The Lone Western Wanderer

Chapter Sixteen

Clay woke with his hand around the rifle before he knew why.

A woman screamed outside.

The sound cut off sharply, then came again, lower this time, as if a hand had closed over her mouth.

Tucker stirred beneath the blankets by Clay’s feet. “Clay?”

“Stay down.”

Clay shoved aside the wagon flap and dropped into the dark.

The camp had gone thin and gray under a waning moon. The fire at its center was mostly ash. Wagons stood in uneven rows among the wet grass, their canvas black against the trees. A horse kicked somewhere close by. Men shouted near the edge of camp.

“Sarah!”

He ran.

Two figures were bent beside Sarah’s wagon.

One had hold of her from behind. The other was hauling at the rear canvas where her trunks and bundles had been tied down.

Sarah fought hard and without much noise.

Her hair had come loose. She drove her heel down on the man’s foot, twisted free enough to throw an elbow into his face, then reached inside the wagon.

The man cursed and caught her arm.

Clay raised his rifle.

“Let her go.”

The fellow turned. It was Danner, one of Everett’s usual shadows, a broad man with a red beard and a hat pulled low. He smiled when he saw Clay.

“Boy ought to be asleep.”

Sarah came up with her pistol in both hands. Her face was pale, but the barrel did not shake.

“Move,” she said.

Danner looked at her and laughed.

The shot cracked across the camp.

Danner’s hat jumped from his head. A clean hole appeared in the brim just above where his ear had been.

For a second nobody moved.

Then Danner swore and stumbled backward. The man at the wagon seized the mule team’s reins. Sarah fired again, lower this time. The bullet struck the wagon’s side with a hard splintering sound.

“Go!” the man shouted.

The mules lurched forward.

Clay ran for the team, but the wagon was already rolling. Its wheels struck a rut, bounced, and gained the trail beyond the trees. Danner backed after it, one hand clamped to his ear. He snatched up his hat from the ground and disappeared into the brush.

Clay fired once into the air.

It did no good. The wagon kept going.

The camp was in chaos; lanterns bobbed in frightened hands. Samuel came from his bedroll with his revolver out. Violet stood by her wagon, Brady pressed against her skirts. Charlotte Granger had one arm around Tucker, who had crawled from Clay’s wagon barefoot and wide-eyed.

“What happened?” Samuel asked.

“Everett’s men,” Clay said. He looked after the wagon until the last rattle of wheels had faded. “They took Sarah’s wagon.”

Sarah still held the pistol. Smoke curled from its barrel. Her chest rose and fell quickly, but she had stopped shaking.

Samuel looked at the dark trail. “You hit either of them?”

“His hat.”

“Near enough to make him remember it.”

Sarah lowered the gun. “They had my mother’s things in there.”

Clay turned toward her.

She was looking at the empty place where her wagon had stood.

A few objects lay in the mud: a tin cup, one of her stockings, the small blue-handled brush she used on her hair.

They had taken her bedroll, her extra dress, her food sack, the little chest she kept under the seat.

Everything that could be carried or sold.

Clay walked to the brush and picked it up. One bristle clung to the wet dirt.

“Did they touch you?” he asked.

Her eyes came to him at once. “No.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

He nodded, though he kept looking at her face. There was a red mark at the side of her throat, where a hand had been. His jaw tightened.

Harlan was giving orders now. “Wake the men. Get the animals close in. Nobody goes after them alone.”

A few men answered. Others stood watching Sarah and Clay. Since the split, there were not many left. The people who had chosen Clay had done it because they trusted him, but fear had a way of making a man count his losses.

Anna stood apart from them all, wrapped in a shawl too thin for the night. Her eyes followed the empty trail.

Clay bent and gathered Sarah’s things from the ground. The cup was dented. He put it under his arm. Then he reached for her pistol.

“Give me that.”

“I can keep it.”

“I know you can.” He held out his hand. “Your fingers are stiff.”

She looked down. Her fingers were clenched so tightly around the grip that the knuckles had gone white.

“I said I can keep it.”

Clay did not lower his hand. “Sarah.”

For a moment he thought she would snap at him. Instead she passed him the pistol. He checked the chamber, reloaded it from his own pouch, and handed it back butt first.

He glanced toward the woods. “You put a bullet through a man’s hat in the dark.”

“I meant to put it through his head.”

Clay looked at her.

She swallowed and turned away. “I missed.”

