Orphan Moon (The Orphan Moon Trilogy Book 1) (36 page)

And then she saw him
.

Stoney was slumped, half leaning, half laying, near the wall, Colt revolver in one hand, the other hand holding the mochila in a tight grip. He opened his eyes as Barleigh dropped to her knees next to him.
 

“My sombrero,” he whispered in a weak voice. “You brought me my . . .” He pointed at the hat, his voice trailing off.

“I did, Stoney. I brought it to you. How bad are you hurt?” The blood that pooled under him on the ground frightened her.
 

“They thought I was dead when they shot me off my horse. They took the mochila. But I followed them . . . here. I got . . . got the mochila back,” he said, his voice raspy.
 

“You did some fine shooting, Stoney. Looks like you got them all.” Barleigh took him by the shoulders, easing him forward, peering over his shoulder at his back.
 

Three arrows were embedded down the middle next to his spine, above what appeared to be a bullet wound. The arrows bore the same feather fletching as the one Barleigh had found earlier on the banks of the Webber River.

“I didn’t get all of them. The tall white man . . . got away.” He struggled for breath.

“One got away? A white man? Not Indian? Stoney—talk to me. Stay awake, buddy.” She gave him a sip of cold coffee from her canteen.
 

“A black ghost was here. He told me—I don’t know—he talked to me. Ghosts are supposed to be white.” His raspy breaths were shallow and labored.

“That’s right, ghosts are supposed to be white. Keep talking to me, Stoney. I’m going to lay you down on your side, easy now, like this, and see about getting these arrows out.”
 

Memories flashed: Uncle Jack, Aunt Winnie tugging at the arrows, the lance—leaning on it, breaking it off. Barleigh’s hands shook, her voice trembled. She forced herself to stay calm, for Stoney’s sake.

“I’ll pull these out. Then I can wrap my poncho around you, keep you warm while I go for a horse. Mine ran away. Wolves spooked her. I’ll need a horse to get you to a doctor. Talk to me, Stoney. Stoney?” Her voice broke, shattering her calm.

Barleigh moved around to kneel in front of him. She lay down on her side close to him, took his face in her hands, and kissed his forehead, soothing him as best she knew how with her soft words. She told him everything would be all right, that she’d bring back the fastest pony she could find for him to ride away to the stars.

“Wouldn’t that be something, Stoney?” she asked, touching his cheek.
 

Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He gasped for breath. His eyes fought to stay focused on Barleigh’s, but then his gaze drifted. He looked through her, beyond to someplace she wouldn’t know. One final rattling breath moved him from this world to the next. Stoney was gone.

“Oh, Stoney.” She wanted to cry, to scream, to sob. Her body tightened, heated, trembled, the anger and emotion choking her breath, but she couldn’t seem to find the relief that tears would offer. She felt a never-ending circle of sadness hardening her heart, adding yet another calcifying layer.
 

Her hands trembled as she reached out to close his eyes—those eyes that were as blue as the river. “I’m sorry, Stoney. I’m so sorry. This was my mail run, not yours. It should’ve been me.”
 

Covering him with her poncho, she sat with his body, her back against the cave wall. She kept her gun in hand, at the ready. Sipping cold coffee, she worked through a plan in her mind. Hiking back up to Head of Canyon Station to get horses from Colonel Hill was the obvious choice. Weariness and bone-deep fatigue washed over her. She tried to fight it off, her head snapping back and falling forward, but soon she could not resist the pull. She fell into a deep sleep, sitting upright, canteen in one hand, pistol in the other.

*****

A noise echoing, a hand on her arm, a voice, a movement, startled her awake. Jumping up, she tripped over her spurs, falling to her knees, pointing her pistol, realizing her hands were empty. A scream caught in her throat as hands reached for her, taking her by the arms, raising her to her feet. Pulling her. Engulfing her. Enfolding her in his arms.
 

It happened so fast, she didn’t realize it was Hughes until she was pressed against his chest—the smell of his body, his aroma, the scent she remembered from the first time she wrapped herself in his coat flooding her memory.

Hughes took Barleigh in his arms, holding her close, saying nothing, waiting for her panic to subside. “Shhh, shhh,” he soothed as her breathing returned to normal.

