4
The next morning found Matt up bright
and early, overseeing the work on the corral. There was still
plenty of wood left over from the barn, and he had two men
splitting it into usable sizes for posts and rough boards. Right at
the moment, he was more concerned with getting the thing built than
what it would look like.
His men didn’t much agree with him, but
they were smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves. They
just went about their work with a distinct lack of
enthusiasm.
Matt was still too het up to notice,
though. He just kept pacing from man to man to man, hardly
speaking, just staring at the ground and, every once in a while,
glancing up at the work.
Blast that Jason Fury, anyway! He’d
thought he could rustle up some men in town, at least; some
volunteers, to help him find who was thieving him blind. Those cows
weren’t just cows, blast it! They were purebreds—well, mostly pure
half-bloods—that his father had brought all the way out here. Well,
until he fell down the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere,
while they were on their way out.
And that was Jason’s fault, too! In
fact, to Matt’s mind, there wasn’t a single thing wrong with the
world that wasn’t Jason’s fault! If the Lord kept a report card on
Jason, he’d bet it was chockablock with F’s.
And those F’s didn’t stand for “Fury,”
either.
His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten
any breakfast, and it was almost lunchtime. He hadn’t had much luck
nosing around the kitchen last night, either. Meg had made a batch
of ginger cookies, but they were so dried out that they were nearly
impossible to eat. And the thing was, he knew that when she’d made
them fresh, they’d been puffy and chewy and altogether wonderful.
But he’d forgotten about them, just like he’d forgotten to pick up
any groceries while he was in town.
Well, who could blame him? Again, he
laid the fault at Jason’s feet.
“Curly!” he snarled.
Curly trotted up to him, hammer in
hand. “Yeah, boss?”
“Tell the bunkhouse cook to fix an
extra lunch plate, and have somebody bring it up to the house to
me.”
Curly looked at him curiously, but all
he said was, “Yessir.”
“And have the boys light a fire under
it. I want this thing finished and the cattle all brought in before
I lose any more of ’em.”
“Yessir,” came the reply.
Matt turned his back and marched up
toward the house, his stomach gurgling and thirst parching his
throat. He hoped Cookie would get the lead out and slap him
together some lunch, pronto. But first, he needed some
whiskey.
A lot of whiskey.
Damn that Jason Fury,
anyway!
Riley had started the train out early.
At least, what was left of it. He just hoped that Fury had a couple
of usable canvas covers that his two topless families could buy
cheap, which wasn’t always the case with these little upstart
towns.
He had one of his “shank’s mare”
members driving the late Darren and Martha Banyon’s rig, battered
and tattered though it was. The other wagon tipped by the wind
hadn’t been mangled as badly, thank God, but the Banyons’ looked
like it had been to hell and back, then run through a
wringer.
Several of the fellows had shored up
the rear axle, broken in the terrible clash of wind and desert, and
done their best to patch up the broken wheel, but they were just
temporary fixes. As it was, the wagon just lurched along. He hoped
that Fury had somebody who knew his way around a Conestoga, too. He
may have lost the Banyons, but he’d by God get their belongings
back to their folks!
He was staking a lot on Fury, he
realized. He prayed that the fellow he’d run across in that bar
back on the coast had been right, and that Fury was “a nice,
friendly, little town.”
He heard somebody riding up behind him,
and turned to look.
It was Sampson Davis, the big, burly
fellow who’d joined the train at the last minute and gone missing
during the storm. At first, he’d been happy to have the extra
man—and muscle—and glad for the money he paid. But then, something
about Davis began to bother him. He couldn’t put his finger on it,
but something just didn’t smell right. He’d told himself he was
full of hooey, and that there wasn’t anything wrong—nobody could
really be as evil as he felt Sampson Davis was—but with each
passing day, the feeling grew stronger.
Sampson reined his bay in next to
Riley, and began to pace him. “How long till we hit Fury?” he
asked. No salutation, no greeting of any kind, just that question.
It was delivered with the usual scowl, of course.
