Trail Angel (15 page)

Josey stood with his back to the old man. “You don't understand.”

“I understand enough. I understand if you don't talk to that woman, she will haunt you every day you draw breath. You've had enough of that already, enough for two lifetimes, likely.”

The Colonel stood from his perch on the bank, waited for Josey to face him. “If you talk to her, maybe she will turn away from you. Can't blame her if she did. But maybe she won't. I think you've got a feeling maybe she won't. And if she don't, well, maybe she can help you forget some of the bad and learn to forgive yourself for things that weren't your fault.”

The Colonel didn't look like he'd expected an answer, so he wasn't likely to be disappointed. “That's enough lollygagging for one day.” He hiked up his gun belt and ambled from the river. “I feel like I could piss like a horse, but I would bet four bits I can't dribble enough to wet a stone.”

After weeks of worry mixed with curiosity, the first time Annabelle saw what her cousin would call “real Indians” proved a disappointment.

They came into camp on foot, more than a dozen bedraggled men whose only resemblance to the noble savages of Annabelle's imagination was a ruddy complexion. There were no feathered headdresses. No buffalo skin robes. They wore clothes not unlike the men in the wagon train, but they were so dirty and smelled so foul Annabelle recalled tales of emigrants hiding gravesites of loved ones so Indians wouldn't dig them up and steal the clothes.

The Indians were unarmed, but they created as much of a stir as if they had ridden in wearing war paint and launching arrows. The Colonel and some of the men greeted the strangers, who moved about the wagons like customers in a store, fingering merchandise and casting an appraising eye everywhere. A handful of dogs followed them, their barks and furtive movements alarming the oxen and camp dogs. She noticed Josey, rifle in hand, maneuvering in a way that kept the campfires and the emigrants at his back.

Her father strode past Annabelle, pulling on a coat as he left the warmth of the fire. “I had finally convinced your mother to put away her ax,” he grumbled.

He intended to put her at ease with the joke, but Annabelle felt more pity than fear. The Colonel had told them how poor the tribes along the Platte were. The cholera epidemic that ravaged the trail more than a decade earlier wiped out so many Indians that in some villages those who remained had to move on or die. Government treaties that guaranteed safe passage for the emigrants were supposed to provide for the Indians. The promised goods were delivered for a few years but stopped or were stolen by government agents once the Indians grew too weak to pose a threat.

Through hand gestures and a smattering of broken English the Indians made clear they wanted something to eat. George Franklin, a Yankee Annabelle's father compared to Scrooge for his miserly ways, objected. “If we feed them, we may never be rid of them,” he said.

Her father took the opposing view. “It might be wise to engender some goodwill among the natives.”

Her father had to be as disappointed as she. Despite her mother's misgivings, he looked forward to trading with Indians. But it didn't look like these people had anything worth bartering. There wasn't a young brave among them. One or two looked to be boys, no older than her cousin Mark. The rest looked to be her father's age or older. The oldest among them had a head of white hair and a face like desert baked and cracked by drought. Around his neck, he wore a necklace of animal teeth—at least Annabelle assumed the teeth were from an animal.

“Look at them. They're no better than stray dogs,” said Ben Miller, the grubby miner whose hygiene wasn't much better in Annabelle's view. “We've got nothing to fear from them.”

Josey remained silent, his eyes never leaving the Indians, who seemed just as aware of him. He didn't look so young or small holding that rifle. The Indians had been watching the men debate, but they kept looking to Josey.
He makes them as nervous as they make us.
Annabelle failed to suppress a smile.

“If you don't agree to feed these men, I'll do it myself.” Her mother, so terrified of Indians when the journey started, pushed past the men, scattering them like ninepins.

“We'll handle this, Mary,” her father said. “Why don't you go and see what food all the camps can spare.”

Mollified, her mother turned back while the Colonel addressed the Indians. Every group of wagons brought forward some food. It seemed more than enough to feed a dozen Indians, though after watching them wolf down what was offered Annabelle figured they could have eaten twice as much. They walked out of the camp as soon as they were fed, with neither a word of thanks, nor threat, nor request for more.

