Built on dreams. Forged in blood.
Defended with
bullets. The town called Fury is home to the bravest
pioneers to ever stake a claim in the harsh,
unforgiving land of Arizona Territory.
In William W. Johnstone and J. A.
Johnstone’s
blockbuster series, the settlers take in a
mysterious stranger with deadly secrets—
and deadlier enemies . . .
Turn the page for an exciting preview
of
A Town Called Fury: Redemption
Coming in July 2011
Wherever Pinnacle Books are
sold
PROLOGUE
29 October, 1928
Mr. J. Carlton Blander, Editor
Livermore and Beedle Publishing
New York, New York
Dear
Carlton,
Thank you so much for
pointing me toward this Fury story! I know you didn’t mean for me
to get a “wild hare” (or is that “wild hair”?) and just go charging
out to Arizona at the drop of your not-inconsequential hat, but
that’s exactly what I did. The story runs deeper than you could
have known—or the sketchy reference books say, for that matter—and
I found a number of the participants still alive and kicking, and
best of all, talking!
As you know, the story
actually begins long before the events you provided me to spin into
literary fodder. They begin in 1866, when famed wagon master
Jedediah Fury was hired by a small troupe of travelers to lead them
West, from Kansas City to California. Jedediah was accompanied on
this mission by his twenty-year-old son, Jason, and his
fifteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, they being the last of his living
family after the Civil War. Jedediah was no newcomer to leading
pilgrims West. He’d been traveling those paths since after the War
of 1812.
I have not been able to
ascertain the names of all the folks who were in the train, but
what records I could scrounge up (along with the memories of those
still living) have provided me with the following partial roster:
the “Reverend” Louis Milcher, his wife (Lavinia) and seven
children, ages five through fifteen; Hamish MacDonald, widower,
with two half-grown children—a boy and a girl, Matthew and Megan,
roughly the ages of Jedediah’s children; Salmon and Cordelia
Kendall, with two children (Sammy, Jr. and Peony, called Piney);
Randall and Miranda Nordstrom, no children (went back East or on to
California—there is some contention about this—in 1867); Ezekiel
and Eliza Morton, single daughter Electa, twenty-seven (to be the
schoolmarm) and elder daughter Europa Morton Greggs, married to
Milton Griggs, blacksmith and wheelwright (no children); Zachary
and Suzannah Morton (no children), Zachary being Ezekiel’s elder
brother; a do-it-yourself doctor, Michael Morelli, wife Olympia,
and their two young children (Constantine and Helen); Saul and
Rachael Cohen and their three young sons. There were a few other
families, but they were not listed and no one could recall their
names, most likely because they later went back East or traveled
farther West.
The train (which also
contained livestock in the forms of a number of saddle horses and
breeding stock, a greater deal of cattle, goats, and hogs—mostly
that of Hamish MacDonald and the Morton families—and, of all
things, a piano owned by the Milchers) left for the West in the
spring of 1866. It was led by Fury, with the help of his three
trusty hirelings. I could only dig up one of the names here: a Ward
Wanamaker, who later became the town’s deputy until his murder
several years later (which follows herein).
Most of the wagon train
members survived Indian attacks (Jedediah Fury was himself killed
by Comanche, I believe, about halfway West, several children died,
and Hamish MacDonald died when his wagon tumbled down a
mountainside, after he took a trail he was advised not to attempt),
visiting wild settlements where now stand real towns, and
withstanding highly inclement weather. About three-fifths of the
way across Arizona, they decided to stop and put down
stakes.
The place they chose
was fortunate, because it was right next to the only water for
forty or fifty miles, both west and east, and it was close enough
to the southernmost tip of the Bradshaws to make the getting of
timber relatively easy. There was good grazing to be had, and the
Morton clan made good use of it. Their homestead still survives to
this day as a working ranch, as do the large homes they built for
themselves. Young Seth Todd, the last of the Mortons (and Electa’s
grandson) owns and runs it.
South of the town was
where Hamish MacDonald’s son, Matthew, set up his cattle operation,
which had been his late father’s dream. He also bred fine Morgan
horses, the only such breeder in the then territory of Arizona. His
sister, Megan, ran the bank both before and after she married, she
having the head for figures that Matthew never
possessed.
For the first few
years, everyone else lived inside the town walls, whose
fortress-like perimeter proved daunting to both Indians and white
scofflaws, and the town itself became a regular stopover for wagon
trains heading both east and west.
But I’m getting ahead
of myself. What concerns us here is the spring of 1871, the year
that gunfighter Ezra Welk went to meet his maker. Former marshal
Jason Fury (now a tall but spare man in his eighties, with all his
own teeth and most all of his hair, and, certainly, all of his
mental capacities) was very much surprised that I was there, asking
questions about something “so inconsequential” as the demise of
Ezra Welk.
“ Inconsequential?!” I
said, as surprised by his use of the word as its use in this
context.
“You heard me, boy,” he
snapped. “Salmon Kendall was a better newsman than you, clear back
fifty or sixty years!”
I again explained that
I was a writer of books and films, not a
newspaperman.
This seemed to “settle
his hash” somewhat, however, it was then that I changed my mind
about the writing of this book. I had planned to pen it pretending
to be Marshal Fury himself, using the first-person narrative you
had asked for. However, in light of Marshal Fury’s attitude (and
also, there being other witnesses still living), I decided to write
it in third person.
And so, as they say, on
with the show!
CHAPTER 1
The black, biting wind was so strong
and so fierce that Jason feared there was no more skin left on his
upper face—the only part not covered by his hat or
bandana.
His nostrils were clogged with dust and
snot, despite the precautionary bandana, and his throat was growing
thick with dust and grit. Whoever had decided to call these things
dust storms had never been in one, he knew that for certain. Oh,
they might start out with dust, but as they grew, they picked up
everything, from pebbles to grit to bits of plants and sticks. He’d
been told they could rip whole branches from trees and arms off
cacti, and add them into the whirling, filthy mess, blasting small
buildings and leaving nothing behind but splinters.
He hadn’t believed it
then.
He did now.
He could barely see a foot in front of
him, and just moving was dangerous—his britches had turned into
sandpaper, and his shirt was no better.
At last he reached his office—or at
least, he thought it was—and put his shoulder into the door. He
hadn’t needed to. The wind took it, slamming both the door and
Jason against the wall with a resounding thud that must have
startled folks as far away as two doors up and down, even over the
storm’s howling, unending roar.
