Trail Angel (6 page)

The men laughed. “Best be glad of that,” the Colonel said.

As they rode off Caleb heard him say to the others, “You can't expect to catch much if all you're doing is playing with worms.”

Annabelle's father imagined himself a cowboy already, so he left with the Daggett boys to check the oxen as soon as he and Annabelle arrived at the camp outside Omaha.

She went to the wagons to find a place for the candles and other supplies purchased in town. The task should have been simple, but every time she returned to the wagons her father had repacked things. It always took a few moments to discern his newest strategy.

As she studied the wagon's contents, Josey Angel rode up on his gray Indian pony. She had sent him off soon after the confrontation in the street outside Hellman's store. “Perhaps you will remember my face the next time we meet,” she said, intending it as a rebuke, though he showed no recognition of it.

She hadn't expected to see him again so soon. Doffing his hat, he dismounted with a grace that left her regretting the need to sell her horses. The larger, eastern-bred mounts were accustomed to eating grain and would only be a burden on the trail.

“Can I help you get something, ma'am?” The scout's helpful attitude evaporated with one look in the back of the wagon, his dark eyes growing wide. “Maybe I better wait here, in case you get lost.”

Annabelle understood his hesitation. The wagon was big as a boat and cluttered as an old barn. Heavy wheels, set wide and constructed of a wood that resisted shrinking in a dry climate, supported the deep bed divided into two floors. The lower, reserved for provisions, stored things that were not needed each day. The upper, for clothing and bedding, doubled as a lounging place during the day and a bedroom at night. The running gear was removable so that the wooden wagon box, sealed watertight with pine tar, would float while fording a river.

“My challenge is trying to find a place to store these boxes without removing half of what we've already packed,” she said.

Josey Angel extended a hand, but Annabelle ignored the offer. She'd been climbing in and out of the wagon for days while helping to pack provisions. The wagon had an arched, canvas-covered roof, with the hickory bows stretched high enough so a child could stand under them. Annabelle hunched over and narrated her progress as she made her way into the wagon.

“This first big box is packed with bacon, salt and other things we need often.” She stepped past huge linen sacks of flour and corn meal, smaller sacks of beans, rice, sugar and green coffee beans that they would brown in a skillet. “This old chest has clothes and things we will want to wear and use on the way. Then there's the medicine chest.” She moved farther back, opened the box and recited its contents. “Brandy, quinine for malaria, hartshorn for snakebite, citric acid for scurvy.”

She kicked at a metal cleat fastened to the bottom of the wagon. “These are for ropes to hold things in place.” She moved on, pointing to another box, nearly as high as the chest. “That has a few dishes and things Mother will want once we arrive.” Seeing his reaction, she said, “You don't carry a tea set on the back of your horse?”

Making her way back, she described items gathered along the sides: ax, shovel, handsaw, auger, rope. In one corner stood a ten-gallon keg for water and a churn. “That's where the sheet iron stove goes when we aren't using it,” she said, pointing to the other corner. “See how the lunch basket fits into the tub?”

He pointed beside her. “Whose chair?”

“That's Mother's. We'll turn it down at night, level things out with the sacks and pile the bedding and comforters on top to sleep.”

“You'll sleep here with your parents?”

“A gentleman wouldn't ask,” she said. Seeing that hint of a smile on his smooth face, she added, “We'll hang a sheet between us for privacy.”

Annabelle sprang down from the wagon to stand beside him. “That's a washtub,” she said, sniffing the air loudly. “I suppose you cowboys wouldn't know about those.”

He stood back to allow her to pass.

“I suppose I better check on Father before somebody gets hurt,” she said, leaving him by the wagon. She wondered if he would follow her and wasn't surprised when he called after her. “Weren't you going to store these boxes someplace?”

She turned to see him nudging the candles with a boot.

Oh, blazes.
Annabelle trudged past him, avoiding his gaze. She sighed as she looked in the back of the wagon, still uncertain where the boxes would fit.

