Chapter Eleven
The wagons stopped beside a narrow creek where the water ran brown over flat stones.
It was not much of a place to rest. The grass had been cropped close by deer or cattle, and the ground sloped toward a stand of cottonwoods whose leaves had begun to turn at the edges. Still, there was water, and that was enough.
Clay unharnessed Nell while Tucker sat on the wagon tongue with a willow switch, watching the others pull in.
“Don’t let her drink too fast,” Clay said.
“I know; you don’t have to tell me every single day.”
Clay looked over at him. Tucker had a streak of dirt on one cheek and a tear in the knee of his trousers that had spread wider since morning. He held Nell’s lead rope with both hands as if he had been born doing it.
“All right,” Clay said. “You know.”
Tucker nodded, pleased at having the last word.
Across the creek, Violet was calling for her boy. Brady had gone down among the reeds with a tin cup, though he had been warned not to stray. Sarah stood near Violet’s wagon, one hand lifted against the sun as she looked toward the water.
“He’s right there,” Clay called.
Brady rose from the reeds with a frog in both hands.
Violet let out a breath that could have been heard across camp. “Brady Harper, you come here this instant.”
The boy held up the frog. “Look what I got.”
“I don’t care if you caught the Governor of California. You come here.”
Clay bent to loosen Nell’s collar. The mare tossed her head, impatient with the flies. Her coat was damp under the leather. He rubbed her neck before leading her down to the creek, letting her take small pulls of water while Tucker kept the rope short.
Samuel came past with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and a coffee pot in one hand.
“You mean to put that horse to work again today?” he asked.
“She’ll tell me if she can’t.”
“That horse has better sense than most men.”
Clay smiled. “That’s no great praise.”
Samuel stopped beside him. He looked beyond the wagons, toward the road they had traveled that morning. It disappeared behind a low rise, pale and rutted between sage and scrub oak.
“You see somebody?”
“No.”
Samuel had that way of answering which made a man listen harder.
Clay followed his gaze. Nothing moved on the road. The day was still except for wagon wheels settling in the dirt, children shouting, harness chains clinking as people unharnessed their teams.
Then a shape came over the rise.
At first Clay took him for a dead tree dragged by the wind. The man walked bent over, one hand pressed against his side. He wore a dark coat that hung long on him despite the heat. His hat had no crown left to it, only a limp brim tied beneath his chin with a strip of cloth.
Samuel set the coffee pot down.
The stranger took another few steps and stumbled.
Men noticed him then. Conversation thinned. A few hands went toward rifle stocks. Everett Kane stood near his supply wagon, speaking low with two men Clay did not know well. He turned and squinted at the figure on the road.
Clay handed Nell’s rope to Tucker.
“Hold her.”
“I can come.”
“No. You stay where folks can see you.”
Tucker’s mouth pulled tight, but he took the rope.
Clay crossed the open ground with Samuel beside him. The stranger had made it as far as the nearest wagon before his knees gave way. He caught himself on one hand in the dust.
Clay crouched a few feet away.
“Can you stand?”
The man’s face lifted.
He was perhaps forty, though hunger and weather made it hard to tell. His beard was gray at the chin and black at the cheeks. There was blood dried along one temple, but the cut itself looked old. His eyes were pale and quick.
“Water,” he said.
Clay took his canteen from his shoulder but did not put it in the man’s hands. He tipped it slowly. The stranger drank, coughing once, then tried to seize the canteen.
Clay pulled it back.
“Easy.”
The man swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Beg pardon.”
“What’s your name?” Samuel asked.
“Rufus Sullivan.”
“Where’s your wagon, Rufus?”
Rufus looked over his shoulder at the empty road.
“Gone.”
Samuel’s face did not change. “Gone where?”
Rufus shut his eyes for a moment. “Soldiers came through our place three nights ago. Blue coats. Said they were looking for deserters and thieves. Said any man with a decent horse had cause to fear them.”
Clay listened without interrupting.
“My family had a small spread south of Fort Kearny,” Rufus went on. His voice was dry, but steady now that he had taken on water. “My wife. Two girls. My brother and his boy. They found us at supper.”
Rufus kept his eyes on the dirt between his boots.
“They wanted grain. We had grain. They wanted the horses. My brother told them no. Fool thing to do, but he’d worked those animals ten years.” He pressed his hand harder to his side. “They shot him. Then the rest came quick.”
The creek made a small, constant noise over stone.
“They took our teams. Burned the barn. I was out by the far pasture when it happened. Came back after dark.” Rufus looked at Clay again. His eyes were wet, but no tears fell. “I buried what I could with a shovel handle. Been walking since.”
Samuel glanced at Clay.
It was a hard tale. Too hard to take in all at once. Clay had heard men lie before. Boys at the orphanage lied over bread, blankets, a missing coin. Their lies usually spilled out fast because they wanted to be believed. Rufus did not seem to want anything but water.
That did not make him honest.
Clay looked at the man’s boots. Good boots once.
Army issue, perhaps, though the soles were worn thin.
His coat had been mended neatly at the elbow.
No bedroll. No knife at his belt. No hatchet.
A man left alone on the trail with nothing might lose all those things.
Or he might choose to leave them behind.