It took him over five minutes to will
both his body and the door into cooperating, but he finally got it
closed. Slouching against it, he went into a coughing jag that he
thought would never quit. He would rather have been cursing up a
storm than coughing one up, but when it finally stopped, a good,
long drink from the water bucket put the world right-side up. Well,
mostly. He still couldn’t breathe through his nose, but a good,
long honk—well, six or seven—on his bandana put that right
again.
With the wind still howling like a
banshee outside and flinging everything not tied down against his
shutters and door, he thanked God for one thing: the storm was, at
least, keeping everyone inside, which included Rafe Lynch—wanted
for eight killings in California, across the river—and currently
ensconced at Abigail Krimp’s bar and whorehouse, up the
street.
He didn’t know much about Lynch, other
than that he was clean in Fury, and for that matter in the whole of
Arizona, and Jason was therefore constrained by law to keep his
paws off Lynch, and his lead to himself. Actually, he felt
relieved. He didn’t feel up to tangling with someone of Lynch’s
reported ilk. Still, he was worried. What if Lynch tried to stir up
some trouble? And what if he or Ward couldn’t handle it? Ward was a
good deputy, but he wouldn’t want to put him up against Lynch in a
card game, let alone a shoot-out.
He sighed raggedly, although he
couldn’t hear himself. Outside the jailhouse walls, the storm
pounded harder and harsher. Dust seeped in everywhere : around the
door and the windows, even up through the plank floor. Jason knew
damn well that the floor only had a two-inch—or less—clearance
above the dirt underneath, and this occurrence left him
puzzled.
He’d managed to make his rounds,
although a bit early. It was only three in the afternoon, despite
the dust and crud-blackened sky. Everyone was inside, boarded up
against the wind and wrapped in blankets against the storm’s
detritus and the sudden chill that had accompanied it.
Couldn’t they have just gotten a nice
rain? Jason shook his head, and two twigs and a long cactus thorn
fell to the desk. He snorted. He must look a sight. At least,
that’s what his sister Jenny would have said, had she been there to
see him. But she was nestled up over at King’s Boarding House with
her best friend Megan MacDonald, or she was at home, madly trying
to sweep up the dust and grit that wouldn’t stop
coming.
His thoughts again returned to Rafe
Lynch. It gnawed on him that Lynch was even in town. In his town,
damn it! Well, not actually his. The settlers had christened it
Fury after his father, Jedediah Fury, a legendary wagon master who
had been killed on the trail coming out from Kansas City. He
supposed the place’s name was attractive to scofflaws, but they
seemed drawn to the tiny, peaceful town in the Arizona Territory
out of all proportion. Why couldn’t they ride on over to Mendacity
or Rage or Suicide or Hanged Dog or Ravaged Nuns?
He shivered. Now, there was a town he
didn’t want anything to do with!
His sand-gritted eyes were weary and so
was he. He glanced up at the wall clock again. 3:30. No way that
Ward was going to make it down here on time, if he came at all. It
wouldn’t hurt him to get a little shuteye, he figured, and so he
put his head down on his dusty arms, which were folded on the
desk.
Despite the battering storm outside, he
was asleep in five minutes.
Roughly twenty-five miles to the west
of Fury, a small train of Conestoga wagons fought their way through
the dust storm. Riley Havens, the wagon master, had seen it coming:
the sky growing darker to the east, the wind coming up, the way the
livestock skittered on the ends of their tie ropes, and the
occasional dust devils that swirled their way across the expanses
on either side of them.
But now the edge of the darkness was
upon them, and if Riley was correct, they were in for one
whip-tail-monster of a dust storm. He reined in his horse and held
up his hand, signaling for the wagons to halt.
Almost immediately, Ferris Bond, his
ramrod for the journey, rode up on him and shouted, “What the devil
is that thing, Riley? Looks like we’re ridin’ direct into the mouth
a’ hell!”
“We are,” Riley replied grimly. “Get
the wagons circled in. Tight.”
“What about Sampson Davis? He rode off
south ’bout an hour ago.”
Riley didn’t think twice. “Screw him,”
he said, and turned to help get the settlers, with their wagons and
livestock, in a circle.
Down southeast of town, the storm
wasn’t as much sand and grit as twigs and branches, and Wash Keogh,
who’d been working the same chunk of land for the past few years,
was huddled in a shallow cave, along with his horse and all his
worldly possessions. Well, the ones that the wind hadn’t already
taken, that was.
But despite the storm, Wash was a
wildly happy man, because he held in his hand a hunk of gold the
size of a turkey egg. It wasn’t pure—there was quartz veining—but
it sure enough weighed a ton and he was pretty sure that pay dirt
was just upstream—up the dry creek bed, that was—a little ways. If
this damned wind would just stop blowing, well, hell! He might just
turn out to be the richest man in the whole Territory!
That thought sure put a smile on his
weathered old face, but he ended up spitting out a mouthful of mud.
The grit leaked in no matter how many bandanas he tied over his
raggedy old face.
Well, he could smile later. The main
thing now was just to last out the storm.
Like him, his horse waited out the wind
with his back to it and his head down. Smart critters, horses. He
should have paid more attention when the gelding started acting
prancy and agitated. But how could a man have paid attention to
anything else when that big ol’ doorstop of gold was sitting right
there in his hand. He’d bet he would have missed out on the second
coming if it had happened right there in front of him! And, blast
it, he didn’t figure Jesus would be mad at him, either! ’Course,
he’d probably “suggest” that 10 percent of it go to the Reverend
Milcher or some other Bible thumper.
Fat chance of that!
He hunkered down against the howl of
the storm to wait it out.
But he was happy.
Back inside the stockaded walls of
Fury—walls that had used up every tree lining the creek for five
miles in either direction and used up most of the wagons, too—the
wind was still whistling and whining through the cracks between the
timbers. Solomon Cohen, who had been known as Saul until he changed
it back to Solomon during a crisis of faith several months back,
was huddled in the mercantile with Rachael, his wife, and the boys:
David, Jacob, and Abraham. The back room of the mercantile was
fairly tight, and so they had planted themselves there for the
duration.
Solomon’s crisis had come after a long
time, a long time with no other Jews in town, no one else who spoke
Yiddish or understood Hebrew, no one with an ancestry in common
with himself or Rachael. Oh, there was she, of course, but it
wasn’t like having another Jewish man around to share things with,
to complain with, to laugh with, and to spend the Sabbath with. How
he wished for a rabbi!