He understood then that she had not meant it as bragging. She was angry at the miss. Angry at the wagon. Angry that anyone had laid hands on her.

He slipped the blue brush into his coat pocket. “Come on.”

At last she looked at him again. “You’ve got Tucker,” she said. “And Rufus.”

“We’ll make room.”

“I won’t crowd you.”

“You won’t be crowding anybody.”

Samuel came near, his face tired in the lantern light. “We ought to move at first light. Everett knows where we are. He may come back once he sees what he’s got.”

Clay’s hand closed around the rifle stock. Sarah’s wagon would have held enough food for several days. Everett had wanted whatever Jacob had given her from the first time he saw her.

“We’ll put watches out,” Clay said.

Samuel watched him a moment. “You need sleep.”

“So do you.”

Clay looked at Sarah. “Get Violet to sit with her while I speak to the others.”

“I don’t need—”

“Just for a little while,” he said.

The words came out sharper than he intended. Sarah’s chin lifted.

Then he took a breath. “Please.”

She did not answer, but she went with Violet.

Clay spent the next hour moving through camp. He put Samuel on the north side where the trees thinned. Clay checked Charlotte’s wagon. The woman sat awake under her blankets. Noah’s coat folded in her lap. She had not worn it since he died.

“You ought to rest,” Clay told her.

“So ought you.”

“I’ll get to it.”

Charlotte touched his wrist. Her hand was dry and light. “The girl?”

“She’s safe.”

“Good.”

That was all she said.

When he finally climbed into his wagon, the sky had begun to pale behind the pines. Tucker lay curled against one side, asleep again. Rufus sat upright near the front, his back against a flour sack. His pale eyes were open, aimed toward nothing Clay could see.

Sarah sat beside him with her knees drawn up beneath the blanket Clay had given her. She had washed her face with a little water from the canteen. The red mark on her throat was clearer now.

Clay ducked under the canvas. “You can lie down.”

“I’m fine sitting.”

He set his rifle close at hand and crawled in beside Tucker.

There was little room. The wagon had been built for one man and supplies, not four souls with all their burdens.

Rufus had taken the narrow space by the driver’s board.

Tucker sprawled near Clay’s feet. That left Sarah a strip of blanket along the far side.

She looked at it as if it had insulted her.

Clay took off his coat and rolled it beneath her head. “It ain’t much.”

“It’s better than the ground.”

He nodded.

For a while none of them spoke. Outside, men walked their watches. Leather creaked. A horse blew through its nose and stamped. The camp smelled of damp wood, mule sweat, and ashes soaked cold by the night.

Rufus shifted his hands over the small leather bag he always kept near him. It was tied shut with a rawhide cord. Clay had seen the faint gleam of metal inside once when Rufus thought nobody was looking. Rings, perhaps. A watch. Things a man ought not to carry alone on the trail.

“Miss Foster,” Rufus said.

Sarah glanced toward him. “Yes?”

“You shoot like somebody taught you proper.”

“My uncle did.”

“Then he gave you one useful thing.”

Clay heard the flatness in her answer. Rufus did too. He only nodded.

After a moment, he said, “My first love could shoot.”

Sarah looked at him. Clay did as well.

Rufus rested his head against the wagon board. “Her name was Eliza. Lived near Vicksburg. Her father kept a little farm by the river. He told her girls had no use for a rifle. She shot the head off a copperhead one morning while he was saying it.”

Tucker made a small sound in his sleep.

Rufus smiled faintly. “Eliza told me afterward that a person ought to know how to preserve what the Lord had given them. Their own life foremost.”

Clay looked down at the floorboards.

“When I lost her, I thought the world had ended,” Rufus said. “There didn’t seem much point in rising, or eating, or speaking to any living soul. But it hadn’t ended. It had only become a different place. God kept putting folks in front of me who needed a hand. So I gave one where I could.”

Sarah’s face had gone quiet. She pulled the blanket higher around her shoulders.

Rufus turned his sightless eyes toward Clay. “That is often the work. Not grand things. A drink of water. A dry place to sleep.”

Clay felt heat rise under his collar. “I didn’t do enough tonight.”

“You came.”

“They took her wagon.”

“They did.” Rufus’s voice was gentle. “And tomorrow you’ll decide what comes next.”

Clay wanted to say Everett would pay for it. The words came easily in his mind. He saw Danner’s face in the moonlight. He saw Sarah’s hand shaking around the pistol after the shots.

Instead he said, “We ought to have put more men on watch.”

“Maybe so.”