Josey Angel hovered, like some kind of sad-faced puppy. “I guess I best be going.” Annabelle didn't even bother to look at him. “The Colonel wants to be in town when the general returns.”

“General?” Annabelle's stomach fluttered.

“That's right. He's due back from his inspection of the forts. I think he's staying at your hotel. There's a party planned for him tonight, and the Colonel hopes to hear news about the trail.”

Annabelle didn't hear anything more the scout said. She steadied herself against the dresser in the wagon, her head spinning at the prospect of what his words suggested. There had been one Union soldier Southerners despised even more than the devil himself. Though she already knew the answer in her heart, she had to ask the question.

“Which general?”

“Why, Sherman, of course.”

Josey stood just inside the Herndon House dining room wishing he were somewhere else. He would have preferred to remain in camp with Lord Byron, but he couldn't leave the Colonel to ride back late from town alone.

For the past hour, Josey had pretended to study the elaborate wood molding and pilaster-framed doorways of Omaha's finest hotel. He kept to the fringes of what he heard described as the social gathering of the season. The swirling motion of people and their clamor reminded him of a battle.

The hotel staff created a field by removing the imported furniture from the dining room. A mirror hanging over the large fireplace reflected the light of the gas lamps lining the far walls, making the room appear large enough for a battalion. Waiters in dark broadcloth suits moved about like messengers. Instead of officers' orders, they delivered trays crowded with flutes of sparkling wine.

The important men of Omaha wore uniforms of Sunday-best suits tailored to conceal expanding paunches. They maneuvered individually or in small groups, more like guerilla fighters than a unit. Sherman's junior officers, tall, straight-backed men with clean uniforms and shiny boots, opposed them. They guarded their commander's flank, quick to block any unwanted incursion or to rally to his support in an engagement.

Josey tried to distract himself with different thoughts, yet too often his mind turned to Annabelle. He was a fool for not anticipating her reaction to the news of the general's arrival. The brutal campaign through the South had been necessary to end the war, yet many Southerners would never forgive or forget Sherman's march. Maintaining his distance from the fiery woman would be smart, but he couldn't forget how she looked facing down those fools in the street or how she smelled standing close to him.

Thinking of Annabelle brought back memories he preferred to bury. The bad days in Kansas. The little farm along the border. The woman with straw-colored hair who lived there.

Josey had been hunting that afternoon, seeking something to add to the stew pots in camp. He heard her cries before he saw her. He saw the men first. They were bummers and dressed for the part, scavenging for supplies. Their disheveled uniforms made it difficult to determine which side they were on. One carried a squawking chicken upside down by its legs. Two others held armfuls of sacks. The fourth, a sergeant, held the woman, her arm twisted behind her. He released her with a shove, and she fell to the ground. Her light cotton dress tore at the shoulder, revealing smooth skin tight against sharp collarbones. The men stopped when they saw Josey.

“What's going on, Sergeant?”

The sergeant was a burly man with a stomach that hung over his belt and a mustache so thick and long he must have tasted it at every meal. “Just following orders, sir.”

“Your orders include mistreating women?”

The sergeant scowled, his manner betraying his resentment for cavalry. “Orders were to get what we can to feed the battalion. These Southern bitches will hide everything.” He pointed to a box by the door of the house that held a collection of candlesticks and flatware. “We found that buried behind the barn.”

“Soldiers can't eat silver.”

The sergeant stared at Josey, his breath coming in heavy puffs that stirred the hairs of his mustache. They both knew the silver wasn't going back to camp. Bummers who stole household goods shipped them back home as plunder. The sergeant wore a gun belt with a pistol in a covered holster. He moved his hands to his waist and looked to either side. With their hands full, the others wouldn't be much help, and they didn't appear in a hurry to make themselves targets. They seemed plenty aware of the two guns Josey wore on his waist and the rifle in its saddle scabbard at his side.