And now Rachael was with child once
again. He feared that they would lose this one, as they had the
last two, and each night his prayers were filled with the unborn
child, wishing it to be well and prosper. He didn’t care whether
God would give him a boy or a girl, he just heartily prayed that
Jehovah would give him a child who breathed, who would grow up
straight and tall, and who would be a good Jew.
Still, he wished for another Jewish
presence in Fury. A man, a woman . . . a family at best! His
children had no prospects of marriage in this town filled with
goyim.
If they were to marry, they would
likely have to go away to California, to one of the big cities,
like San Francisco. It was a prospect he dreaded, and he knew
Rachael did, too. They had talked of it many times. They had even
spoken of it long before the children’s births, when they first met
in New York City and Solomon spoke of his dreams of the West and
the fortunes that could be made if a man was smart and handy and
careful with his money.
It had taken him over ten years (plus
his marriage to Rachael and three babies, all sons) to talk her
into it, but at last she relented. Although he always remembered
that she had cautioned that they didn’t know if the West held any
other Jews that their children could marry—or even, for that
matter, would want to!
As always, she had been right, his
Rachael.
He looked at her, resting fitfully on
the old daybed they kept down here, her belly so swollen with child
that she looked as if she might pop at any second, and he felt
again a pang of love for her, for the baby. She was so beautiful,
his wife. He was lucky to have her, blessed that she’d had
him.
The wind hadn’t yet shown any signs of
lessening, and so he slouched down farther in his rocker and
carefully stuck his legs out between David and Abraham, who were
sound asleep on the floor. Glancing over at Jacob to make sure he
was all right, too, Solomon said yet another silent prayer, then
closed his eyes.
He was asleep in less than five
minutes.
The Reverend Milcher angrily paced the
center aisle between the rows of pews. Not that they had ever
needed them. Not that they’d ever been filled. Not that anybody in
town appeared to give a good damn.
Even though he hadn’t spoken aloud, he
stopped immediately and clapped his hand over his mouth. From a
front pew, Lavinia, his long-suffering wife, looked up from her
dusty knitting and stared at him. “Did you have an impure thought,
Louis?” she asked him.
“Yes, dear,” he replied after wiping
more sand from his mouth. “I thought a sinful word.”
“I hope you apologized to the
Lord.”
“Yes, dear. I did.”
He began to pace again. They were
running out of food, and he needed to fill the church with folks
who would donate to hear the word of the Lord. That, or bring a
chicken. He had tried and tried, but nothing he did seemed to bring
in the people he needed to keep his church running. And now, this
infernal dust storm! Was the Lord trying to punish him? What could
he have possibly done to bring down the Lord’s wrath upon not only
himself, but the town and everything and everyone around
it?
Again, he stopped stock still, but this
time his hand went to the side of his head instead of his mouth.
That was it! The dust storm! Oh, the Lord had sent him a sign as
sure as anything!
“Louis?”
“What?” he replied,
distracted.
“You stopped walking
again.”
He pulled himself up straight. “I have
had a revelation, Lavinia.” Before she could ask about it, he
added, “I need some time to think it through. Good night, dear.”
Soberly, he went to the side of the altar, opened the door, and
started up the stairs.
Lavinia stood up and began to smack the
dust out of the garment she’d been knitting, banging it over and
over against the back of a church pew. She kept on whacking at it
as if she were beating back Fury, beating back her marriage and
this awful storm, beating back all the bad things in her
life.
At last, she wearily stilled her hand
and started upstairs.
When Jason woke, he still found himself
alone, surrounded by unfettered wind whipping at the walls. And it
was, according to the clock, 10:45. And there was no Ward in
evidence.
He let out a long sigh, unfortunately
accompanied by a long sandy drizzle of snot, which he quickly wiped
on his shirtsleeve. Well, he should have expected it. He gave
himself credit in foretelling that Ward wouldn’t brave the storm in
order to come down to the office, though. Jason just hoped he’d
found himself a nice, secure place to hole up in.
Jason reminded himself to hike up to
the mercantile and see if they had any calking. That was, when the
storm let up. If it ever did. He was going to make this place
airtight if it killed him.
There was still dust coming in around
the windows and the front door, and right up through the floor. He
didn’t want to see what was happening around the back door, but he
knew it’d be bad. It wasn’t nearly as tight as the front
one.
Just then, a loud bang issued from the
back room, and he shot to his feet, accompanied by the soft clatter
of thousands of grains of sand falling from his body and hitting
the floor.
Whispering, “Dammit!” he went to the
door to the back room and threw it wide. He had expected to be met
by the full force of the storm and the outer door hanging off its
hinges, but instead he found Ward, struggling to close the back
door.
He fought back the urge to laugh, and
instead helped Ward. The two men succeeded in closing and latching
the door, and Ward leaned his back against it, his head
drooping.
Jason grinned. “You look like you been
rode hard and put up wet, man.”
“Feel worse,” Ward replied after a
moment. Then he looked Jason up and down. “You don’t much look like
a go-to-town slicker, yourself, boss.”
Jason smiled, then led him into the
main part of the office. “There’s clean water in the bucket. You
want coffee, you’re gonna hafta make it yourself.”
Ward went to the bucket and had himself
two dippers of water, then splashed another on the back of his
neck. “You ever seen a storm like this?”
Jason said, “I never even heard a’
one.” He hadn’t, either, not one like this!
“Well, I heard about ’em, but this
one’s sure a rip-snorter. Don’t believe I ever heard tell a’ one
lastin’ so long or goin’ so hard. Oh—what I come to tell you. One
a’ the Milcher kids is missin’. Found the Reverend out lookin’ for
him, but you know him—he’s like buttered beef in a crisis. Made him
go on home.”
Jason nodded. “When’d he go
missing?”
“Sometime between seven and nine
thirty. The Reverend thinks he’s out lookin’ for the cat. She’s
missin’, too.” During the passing years, the Milcher’s original
cat, Chuckles, had been replaced several times. The latest one was
. . . well, he couldn’t remember at the moment. But it was either a
grand kitten or a great-grand kitten of Chuckles.
“Shit.” Jason put his hands flat on the
desk, then pushed himself up. “I reckon now’s as good a time as
any.” He shook out his bandana and tied it over his nose and mouth.
“You rest up. Come out when you’re ready.”
But Ward was on his feet, his clothes
dribbling sand on the floor. “Naw. I’ll go with you. Four eyes are
better than two. Or so they tell me.”
Jason nodded. “Appreciate it. Pull your
hat brim low.”
He opened the front door. He had a firm
hold on the latch, but the sudden influx of wind shoved Ward off
his feet and into the filing cabinets.