That answer surprised him.

Rufus gave a soft breath that might have been a laugh. “A man can learn from a wrong turn without setting up house in it.”

Clay looked away first. He reached down and adjusted Tucker’s blanket, though the boy was covered well enough.

Rufus lay back. “Get some rest, Mr. McCall.”

Clay did not think he would. Still, the long night had pulled at his bones, and the sound of the camp settled around him little by little. Sarah lay down with her back to him. A foot or so of space remained between them.

He listened to her breathing.

Then sleep came.

***

When Clay woke, the wagon was bright with morning.

For a moment he did not know why his arm had gone numb.

Then he saw Sarah.

Sometime in the night she had turned toward him. Her head rested against his shoulder. One hand was curled in the front of his shirt. His own arm lay around her back beneath the blanket, his palm spread against the wool of her dress.

Clay stopped breathing.

Her hair smelled faintly of smoke and whatever soap she had used by the river two days ago. Her cheek was warm through his shirt. He stared at the canvas roof, afraid that any movement would wake her, and equally afraid that she would wake and find him holding her.

Tucker snored softly at their feet.

Rufus was gone.

Clay saw the empty narrow space by the driver’s board. The flour sack was still there. The blanket Rufus had used was folded square on top of it. His leather bag was gone. So were his boots.

Clay eased his arm from Sarah without touching more of her than he had to. The movement woke her.

Her eyes opened.

For one second she did not move. Then she looked down at her hand in his shirt, at his arm half beneath her shoulder.

Color rose in her face.

Clay sat up too quickly and struck his head on the wagon bow.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

Sarah scrambled away, turning her back to him. “You were holding me.”

“I was asleep.”

She did not answer; there was a change in her face—her eyes were wider than usual.

He looked toward Rufus’s place. “He’s gone.”

Sarah turned. The embarrassment left her face at once.

“Gone?”

Clay climbed out of the wagon. Morning had fully broken. Mist lay low over the grass. People were already moving through camp, packing what they could, feeding animals, speaking in low voices.

Rufus stood fifty yards away at the edge of the trees.

He had his coat on and his leather bag over one shoulder. His walking stick was in his right hand. He faced east, toward the first light.

Clay strode toward him. “Rufus.”

The man turned his head.

“You’re leaving?”

“I believe I am.”

“By yourself?”

“I came by myself.”

“That don’t mean you ought to go the same way.”

Rufus smiled. “No trail stays the same.”

Clay stopped in front of him. Up close, Rufus looked worn down. There were deep lines around his mouth, and silver in his dark beard. Yet he stood straight.

Clay exhaled hard through his nose. “You don’t even know where you’re headed.”

Rufus’s expression changed slightly.

“Son, we never really know.”

Clay had no answer to that.

Rufus lifted one hand. Clay took it. The man’s grip was firm and callused.

“You have a good heart,” Rufus said. “Keep it that way. A hard road will try to make you close it. Don’t let it.”

Clay’s throat tightened. He nodded once.

Rufus turned toward Sarah, who had come out of the wagon with Clay’s coat around her shoulders.

“Miss Foster.”

“Rufus.”

“Your life belongs to God before it belongs to any cruel man who thinks he can name your worth.” His voice carried no force, yet Sarah went still. “Don’t forget that.”

Her fingers closed on the coat collar. “I won’t.”

He tipped his head toward Tucker, who now stood beside Charlotte, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Take care of that boy.”

“We will,” Clay said.

Rufus smiled again, then faced the trees.

“Wait,” Clay said. “At least take some food.”

But Rufus had already started walking.

Clay watched him go between the pines. The walking stick tapped softly against roots and stones. Rufus did not falter. The morning mist swallowed his coat, then his shoulders, then the pale shape of his head.

For a long while Clay stood there.

Samuel came up beside him. “You think he’ll manage?”

Clay looked at the empty trees.

He remembered Rufus arriving with no wagon and no story a man could pin down. He remembered the way he had known Clay’s trouble before Clay spoke it. He remembered those blind eyes turned toward the road as though they saw farther than any of them.

“I reckon he will,” Clay said.

Sarah stepped close enough that her sleeve brushed his hand.

Clay did not move away.

The camp was waiting. Everett had their trail. Sarah had nothing now but what she wore, a pistol, and the few things Clay had gathered from the mud.

Clay looked over the wagons at the women and children and the tired men trying to ready themselves for another day. Then he picked up his rifle.

“Let’s get moving,” he said.