“I’m lucky it’s you,” she said, her voice trembling. She felt foolish, falling asleep, leaving herself vulnerable.

“It’s all right—I’m here.” Hughes looked over at Stoney and shook his head. “I told him to hang on till I got back. Damn it—I thought he could hang on. I had to go after Archer.”

“What do you mean, till you got back?” Barleigh pulled away, Hughes’s hands slow to release her.

“I’ve had my eye on the Archers. They’re part of a larger group who’ve been tampering with the mail. They hire renegade Utes and Shoshones to do their dirty work so that it appears like a common Indian attack. Tonight came as a cold surprise. I was expecting it to happen next week with the westbound mail to California.”

“But you were drunk—so drunk you could hardly stand,” said Barleigh, confused.
 

“I was on my way to a good drunk. When I learned this was happening tonight, I switched the whiskey for tea to put on a show for those watching.”

“So it was a ruse,” said Barleigh, putting the details of the evening in order.

“A ruse—yes.”

“Stoney said the black ghost visited him, talked to him. That was you,” she said, stealing a glance at Stoney lying still and quiet under her poncho.

Barleigh fisted a hand against her mouth, afraid that if she were to remove it, a flood of unbearable sadness would come rushing out. It was better to hold it inside where it belonged—buried alongside the other memories she tried to hush.

“I guess I’m the black ghost,” acknowledged Hughes, nodding. “Stoney handled the Indians just fine, but Johnny Archer had Stoney pinned. I shot once—it grazed him. Archer fled, but his blood made the trail easy to follow in the moonlight. That Stoney was a brave son-of-a-gun.”

“Brave—yes, he was brave,” she said, pacing, clenching her fists into her hair, then kneeling next to where Stoney lay—but it was she who should be lying there, not him. “It was my mail run . . .” Barleigh’s voice trailed off.

“It’s not your fault, Barleigh. Don’t go down that road.” Hughes knelt beside her, turning her to face him.

“I’m very familiar with that road,” she said. This wasn’t the first death for which she felt responsible.

“What are you saying?”

“My first was my mother, when she gave birth to me. Then there was Papa and Birdie and Uncle Jack, when I ran like a frightened child and hid in the cellar instead of fighting alongside Papa like I should have. Now, Stoney.” She looked down at her hands, as if she would see blood.

“Stop it.” Hughes’s hands gripped her shoulders. “Don’t do this to yourself. All this false guilt will do nothing but keep you from ever finding happiness.”
 

“I’m not looking for happiness. I don’t expect it’s looking for me, either.” She shrugged away from his grip. “All I’m looking for is a way to get back to the city. I’m horseless. Wolves spooked mine away. And I’m taking Stoney with me. I’m not leaving him here.”

“I’ve got Archer’s body outside tied to his horse. We can leave it in the cave, tell the authorities where to find him, and use his horse to get Stoney home. You can ride behind me.”
 

They wrapped Stoney’s body in Hughes’s bedroll after Hughes removed the arrows from his back, and then draped him over the saddle of the outlaw Archer’s horse. Barleigh tied the sombrero to the pommel, letting Stoney take it home. If they rode nonstop at a steady pace, the trek back to Salt Lake City would take well into the night.

Barleigh rode behind Hughes, holding onto his coat, trying not to think of Stoney lying across the saddle of the horse that trailed behind—trying not to think at all. She pounded her forehead against Hughes’s back, over and over again.
 

Hughes never flinched but reached a hand around to squeeze her thigh. The tenderness and the intimacy was almost too much for Barleigh to bear. She stopped pounding her forehead and, instead, lay her cheek against his back and tightly closed her eyes, staunching the flow of tears.
 

As evening wore on, Hughes decided to make a small campfire to reheat the coffee in Barleigh’s canteen. Hughes didn’t have his saddlebags packed with his usual fancy picnic, so dinner was beans and sourdough biscuits. For Barleigh’s starving stomach, it was a feast.

Sitting on a log close to the crackling fire, she sipped steaming coffee from the tin cup Hughes handed her. “When I took off looking for Stoney, I told Mario that I might . . . that I was thinking about going back to Texas after I found him. I didn’t think I’d be bringing him back like this.”

Hughes stirred the embers, adding more kindling. The flames sparked and danced upward like how lightening bugs do in a warm summer sky. He looked back over his shoulder, the look of relief evident on his face.
 