“You wanna warn a fella afore you do
that?” he groused.
Jason didn’t blame him. “Sorry,
Ward.”
Muttering something that Jason was glad
he couldn’t hear, Ward slowly got back to his feet, using his feet
and hands and back for traction. He made it to the desk, and
finally to the door.
Jason shouted, “We’re gonna hafta get
outside, then pull like crazy, okay?”
Ward nodded, and they did, each bracing
a boot on either side of the door frame. It took them nearly five
minutes just until Jason lost sight of the wall clock, but
eventually it was closed and latched.
“Which kid was it?” he asked Ward over
the howling wind.
“Milcher!”
“Which Milcher kid?” There were a bunch
of them.
“Peter. The
five-year-old!”
Great, just great. A five-year-old kid
lost in this storm!
A storm a grown man could barely keep
his footing in, and that seemed intent on staying around until the
end of time. Maybe it was the end of
time.
But Peter was a tough little kid. If he
had survived the trip out West in his mother’s belly, he could
survive anything. At least, that’s what Jason hoped.
He tried to think like a five-year-old
following a cat . . .
“Follow me!” he said to Ward, and set
off, staggering against the buffeting wind, toward the
stables.
Down at the stable, they found several
cattle and a couple of saddle horses standing out in the corral,
all with their heads down and their butts into the wind. Jason
wondered if they could get them inside once they found the Milcher
boy.
It didn’t take them long at all. Once
they pulled the barn door closed after them and called out his name
a couple of times, they heard soft sobbing coming from the rear of
the barn. Well, it would have been loud wailing, if not for the
roar of the storm. Ward heard it first, and Jason followed him back
to a rear stall, where Jason uncovered the boy, hiding beneath a
saddle blanket.
“Peter?” he asked.
“My daddy’s gonna kill me!” came the
answer. When the boy looked up, his face was streaked by the trails
of tears through the crust of dust and grit on his face. “But I had
to find Louise! She’s gonna have kittens, and she’s having them
right now!” He pointed down next to him in the straw, and there was
the Milcher’s cat, with a third or fourth kitten just
emerging.
“Get a crate, Ward,” Jason said, and
put an arm around the boy. “Don’t worry, Peter. Your daddy’s not
gonna kill you. In fact, he was out looking for you, he was so
worried.”
Ward handed him an apple crate, in
which he’d already placed a fresh saddle blanket.
“H-he was?” Peter asked.
“He was indeed. Now let’s see . .
.”
Jason gently lifted the mother cat
while Ward stooped over him, carefully bringing the still attached
kitten along, and they placed them in the apple crate. “Good,”
Jason said. “Now let’s see who else is here.”
He found not three, but four other
kittens. Three were tabby and white, and one was all white. By the
time the men got them all back with their mother, she had finished
giving birth to the fifth kitten, had cut the cord, and was busy
licking it clean. “Good kitty,” Jason murmured, “good momma.” The
kitten was tabby and white, too, although with more white than the
others.
Jason and Ward stood up, and Jason held
his hand down to the boy. “Guess we’d best get the lot of you back
home!” Ward shifted through the stack of saddle blankets and dug
out a relatively fresh one, covering the box snugly.
“But the baby cats can’t go back!”
Peter said as he grabbed Jason’s hand and pulled himself to his
feet. “Daddy doesn’t like them. He says he doesn’t like the smell
of birth.”
“Reckon he’s just gonna have to get
over it,” Jason said, trying to hide a scowl. He didn’t much like
the smell of Milcher, either. And if Milcher objected to those
kittens in his damned house, then Milcher was going to find himself
in jail. For something or other.
Jason lifted Peter up into his arms,
then threw a blanket over him. “You all snugged up in there?” he
asked.
A muffled, “Yessir,” came from beneath
the blanket, and with Ward carrying the box of kittens and their
momma, the men pushed their way out into the storm
again.
The wind hit Jason like a slap in the
face, but behind him, he heard Ward say, “Believe it’s lettin’ up
some!”
Jason didn’t reply. He just forged
ahead, toward the Milcher’s place. Thankfully, it wasn’t far, and
when he rapped on the church door Mrs. Milcher threw it wide, then
burst into tears. “Is he all right?” she cried, pulling at the boy
in Jason’s arms. “Is he—”
“I’m fine, Momma,” Peter said after he
wiggled out of the blanket. And then he broke out in a
grit-encrusted grin. “Louise had her babies!”
Ward set the box down and lifted the
cover. A purring Louise looked up with loving green eyes, and mewed
softly.
Mrs. Milcher cupped her boy’s face in
her hands. “Is that why you went out, honey? To find
Louise?”
“Yes’m. And I did, too! She was in the
stables.”
Mrs. Milcher looked up at Jason. “She
always wants to hide when she feels her time is here. What a night
to pick!”
“Mrs. Milcher, ma’am? I know you’ve
given away kittens before, and I was wonderin’ if—”
“Certainly, Marshal! Any one you
want!”
Jason smiled. “I kind of fancy the
little white one. Got a name for him already and
everything.”
She cocked her head. “But you don’t
even know if it’s a boy or a girl! Do you?”
“No, ma’am. Wasn’t time to check. But I
figured to call it Dusty. Name works either way, I reckon, and I’ll
never forget when he was born.”
Mrs. Milcher smiled back at him. “No, I
don’t suppose you will! Thank you, Marshal, thank you for
everything. My husband would thank you as well, I’m sure, but he
has retired for the night.”
Jason lifted a brow but said, “I see.
Well, take care of young Peter, here, and watch over my kitten
until it’s ready to leave its momma.” He and Ward both tipped their
hats, and both stepped through the doors at once. But instead of
the whip of wind that Jason was expecting, they stepped out into
cool, clear, still air.
“What happened?” Ward said, looking
around him.
“I guess it quit.”
“Guess so. You wanna go up and get a
drink?”
“Nope. Wanna go home and wash
up.”
Ward nodded. “Reckon that sounds good,
too. Well, you go on ahead, Jason. I’ll have a drink for both of
us.”
Jason laughed. “Just one, Ward. You’re
on duty, y’know.”
Jason turned around and started the
walk back to his house. The air felt humid, as if rain was coming.
He hoped it was. Nothing would feel better right now than to just
strip off his clothes and stand out in his front yard, nekkid. He
chuckled to himself. Yeah, there’d be hell to pay if Mrs. Clancy
saw him, but on the other hand, she wasn’t likely to be awake at
eleven at night, was she?
