A Place Called Harmony (17 page)

Patrick McAllen

As the days passed, Patrick was surprised by how much he missed grumpy Truman. Patrick never knew when he was going to hit a nerve and Truman would let out a string of cuss words. He’d heard people talk about men who weren’t comfortable in their own skin, but Patrick wasn’t sure Truman was comfortable on the planet. It wasn’t like he was afraid of something. It was more like Truman feared nothing. Not even his own death.

But Patrick missed Truman all the same. He’d noticed the way Truman watched the sky for a change in weather and how he seemed aware of every stranger who rode near. Patrick couldn’t tell if he was looking for someone or looking to avoid someone, but Truman was definitely a man who missed little in his surroundings.

Patrick watched Shelly sawing away. “You ever wonder why Truman doesn’t talk to his wife?”

Shelly shook his head and continued to work.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Patrick pointed at his brother with his hammer. “You’re figuring that maybe Truman reads her mind the way I read yours, but I doubt it.”

Shelly kept working and Patrick kept thinking aloud. “I thought maybe he beat her, but we’re right next door and I’ve never heard a sound coming from their room. Not even cussing, and I find that hard to believe that Truman doesn’t cuss around her. But then, he never cussed around the other women either. Maybe it’s just me and you that draw the words out.”

Shelly looked up and raised an eyebrow.

“All right, maybe it’s me.” Patrick smiled. “He sure did think up a few new words for me when I asked him how many times he and his wife did it before she got a baby growing inside her. I was just curious, but he was touchy about something as simple as a number. Besides, how else am I going to know if he doesn’t tell me? It wasn’t something I could ask Pa about. If I wasn’t proof to the contrary, I’d swear Pa never did it with either of his wives.”

Patrick tossed his hammer from one hand to another. “I love getting Truman’s goat. I know you’re wondering when he’s going to draw that Colt he has strapped to his leg and shoot me, but I’m betting it’ll never happen. I think he likes having us around.”

Shelly finally laid the saw down and picked up a branch so he could write in the dirt.

Patrick leaned over to read, “Get back to work.” He looked up in surprise. “I thought we
were
working, Shelly. Sometimes I swear your mind wanders.”

Shelly laughed and rolled his eyes.

As the week passed, Shelly and Patrick finished the last details on the forge and worked on the fireplaces for the houses. Just for fun, they often worked on the front of the trading post in the evenings. The ladies had put curtains on all the windows and painted everything out front, including one of the Matheson twins from the looks of him.

Harmon Ely complained about all the fuss, but they saw the pride in him when folks stopped by and said the place looked grand.

The days were getting longer and warmer. When they moved to Truman’s land to work on his fireplace, Karrisa always came out to bring them lunch and stayed to tell them details she wanted in the house. She was shy and somehow seemed deep-down sad. Patrick had no idea if Truman was the source of her sorrow or the cure.

Jessie liked to ride out and watch them work. She loved her mare. Patrick didn’t know her story either. He’d noticed she liked to talk to Shelly. Maybe because he was the only one around who didn’t talk back?

Patrick’s favorite time was after supper when everyone gathered around to talk either on the porch or in the kitchen. Karrisa mostly sewed and listened, but Patrick had a feeling she enjoyed the company. Old Ely would tell one story after another, and then when he got tired, he’d announce it was bedtime as if no one else would ever figure it out unless he mentioned it.

Some nights Ely would order them all to bed, saying he needed his sleep even if they didn’t. The old yellow dog would guard the store while everyone else found their beds.

One afternoon Patrick brought up missing Truman again. “He’s been gone nine days.”

Shelly shook his head and held up ten fingers.

“Ten days,” Patrick corrected. “I’ll be glad when he gets back. You figure he’s all right? I think his missus is worried about him. I see her sometimes standing in the window upstairs just staring out as if she might see him coming.”

As Shelly often did when he was working, he seemed to turn off his ears. Patrick gave up trying to carry on a conversation.

That afternoon, when they returned from Truman’s place, they were surprised to see that the captain and Ely had started a real corral. Matheson was growing stronger every day. Somehow he’d organized the women and Jessie. They carried the boards while he and Ely hammered.

As they walked up, Patrick started bragging on their progress, but Shelly stopped and helped Annie with the board she was dragging.

She smiled her thanks at Shelly.

