The Trail West Read online

  Just like that, she pounced on him, letting loose with a barrage of unaimed and unanswered blows and kicks. As she pounded, she shouted, “Don’t you go callin’ me names!”

  Despite his occasional shocked look when she contrived to land a blow that actually hurt him, Sweeney managed a big grin and taunted, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty . . .”

  “You peckerwood idiot!” she screamed, hitting and kicking as hard and wild as she could—which was growing pretty danged wild and hard.

  More in order to save the young cowboy some face than anything else, Monahan climbed to his feet and stood over the girl. “That’ll be about enough, Miss Julia.” Grabbing the back of her shirt and the waistband of her skirts, he lifted her straight off Sweeney, still kicking like an airborne bronc and trying to punch the living daylights out of him. She landed a good, sound slap to his cheek, then spat in his face.

  Monahan had turned around and was setting the girl on the ground, feet first, when the air behind him moved with a little localized whoosh. He planted a hand on Julia’s shoulder and held her away at arm’s length, then twisted his head toward Sweeney. He was on his feet and looked very angry. Maybe not angry enough to kill her, but Monahan wasn’t taking any chances. He stretched out his other arm and planted it in the center of Sweeney’s chest, stopping him as he stepped forward.

  “Let me have at her,” Sweeney muttered, never taking his eyes off the girl’s. “Just lemme at her for five lousy minutes.”

  Monahan noted that the girl had stopped pushing forward. Most of the pressure was coming from Sweeney “Butch, ease up. She’s just a kid.”

  Sweeney growled, “Yeah, just a smart-mouthed, sassy little wench askin’ for a whippin’ kinda kid!” He put pressure on Monahan’s arm.

  “Maybe you’re right, Butch, but it’s not up to you or me to decide. It’s up to her folks. That is, if anybody claims her.”

  He felt her jerk toward him again and he snarled, “Now, knock it off, the both o’ you, or you’re both gonna see some whompin’ like you ain’t never dreamed to see afore!” With that, he pulled them toward him an inch or so, then thrust them apart.

  Sweeney was unaffected, but Julia landed on her fanny in the weeds. Well, at least I can still push a little girl down, Monahan thought ruefully. He staggered, and felt Sweeney catch his arm.

  “Careful, there, Monahan.”

  The old cowboy shook him off like a dog shakes off pond water. He didn’t want sympathetic words. He wanted twenty years back, that’s what he wanted. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out where to complain, though. He’d tried the Lord, tried him a lot, but nobody ever answered. “I’m alright, dammit! Now, let’s get this lunch mess cleaned up and be on our way.”

  Sweeney stepped right up, getting his tin plate, utensils, and cup scrubbed out with sand, wiped down, and packed away. Monahan, who cleaned up after the dog as well as himself, was ready a few minutes later.

  The girl hadn’t moved an inch.

  “C’mon, Julia,” Sweeney said. “Shake a leg.”

  “Ain’t goin’.”

  Incredulous, Sweeney stopped fiddling with his horse’s bridle and turned toward her. “You ain’t goin’? Why not?”

  Monahan watched the girl, waiting for her response. When none was forthcoming, he finally said, “Julia, you’re goin’ with us whether you aim to or not. Now, get up on your feet and get crackin’.”

  She looked up directly at him. “Said, I ain’t goin’. You can’t make me. I know my rights.”

  Despite himself, Monahan grinned. “An’ just what makes you think you got rights?”

  She looked even more annoyed with him. “Mr. President Lincoln freed the slaves, didn’t he? I figure that includes me, since I feel like a slave mosta the time.”

  “Don’t matter a whit how you feel,” Monahan said, trying to rein himself back to reasonability. “You’re a minor and a girl to boot. And it ain’t ‘Mr. President Lincoln’. It’s Mr. Lincoln or Mr. President, if you’re talkin to him direct. And Mr. Lincoln or President Lincoln if he ain’t there but you’re just talkin about him.”

  “What about him?” she demanded, shooting her finger toward Sweeney and confusing Monahan. “He can’t be more ’n eighteen!”

  Sweeney threw a leg over his saddle. “First off, I’m twenty-three. Second, you can call me Mr. Sweeney or you can call me Butch, but you got no call to be sayin’ a word about Mr. Abraham Lincoln, former President of these here United States and its territories, on account of he’s murdered, dead, and buried. Understood?”

