Squire's Quest (35 page)

Not being able to see out of his one eye bothered him. He wished the lad hadn't
bandaged it. Surely whatever the wound, it had stopped bleeding by now.

He raised his hand. Touched the bandage.

Only it wasn't a bandage. It felt like leather. There were strings attached to both sides of
it.
No!
One of the strings snapped when he tore at it.

He stared at the thing he held in his left hand. An eyepatch. Leather. Soft with frequent
use. He touched what had been hidden under it.

An empty socket, a sunken lid, and deep scars all around.

"I'm blind." With shaking hands, he ran his fingers over the skin of his face. A scar,
long-healed, ran from the outer corner of his eye down his face to the angle of his jaw. His
eyebrow was misshapen, with a bald spot in the middle, where raised flesh was evidence
something had torn--not cut, but torn--through.

"I'm blind." For a long time. Years.

"I don't remember."

But he did, sort of. A bleating lamb, separated from its mother and crying for her. A
tawny shape on a branch, ready to leap. He had yelled, waved his arms, just as his pa had told
him to do. "A cat will like as not run if you show yourself big enough."

He hadn't been big enough. The panther had leapt. Had taken him down. Its foreclaws
had raked his face, ripped through his shirt. Its teeth had fastened around his head. He'd slashed
and stabbed with his knife, even as he'd felt the cat's hind claws tearing at his heavy
britches.

And suddenly it had collapsed against him, hot and bloody and...and dead.

"Who killed it?" He couldn't remember, nor could he recall what had come next.

Or who he was.

His vision had dimmed with the weight of the great cat heavy on his chest. In the
darkness, he'd felt strong hands lifting him. a hoarse, shaking voice saying, "My God, son... Oh,
my God."

But no name. His father had not named him then, nor within his memory.

A coyote slunk along the edge of the brush but came no closer. It would, eventually,
once it decided he wasn't going to shoot at it.

He waited, but while he did, he scrabbled on the ground. Gathering small stones until he
had two handsful ready to fling.

The coyote grew bolder, was tensed for a charge at the meat, when he heard the lad
approach. It froze, turned its head from side to side, and took off like a stone from a sling.

"I'm back."

"Good. How's the wood supply?"

"I dunno. Maybe enough for an hour or two. Why?"

"We'll need to keep the fire going all night long, if you want to have meat to take home
come morning."

"There's no more wood around. I scrounged everything I could find."

Well, hell.
"Got any rope?"

"Huh?"

"Rope. Line. The stuff you use to tie things up."

"Oh. Sure. I got the line I was going to tie the meat together with."

"Hang the meat." He tried to get up, so he could show the lad what he meant, but
something was wrong with his leg, It wouldn't do what he told it to.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Rye. Zachariah Bates. Who are you?"

"I'm..." His name was there, buried just beyond reach. "I don't know--

"I don't know who I am."

* * * *

Someone shook her awake. "We're gettin' off here."

When Callie tried to stand, nothing happened.

"Pick her up, Frisco," her pa said.

If the conductor hadn't called out the town's name, Callie wouldn't have known it was
Sidney. She didn't ask why they were getting off.

The man carrying her was the hulk who'd taken her from the cabin. Once they were on
the platform, he said, just loud enough for her to hear, "Yore pa says I can have you if'n you give
him any trouble. I'd like that. I'd like it a lot."

Nothing would have made her more docile, even if she hadn't still been limp from the
laudanum. The hulk terrified her. He was the most evil, merciless creature she'd ever
encountered. Even compared to her father.

The men walked in a tight-knit group for a block, turned to the left and traveled another
three. At the entrance to a tall, narrow house, her father stopped and pulled out a set of keys.
"You boys check around back. Frisco, bring her in this way."

He unlocked the door and waved her inside. The entry smelled of raw wood and tobacco
smoke. Its floor was bare, its walls empty of decoration, and painted white. A pair of doors broke
the blank plaster wall on one side, and a set of double doors were set in the opposite wall.
Several feet back from the entrance, a stairway half the width of the hall led into a dark second
floor. Everything looked newly-built, raw.

