement drew his eyes. Someone had loosened the ties that held the canvas in place. He couldn’t see into the deep shadows within, just a face looking out, small and pale as a death mask.
*****
Grieve unsaddled his horse and stripped the mule of its packs, piling his supplies under a canvas cover for safekeeping in a thicket of greasewood. He looped a feedbag over Deuce’s ears and took his time brushing down the horse as he mulled his options.
Unsettled by the manner of these men, he contemplated moving on. Strangers raised the potential for a threat, especially so far from the civilizing influences of a town. Yet Grieve had found most emigrants, once they had a measure of a man, were pleased by company, either for the exchange of news or simply to break the monotony of conversation among the same people every day.
By the time Grieve returned to the camp, a woman was working over the fire. He interpreted her presence as a good sign that the brothers felt comfortable with their guest. She was a little thing, almost too clean for the trail. Grieve masked his surprise when Lucas Stoddard introduced her as his wife, Maria. He guessed her to be younger than her husband by nearly a score of years.
Grieve removed his hat. “Ma’am.”
The woman offered a tight-lipped smile in return but held her eyes on the fire, a hot-burning blaze of dried brush and buffalo chips. She wore a high-collared blue dress without an apron. A smear of red clay stained the fabric that stretched across her narrow hips. Her uncovered hair, the color of corn silk, hung loose down her back.
“I’ve brought some things to contribute to our provender,” Grieve said. “I’m afraid it’s not much.”
“All God’s gifts are equal in His eyes,” she said.
“Bacon, especially, I expect.” He smiled, earning another tight-lipped response that did not reach her eyes. A tiny crucifix hung on a thin chain around her neck. A papist. The few Grieve knew usually stayed to themselves. He expected she normally kept the cross tucked beneath her dress, but the chain had gotten caught in the folds of the collar. It glinted in the light from the fire as she leaned over to pour coffee.
He accepted a cup and thanked her. Stoddard already had a tin cup in his hands. His younger brothers were off washing after seeing to their animals. Stoddard asked, “Where you headed, Mr. Grieve?”
“At least as far as Laramie.” Grieve blew on the coffee and sipped. Real beans. He’d never grown accustomed to the blends of roasted rye and other substitutes they’d been forced to drink during the war. He savored the taste. “How about you?”
“We’ll be passing through Laramie on our way to the South Pass. We figure to get us a homestead.”
“Never took up arms against the Union?” The Yankees said the war was over, but their laws continued to punish Confederate veterans, denying them the hundred and sixty acres of government land free to any other citizen.
A grin split Stoddard’s beard. “Not my brothers. They were too young to fight.”
They had returned from washing. Cyrus looked a shade paler with a layer of dust scrubbed from his downy cheeks. Beneath his vest he wore a red flannel shirt with a large tear at the elbow. He stood uncomfortably, shifting his weight from one leg to the other like he had somewhere else to be.
The boyish one, Sean, looked just as uneasy. He had a lean face and an Adam’s apple almost the size of a child’s fist that rose up and down in his throat steady as a heartbeat. Grieve wondered how he managed to breathe through the thing. Both of them looked to their brother as if awaiting instructions. All three men were still heeled. Grieve was glad he’d decided to leave his gun belt on, too.
“Supper’s ready.” Maria stepped back from the fire, leaving room for the men to approach. Grieve’s stomach rumbled at the smell of bacon and potatoes.
Stoddard moved in first. “Let me fix a plate for our guest.”
The rifle shone like gold beneath Montana’s early summer sun.
“So that’s a Winchester. I’ve heard of them but never seen one up close.”
Josey Angel noted a trace of envy in the tone of his neighbor. Stephen Chestnut cradled the gun like a newborn, his rheumy eyes blinking in the light. It was the receiver, made of a bronze and brass alloy, that shone so brightly.
“I see why they call it ‘Yellow Boy.’ It sure is pretty.” Chestnut whistled for emphasis. “Sort of puts my Henry to shame.”
“I’ll hear no disparagement of a Henry.” Josey had carried the Winchester’s antecedent throughout the war and all the way to Virginia City, long enough for him to feel the weapon was as much a part of him as his right arm, though some of the things he had done with that gun still haunted him.
Chestnut handed the rifle back. “It suits you.”
“It’s just a rifle.”
“And I suppose you’re just Josef Angliewicz.”
“That’s my name.”
Chestnut cocked his head, exposing his narrow face beneath a wide-brimmed hat. “No more Josey Angel, eh? I suppose you have changed as much as people say.”