Jenny’d skin him, though. It was a
terrible thing, he thought, to be ruled by women. Then he pictured
Megan MacDonald. Well, there exceptions to every rule, he thought,
and grinned.
It did rain, and while Jason was
outside, beaming and standing nekkid in his front yard with a bar
of soap in his hand, miles away the wagon train was getting the
worst of the dust storm. The wagons had been tightly circled and
all the livestock had been unhitched and brought to the center, but
the wind screeched through the wagons like a banshee intent on
revenge. Young Bill Crachit thought that maybe God was mad at them
for giving up on the dream of California, and he huddled inside his
wagon, praying.
The Saulk family, two wagons down, held
their children close, hoping it would just stop. Well, Eliza Saulk
did. Her husband, Frank, had the thankless job of trying to hold
the wagon’s canopy in place: the train had lost three already to
the torrent of grit and dirt and cactus thorns. He was around the
far side when, out of nowhere, an arm of saguaro hit him in the
back like a bag of nail-filled bricks. He went down with a thud,
but was helped to his feet a moment later by Riley Havens, who
yanked the cactus, stuck to Frank by its two-inch spines,
free.
Blood ran down Frank’s back in a
hundred little drizzles, soaking his shirt, and Riley helped him
back up inside the wagon.
“Saguaro!” he shouted to Eliza. “Get
those thorns out!”
Never letting go of the children, she
moved back to her husband, gasped, “Oh, Frank!” and immediately
began to ease him out of his shirt.
Riley left her to take care of her man
and struggled next door, to the Grimms’s wagon. Their canopy had
blown off earlier. It had taken four men to chase it down and get
it tied back in place. And that had been before the wind came up so
damned hard. He doubted they could repeat their
performance.
All was well with the Grimms, except
that their dog wouldn’t shut up. He was a cross between a redbone
hound and a Louisiana black-mouthed cur, and the wind had brought
out the hound side of him, in spades. While he yodeled
uncontrollably, the Grimms had covered their heads with blankets
and quilts, trying to hold off the noise of him and the storm.
Riley hollered, “Shut up!” at him a few times, but it made no
difference, and so he moved on to the next wagon and left the
howling beast behind.
The raw wind still raked at his ears,
though, even though he’d tied his hat down with one scarf, then
covered his nose and mouth with a second one. But the crud still
got through somehow, worked its insidious way up his nose and into
his mouth. His eyes were crusted with it, and even his ears were
stuffed. I must look like hell, he thought,
then surprised himself by smiling beneath the layers. The whole
world looked like hell tonight. He wasn’t the only
one.
The wind picked up—although how it
managed, he had no idea—and one of the horses reared. He felt it
more than saw it, because the horses were circled twenty feet away,
in the center of the ring of wagons, but he knew what had happened.
Somebody’s gelding or mare had fallen prey to another of those
thorny chunks of cactus that the wind seemed intent on throwing at
them.
He made his way through the roar,
falling twice in the process, but at last reached the distressed
animal. Lodged on its croup was a fist-size chunk of jumping
cholla, which, in this case, might have jumped all the way from
Tucson as far as Riley knew.
He pulled it free, then pulled out what
spines he could see. It was all he could do, but the horse seemed
grateful.
Slowly staggering, he made his way to a
new wagon to check in and give what reassurances he could. Which
weren’t many. He swore, this was the last train he was going to
ferry out or back.
He was done.
CHAPTER 2
Back in Fury, it was still raining come
the morning, although it had settled into a slow but steady
drizzle. And it didn’t take much water for an Arizona inhabitant to
forget the dust, Jason discovered. When he walked up the street to
the office, he didn’t pass a single water trough that wasn’t filled
to the brim. And grimy from gritty, dusty cowhands helping
themselves to a free bath. Jason pitied the horses that had to
drink from those troughs.
Surprisingly, there hadn’t been that
much wind damage. To the town, anyway. Ward Wanamaker told him,
before he went home for the day, that the east side of the
surrounding stockade wall looked like God had been using it for
target practice.
Jason didn’t feel like walking around
the outside of the town, so he walked past the office and all the
way down the central street, to the steps that would take him to
the top of the wall. Every wall, his father had taught him, had to
have places from which men could defend the interior, and this one
did, around all four sides. When he reached the top, he stood on
the rails that also ran around the perimeter and looked
down.
Ward had been right.
Cactus—clumps, arms, and pieces—covered
the outside of the wall, and at the base was enough vegetation to
start a small forest. If anybody in their right mind would want a
forest of cactus, that was. And then he got to thinking that a
forest of cactus just might be a good thing for the outside of that
wall. He knew cactus would just send down roots and take off, if
you threw a hunk of it down on the ground. And they sure had a good
rain last night, that was for sure. The stuff was probably rooted
already.
He decided to leave it. It’d be just
one more deterrent for Apache, and he was all for
that.
He figured the stuff stuck to the wall
would eventually fall off, leaving spines and stickers behind to
discourage anyone who might try to climb in, too. If they made it
past the cactus forest, that was.
“Oh, get a grip on yourself,” he
muttered to himself. “Stuff only blew in last night, and here
you’ve got it six feet tall in your head!”
Shaking his head, he went back down the
steps and started up toward his office. But he paused before going
inside. He wondered if he should have a word with Rafe Lynch. He
decided he should, but he put it off. Frankly, he didn’t want it to
turn into a confrontation, and he was afraid that Lynch could do
that pretty damn fast.
Actually, he was afraid that Lynch
could rope, tie, and brand him before he even knew he was in the
ketch pen.
So he turned and walked into the
office, expecting one hell of a mess that’d need cleaning up. But
to his surprise, Ward had spent a busy night with the push broom
and the cleaning cloths.
Hell, Jason thought, this place ain’t
been this clean since we built it! When he stepped out back, he
found that even the bedding from the cells had been hung out in the
rain!
“Wash and dry in one move,” Jason said
with a chuckle. “That’s Ward.”
Southeast of town, Wash Keogh was
looking like mad for his gold vein, the one he was certain was
going to make him rich, and the one of which he carried a goose
egg–size chunk in his pants pocket.
He’d been searching all morning, but
nothing, absolutely nothing showed up. It wasn’t raining now, but
it had drizzled long enough after sunrise that the desert was still
wet, washed free of its usual cover of dust. He had expected to
find himself confronted with a shimmering wall of gold, the kind
they wrote about in those strike-it-rich dime novels.
But no. Nothing.
