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 backbar.
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 chiffarobe.
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 dark eyes. Riley seldom wished any man ill, but, may the good Lord forgive him, he hoped that 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 never sore or come up lame. 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.