  Julia lowered her finger, but didn’t speak. She kept staring at Sweeney, and it wasn’t a happy stare, not by a long shot.

  “C’mon, missy,” said Monahan, hauling her up to her feet. To Sweeney he added, “Well, I don’t think they would’ve buried him if he wasn’t dead,” before he stepped up on General Grant and pulled his boot back from the stirrup. He held down his hand. “C’mon, girl. We ain’t got all day.”

  At last she took his hand, although grudgingly, and climbed up behind him. “I ain’t stupid,” she muttered into his shoulder so only he could hear. “I know President Lincoln got assassinated at a play. It was Our American Cousin and at it was at Ford’s Theatre. So I ain’t stupid.”

  Monahan didn’t turn round, but asked, “And why’re you tellin’ me?”

  “’Cause I ain’t speakin’ to him.”

  9

  That evening, they made camp later than usual. Monahan had wanted to get to a wide open area where, if the girl decided to run, she couldn’t get out of sight before they noticed she was gone. According to Sweeney, they were about a day and a half from the town of Iron Creek.

  Monahan was disappointed. He was in a toot to get to the ranch he’d been aiming toward in the first place, eager for the immediate prospect of money coming in on a regular basis, and eager for a cot to sleep on most every night. The business with the girl had him all knotted up inside. The nagging feeling that something bad was on its way, and heading straight for him wouldn’t go away.

  About seven miles north and five, maybe six miles east of Monahan’s camp, the Baylor brothers had finally camped for the night after aimlessly wandering a sloppy zigzag through trees and scrub that took them back to within a mile of their starting point. Dev was suddenly jolted awake by his brother’s wild thrashing, creating a racket. As usual, Alf had forgotten to take off his spurs before he hunkered down for the night, and the rowels had gotten hung up in his thin blanket.

  Over all the noise of ripping blanket and clanking spurs and his brother’s unintelligible shouts, Dev hollered, “Alf! Alf! Put the cat down! Put the gawdamn kitty down!” When Alf didn’t respond, Dev dragged himself around the embers of their dying fire and shook his brother by the shoulder. “Let go of ol’ Fluffy, Alf. You know he’s Ma’s favorite!”

  Usually, that was enough to bring Alf out of it, but it didn’t work. He just started kicking harder, which created more sounds of ripping blanket.

  Dev tried again. “You’re dreamin’, Alf,” he said gently. “You’re dreamin’. Now stop kickin’ and fussin’, Alphonse. Settle down. Settle . . . calm down. Shhh, shhh, shhhhh,” he finished, and Alf finally quieted to a loud but regular snore.

  Figuring things had settled to a safe decibel level, Dev slouched back to his own side of the fire.

  But he had just closed his eyes again when Alf began talking. At first, he thought it was going to be like the night before when Alf had mumbled for an hour or so before finally sinking into a deep and silent sleep. But it was not so. Sleeping Alf—who was very different from Waking Alf, Dev had discovered—was in a talkative mood. He wasn’t making any more sense than usual, but his words were crisp and clear.

  “G’day, mite,” Alf said rather quickly, and in a voice at least a register lower than his usual confused and cracking tenor.

  Dev hadn’t figured out what kind of accent it was, exactly, on those occasions when he paid it any mind at all. But Alf was consistent,
anyway. He used the same slang often enough that Dev thought it sounded sort of British. But if it came from some part of the British Empire, Dev didn’t know where.

  “. . . said he’d be diddled iffen that ol’ Papa Croc didn’t carry off ’is leg, the blasted idiot. Oh, he was bleedin’ an’ yellin’ to beat the band, he was. Didn’t last long, rest ’im. Owen, he couldn’t get the gushin’ blood to stop and neither could ol’ Cods. And the guards, they wasn’t no bloody ’elp atall, atall . . .”

  Dev frowned at the dash of Cockney. He’d met a Cockney sailor, once—in some waterfront dive back in Boston. Of course, everybody there sounded funny, but the sailor? Everything rhymed, for one thing. “Plates o’ meat, that’s your feet.” Dev recalled that one, because it had taken him so long to figure out.