With a heavy sigh, the sergeant said to the others, “We've gotten enough here. Let's move on.” He looked back at the box of silver but made no move toward it.

The woman looked up at Josey. Even with a dirt-streaked face and pain-dulled eyes, she was pretty. Josey wondered what else the sergeant might have taken if he had not come along. “They've left me with nothing,” she said. “I'll starve.”

Josey looked away. “I can't help you, ma'am. An army's got to eat.”

The sergeant smirked as he led the bummers away. Josey dismounted, offering a hand to the woman. She ignored it, rising on her own with a grimace. She limped to her house, stooping to drag the box of silver inside, then closed the door.

It should have been the last time Josey saw her. He should have never returned to the cabin, and over the last two years he'd lost track of how many times he wished that had been true.

A commotion from the other side of the room drew Josey's attention back to the party. A haze of cigar and pipe smoke hung over the room like a cloud of black powder. A cacophony of countless conversations assaulted his ears. Banalities about weather. Women's gossip about the marriage possibilities for the plain-looking daughter of a merchant. Soldiers' tall tales of valor. Mingled with the party noise, they sounded like battlefield commands. His throat tightened. His breath came in quick gasps. He put his back to the wall. Scanned the field for a line of retreat.

The Colonel's light touch on his arm jolted him. “Everything all right, Josey?”

Josey swallowed. He breathed easier in the space created when a circle of admirers closed around Sherman on their side of the room. “Let's take a minute,” the Colonel said. “We'll wait until the crowd clears before talking with the general.”

Before that happened, Sherman lost his position as the center of attention.

A young woman in a black dress commanded the notice of every man in the room. Just as quickly, every woman studied the newcomer's dark hair, tied up in ribbons to match her dark dress, and appraised the low cut of her gown. She spurned the hoops worn by the other young women so that the material clung to her slender figure. With her shoulders held back, her head high, the woman glided across the room.

Directly toward Josey.

Annabelle began dying her dresses black after her brothers' deaths nearly four years earlier. The subsequent loss of her husband left her no reason to alter her wardrobe. Her mother occasionally inquired when the mourning period might end. She still dreamed that Annabelle would remarry and make her a grandmother. The truth hurt too much, so Annabelle told her she felt no need to move on.

“Black is a forgiving color for a woman enduring the privations of war,” she said when pressed on the matter. So long as she overlooked the sheen where the fabric had worn thinnest, the dark color concealed the wear of material too scarce to be replaced.

Standing before a mirror in her room at the Herndon House, the sounds of the merriment downstairs drifted in from the hallway. Annabelle rethought her plan to confront the man responsible for so much grief to the South.

On returning to the hotel late that afternoon, she found a crowd gathered. Blue-coated soldiers moved with purpose across the hotel's wooden boardwalk and under the awnings that covered the first-floor windows of the Union Pacific Railroad office. The place resembled a camp quarters more than a luxury hotel. Townspeople in business attire turned out to watch in hopes of seeing the great man.

William Tecumseh Sherman.

The news staggered Annabelle. In the last months of the war, Sherman's approach terrified all of Charleston. It was a relief when he marched instead on Columbia. On hearing how Sherman's troops razed that city, Annabelle's guilt at drawing comfort at others' suffering transformed her fear into hatred for the man leading the marauding bluebellies. She wished then that Sherman
had
come to her city. She would have faced him herself.

Now she had her chance.

Her mother helped tie her hair for the occasion, and Annabelle was pleased enough with the results, which would have qualified as fashionable even in Charleston. As for the rest . . . She forced herself to look away from the mirror. Loss of weight when food was scarce made her cheekbones too prominent, like one of the stern-faced Indian women she saw in pictures. Annabelle had altered her dresses for travel and nearly discarded this one, for the décolletage made it impractical for what she imagined life to be on the frontier. It seemed fitting for this night, even though without crinoline the dress clung to her frame in an unseemly fashion.