“You’re going back to Texas? I am so relieved to hear you say that.”
 

“I thought I’d made up my mind. But I can’t leave Mario like this. I have to stay now. For a while, at least.”

Hughes came to kneel in front of the log she was sitting on, taking her hands in his. “Barleigh, look at me. Stoney’s dead. There’re many others like the men who killed him. They’ll kill anyone who gets in their way. The Archer brothers were a small fraction of those involved who’d like to keep certain letters from going between Washington and California. These Southern sympathizers will stop at nothing to convince California to side with the Confederacy. You have no idea the danger you ride into every time you pick up that damn mochila.”

“Are you saying that this is just the beginning?” A chill shivered down her spine, despite the fire and the coffee providing their own warmth.
 

“That’s right,” he said, his eyes dark and serious. “An intricate conspiracy with a far-reaching association is at work. Tensions escalating between North and South spur these conspirators to more heinous acts in their efforts to pull California’s gold into the Rebel war coffers. Lincoln
has
to keep California loyal to the Union, thereby keeping control of its gold. Whichever way California sides could sway the outcome.”

“You talk as if war is certain.”

“I believe it is.”

“Then that’s all the more reason for me to help get the mail through. Look at what’s at stake.”

“Look at what’s over there and tied to that horse,” he said, his voice harsh and low. “Are you willing to take that risk?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe it doesn’t matter.” Barleigh’s eyes filled with sadness at the brutal thought jabbing at her heart. “Starling would be better off being raised by Aunt Winnie, anyway.”

Hughes tossed the rest of his coffee in the fire. Settling his eyes on her, his words were sharp and emphatic. “Look at me, Barleigh. That’s not true. Your sister needs you. Risking your life on purpose—taking dangerous chances you don’t have to—is not the answer.”

Barleigh stood, kicking sand into the fire. “Why can’t there be easy answers, where decisions don’t seem impossible?”

“Not all decisions are impossible. Damn it—I can’t let this go on. It has to stop.” Hughes walked over to where Barleigh stood, his amber eyes reflecting the fire’s flickering light.
 

“What do you mean? What has to stop?”
 

“There are things . . .” He paused, sucking in a deep breath, letting it seep out slowly through gritted teeth. “. . . that you need to know.” Hughes rubbed the back of his neck and looked to the sky, as if the moon would give him the right words.

“Hughes? What are you trying to say?” she asked, alarmed by the look on his face, the set of his jaw, and the grave tone of his voice.

“It’s killing me, seeing you like this, so torn up, so sad and guilt-ridden over something that didn’t happen.” Hughes held her at arm’s length, fixing his penetrating eyes on hers. “You can’t go on thinking that you’re responsible for your mother’s death. Barleigh, your mother didn’t die giving birth to you. Your mother is alive.”

*****

She had done as he had requested—listened and let him speak uninterrupted. He talked until the fire went cold, giving Barleigh an abbreviated telling of her mother’s life, sparing a few details, he had said, that Leighselle might wish to keep to herself.
 

He told of the sorrow he felt that Barleigh’s mother might die before he could persuade her to change her mind about keeping this a secret, and that he had tried to convince her to agree to let him tell Barleigh the truth. Now, he wasn’t sure if there would be enough time.

Barleigh felt assaulted by his words. They covered her with shame and filled her with anguish. They numbed every fiber and nerve of her being. In a span of time that lasted less than one hour, he undid her past. His story revised her history. It stripped away what she’d known to be true of the life she’d worn so comfortably.
 

She sat, listening, unmoving, a statue without feelings. Birdie, whom she’d always thought was so beautiful, so exotic—it’s no wonder her papa had fallen in love with her. Birdie reminded him of his first love.
 

Barleigh sat frozen in place, hearing, absorbing, processing. The dark, frosty woods swirled around her. Noises far away made hollow echoes. A ghost wind skimmed across her skin, not touching, just passing over. Nothing seemed real.

“Barleigh, are you all right? I know it’s a lot to take in. You haven’t said anything.”

“You wanted me to listen to your story while you spoke uninterrupted. I’ve listened.”

“Please,” said Hughes, taking her hand. “Say something now. Ask me a question.”