"You'll have a room on the third floor. For now. As long as you behave." Pa opened the
double doors and disappeared into the dim space beyond. After a moment she saw the flare of a
match, followed by the steady glow of a candle. It came toward her, and for an instant she had
the impression it was being carried by an invisible hand, until her father came into view. Looking
past him, she got the impression of dark red walls, a lot of gilt and shining brass, and too-plush
furniture scattered in small groups around a big room.

"Take this," He handed her the candle. "Don't make any noise. I'll tend to you when I'm
ready."

Her first impulse was to smash the burning candle against his face, or Frisco's. Instead
she said, "Yes, sir," and meekly started up the stairs. She had to hold tight to the handrail,
because her legs were still weak and trembling.

She was at the top of the first flight when he spoke again. "Girl, there's something you
should know."

She waited.

"You're my daughter, and I won't put you to work here. Not as long as you don't give me
any trouble. But rile me and you'll regret it. I can always use another girl on the second
floor."

He looked up at her, his gaze intense. "Don't you forget it."

With those words, she knew what sort of a house she was in.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said on a sigh. "Yes, I understand."

The stairs to the third floor were narrow and steep. She had to crawl the last few. At the
top, she looked back down while she rested. What kind of man was her father, to threaten his
only child with a life of shame?

A monster. He was a monster.

Rye agreed the snow was a good reason to stay put. The tree--perhaps the only tree in
this part of Wyoming taller than fifteen feet--had branches strong enough to hold all four
quarters of the deer out of the reach of coyotes and cats. The lad claimed there were no bears in
the area, but his voice had sounded more hopeful than positive. "Leastwise we never saw none,"
he said, when pressed.

Mister--the name he'd adopted as his own, wasn't convinced--but until he saw one, he'd
take Rye's word. He'd a memory of a bear-killed calf, and didn't want either of them to suffer that
fate.

Why, when I can see that calf as clear as day, can't I recall my own name? Or
anything that's happened to me since... Since when?

He could see, in his mind's eye, children playing along a river, riding across a meadow
single file. A big black man laughing aloud, a tall, fair man in buckskins quietly chuckling beside
him. They were both kin, but how?

Sometimes, when he forgot to strive for memories of the life he'd lived before, he saw a
sweet face, eyes as green as spring leaves, a loving smile.

Or was it only a dream? For the woman's face had no more of a name attached to it than
the children or the men.

The piercing pain in his head was constant, but he would not die of it. A bullet had
plowed a furrow across the side of it just above his right ear. Either he'd been clubbed or dropped
on the top of his head too, because there was a long cut and a goose-egg on his crown. All
around the cut, his scalp was puffy, swollen, and tender. Was the bone underneath intact?
Great God, I hope so.
It felt solid.

His shoulder was more a nuisance than a danger, for the bullet had gone though muscle,
leaving a ragged hole but doing little damage. His arm didn't work the way it ought, but he knew
in time he'd regain strength. The massive bruise to his hip put a hitch in his git-along, but he
knew it would heal, eventually.

The second day he found movement marginally easier, although he still couldn't take
more than two or three steps without falling to his knees with dizziness. "Go," he told the lad
after they'd fed on meat skewered on sticks and cooked over the scanty fire. "Take one of those
haunches and hightail it home. Send somebody back with a horse."

Rye's mouth turned down and he looked anywhere but at Mister. "I can't." He kicked at
a stone. "We got no horses. Just two milch cows and half a dozen goats."

"No horses? How the dickens did you get clear out here without horses?" He didn't
know what the nearest town was, but somehow he knew it was a couple of days' ride.

"Walked. We took the train to Cheyenne. Pap thought Laramie looked closer, leastwise
on the map. But Father Jacob had said Cheyenne, so that's where we came."

No amount of argument would convince Rye to leave him. Finally the lad went off to
look for more firewood. "Maybe I can find something to make you a crutch," he said, with the
incurable optimism of the young.