The thought that Annie should go to Shelly if something ever happened to him crossed Patrick’s mind again. The two of them were friends, he was sure of it. They’d help each other if he died. The pops of a bullwhip had faded in his mind, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that his father would someday find him. The old man’s anger must be festering like an open wound. If he came, Solomon would kill him. If that happened, he wanted his last thought to be that his Annie was safe.

Pushing the dark thought aside, Patrick forced himself to silently say three times that nothing was going to happen to him. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. But still, didn’t people start thinking about their own death right before it happened? He seemed to remember folks at funerals saying things like,
He told me he didn’t think he’d make the winter
, or
He was worried about dying for weeks
.

Maybe the dark thoughts were haunting him because he was so happy. All his life bad times always rained down when he thought the world was bright. Right now, he had so much to lose. So much to live for.

“You feeling all right?” Annie asked as she passed by with another board for the corral.

“Why? Do I look sick?”
Oh great
, Patrick thought,
others are starting to see death’s shadow over me
.

“No, you look fine. You’re just so quiet.”

Patrick forced a smile. He was being an idiot. He should just count his blessings and not worry about trouble coming. Truman was the one on the road and maybe in danger. Matheson had suffered a close call getting here. Ely was near about fifty; he could kick the bucket anytime.

Maybe he could buy one of those rabbit’s feet that Ely kept in a box. They were supposed to be good luck. But they hadn’t been much luck to the rabbit.

Patrick told himself he had nothing to worry about. “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,” he said aloud for luck. His thoughts had simply wandered off in the wrong direction.

That night when he made love to his Annie it was so sweet. So perfect. While she slept on his shoulder, he worried that maybe life gets perfect before you die young. That would make sense.

No, that didn’t make sense. Most of the people who died young didn’t seem to have figured out anything. If they had, maybe they would have figured out how not to die?

Finally relaxing, Patrick decided that when Truman got back he’d ask him about why people think they’re going to die young. Who knew, after the big guy finished cussing him out for asking, he might offer a bit of insight. Truman had been in the war. He had scars on his hand and chin. He must have been near death. Hell, dressed in black, he looked like the devil’s brother. Surely he’d know something.

Then as midnight passed, Patrick started thinking that if Truman died on the road he’d never get his question answered.

Patrick finally decided maybe he should just go back to worrying about Truman getting killed and forget about his own looming death.

D
ALLAS
T
RAIN
S
TATION

The streets of Dallas were far dirtier than Clint remembered when he’d passed through with Karrisa. Maybe he’d been more worried about getting her and the baby safely out of town and on the road. Those first few days with her had been hard for them both. She hadn’t trusted him, and he kept wondering what kind of a fool picks his wife among women getting out of prison. Even now sometimes he’d look at her and wonder if they weren’t still both thinking the same thing.

Only difference was now he couldn’t wait to get back to her. One kiss shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. The sooner he could get his business over and be on his way north, the better.

Rain hung in the air, making everything damp and adding a layer of cold his jacket couldn’t seem to keep out. He moved among the shipments and men unloading freight at the train station. Buyers with carts picking up lobster and fresh produce for restaurants, cowhands unloading cattle, families collecting their goods and packing everything they owned into wagons, all mingled amid passengers changing trains.

It took Clint an hour to find the several boxes that Ely had ordered shipped in and another hour to locate the lumberyard where he’d ordered most of the building material. Apparently, Ely figured that if Clint was picking up building supplies, he might as well pick up everything needed for the trading post.

By dark, Clint had three wagons loaded and stashed in the nearest livery. He’d hired two drivers who came with the wagons the livery owner rented him. The third wagon also belonged to the man who owned the livery but had no driver. The barrel-chested owner called himself One-Eyed Buford. He was a round little man with a black patch over one eye and no teeth, and, like most men over thirty, he’d fought in the war.

Buford apologized for not having the third driver. He said the driver who usually manned the third wagon had worked for him for almost a year, but the guy was a drunk and kept falling off the bench. Buford seemed far more worried about his wagon than his former employee.

“Find me a sober driver,” the livery owner said, “and I’ll pay his salary for the trip back with my empty wagon. That way if he don’t bring my wagon back, he won’t be paid.”

“What if my shipment takes a fourth wagon?”