Had somebody been in here before him
and cleaned it all out? It sure looked that way. Maybe the chunk
he’d found had simply been tossed away like so much trash. He
growled under his breath. Life just wasn’t fair!
“What did those other boys do right
that I done wrong?” he asked the skies. “I lived me a good life,
moved settlers back and forth, protected ’em from the heathen
Indians! I worked with or for the best—Jedediah Fury, Whiskey Hank
Ruskin, and Herbert Bower, to name just three. All good, godly men!
I brung nuns to Santa Fe and a rabbi to San Diego, for criminy’s
sake, and I guarded that preacher an’ his family to Fury. All
right, I do my share of cussin’, some say more. And I like my
who-hit-John, but so do them priests a’ yours. What more do you
want from me?”
There was no answer, only the endless,
clear-blue sky.
Another hour, he thought. Another hour,
and then I’ll have me some lunch.
He set off again, his eyes to the
ground, keenly watching for any little hint of glittering
gold.
Jason had let his sister, Jenny, sleep
in. She was probably tuckered out from the storm—he knew he
was.
The girls—Megan MacDonald was with
her—woke at nine, yawning and stretching, and both ran to the
window at the sound of softly pattering rain.
“Thank God!” Jenny said, loudly enough
that Megan jumped. Jenny didn’t notice. “Rain!” she said in wonder,
and rested her hand, palm out, on the windowpane. “And it’s cool,”
she added in a whisper. “Megan, feel!”
She took Megan’s hand and pressed its
palm against the pane, and Megan’s reaction was to hiss at the
chill. “My gosh!” she said, and put her other hand up next to it.
“It’s cold!”
Ever down-to-earth, Jenny said, “Oh,
it’s not cold, Meg, just cool. I wonder if Jason’s
up?”
She set off down the hall to wake him,
but found his room empty except for an absolutely filthy pile of
clothes heaped on the floor, dead center!
“He’s gone,” she said to nobody. Meg
hadn’t followed her. Turning, she grumbled, “Well, I hope he had
the good sense to take a bath,” and walked up the hall toward the
kitchen, where she heard Megan already rooting through the
cupboards.
A little while later, after both girls
had washed last night’s grime out of their hair and off their
bodies, and had themselves a good breakfast, they walked uptown
toward Solomon and Rachael’s store.
The storm—long gone by now—hadn’t
shaken Jenny’s hens, who had taken shelter in the low hay mow of
Jason’s little barn, and subsequently laid a record number of eggs.
The girls’ aim was to sell the excess eggs and find a new broom and
dustpan, which Jenny had needed for a coon’s age, but hadn’t got
around to buying yet. This seemed like the time, what with the
floors of the house nearly ankle-deep in detritus.
They had barely reached the mercantile
and were standing, staring in the window, when the skies suddenly
opened again! Rain began to pelt them in huge, hard drops, and
Megan grabbed Jenny’s hand and yanked her. “C’mon!” she
hollered.
But Jenny had put the brakes on, and
just skidded along the walk behind Megan, the egg basket swinging
from her hand. “Wait! The door’s back the other way,
Meg!”
“Come on!” Megan insisted, and tugged
Jenny for all she was worth. “The mercantile’s closed,
Jenny!”
“It is?” Jenny began to run alongside
Megan then, and what Megan was headed for wasn’t a very nice
place—it was Abigail Krimp’s. But any port in a storm, she told
herself. It surely beat standing out here. Her skirt was already
almost soaked!
Abigail was holding the door for them,
and they ran directly inside, laughing and giggling from the race,
not to mention where it had ended. It was the first time either one
of them had so much as peeked inside a place like Abigail’s—just
the location made them giddy!
But Abigail was just as nice as Jenny
remembered from the trip coming out. Why, she didn’t look “sullied”
at all! That’s what Mrs. Milcher always called her. And then it
occurred to her that she didn’t even know what “sullied” meant. And
Jenny had the nerve to call herself Miss Morton’s assistant
schoolmarm!
Abigail put a hand on each girl’s
shoulder and said, “Why don’t you young ladies have a seat while
you wait it out? I declare, this weather of late is conspirin’ to
put me outta business!” She led them to the first of three tables
and sat them down. “You gals like sarsaparilla ?”
Jenny’s mouth began to water. It had
been ages! She piped up, “Yes, ma’am!” and Megan nodded
eagerly.
But Jenny’s money sense moved in. “We
don’t have any money, Miss Abigail. But thank you
anyway.”
Megan looked at her as if she’d like to
toss her over the stockade, and Jenny stared down at her
hands.
“Not everything in here’s for sale, you
sillies!” Abigail laughed. “I thought we’d just have us a nice,
friendly sody pop. Been forever since I just got to sit and
socialize.” And she was off, behind the bar.
Megan and Abigail exchanged glances,
but Abigail was back by then, with three bottles of sarsaparilla,
three glasses, a bottle opener, and a small bowl of real ice! The
ice itself opened up the first topic of conversation, and Abigail
told them that she had a little cellar dug far underground, under
the back of the bar, where she kept a barrel full of ice when she
could get it. This was the last of her current stash, which had
come down from the northern mountains with the last wagon train to
stop in Fury.
Jenny was transfixed, but Megan was
halfway through her first glass. If you put enough ice in the
glass, your bottle was enough to pour out twice. Jenny looked away
from Abigail long enough to ice her glass, then fill it with
sarsaparilla. It bubbled up into fizz when it hit the ice, and she
was giggling out loud, which started Abigail, then Megan, laughing
as well.
Abigail lifted her glass. “To old
friends,” she said.
Jenny and Megan followed suit, then
clinked all three together and drank.
Until her dying day, Jenny would swear
that was the best sarsaparilla she ever drank.
“What the hell’s goin’ on out here? A
hen party?” asked a new voice, male and jovial, but pretending to
be cross.
Both Jenny and Megan twisted in their
chairs to see the speaker. He was coming out of the mouth of the
hall behind him, all clanking spurs and hip pistols and worn blue
jeans and nothing up top except his long johns. And his hat, of
course. Jenny didn’t understand why in the West, nobody took off
his hat, not even to greet a lady. Not even in church. Just a touch
of the brim was the most she’d seen since they left
Kansas!
But this man—who Jenny liked already,
just on general principle—not only took his hat clear off, but
bowed to the table! Then he swept his hat wide, and said, “Good
morning ladies! I trust everyone came through the night in one
piece?”
While the girls tittered, he looked at
Abigail, raised his brows, indicated the empty chair at the table,
and asked, “May I?”