  But the jabbering Alf did when he was sleeping? It was only part Cockney—and part something completely different. Something that came from a place far away from the British Isles or the United States. Or even Canada!

  For the millionth time, he told himself that he and Jason never should have taken Alf out of that loony bin.

  The next morning, Monahan was up before the dawn, stomping on numb feet and moaning while he rubbed at his head and his neck, and made the other assorted creaks and groans he made every morning. Sweeney, who was just beginning to get accustomed to Monahan’s pre-light uproar, was awakened not by Monahan’s ritual, but by the girl’s reaction to it.

  She screamed.

  And it wasn’t your everyday, garden variety ‘Help, help, I saw a mouse’ scream, either. It was a ‘Help, help, a whole passel of raping, murdering, wild-eyed Apache just broke through my door with mayhem on their minds, slaying in their hearts, and a whole arsenal of tomahawks and assorted deadly blades tucked in their belts’ kind of screech, with bone-shattering, bloodcurdling, gut-wrenching overtones.

  At least, that’s what it sounded like to Sweeney. After a quick look around to make sure there weren’t really any rapacious Apache, he muttered a muted, “Lord have mercy,” and yanked his blanket over his head.

  Monahan’s reaction to Julia’s scream was a little different. He spun around on his heel—a real feat, considering he’d barely stomped any blood into it yet—and hissed, “What the hell is wrong with you now?!”

  “Are you crazy? You’re makin’ too much noise!” the girl said, her hands clasped over her ears.

  “Not as much as you,” Monahan mumbled. He began stamping his foot again. “I think you already spooked the bejesus outta Butch, there.” He pointed a finger at Sweeney’s huddled form, barely discernible in the pre-dawn light.

  He had seen the young cowboy flinch when the girl screamed, and watched him tunnel down into his blankets a few seconds later. “No use tryin’ to hide, boy. Now that she’s woke up everythin’ within five miles what can kill an’ eat us, we might as well get on with it.”

  A grumble came from Sweeney’s general direction, and Monahan took it as an acknowledgement. He turned back to the girl. “Well, Miss Julia, hop to it.”

  She glared at him—and he glared right back—until at last she stood up and went into the brush to relieve herself. Or so he guessed. His hands moved to his knee, which was crying out for second place on his “ouch list.” To the slowly moving lump that was the blanketed Butch, he said, “You up, kid?”

  “I’m up,” was Sweeney’s muffled reply.

  “Well, get a move on. I got a feelin’ we ain’t got time to take breakfast, least not here and now.”

  The blanket-man shifted. “Why?”

  “Just got a feelin’, that’s all.” Monahan put his hands in the small of his back and began to knead it as best he could.

  “Okay.” Sweeney made a small move to indicate he understood.

  Monahan went on with his morning ministrations. He had yet to get to his shoulder, and was grateful for no further questions.

  By full morning, they had moved on about three miles. Pleased enough with their progress, Monahan let Sweeney shoot a couple of rabbits. But he made them put another four miles under their horses’ hooves before they could stop and rest.

  As relieved—and as hungry—as anyone, Sweeney made a small fire as fast as Julia could tote sticks, and quickly skinned, cleaned, and roasted the jackrabbits. The dog occupied his time by tossing the pelts high into the air, then leaping to catch them. And Monahan kept busy by tying out their horses in the knee-high grass until lunch was ready.

  It wasn’t that he was antisocial. Well, he was, but most especially, he was putting off seeing the girl again. For some reason, she left a bad taste in his mouth. She had ridden behind his saddle for the most of the morning, and she hadn’t said one word to him. Or to General Grant, for that matter. A person would at least figure she’d thank an old horse for going above and beyond the call of duty.

  “They’re ready,” Sweeney announced as Monahan walked back into camp. He held out a roasted rabbit on a stick.

  “You got a plate for that?”

  Sweeney sighed and handed him a plate, then the roasted rabbit.

  Monahan took it and sat, cross-legged in the grass beside him. He pulled out his pocketknife and cut the roasted buck or doe in half, and then in quarters. “Heads up,” he said, and when the girl turned his way, he tossed one of the front quarters to her. He threw one of the back quarters to Blue before he let himself sink his teeth into the other.