He returned along toward sundown, when Mister was beginning to worry something had
befallen him. His scrawny arms held a bundle of wood, most of it short sticks, but not all. He
dumped it next to the firepit, where not even embers remained of this morning's fire. "Look what
I found. It ain't long enough to make a crutch, but I reckon it might make a fine cane." The stick
he held up was thick, nearly as big around as the lad's wrist, and waist high to him.

"It just might. Hand it over here, and I'll work on it while you build up the fire." It galled
him to let Rye wait on him like this, but movement still made his head spin and darkened his
vision.

* * * *

The next morning he used the cane to get to his feet. If he leaned heavily on it, he could
walk, in a matter of speaking. How long he would be able to walk was another thing entirely.
I'll go until I drop. Pa would be disappointed if I gave up.

Pa?
He tried to put a face with the name, but none appeared.

Rye piled the venison quarters on the now raggedy hide and tied the ends of the rope
around the bunched-up corners. Making loops in between, he put it on like a harness that he
slipped his arms through.

Mister calculated what was on the hide weighed nearly as much as the lad. He silently
cursed his weakness. No boy of thirteen--Rye had, on questioning, admitted his age--should
work that hard. No lad that young should have been sent into wilderness to find meat for his
family's table.

"Pap converted to the Brethren after Mama passed on," Rye said in answer to his
question, once they'd crossed the creek and were following a mostly level path where two
branches came together. Horse Creek he'd named it. The Brethren of Virtue's ranch was two
miles beyond the confluence, up the north fork.

"The Brethren, they don't hold with marriage. Father Jacob says a man shouldn't have to
cleave only to one woman. Pap don't care, but some of the men, they don't like it that Father
Jacob has first call on the women's services."

Mister wasn't sure Rye understood what those services consisted of, but he said nothing.
"How long have they been hereabouts?"

"Four years, last August. Pap and me, we came out two years ago, 'cause his brother was
here. He likes it fine, but it ain't the kind of place I want to stay, once I'm growed up. I want to
see the world, Mister, not stay out here where nothin' much happens."

"Don't let them stop you, lad." Mister knew he'd seen his share of the world, for he'd
memories of tall buildings, a wide, brown river, long lines of silver rails stretching into the
distance, and cattle spread as far as the eye could see across grassland as flat as a dinner
plate.

"I won't. Soon's I'm sixteen, I'm takin' off. By then Pa should have paid up his share of
the settlement and I won't have to help him out."

Further questioning revealed that everyone who joined the Brothers of Virtue had to
work off a debt, and Rye had volunteered to hunt--"I'm a better shot than anybody else"--to help
pay his father's.

Mister kept his mouth shut, but he wasn't thinking too kindly toward Father Jacob by the
time, a day and a half later, when he hobbled into a clearing he was pretty sure he'd seen
before.

It was a good thing he was about wore out, for when the white haired man who seemed
to be the boss jumped all over Rye for taking so long to get home, Mister was sorely tempted to
kick him where it would hurt the most.

"We'll doctor you 'til you're able to travel on your own," Father Jacob told him, once
they were inside the big barn that housed both livestock and people. "We're not a rich settlement,
so we'll expect you to pay your way, just as any new pilgrim would."

"I'm obliged," he said, wishing he were in better shape. If he were, he'd give the man a
lesson about what Christian charity really meant. "No honest man walks away from my table
hungry," he remembered someone saying. Once again he saw the quiet, solemn man with
long-seeing gray eyes and hair like gold in the sunlight.
I know him. I've known him all my life.
Who is he?

* * * *

The taciturn man they called Deed brought a tray to her room sometime before noon the
day after they arrived. Callie hadn't ventured out of the room she'd chosen, even after her head
cleared, for she didn't want to rile her father. She'd examined the alleyway behind the big house
as best she could from the high, narrow window. The house wall went straight down, with no
protrusions she could hold onto. From what she could see, a kitchen window looked directly out
on where she'd land if she let herself down with a rope made of sheeting. She'd be docile and
obedient for now, until she got a chance. Just one chance.