“What do people say?” Josey smiled to soften the edge in his voice. He knew Chestnut meant well, but he felt an old sadness creeping up on him. He’d never appreciated the nickname, or the notoriety that came with it. Some names attracted stories like burrs on a saddle blanket. The stories could be more nettlesome than any thorns, until his life felt appropriated into a legend no longer his to determine.
“Just that you’re different. You’re a wealthy rancher now. A husband. A father.”
“I’m still the same man, aren’t I?” He posed the question to Chestnut, but it was something Josey wondered about as well. People had always taken him for younger than his years. They saw boyish qualities in his slender frame and smooth cheeks that Josey resented as a younger man. Yet now, when he caught sight of his face in the shaving mirror he still only needed every other day, his eyes went to the lines that stretched across his forehead like a plowed field and the deepening creases that bracketed his mouth. In quiet moments alone, his wife traced the branching wrinkles that extended from the corners of his eyes. She called them “becoming,” a word that begged a question he never asked aloud. Becoming what? Josey wasn’t certain he would welcome the answer.
Rather than answer the question, Chestnut looked off, as if wishing his wife, Myrtle, or daughter, Sarah, might arrive and prompt a new course of conversation. The Chestnuts had been one of the families Josey helped guide to Montana on a wagon train from Omaha. Beset by road agents and Indians, the journey had been hard on all of them but none more so than the Chestnuts. Burton, their fourteen-year-old son, had been killed after he grabbed a loaded rifle in haste and accidentally set it off. They’d had to cover the body so his mother wouldn’t see what the minié ball had done to her son’s face. Two years later, Josey still felt protective of the emigrants, especially Chestnut. A small-boned man with a wispy reddish-brown mustache and pallor better suited to indoor work, he’d been a banker before the war and decided to head west when it became clear the carpetbaggers would take all the profitable work around his Atlanta home. Josey had tried to persuade him to return to that occupation in Virginia City or Bozeman, but Chestnut was determined to start fresh. He’d taken up ranching sheep on the grassy foothills between the towns, not far from Josey’s place.
With the women still inside, cleaning up after lunch, no reinforcements were in sight, leaving Chestnut to explain himself. “I guess I mean you don’t go looking for trouble anymore.”
“I never went looking for trouble.”
“Plenty always found you, though.”
Can’t argue with that. Even after Josey had led the emigrants across the Bozeman Trail, surviving the start of what settlers now called Red Cloud’s War, trouble had found Josey. He’d returned to Fort Phil Kearny, the main source of the conflict in what was about to be recognized as the new Wyoming Territory, on a promise to Colonel Marlowe Long. The Colonel had been his commanding officer during the war and a second father to him afterwards. He’d been wounded and remained behind at the fort while Josey and the settlers pressed on to Virginia City. Josey returned to fetch him but then, laid up with his own wounds, wasn’t there when Red Cloud’s warriors ambushed eighty-one men outside the fort, killing every last one—including the Colonel, who’d been carrying Josey’s Henry rifle when he died. Newspapers back east published lurid accounts of the massacre, undermining support for defending the Bozeman Trail, and compelling the army to negotiate terms with Red Cloud. Josey’s involvement had ended even earlier. Before she would marry him, Annabelle Rutledge exacted a pledge from Josey to end his fighting days. She had no wish to raise their child as a widow. Josey said the vows, and he had not killed a man since.
He now saw Chestnut’s point; he wasn’t the same man. The Colonel had labeled Josey’s ability to stay cool when other men grew fevered in a fight as a gift. In those moments, Josey felt more alive than at almost any other time. Light shone brighter. Sounds grew sharper. Time telescoped itself in a way that left him aware of everything happening around him all at once. In the madness of battle, Josey felt he hovered over the chaos, like a hawk floating on the wind.
Then the moment passed, and Josey’s “gift” exacted its cost. He recalled walking among the dead after a battle. They were spread in monotonous lines and clusters so that they were no longer individuals but a collective, the way pine trunks blend into a single tree line or cornflowers appear as a smear of blue in a field. But the dead are the opposite of those things, which please the eye and soothe the soul. The dead are ugly as nothing else. Faces made pasty and bloated. Misshapen limbs no longer recognizable as human parts. Josey hated them, these lifeless carcasses stripped of the myth of immortality that a boy will clasp to until the lie of it is thrust in his face. He can hold his nose and numb his mind to the dead in the moment, but their ugliness leaves a mark, a stain that spreads with every attempt to wipe it away. Long after he has forgotten the peace of the forest and the scent of the bloom, he will awake with the stink of the dead on him and know that it is his inexorable end he smells.