“Certainly,” she said. She was on the
edge of laughter, herself.
The man sat down—right next to Jenny,
who nearly fainted.
He was tall, over six feet, and had
wavy, sandy hair, and it was cut fairly short. His eyes were blue,
but not regular blue, like hers, nor sky blue, like Jason’s. They
were a deep, deep blue, as blue as she imagined the ocean would be
if you swam down so far that your lungs were ready to burst. And he
was, well, gorgeous, if you could call a man that.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said
the vision sitting beside her. “My name is Lynch, Rafe Lynch, and
I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Rafe.”
Jenny stuttered, “Hello, Rafe. I’m
Jenny Fury.”
“Like the town!” He smiled wide.
“Coincidence?”
She barely had her mouth open when she
heard Megan say, across her, “Her father was the wagon master who
started us West and her brother is our marshal, and I’m Megan
MacDonald and my brother owns the bank.”
Megan ran out of air, and Jenny just
said, “Yes. What Megan said, I mean.” She felt herself flush hotly
and took a quick sip of her soda pop.
It was Abigail who saved her. She
reached over and put a hand on Rafe’s arm. “Can I get you
somethin’, honey?”
Rafe picked a little chunk of ice out
of the bowl and ran it over his forehead. “A beer, if you wouldn’t
mind, Abby.”
She said, “No problem at all,” and
stood up. Before she left, though, she said, “Rafe, honey, why
don’t you tell the girls, here, how you just beat the dust storm to
town? I swan, I would’a been scared to death!”
He grinned. “Don’t take much to scare
you, does it, Abby?”
She laughed, and he just kept grinning,
even as he turned back toward the girls. “How old are you two?
Unless it’s uncalled for to ask, I mean.”
Megan said, a little too proudly, “I’m
twenty-one. Jenny, here, is only nineteen.”
Oh, terrific. Now she was marked as the
baby of the group. She was going to have a word or two with Megan
later. That was for sure! As calmly as she could, she said, “But
I’ll be twenty come June.”
There. That was better.
“And your brother’s the famous Jason
Fury I been hearin’ so much about?”
Jenny had never heard that he was
famous, but she said, “Yes, I guess so. But he’s just my
brother.”
Rafe Lynch ran the last of his ice over
his forehead again, then popped it into his mouth. He pointed an
index finger at Jenny and said, “You’re funny. Why, I heard about
him back in California! Somethin’ about a couple a’ Indian attacks.
And yeah, somethin’ else . . .” He smiled and thumped his temple.
“It’s gone right outta my head for the time bein’.”
Abigail was back, and slid his beer
across the table before she sat down again. “You tell ’em yet how
you beat the dust storm?”
Jenny wanted to know what the other
thing was that he’d heard, but held her tongue while Rafe took the
first sip of his beer. Megan, she noticed, was leaning forward
eagerly. Way too eagerly for somebody who was supposed to be soft
on her brother, Jason, she thought. That was something else she was
going to have to talk to Meg about later on.
Rafe started talking about the storm,
how he saw it coming on the horizon and nearly stopped. But then he
saw signs of Apache far to the south, and hightailed it . .
.
Jenny listened as raptly as Megan. He
was so handsome and charming, and had little lines that fanned out
from the corners of his deep blue eyes when he smiled or laughed.
Even his name was wonderful. She’d never known anyone called Rafe
before.
She was smitten.
Over in California, near the Pacific
coast and the upstart town of Los Angeles, Ezra Welk sat at the
back of his room at Maria’s place, listening to the morning birds
singing over the desert while he smoked a cigar. He was a tall man,
although he preferred to think of himself as compact, and studied
the ash on the end of his cigar before he rolled if off on the edge
of the sole of his boot.
He was alone in the room, and had been
ever since seven, when the little spitfire he’d spent the night
with had left. Her name had been Merlina, he thought. Hell. She was
probably servicing some caballero downstairs right now, behind the
back bar.
That’s where he’d found her, anyway.
Quite the little bucking bronca, that gal.
He hoped her next “rider” was as
satisfied as he was. He rolled the ash off the end of his cigar in
the ashtray, this time—cut glass pretending to be crystal, he
thought—and let out a sigh. He wasn’t that tired. Well, maybe a bit
tuckered out from Señorita Merlina, but that’d pass. No, if he was
tired of anything, he supposed it was just life
itself.
That was a funny thing, wasn’t it? He
couldn’t think of another way to put it, though, when a feller was
sick and tired of, well, everything.
He took another drag on his cigar, then
put it out before he stood up and gave his collar a tug. He
supposed he’d best see about finding himself some breakfast, and
then think about what to do.
This is all Benny Atkinson’s fault, he
thought unpleasantly as he left his room and started downstairs.
Why in hell did Benny have to show up in the first
place?
West of Fury, the wagon train sat
forlornly, broken and wind-whipped. Two of the wagons had blown
clean over during the night, killing the occupants of one of them.
The Banyons had managed to fall asleep somehow, Riley Havens
guessed, and when their wagon went over, they were crushed by
Martha’s chifforobe.
Ferris said it had taken two men with
shovels to scrape up Darren’s skull.
Three of the other men had set off to
dig a couple of holes, and it wouldn’t be very long before he was
asked to come out and say some words over the dearly departed. What
could he say? That Darren Banyon was the second to the cheapest
cheapskate he’d ever met, but that he was a good man with his
horses? And Martha Banyon . . . That she could be sharp tongued and
had already caused more than one blowup in the troupe, but that she
could sing so sweet and pretty that it could make a grown man go
all gooey?
He supposed he should just say the best
parts. He’d leave the Bible-thumping to a couple of the other
travelers. They sure enough had a crop of them on this journey,
including a real Catholic priest.
But he supposed that Sampson Davis,
wherever he was, leveled the field, good and evil-wise. There was
something just plain nasty about the man. It wasn’t in his voice or
his looks or the way he carried himself, and so most people in the
train liked him all right. But there was something . . . evil,
that’s what it was, downright evil . . . lurking behind those eyes.
Riley seldom wished any man ill, but, may the good Lord forgive
him, he hoped Sampson Davis had died in the dust
storm.
“Mr. Havens?” Young Bill Crachit, a
sixteen-year-old on his own, and with his own wagon, stepped around
to the tailgate where Riley was sitting. “I guess we’re ready for
you, sir.”
Riley hopped down, then ground out his
smoke under his boot. “Thanks, Bill,” he said as the two of them
started toward the burial site. “Sampson Davis show up
yet?”