“You got any papers?” Samuel asked.
Rufus shook his head.
“Anything to show who you are?”
“No.”
Everett walked nearer, his thumbs hooked in his belt. “Convenient, ain’t it?”
Rufus looked toward him but did not answer.
Everett spat into the dust. “Folks get robbed every day out here. Now we’re meant to take in every sorry fellow who comes walking over a hill with a story?”
“He only asked for water,” Clay said.
“Water’s one thing. Bringing him among women and children is another.”
Clay stood. His knees cracked from the long crouch. “What are you asking for, Rufus?”
The stranger got one foot beneath him. Samuel caught his arm and helped him upright.
“A place by a fire,” Rufus said. “A crust, if you can spare it. I’ll work for it when I have strength.”
“You know anything useful?”
“I can mend harness. I can cook, poorly. I know plants. Some. And I don’t sleep much.”
“That last part ain’t useful to me,” Everett said.
Rufus turned his head toward the voice. Clay noticed then that the man did not look directly at Everett. His eyes passed just to one side of him.
He was clearly weak.
Samuel said, “You travel alone long?”
“Since the soldiers came.”
“You expect us to believe they killed your whole family and let you walk away?”
Rufus’s shoulders sank a little. “No. I don’t expect anything from you.”
There was no anger in it. That bothered Clay more than if he had shouted.
Charlotte had come from her wagon without Clay noticing. She held a covered dish in both hands.
“Noah’s got beans,” she said. “They’re soft enough for him.”
Noah stood behind her. His eyes were fixed on Rufus.
“Give the man a bowl,” Noah said.
Everett made a sound through his nose. “You’re all set on being robbed blind.”
Noah looked at him. “I’ve been robbed blind, Kane. I know the difference.”
For a moment Everett’s face tightened. Then he turned away.
Clay watched him go back toward his own wagon. Anna sat in its shade, combing her hair with a small bone comb. Everett bent close to the two men beside him again. They looked up once at Rufus, then away.
Clay did not like it.
Charlotte handed the dish to Rufus. He accepted it carefully with both hands.
“You sit there,” she said, pointing to a patch of shade near her wagon. “Eat slow. You’ll bring it up again if you don’t.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s Mrs. Granger.”
Rufus gave the faintest nod. “Yes, Mrs. Granger.”
Clay went back to Nell.
Tucker was still holding the lead rope. He had watched the whole thing with round, solemn eyes.
“Is he coming with us?” he asked.
“For now.”
“Do you think he’s bad?”
“I don’t know.”
Tucker considered that. “You always know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You knew Everett was bad.”
Clay looked across camp. Everett had taken a tin cup from Anna. He drank from it and handed it back without looking at her.
“I knew Everett was mean before I knew he was bad.”
“What’s the difference?”
Clay began rubbing Nell down with a scrap of burlap. “Mean folks can decide to do better.”
“And bad folks can’t?”
“Most times they don’t want to.”
Tucker thought about that too. Then he said, “Maybe Rufus wants to do better.”
“Maybe.”
Sarah came from the creek carrying a pail in each hand.
She had tied her hair back with a blue ribbon, though loose brown curls had already worked free around her temples.
Her skirt was darkened to the knees where she had knelt in the shallows.
She saw Clay watching and shifted both pails to one side.
“You intend to stand there while I carry these myself?”
“I was admiring your fine way with a bucket.”
“Then admire closer and take one.”
Clay crossed to her. “You could’ve called for Tucker.”
“Tucker was busy guarding Nell from the whole Indian territory.”
“I heard that.”
Tucker straightened. “I was.”
Sarah handed Clay one pail. Their fingers met on the iron handle.
It was nothing. A brush of skin, no more.
Still, Sarah pulled her hand back too fast. Water sloshed over the rim onto the front of her skirt.
“Careful,” Clay said.
“You bumped me.”
“I did not.”
“You most certainly did.”
Clay looked down at the narrow space between them. “I was standing still.”
She gave him a look that could have stripped paint from a wagon. Then she turned and walked toward the fire pit.
Clay followed, trying not to grin.
They set the buckets near Charlotte’s wagon.
Sarah took a sack of flour from the supplies and began measuring it into a chipped blue bowl.
Clay crouched beside the fire ring, stacking dry sticks under the iron crane.
The wind had shifted since morning. It came cool off the north now, carrying the sharp smell of distant rain, though there was no cloud worth naming.
“You let him stay,” Sarah said.
Clay struck his flint against steel. “For one night.”
“Samuel says that means until you decide otherwise.”
“Samuel says plenty.”
“He’s usually right.”
Clay got a spark into the tinder. He blew on it until a small flame took hold.
Sarah worked water into the flour with her fingers. “You don’t trust him.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Yet you brought him in.”
“He was hungry.”
Her hands paused in the bowl.
“You're a good man, you know that.”
Clay kept his eyes on the fire. Tucker had fallen asleep against Violet’s wheel, his head in her lap while she stroked his hair. Samuel was checking the wheel blocks before bedding down. Sarah bent over her sewing, but her eyes had lifted toward Clay.
The creek went on running in the dark. Somewhere farther up the bank, an animal moved through brush, then stopped.
Clay did not sleep for a long time.