Riley let out a disgusted huff, then
said, “Before nightfall, I reckon.” He was going to add,
What’s your hurry?, and more to the point,
Where were you last night?, but Davis had
reined his horse around and was galloping back to the train before
Riley had a chance to open his mouth again.
“Prick,” he muttered before he spat
down into the brush, and then turned his attention back to the
rugged landscape that lay ahead of him.
Despite any evidence to the contrary,
Wash Keogh was still searching for the vein of gold that had spat
out the turkey egg–sized nugget that was wearing a hole in his
pocket. He wouldn’t leave it back in camp, no sir! Who knew who
might just come along and accidentally “find” it? Nope, he was
keeping it on his person, even though it felt as if it was adding
ten pounds to every stride he took.
Hell, he
thought. It probably is.
He sat down for a minute, to catch his
breath and grab a drink from his canteen. He’d gone through his
whiskey supply already: finished it off the day he found the gold
rock. But he figured he was entitled to it. When a man found
something like that, he had best get himself good and
drunk!
He took a slug of water, swished it
around in his mouth, then swallowed. He was almost out. He supposed
he’d have to go back up into town to replenish his supply, and
mentally flogged himself for not catching some of the rainwater. He
could have done it. There was some canvas to trap it
in.
But the canvas had gone unused, and now
he was running low. He figured that maybe he could stay put for the
rest of the day and part of tomorrow. There were plenty of barrel
cactus between him and town, and he could always raid a couple of
those if he got desperate. Of course, he’d have to be pretty damned
desperate to do that. Water from a barrel cactus tasted like, well,
like water from a barrel cactus. Unconsciously, he made a
face.
He stared at his canteen for a long
minute before he lifted it to his lips once more and took another
drink. And then he stoppered it and slung it back over his
shoulder, standing up slowly.
“All right, gold. You’d best quit
hidin’ from me. This here’s Wash Keogh, and I means it!” he
half-shouted at the desert, before he took a deep breath and
started off again, his diligent eyes to the ground.
In his office, Jason was struggling
with a letter to the U.S. Marshal’s office up in
Prescott.
He still didn’t know what to do with
Rafe Lynch, who was still in town, and whose presence he thought
the Territorial Marshal should be aware of. At least, he’d want to
know if he were the Territorial Marshal.
He wrote that down, then reread it,
balled the paper in his hands, and pitched it into the wastebasket.
It joined roughly twenty other crumpled pieces of paper, his whole
afternoon’s work. Every letter he had started to write had turned
into what sounded to him like begging. Or worse, whining. He didn’t
think that was a very professional way to contact the marshal’s
office, but he couldn’t keep the fear out of his
writing.
He had just taken a new piece of paper
and written the salutation, when the office door banged open and
Ward burst in. Startled, Jason looked up.
“They’re comin’ in!” Ward said, and his
excitement was plain.
“Who’s comin’ in?”
“It’s a whole new wagon train, with
goods to sell and folks wantin’ to buy stuff!”
Ward was right to be excited. A wagon
train always brought good news to Fury, in the form of new settlers
and fresh trade. Jason smiled for the first time that afternoon.
The day wasn’t a total loss, after all.
Ward leaned across the desk and jerked
Jason’s sleeve. “C’mon! They’re pullin’ up now, and you gotta make
a whatchacallit. An official presence or somethin’.”
Jason put his pen down and stood up.
Whatever would take him away from this blasted letter was something
to celebrate, he supposed.
They walked up the street, then down to
the south gate, which Ward had already opened. Sure enough, wagons
were pulling into place and lining up outside, all down the south
wall. The people in the front, who had already set their brakes and
climbed down from their seats, were coming forward to glad-hand
him. The first among them was the wagon master, who introduced
himself as Riley Havens.
Jason made a quick assessment as they
shook hands. Havens was sandy haired and tanned, and about thirty
or so, he guessed. He had brown eyes and a tan line across his
forehead (which Jason glimpsed when Havens doffed his hat to a
passing lady), the latter of which denoted a fellow who worked
outside in the sun for a living. He took a quick liking to the man,
who said, “Pleased to meet y’all. You fellas, you just call me
Riley, okay?”