Josey had come to terms with the war by viewing it as a culling, something every generation endured until it lost its taste for butchery. Just as bees die off after summer’s flowers wilt, Josey had expected his time would come when his usefulness to the world ended. On surviving the slaughter, he had struggled to live among people again. He turned to drink. Put himself in circumstances where death seemed certain. He would have gone to meet Saint Peter half a dozen different times if it hadn’t been for the Colonel and Lord Byron, the freed slave who took up with them following the march through Georgia. The two of them had looked out for Josey until he had been willing—or able—to look out for himself again.
Annabelle was the cause of that—she and the rest of the settlers he’d led across never-ending plains and waterless badlands. They’d extended their hands in friendship to Josey, and they’d rallied to his and Annabelle’s aid when they were most in need. In caring for others, Josey had found the humanity he’d surrendered during the war. Now when he woke in the middle of the night, it was just as likely in response to his baby’s cries as to the old nightmares. The responsibility of marriage and fatherhood left him with new worries, but they were fears that reinforced his humanity rather than diminished it.
The baby had been born before the end of May the previous year. Isabelle Mary they named her. Mother and baby couldn’t have been healthier, leaving Josey feeling as useful as a saddle on a pig and anxious over the need to provide for this growing family. Even before Isabelle came into the world, he had sent Lord Byron and their top hand, Willis Daggett, off to Texas to hire a couple of dozen drovers. Josey met them there as soon as he could after Isabelle’s birth, and together they herded some three thousand head back to Montana.
Josey wasn’t the first to make that sort of cattle drive. His new neighbor Nelson Story had done it a year earlier. Josey had met the man when he drove his cattle past Fort Phil Kearny on the way to Montana. It had been in Josey’s head ever since to match the accomplishment. On his return to Montana, Josey found the butchers in Virginia City and the surrounding mining camps were so desperate for good beef that they paid ten times what it had cost him to buy the cattle in Texas. Josey and Byron kept what they couldn’t sell on the joint property they called Angel Falls to raise their own herds on the lush valley grassland.
At twenty-eight years, Josey was a wealthy man. The home he was building for Annabelle would be the biggest ranch house in Montana, constructed of stone two stories high with a veranda that wrapped around the house so she could sit in the shade with their child no matter the time of day. Josey had once promised the Colonel a seat on that porch, but he understood now the old man wouldn’t have been happy sitting idle and waiting for his time to run out. God, I miss him.
Guilt at challenging Chestnut’s assessment of his character moved Josey to generosity. He swallowed his discomfort and held out the rifle. “Do you want to shoot it?”
Chestnut’s face lit up like an oil lamp with an untrimmed wick. “May I?”
Still careful of the gun, he shot just once. If Chestnut had meant to hit anything, he didn’t announce it, so Josey couldn’t judge his aim. “The recoil’s just like the Henry,” Chestnut said.
“Told you.” Neither repeater packed the punch of the single-shot rifles hunters used to kill buffalo. But Josey could fire off fifteen rounds in ten seconds or less with the lever-action Winchester. He found he rarely needed more power when he hit what he aimed at. “Keep your Henry clean, and you’ve got no reason to buy a new rifle.”
Chestnut handed over the Winchester, and Josey slipped a new cartridge into the loading gate. Chestnut shook his head. “Afraid you’re going to run out of shots?”
“You know I never like to leave a gun less than fully loaded.”
“The war’s over, Josey. When’s the last time you needed to shoot every round before reloading?”
A lopsided grin signaled that Chestnut was teasing him, but Josey’s sense of humor had never extended to martial matters. “I don’t concern myself with the last time,” he said. “I look to the next time.”
Josey gathered his gray Indian pony and waited for Chestnut to mount the old mare that was a few hands too big for the man. The Chestnuts lived in a large, well-chinked cabin near a bend in a stream. Josey had been there to lend a hand the day they built it, along with nearly every man who’d journeyed west in their wagon train. Chestnut had plans to build a frame house like the one he’d had back in the States after the next spring shearing—if his fortunes improved. He’d been losing sheep lately and feared wolves. With Annabelle and the baby in town visiting family, Josey had come to help. He looked forward to testing his rifle on a dangerous predator.
They rode into the hills and out of sight of the cabin. Josey listened for the rush of water from the stream near a line of trees that marked one border to Chestnut’s property. He loped over toward the far side of the property, drawing up when he saw a row of thin wooden posts leaning crookedly against the horizon. He waited for Chestnut to catch up. “That supposed to be a fence?”
“It’s new since the last time you were here,” Chestnut said, still a little breathless from the ride. “My neighbor, Remy Bouchard, put it up after he moved in.”
“He did a poor job of it.” Josey’s sharp eyes followed the line. “Where are the rails?”
“They’re made of wire, Josey.”