  The juice ran down his chin, and he smiled. “Good jackrabbit, Butch,” he managed while he chewed. He’d swear it tasted almost as good as those old cottontails back in Missouri.

  Now, why on earth had he thought of that?

  About the same time Sweeney had a change of heart . . . and a pang of conscience . . . and began slicing up his jackrabbit to share with the girl and the dog, too, the Baylor brothers were riding into the meadow where Dooley and his crew had camped the night before.

  Alf thumbed back his hat and slouched forward, his forearms folded on the saddle horn. He stared intently at the ground before them.

  Dev let a few seconds pass before he let out a snort. “What?” he asked derisively.

  Alf made no attempt to defend himself. He simply shook his head slowly, raised his head, and looked at his brother. “I’s flummoxed.”

  “Well, of course you are. You always are.” Then he thought better of it and in a friendlier tone, Dev asked, “What’s botherin’ you this time, Alf?”

  “Well, first we was followin’ one man, then all of a sudden he turned into two fellers an’ a dog. And now there’s a kid with ’em.” Alf shook his head. “I just can’t . . .”

  “Fathom it?” Dev asked. To tell the truth, he was perplexed, too, but it wouldn’t pay to let on to Alf. The only things he remembered with any surety were that he couldn’t play that high note in “Camptown Races” and his brother’s mistakes. He had a tendency to bring up those with alarming frequency.

  Well, Dev thought so, anyway.

  “Yeah, that’s good, Dev. Fathom.” Alf’s face brightened. “I like that word.” As was his habit, he repeated the word over and over, beneath his breath. But Dev heard and, as always, it pissed him off.

  Alf didn’t notice, though. He stuck out an arm, pointing to the garbled story left by footprints in the earth. “Those look like a kid’s to you?”

  Dev took a long time and a deep breath before he said, “No. Looks like the tracks of a girl’s shoe.” They were short and narrow, with too thin a heel and too finely chiseled a toe for a boy’s boot. But why would that brother-murdering Monahan be carrying so many people? Dev wondered. He figured the other man must be good with a gun, and perhaps the dog was his. But now Monahan had added a girl to the mix?

  “I just don’t get it,” Dev said, giving his head a slow shake.

  “Mayhap she’s a fairy,” Alf whispered.

  She didn’t have a horse, Dev was thinking. That was for certain. Only two horses had ridden in, and only two sets of tracks led out. He’d been right, then. He’d told Alf the faint noise
that had woken them before the dawn wasn’t any owl’s hoot. He smirked. He’d bet they were messin’ with her. Otherwise, why would she holler so loud they’d heard her clear back up at their own camp?

  Beside him, Alf was still staring at the ground, muttering, “She could be a haunt, ’cept haunts don’t leave no footprints, I doesn’t think. Dev, do haunts leave footprints?”

  Dev took the course of least resistance and smacked Alf across the face with his hat. “C’mon.” He rode west out of the camp, following the trail of bent and broken grass.

  Alf was right behind him. “But Dev . . .”

  “Of course ghosts don’t leave footprints,” Dev said without bothering to turn toward him. “Did you ever see a ghost with feet?”

  “Ain’t never seen no haunt,” a dejected Alf replied.

  “Well, then don’t bother me with stupid questions.” Dev checked his pocket watch. “And we’ll be stopping for lunch in about a half hour.”

  There was relief in Alf’s voice. “All right, Dev. Good thinkin’.”

  But Dev didn’t hear him. He was thinking . . . and busy pushing his horse into a slow lope. They hadn’t lit a breakfast fire, which meant they’d cut out early, and with a purpose. They were headed for Iron Creek. He’d lay cash money on it.

  10

  Monahan had hurried them the rest of that day, hurried them to the point of exhaustion. But to his mind it had been worth it. He couldn’t see much of the town as they rode in. Just that it wasn’t much of a town. Naturally, Julia didn’t say a word. At nightfall, he had taken over ferrying her, much to Butch’s delight, and he swore, it was like riding double with a big sandbag.

  But he’d been thinking she was acting the way he would’ve acted if he’d been in her situation, if he’d been just a little snip of a girl and all, and had been picked up and bossed around by Sweeney—who was at least a foot taller than her—and himself. And he was even taller than Sweeney, especially with his boots on. He wondered who had legal charge of her. He’d never thought to ask.