“All right, Riley,” Jason replied. “I’m
Jason, and welcome to Fury. Lookin’ for anythin’ special, or are
you folks just glad for a place to camp near what we laughingly
call ‘civilization’?”
Riley laughed. He said, “Both, I
reckon. We’re in need of canvas. That big storm the other day
yanked the tops clean off’a couple a wagons. Reckon they’re in the
Pacific by now. And we’re in need of a wheelwright and an axle man,
if you got one.”
Jason rubbed at his chin before he
said, “Reckon we used up most of the canvas already, but there
might be a couple of wagon covers tucked away someplace. And as for
your wheel and axle man, we’ve got one who’d be happy for the
business.”
Ward, beside him, nodded happily.
“Yessir, we sure do! Jason, you want I should ride out to the
Morton place and get Milton Griggs?”
“Tomorrow morning’ll be soon enough,
Ward,” Jason said. Behind him, in the stockade, he could hear the
town waking from its siesta, rattling its shutters and dusting off
the welcome mats. “In the meantime, Riley, y’all c’mon in and grab
yourself a drink. Water, whiskey, beer, whatever you
want!”
He was about to take his leave of Riley
and go back to face the letter, when a big, burly man, stepped up.
“You the sheriff?” he asked in a bark.
“Yeah,” said Jason. “What of it?” He
noticed that Riley had taken a step back.
“I’m lookin’ for somebody. Rafe Lynch
is his name. The sonofabitch in town?”
Jason didn’t like the looks of him, and
stalled a little. “Might I ask who’s wantin’ to know?”
“I’m Sampson Davis, and I’m here to
kill the rat bastard.”
Even down the street, walking back
toward the safety of the office, Jason and Ward spoke in guarded
tones. It was one thing to have a killer in town, but another
entirely to have two of them!
“Look, that Sampson guy, he’s sayin’
right out that he’s gonna kill Lynch, but Lynch ain’t done a dang
thing wrong here in Fury,” Ward was saying.
“And if he kills him in Fury, he’ll
hang for murder, just like anybody else would.”
“Take a mighty stout rope to hang a
big, muscled-up fella like that, Jason,” Ward mused.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Ward,” Jason
said, and opened the door to his office. They both stepped inside,
and ran smack into Rafe Lynch.
Jason had been wanting to talk to him,
but he would rather have been the one to pick the time and place.
He had only glimpsed Lynch in person, and seen his poster, and now
he decided that the poster hadn’t done him justice. No wonder Jenny
was so taken with him.
He said, “Lynch. What brings you to
Fury in general, and my office in particular?”
Beside him, he heard Ward utter a low
gasp and felt him take a discreet step to the side, then halt, rock
solid as usual. It was good to know Ward had his back.
Lynch said, “Guess you already know my
name. And I know yours, too. You’re Marshal Jason Fury, brother to
the charming Miss Jenny Fury, and son of the late, lamented
Jedediah Fury.” He stuck out his hand and Jason reluctantly took
it.
“And you’re Ward Wanamaker,” Lynch went
on, “unless I miss my guess. Have I?”
Next, Ward took his hand and gave it a
half-hearted shake. “I’m Wanamaker, all right,” he said, a little
stiffly.
“You’ll pardon my deputy,” Jason said
when Lynch arched a brow. “Like me, he’s just wonderin’ what a
fella wanted in California for killin’ eight men is doin’ here in
Fury.”
One corner of Lynch’s mouth crooked up.
“Well, you boys ain’t nothin’ if not direct.” He turned around and
pulled out the chair opposite Jason’s desk. “You mind if I set
myself down? I got a feelin’ this is gonna be a long
palaver.”
Jason said, “Help yourself,” moved
around to his chair on the other side of the desk, and wished he’d
finished that damned letter and sent it out yesterday. At least the
wastebasket didn’t look disturbed. Lynch hadn’t been snooping,
which left Jason feeling oddly relieved.
Ward moved across the room and took a
seat in front of the cells, where he could keep an eye on Lynch’s
gun hand.
Jason crossed his arms on the desktop
and leaned forward. “So, why Fury? How come we’re blessed—or
damned—with your presence?”