Josey trotted his gray pony to the fence so he could inspect the taut wires with thorn-like hooks that stretched between the posts. Following his gaze, Chestnut said, “They keep the animals from rubbing up against the fence and knocking it over.”
Josey rode along the fence line, wondering if it would hold cattle. Chestnut caught up. “The wire fence is an idea Bouchard brought from France.”
Josey grunted. In a lot of ways, he was still a shave tail when it came to ranching. Better with a rifle than a lariat, he still had much to learn. “A lot cheaper than wood rails, I expect.”
They followed the fence until Josey saw something that made him doubt the day would deliver a wolf pelt. He pulled his rifle from the saddle scabbard, levered in a cartridge, and kicked his heels into Gray’s flanks.
A trio of men were gathered on the opposite side of the fence. Two were mounted. The third worked at loose wires in the fence with tools, while a half dozen sheep grazed behind them. The men looked when Josey pulled up and asked, “Problems with the fence?”
“Nothing we can’t handle.” One of the mounted men, the oldest of the three, had answered. He wore a dark hat and a gray mustache as thick as a horse brush. He introduced himself as McCord, Bouchard’s foreman.
Josey forgot the other men’s names as soon as he heard them. He replied with his and Chestnut’s proper names. “Mr. Chestnut’s been losing some sheep. He feared wolves.”
“Wolves are a menace,” McCord said. The man at the fence had stopped working and watched.
“I’m not so sure,” Josey said. “Before you finish mending that fence, do you mind if Mr. Chestnut comes over and checks the notches on those animals’ ears? Wouldn’t want for you to get any of his sheep by mistake.”
“We’ve made no mistake,” McCord said. He stared at Josey, the lines at the corners of his eyes creasing with concentration.
Josey heard the thrum of the wire in the wind that blew steady off the hills. A scattering of clouds passed overhead, casting long shadows across the ground. A black-breasted magpie, perched on a nearby post, sang out, the notes of its song echoing across the undulating field.
“Maybe we should go.” Josey had nearly forgotten Chestnut. “I don’t think those are my sheep, Josey.”
“Josey?” The man at the fence looked up. “You be Josey Angel?”
McCord chuckled. “Relax, Jack. Haven’t you heard? Now that he’s gotten married and settled, Josey Angel’s no longer a shootist.”
Josey’s gaze passed over the men. The other rider held the reins in his hand, but Josey felt certain he wore a holster on the hip hidden from his view. The man who’d been working the fence had taken off his thick work gloves but still held the wire cutters in his right hand. McCord sat motionless but for a twitch to the brush at his lip.
The wood rifle stock felt warm in Josey’s hands, like a living thing. Recalling his vow to Annabelle, he heard her voice in his head, reassuring him there had to be a reasonable way to work this out. He said, “Killing men was bad for my soul.”
The man at the fence smiled, as if he’d heard a jape. McCord’s brush twitched again. “So why carry that fancy rifle? There are better weapons for hunting wolves.”
“I prefer a repeater,” Josey said, raising the Winchester as if to admire its gleam, though his eyes never left the men facing him. “You never know when you might go out after a lone wolf and find a pack.”
McCord said, “Faced with a pack, I’d rather have the speed of a revolver. Care for a demonstration?” His hand fell to the butt of his holstered gun as the other rider pivoted on his mount, and the third man dropped the wire cutters.
Before the tool even hit the ground, Josey fired. Levered. Fired. Levered. Fired.
In an instant, the man at the fence screamed and hopped on one foot. The second rider tumbled to the ground after his horse reared with a squeal and ran off. McCord’s eyes cast up toward the hole in the brim of his hat.
Josey cocked his head, allowing a pair of ejected cartridge shells to slide off his hat brim where they’d landed. He levered in a new shot. “I’ve got another twelve if you’d like more of a demonstration.”
To Chestnut he said, “Pick up those cutters and get through the fence. I believe we’ll find Mr. McCord is mistaken about the sheep.”
Chestnut had already dismounted. After snipping a gap in the fence, he said, “Guess you’ve never seen a real shootist work a repeating rifle.”
The sheep, unfazed by the gunfire, continued grazing while Chestnut confirmed the notches in their ears were his mark. He waved them through the opening with his hat.
Bouchard’s men had roused from their stupor. McCord held his reins high, so Josey could see his hands. The man who’d fallen rose on quivering legs. “I think he shot my horse,” he said. The third man clutched at the bullet hole in his boot. “I thought you didn’t shoot people no more.”
“I said killing was bad for my soul.” Josey waited while Chestnut remounted. “I’ll shoot anyone who’s got it coming.”
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