“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.
Up 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 what we’ve got, here. . . .”
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 Mama.” 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 mama, 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 Milchers’ 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, Mama,” 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 mama.” 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, naked. 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 were exceptions to every rule, he thought, and grinned.
It did rain, and while Jason was outside, beaming and standing stark naked 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 old, used 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 a 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!”