Buford smiled. “I got the extra wagon, but you’ll have to find yet another driver.” The livery owner knew he was asking Clint to do his job for him. He also knew Clint was in a hurry and that left Buford with the advantage.

Clint agreed, guessing that finding a new driver wouldn’t be easy. The cattle drives were organizing and heading out. An able-bodied man could make twice as much money herding cattle as driving a supply wagon.

Buford pointed Clint to a saloon about a hundred yards down the road. “You might start there. Folks post work for hire on the board by the bar. Tell them where to find you or write that they can report to One-Eyed Buford. Everybody in town knows me. If there’s a man available, he’ll report in within a day or two.”

Clint thanked the man and headed out. He had three more stops to make in the morning, so he needed to put an ad out for drivers tonight if possible.

Ely bought clothes to sell from a little factory on the south side of Dallas, leather goods from a saddle maker near the courthouse, and staples, like flour and sugar, from a wholesaler near the station. Since Clint had no idea how big each of the orders was, he’d pick them up early tomorrow, then decide if he needed another wagon.

The saloon looked dirty and smelled as bad as an outhouse. He thought of all the bars he’d been in since his wife died three years ago. He’d even passed out and slept on the floors in a few. Now, when he looked down, it turned his stomach to think of his wasted days before Sheriff Lightstone straightened him out. Truman was no fool; he knew Lightstone had probably saved his life. Every fight he got into as a drunk took more out of him. There hadn’t been much left of the man he’d once been that day the sheriff gave him a choice of heading north or going to jail.

Clint was beyond caring, and he had no one and nothing to keep him from failing. Now, after over a month of being sober and eating regular meals, he felt like a different man. He told himself he hadn’t spent three years on the bar floor. He’d drifted, worked cattle for a while, even signed on with a stage line for a year. Only, every night and every day off, he’d drunk until his memory blurred. Eventually, he’d lose whatever job he’d gotten and then he’d just drink until his money was gone and he had to sober up and get another job so he could drink again.

During that time he never sold his farm. He kept the land and he kept circling by it. A spot of land with a burned-out barn, a house in ruin, and a hundred-year-old cottonwood were all he’d had left. He never stayed on the land he owned. He rarely visited the three graves on the hill beneath the tree. He’d been their hero and he couldn’t bear to think of them seeing him drunk.

The smell of whiskey pulled Clint farther into the saloon, and he tried to push out the memories of his wife and girls dying so easily of a fever. They were all there with him one day, and the next he was digging graves.

He tried to think of his new wife now. Karrisa must be stronger than she looked. She’d survived prison and the birth of a child in conditions that must have been horrible. She’d put up with the trip and the crowded conditions at the trading post without one complaint.

She was his wife. She and the baby were his responsibility. He’d told her he had no love left in this lifetime to give, but he’d keep her safe. She had food and a place to sleep and him to watch over her. That night at the prison gate he’d known that he had only two paths left. He could help her, or he could find the energy to dig his own grave beneath the old cottonwood.

“You want a drink, mister?” a tired bartender snapped.

“No,” Clint answered. “I want to post a job opening.”

The bartender pointed with his head toward a board and moved away. He wasn’t interested in talking to someone who wasn’t buying.

As Clint walked the few feet to the board at the corner of the bar, he watched the crowd. Saloon girls trying to make money. Drunks sitting alone. Several men talking, a few arguing. Poker games going on at every other table. The one nearest him had a big hairy guy, with his back to Clint. The guy was dealing from the bottom of the deck. The other players were too drunk to notice but sober enough to complain when the dealer raked in the pot.

Clint moved on, putting up a note saying that he was looking for a long-haul driver. He left his name and his hotel’s name at the bottom of the note along with One-Eyed Buford’s name.

Before he could walk away, a woman in a faded red dress looped her arm around his. He looked down, fighting the urge to fling her away. She was short with breasts so big and pushed up they looked like a shelf beneath her chin.

“You want to buy me a drink, mister?” Her words were slurred, indicating she’d already had her share of drinks for the night.

“No,” he said. “I was just leaving.” He tried to untangle her arm without being rude.

She cuddled close. “I could go with you. You look like you could use a little company, and I’m real good company.”

“No,” he snapped. The woman smelled of cheap perfume and whiskey. “I’m a married man.”