Despite the Indians' haggard appearance, a new tension ran through the camp, and if her mother brought the ax to bed, her father didn't complain. Some of the men laughed off the fear. The Indians had looked so pathetic, Clifton Daggett said, surely they posed no threat. Annabelle heard such sentiments repeated so often she recalled Shakespeare and a lady's protests.

Caleb Williams warned that the Indians' appearance had been a ruse, intended to lull the camp into complacency so the braves could sneak in and kill them in their sleep. The burly handyman was shushed by the others.

Whether from fear or prudence, the camp doubled the guard around the stock while others took turns patrolling the wagons. Some of the emigrants who had been sleeping in tents remained in their wagon. Not many of the men slept at all.

The camp rose early the next morning. The guards reported that none of the stock had been disturbed. Everyone relaxed as water boiled for coffee and bacon sizzled. The Indians soon returned. They came just as they had the night before, unarmed, leaving their horses outside the camp. They were hungry again.

“Didn't I tell you?” George Franklin said.

More than a few of the emigrants looked to Annabelle's mother. She had made her point the night before that they weren't afraid of the Indians. To capitulate to new demands might suggest otherwise. She smoothed out the folds of her dress and tucked a few stray hairs beneath her bonnet as she stood.

“Tell them we're not running an Indian hash house here,” she said.

Again, the Colonel handled the communications. The Indians didn't seem pleased with his message but rather than argue they gestured, making it clear they hoped to leave with one of the cows that had been trailing behind the wagons. The Colonel refused, and the Indians gave up rather meekly. Annabelle couldn't see Josey, but she knew he would be nearby, rifle at hand.

They finished breakfast even faster than usual. The women packed and the men yoked and hitched the animals with no idle chatter or dawdling. As the wagons pulled out, Annabelle looked back with a mixture of emotions.

These Indians, who had stirred so much concern among the travelers when they set out, seemed more pitiful than fearsome. Yet the image of the white-haired Indian who appeared so ancient to Annabelle the previous night stuck with her. Watching him go to where they had left their horses, she marveled as he sprung to his pony like a young buck. Galloping off, he looked more centaur than man and horse, and it sent a shudder down Annabelle's back.
If the old men ride so well, how dangerous must the braves be?

After a brief layover for repairs and mail at Fort Kearny, they found the road changed. The wagons passed over some steep, sandy bluffs that made for hard pulling, even for the oxen. On more than one occasion, the women and children left the wagons and walked for miles in the sand while the men cursed and sweated, doubling up the teams at times to get the wagons across.

Tired as he was, Caleb took his pistol out that night to clean it while the women cooked dinner. He shut their gay chatter from his mind.
Josey Angel this. Josey Angel that.
They treated the man like some kind of hero after he showed up with a big buck draped across the saddle of his pony. A few of the farmers butchered it, and everyone anticipated fresh venison stew. Josey gave the antlers and skin to the Georgia banker, Stephen Chestnut, the one man in camp who belonged on the frontier even less than Rutledge.

Chestnut, a small-boned man with a wispy mustache and rheumy eyes, determined to make himself over as a mountain man. He wanted buckskins like Kit Carson wore in the dime novels and planned to mount the antlers over the fireplace in the log cabin he would build in Montana.

The asswipe didn't even understand the antlers a man hangs in his home are supposed to come from an animal he shot himself. Didn't matter to Chestnut. Even worse, now he talked of Josey Angel as if they were bosom friends. Caleb doubted Josey Angel had spoken two words to Chestnut before he handed over the antlers.

Caleb didn't understand. Chestnut, who lost his bank and nearly everything he owned when Sherman's army swept through Georgia, ought to be the last man to curry favor with that bluebelly. Southerners swore they would never forget. Well, Caleb hadn't forgotten.

“I sure hope they're going to fry up some steaks with that buck. It's been too long since I've had a good steak,” Willis Daggett said. Having seen Caleb, he and his brother got the idea to clean their guns, too.

“Big as it was, I'm not sure there's enough for steaks,” Clifton said. “Just wait 'til we reach Wyoming. I bet Josey will come back every night with
two
deer.”