Lynch gave him that crooked-up smile
again. “Because you’re close enough to California that I can make
it in a day’s ride, and because rumor has it that you run a
friendly little town. Am I right?”
Jason tipped his head, then nodded. “So
far,” he said.
And Lynch laughed! Still cackling, he
said, “I like you, Fury! You got a by-God sense of
humor!”
But Jason didn’t return Lynch’s smile.
He said, “I mean, how long are you plannin’ to stick around? You
waitin’ for somebody or what?”
“Tryin’ to tell you,” replied Lynch,
still holding that amused expression. “I’m not meetin’ anybody, or
makin’ plans for anything, and there ain’t nobody here I wanna
hurt. All I want is safe harbor, like those sailor boys say. I
promise to mind my P’s and Q’s while I’m in town. Hell, while I’m
in the whole territory!”
Despite himself, Jason was warming to
Lynch as he spoke. He could see why Lynch would want—and need—a
safe place. And he didn’t seem like such a bad fellow. Of course,
he’d killed all those men. That mattered. That counted against him
in the most serious way!
Jason said, “And what about all those
men you killed? They probably could’a used a ‘safe harbor’
somewhere, too.”
“I ain’t gonna go into it now, but
there’s a good reason attached to each one’a those
killin’s.”
Behind him, over by the cells, Ward let
out a loud “Hmmph.” Both Jason and Lynch ignored it, each for his
own reasons.
Lynch stood up, startling Jason, who
rose, too. Lynch said, “Well, I just wanted to check in and let you
know I ain’t lookin’ for any trouble. I’m stayin’ across the street
at the saloon, in case you wanna get hold of me. I liked it at Miss
Abigail’s, but there ain’t much of anybody in there to get up a
decent poker game with.” He paused. “The gals who drop by are a bit
on the tender side, too,” he added, with a wink to
Jason.
“I imagine they are,” he replied,
without expression. He was glad, though, that Lynch had taken up
residence at the other end of town, in the saloon. And he also
hoped that Lynch kept true to his word, and stayed out of
trouble.
They’d taken a few steps toward the
door before Jason remembered, and stopped. “Wait,” he said,
grabbing Lynch’s arm. “There’s a fellow in town. Just rode in with
the wagon train, and he’s lookin’ for you. Says his name is Sampson
Davis, and that he’s gonna—”
Lynch’s grin widened. “Gonna kill
me?”
When Jason nodded, Lynch added, “I knew
he was gonna catch up with me sooner or later. Just sorry it had to
be here. You tell him I was in town?”
Ward said, “Already seemed to know.
Nasty sort of fella.”
“Yup,” said Lynch. “That’s Davis. Well,
I’ll be on the watch for him. Thanks, fellers.”
He tipped his hat and walked out. Jason
watched through the window as he looked up the street, toward
Abigail’s, then down it toward the saloon. Finally, he set off for
the saloon, walking at a casual clip.
Beside Jason, Ward said, “He’s sure
somethin’.”
Warily nodding, Jason said, “Yeah. He
surely is.”
Finally satisfied with the content and
phrasing of his letter to the U.S. Marshal (which included the fact
that Fury had not one, but two gunslingers in town), Jason sealed
the envelope. “I’m leavin’!” he called to Ward, and exited using
the front door.
Up the street he went toward Solomon’s
store, after checking to make sure the end of the street with the
saloon was quiet. Everything was calm, aside from the burble of
trading coming from outside the gates. He momentarily wondered if
Jenny had been out to buy anything edible, and if there’d be a
treat for supper. It didn’t last long, though. He put his hand on
the latch to Solomon’s mercantile and went in, accompanied by the
jingling little bells attached to the door.
“Solomon?” he called when he saw no
one. “Hey, Sol, are you around? It’s Jason!”
He heard some rustling from upstairs,
then Solomon’s voice. “Hold on to your skivvies. I’m coming,
already!” Then footsteps on the staircase.
Solomon himself came around the corner
with a wide smile on his face. “Jason!” he said. “What can I do for
you on this fine day?”