“Oh, yeah,” Bill said. “Rode in a half
hour ago. Why?”
“No reason,” Riley answered. “Just
keepin’ tabs on the train members, that’s all.”
They came to the site of the graves.
Somebody had found the wood and twine to tie together some crude
crosses, and the bodies had already been lowered. When the gathered
crowd saw Riley and Bill coming, they stopped their low hum of
conversation and looked toward Riley.
He took off his hat. “I’m not one for
Bible verses,” he said. “I’ll let you, Fletch, or you, Father, take
care of that part. But I can tell you about the Banyons. I didn’t
know ’em long, but long enough to know that Darren was the best
I’ve seen for soothing a colicky mare or knowin’ how to hitch his
team just right, so they didn’t ever sore. Martha was a beauty, and
when it came to singin’ a tune, I doubt anyone would say she wasn’t
the best they’d ever heard, especially in a wagon camp when people
need some of the civilized things around them, fine things like
music and manners.”
Someone in the crowd tittered at that,
and he cleared his throat. “Well, maybe I made a bad choice of
words right there. But I think you all know what I meant. And now,
if one of you more religious gents will take over?”
He stepped aside, and Fletcher Bean
took his place between the head markers. Solemnly, he bowed his
head, opened his Bible, and began, “Let us pray . . .”
Jason got up the nerve to go talk to
Rafe Lynch around two in the afternoon, long after the girls had
gone home. He found himself walking slower and slower as he neared
Abigail’s place, though, and had to mentally kick himself in the
rump for being so scared. Lynch wasn’t going to do anything, he
told himself, not and ruin his harbor in a whole fresh
territory!
That helped a little, so he was walking
faster when he came up to Solomon’s store. He knew full well that
it was Sunday, but that had never before stopped Solomon from being
open. Curious, he stopped and peeked in the front window, cupping a
hand over his eyes to cut the glare.
What he saw surprised him. He saw the
backroom door open, and Dr. Morelli step out and shake hands with
Solomon, who’d been kneeling against a counter. The look on
Solomon’s face was ecstatic, and he pushed Morelli aside to go into
the room, but Morelli blocked his passage, speaking to him very
seriously. Solomon nodded just as solemnly, and then burst out in a
fresh grin. He leapt up in the air, laughing, and finally Jason
could make out some words through the glass.
“A girl! It’s a girl!” Solomon shouted,
and then gave Morelli one of those big bear hugs of
his.
Morelli freed himself after a moment,
and when he walked outside again, Jason was standing there on the
boardwalk, smiling at him.
“Lived, didn’t it?” Jason asked with a
grin on his face.
The doctor allowed himself a small
smile. “Yes, she did. I’m very happy for them, but . .
.”
“But what?”
“The baby isn’t quite right, Jason. I
think there’s something wrong with her heart.” Morelli shook his
head slowly. “But it was a tad early. Sometimes these things just
fix themselves with time, if there is any. This may have been what
killed the boys, too, but since their religion prohibits any sort
of postmortem . . .” He stared at the ground for a moment, then
looked up. “Well, I must go. My wife’s waiting dinner for me.” He
tipped his hat and cut across the street, making a beeline for his
house.
Jason leaned back against the
storefront, and shaking his head, muttered, “Well, I’ll be dogged.”
He hoped Morelli was right about time fixing things. The last thing
he needed was Solomon shooting up the place again.
He was just opening the doors into
Abigail’s place when someone fired a gun—and not too far from him!
He whipped around and saw that it was Solomon Cohen himself, gun in
hand, and screaming, “It’s a girl! It’s a girl!” He fired up into
the air once again, then took off at a dead run, right down the
center of town.
Jason took off right after
him.
He caught up with Solomon only about
six or seven steps later (Jason having the longer legs of the two,
and not being nearly so giddy with joy) and wrested the gun away
from Solomon.
“Yes, we know it’s a girl! I reckon
even the Apache, practically down on the Mexican border, know it,
too!”
Solomon wasn’t easily calmed or
stilled, though. “But it’s a girl, Jason, and she’s alive!” he
shouted, so loudly that it hurt Jason’s ears. He blinked, and had
to quickly change position when Solomon tried to take his gun
back.
“There’ll be none a’ that, now. Why
don’t you come on over to the office, and we’ll toast her with a
cup a’ coffee. I made it, Ward didn’t,” he added as an incentive.
Ward made terrible coffee.
Solomon stood up straight. “Why, Jason!
You’re not goin’ to arrest me!?”
“Just until you settle yourself down. I
can’t have you runnin’ all over town, shootin’ and maimin’
folks.”
“I’m not—”
“I know, Solomon,” Jason said as he
began to get them aimed toward the jail. “I know you’re not tryin’
to harm a soul. But you gotta admit that you ain’t the best shot.
What if you was to shoot somebody by accident and they died? Think
about how bad you’d feel then! And think how bad I’d feel, havin’
to hang you after all we been through together!”
By this time, Jason had Solomon nearly
to the office, and Sol wasn’t fighting him. But in the half-second
it took to let go of his arm and open the office door, Solomon
snatched back the pistol, jumped away, and fired twice (down toward
the open ground by the stockade wall), hollering,
“Yahoo!”
Jason grabbed him from behind, shaking
his wrist until the gun fell into the dirt. “Jesus Christ, Solomon,
gimme a break, all right?”
“You shouldn’t be taking the name of a
prophet in vain,” Solomon scolded.
“And you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere
near firearms when your wife’s havin’ a baby!” Jason shoved him
back toward the jailhouse. This time, he got him clear through the
front door and locked in a cell, then had to run outside again to
pick up his gun.
The first thing Solomon said to him,
once he came back inside, was, “So, I was promised coffee,
already?”
Across the street, the Reverend Milcher
sat alone in his church. Lavinia and the children were nowhere to
be seen, and even the shooting and the shouted news that Solomon
Cohen’s child had lived—this time—wasn’t enough to make him take
his eyes from the broken clay–tiled floor.
Again, no one had come for Sunday
service. No one except his family, and you could hardly count
them.
How would he feed his children without
some funding? How could he pass a collection plate when there was
no one there to hand it to?
They had their milk cow, still, and she
was heavy with calf. She’d calve any day, and then they could be
sure of having milk. But he couldn’t slaughter the calf until fall,
until it had put on enough beef-weight to make it worthwhile.
Lavinia had the few vegetables she could coax from the desert
floor, but that was it.
This was indeed the wilderness, but
there was no manna from heaven.