She laughed a rehearsed laugh. “I can do things your wife never thought about doing.”

Before he could disentangle himself, she reached up and cupped her hand on the back of his neck. “How about a little kiss before you make up your mind?”

Her laugh clanged in his ears.

She’d jerked his head down a few inches before he realized what she was doing. Her thin lips were painted the same red as her dress and her mouth opened as it drew closer.

Clint reacted, pushing her away, and then, too late, realized he’d used more force than was needed. She tumbled backward into the group of drunks playing cards a few feet away.

Cussing and threats blended with annoyance as drinks spilled across the chips in the center of the table.

The big man who’d been cheating stood. He didn’t offer to help the woman. He turned on Clint and in a low guttural voice demanded, “Who do you think you are, stranger, shoving a lady into our game?”

Clint met the stranger’s stare and saw something he recognized from his past. The man had aged, hardened with life, but Clint knew him, or had known him once in another time, another place.

“I’m no one,” Clint began, knowing he had to get away fast. “I’m sorry to have bothered you gentlemen.” He tossed a double eagle coin to the bartender and said, “Buy them and the lady another round.”

The bartender smiled. Clint had just paid double for a round and they both knew he wouldn’t be staying around to pick up his change.

He turned and headed out. The big guy at the table either didn’t recognize him or was too drunk to move fast enough to follow. Clint didn’t look back to make sure, but he heard no footsteps behind him as he exited.

As soon as Clint reached the fresh air, he lengthened his stride and headed for the hotel as memories caught up with him.

The big man had been a sergeant with a fighting group from Arkansas. He’d been maybe twenty-eight or thirty when Clint met him the first year of the war. Some men fought for honor or the pay or out of fear, but Dollar Holt fought for the joy of killing, and so did the men who followed him. They didn’t answer to anyone and were often used for jobs no soldier wanted to do.

Clint was newly trained and hadn’t seen his eighteenth birthday. His commanding officer ordered him to go with Dollar one night on a secret mission.

They crossed the lines and headed into northern territory. Clint had been told Union troops were holding stolen supplies meant for the South. He had followed orders and taken out the guards with his rifle only to discover when Dollar and his men moved in that the guards weren’t in uniform. They’d been older men guarding a shipment of whiskey.

He’d killed two innocent men for a load of whiskey.

Dollar had laughed at him for getting sick. The raid hadn’t been for the Southern cause. It had simply been theft, and he’d been a part of it.

After that, he asked to be transferred, and for the rest of the war he made sure he was fighting soldiers, not civilians. At first he told himself he was killing men who’d killed his brother, Daniel, but he knew he lied. After a while he used his skills to hunt food for the troops. He was so good at it, he managed to finish the last two years of the war firing at nothing but wild game. But he never forgot the night he’d been tricked into killing or the man who’d laughed at what a naïve fool Clint had been.

Dollar Holt. Time had twisted his smile into a smirk and extra weight had pooled around his middle, but evil never changes. Clint had no doubt Holt was still robbing and killing.

That night, atop a real bed, Clint didn’t sleep well. The nightmares wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d been running from what he’d done for eleven years, and one man in a saloon in Dallas had brought it all back as if it were yesterday.

He was dressed and down at the café on the ground floor of the hotel by dawn. He wanted a chair where he’d have his back to the wall and could still see out the window. If Dollar figured out who he was, the man might be gunning for him.

As Clint drank his third cup of coffee, he thought of the woman in red who’d tried to kiss him. The moment he realized what she planned to do, he knew that the only woman he wanted to kiss was Karrisa. His shy wife, who only talked to him if she had to, who mended his clothes and had danced with him once. Karrisa, whose lips welcomed him when her words never had.

When he got back to her, he planned to kiss her again if she was still agreeable. It had been so long for him, he knew he was out of practice. He was afraid he’d forgotten how to be gentle. But he’d like to try to be when he kissed her again. Maybe she’d even be agreeable to letting him hold her close, or lean her against the door of their little room and press gently into her, covering her body with his while his lips touched hers. The thought of her letting him kiss her just like that lingered on the edges of every thought he had.

He remembered her shy little smile just before he rode away and the way she’d touched her lips. She’d liked the kiss also. She’d be waiting for him to get home. He’d never push her into anything. If they could just share this one thing now and then, it would be enough.