Jason grinned back at him. At least he
wasn’t holding a grudge about the earlier lockup. He reached into
his pocket and pulled out the letter, then into another and pulled
out some change. “Got a letter to go out,” he said, sliding the
envelope across the counter.
Solomon looked at it. “To Prescott?” he
said. “Be thirty-five cents. Sorry it’s so much, but there’s hardly
anything else goin’ out, and Grady won’t take his confounded horse
out of the stable for less than a dollar.”
Grady was the young man who ferried the
mail to Prescott and back.
“Well, you tell Grady that there’s
another dollar in it for him if he gets that letter to Prescott in
less than two days, all right?” Jason counted out the
money.
“You’re paying?”
Jason laughed. “I’m
paying.”
Solomon nodded. “I’ll tell him. And by
the way, did I tell you? Rachael and I, we have a
houseguest!”
“I’d hardly call your new daughter a
house guest, Sol!”
“No, no.” Solomon laughed. “A real
houseguest and a Jew to boot. He turned up this afternoon looking
for something kosher to eat, and we asked him to stay. Rachael,
she’s not up to cooking yet, but I made him the best and biggest
kosher meal he’d had in a long time. We’re celebrating Sarah’s
birth, you know,” he added, as if to excuse the
excess.
Jason grinned at him. He knew that
Solomon had been longing for some Jewish company, and he hoped this
fellow would stay. He’d certainly perked Sol up, that was for
sure!
He said, “Congratulations again,
Solomon! Glad you finally have somebody Jewish to talk to. Well,
you know what I mean. And you’ve already named the
baby?”
“Yes, we have and I certainly do! And
thank you, Jason, my friend.”
Jason nodded and grinned.
“She is quiet and calm, and he is a
little on the quiet side at first, too. But I think he’ll
eventually open up and be hearty company!”
“I’m sure he will.” Jason pushed the
change for the letter across the counter, tipped his hat, and said,
“We’ll be seeing you, Solomon! I’d best get home and see if Jenny
remembered to fix me some supper.”
As he turned, Solomon called after him,
“If she didn’t, you come back here. We have some fine kosher
brisket left over, if I say so myself!”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jason
replied, turning slightly back to face him, then opening the door.
“See you!”
He had walked halfway home before he
realized he’d forgotten to ask Solomon what his guest’s name
was.
Oh, well.
It’d wait till tomorrow.
When he walked in the front door, the
first thing Jenny asked about was the Cohens’ baby, and Jason
dutifully reported. He also reported that they had a houseguest,
but couldn’t give any more information on the subject.
Jenny had been up to the wagon train,
as had Megan, judging by Jenny’s pretty new hair bow and Megan’s
new shoes. He said, “They let out school early today?”
Jenny grinned. “Yeah. Miss Electa
Morton let everybody go at two-thirty—”
“—and I closed up the bank at
three—”
“—so we went together!” Jenny
finished.
“There’s still a lot we didn’t see,”
Megan began.
“So we’re going back in the morning!”
Jenny finished.
Jason clapped his hands over his ears.
“You two don’t stop doin’ that, you’re gonna drive me to the
asylum!”
Jenny just laughed and slid a plate of
beefsteak in front of him. Megan sat across from him, chin planted
primly on the backs of her hands, while she grinned.
“Very funny, the both of you,” Jason
said before he sliced into his steak. It was cooked perfectly: pink
and juicy on the inside, slightly charred on the outside. It seemed
like everybody else in town liked their beef cooked to the
consistency of shoe leather, but not him.
Home was the only place where he could
get a steak cooked right!
Ezra had camped early again that night,
satisfied that nobody was trailing him.
He’d already settled in his horse, and
cooked and eaten his own supper—roasted jackrabbit, fresh biscuits,
and canned peaches—and was presently engaged in nothing but
watching the stars. He’d once ridden for a while with a man who
said the old-time Greeks or Romans or somebody had made up pictures
by drawing imaginary lines from star to star, but Ezra never saw
the sense of it. How the hell did a bunch of dots of light in the
sky look like a horse with wings or a dragon or a pretty woman,
anyway?
Still, he liked looking at them.
Sometimes, they seemed like the only constant thing in his
life.