“I wish you two would shut up about it,” Caleb said as he peered through the Navy revolver's six empty cylinders to make sure they were clean. The pistol hung heavy on his hip and got in the way while he drove the wagon, so he had packed it after a few days on the trail. The only time he'd thought to get it was the day the snake bit the boy. The run-in with the Indians reminded him it probably needed cleaning.

“Don't you like venison?” Willis asked, not understanding Caleb's foul mood. “If you don't want yours, can I have it? You can have my biscuits.”

“Keep your paws off my stew, fat boy,” Caleb said.

The brothers ignored him. “Josey told me he cleans and loads his guns before every breakfast and supper,” Clifton said, sounding like he repeated the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Willis seemed jealous. “When does he talk to you?”

“All the time, you fool. He says any man who tends himself before his guns isn't worth much. I'm going to start doing that, too.”

“How often do you idiots need to shoot?” Before either Daggett answered or made any more noise about their hero, Caleb cut them off. “I just don't see what all the fuss is about. If we spent our days riding all over the country, we would come back with something even better than a deer, like a buffalo or a bear.”

“Josey Angel told me they's too heavy to carry back to camp,” Willis said.
So now he's having private conversations with Josey Angel, too.
“You'd have to skin it and butcher it where you killed it. Be better if we shot antelope or deer like Josey.”

Clifton snorted. “Willis, you ain't no crack shot like Josey Angel. You couldn't hit the ground if you fell out of your wagon.” He laughed at his joke, leaving him unable to fend off an assault from his larger brother, who landed a punch that left him rubbing his shoulder.

Caleb was about to yell at the boys to shut up when he noticed, almost lost in the gray and brown of the chaparral, a good-sized jackrabbit poised on its hind legs, its nose twitching in curious study of the three men. The boys noticed it, too. “You loaded?” Willis asked his brother.

“Not yet.”

Caleb looked to them. They exchanged grins. The race was on.

A powder flask lay at Caleb's feet. He tapped it against his knee to loosen the contents, then poured what he judged to be the right amount into a chamber—no time to measure—then slipped the ball in and pulled down the loading lever to pack it securely. In his haste, he left the other cylinders empty. He added the percussion cap, careful not to set it off in his hand. He sensed the others moved just as fast, so he raised the gun and sighted quickly. The explosion in his hand echoed immediately with two others, the sound so great his head throbbed. Through the haze of smoke, the rabbit disappeared.

“Damn.”

“Did we hit it?” Willis asked.

“What do you think, you ignoramus.”

They stood for a better look, just as nearly every man in camp appeared around them, armed and cocked and ready to go off at the first sight of marauding Indians.

“What's happened?”

“Is anybody hurt?”

“Where did they go?”

It took a moment to explain and calm everyone, and then they heard another shot from the other side of camp. “Now what?”

Rutledge was spitting mad. “Fools. With everyone so wound up over Indians someone might have died of fright.”

Caleb almost laughed at the man's vexation.
You would be the first to go.
Then he saw Annabelle, who had come with the other women to see about the commotion. Her hair hung loose and wild around her shoulders. Something was different about her, though Caleb couldn't place it. He felt a fool now for missing his shot. He supposed Josey Angel never missed, at least not that anyone witnessed, and now he and the Daggetts couldn't hit a jackrabbit with three shots among them.

“Everything's fine. Nothing to worry about,” Rutledge called.

Mrs. Rutledge approached her daughter and handed her a ribbon for her hair. As Annabelle turned and walked toward the wagons, Caleb realized what was different. Instead of black, she wore a gingham dress of white and faded-blue checks.

Before Caleb could figure what that meant, little Sarah Chestnut raced to the group, breathless and red-faced. She was a tiny girl, all elbows and knees, but the family features that served her father so poorly made a more comely impression on her. Later, Caleb would have time to reflect on the strangeness of having Stephen Chestnut in his thoughts just moments before tragedy struck. In the moment, though, all eyes were on the girl as she spoke between great gulps of air.