Read The Loner: The Blood of Renegades Online

Authors: J. A. Johnstone

Tags: #Fiction, #General

The Loner: The Blood of Renegades (25 page)

BOOK: The Loner: The Blood of Renegades

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Rafe started talking about the storm, how he saw it coming on the horizon and nearly stopped. But then he saw signs of Apache far to the south, and hightailed it . . .

Jenny listened as raptly as Megan. He was so handsome and charming, and had little lines that fanned out from the corners of his deep blue eyes when he smiled or laughed. Even his name was wonderful. She’d never known anyone called Rafe before.

She was smitten.

In California, near the Pacific coast and the upstart town of Los Angeles, Ezra Welk sat at the back of his room at Maria’s place, listening to the morning birds singing over the desert while he smoked a cigar. He was a tall man, although he preferred to think of himself as compact. He studied the ash on the end of his cigar before rolling it off on the edge of the sole of his boot.

He was alone in the room, and had been ever since seven, when the little spitfire he’d spent the night with had left. Her name was Merlina, he thought. Hell. She was probably servicing some caballero downstairs right now, behind the backbar.

That’s where he’d found her, anyway. Quite the little bucking bronca, that gal.

He hoped her next “rider” was as satisfied as he was. He rolled the ash off the end of his cigar in the ash tray, this time—cut glass pretending to be crystal, he thought—and let out a sigh. He wasn’t that tired. Well, maybe a bit tuckered out from Senorita Merlina, but that’d pass. If he was tired of anything, he supposed it was just life itself.

That was a funny thing, wasn’t it? He couldn’t think of another way to put it, though, when a feller was sick and tired of, well, everything.

He took another drag on his cigar, then put it out before he stood up and gave his collar a tug. He supposed he’d best see about finding himself some breakfast, and then think about what to do.

This is all Benny Atkinson’s fault, he thought unpleasantly as he left his room and started downstairs. Why in hell did Benny have to show up in the first place?

West of Fury, the wagon train sat forlornly, broken and wind-whipped. Two of the wagons had blown clean over during the night, killing the occupants of one of them. The Banyons had managed to fall asleep somehow, Riley Havens guessed, and when their wagon went over, they were crushed by Martha’s chiffarobe.

Ferris said it had taken two men with shovels to scrape up Darren’s skull.

Three of the other men had set off to dig a couple holes, and it wouldn’t be very long before he was asked to come out and say some words over the dearly departed. What could he say? That Darren Banyon was second to the cheapest cheapskate he’d ever met, but that he was a good man with his horses? And Martha Banyon . . . She could be sharp-tongued and had already caused more than one blow-up in the troupe, but that she could sing so sweet and pretty it could make a grown man go all gooey?

He supposed he should just say the best parts. He’d leave the Bible-thumping to a couple of the other travelers. They sure enough had a crop of them on this journey, including a real Catholic priest.

He supposed Sampson Davis, wherever he was, leveled the field, good- and evil-wise. There was something just plain nasty about the man. It wasn’t in his voice or his looks or the way he carried himself, so most people in the train liked him all right. But there was something . . . evil, that’s what it was, downright evil . . . lurking behind those eyes. Riley seldom wished any man ill, but, may the good Lord forgive him, he hoped Sampson Davis had died in the dust storm.

“Mr. Havens?” Young Bill Crachit, a sixteen-year-old on his own, and with his own wagon, stepped around to the tailgate, where Riley was sitting. “I guess we’re ready for you, sir.”

Riley hopped down, then ground out his smoke under his boot. “Thanks, Bill.” As the two of them started toward the burial site he asked, “Sampson Davis show up yet?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bill said. “Rode in a half hour ago. Why?”

“No reason,” Riley answered. “Just keepin’ tabs on the train members, that’s all.”

They came to the site of the graves. Somebody had found wood and twine to tie together some crude crosses, and the bodies had already been lowered. When the gathered crowd saw Riley and Bill coming, they stopped their low hum of conversation and looked toward Riley.

He took off his hat. “I’m not one for Bible verses. I’ll let you, Fletch, or you, Father, take care of that part. But I can tell you about the Banyons. I didn’t know ’em long, but long enough to know Darren was the best I’ve seen for soothing a colicky mare or knowin’ how to hitch his team just right, so they didn’t ever get sore. Martha was a beauty, and when it came to singin’ a tune, I doubt anyone would say she wasn’t the best they’d ever heard, especially in a wagon camp when people need some of the civilized things around them, fine things like music and manners.”

Someone in the crowd tittered at that, and he cleared his throat. “Well, maybe I made a bad choice of words right there. But I think you all know what I meant. And now, if one of you more religious gents will take over?”

He stepped aside, and Fletcher Bean took his place between the head markers. Solemnly, he bowed his head, opened his Bible, and began. “Let us pray . . .”

Jason got up the nerve to talk to Rafe Lynch around two in the afternoon, long after the girls had gone home. He found himself walking slower and slower as he neared Abigail’s place, and had to mentally kick himself in the rump for being so scared. Lynch wasn’t going to do anything, he told himself, to ruin his harbor in a whole fresh territory!

That helped a little, so he was walking faster when he came up to Solomon’s store. He knew full well it was Sunday, but that had never before stopped Solomon from being open. Curious, he stopped and peeked in the front window, cupping a hand over his eyes to cut the glare.

What he saw surprised him. The backroom door opened, and Dr. Morelli stepped out and shook hands with Solomon, who’d been kneeling against a counter. The look on Solomon’s face was ecstatic, and he pushed Morelli aside to go into the room, but Morelli blocked his passage, speaking to him seriously. Solomon nodded just as solemnly, and then burst out in a fresh grin. He leaped in the air, laughing, and finally Jason could make out some words through the glass.

“A girl! It’s a girl!” Solomon shouted, then gave Morelli one of those big bear hugs of his.

Morelli freed himself after a moment, and when he walked outside again, Jason was on the boardwalk, smiling at him.

“Lived, didn’t it?” Jason asked with a grin on his face.

The doctor allowed himself a small smile. “Yes, she did. I’m very happy for them, but . . .”

“But what?”

“The baby isn’t quite right, Jason. I think there’s something wrong with her heart.” Morelli shook his head slowly. “It was a tad early, but sometimes these things fix themselves with time. This may have been what killed the boys, too, but since their religion prohibits any sort of post mortem . . .” He stared at the ground for a moment, then looked up. “Well, I must go. My wife’s waiting dinner for me.” He tipped his hat and cut across the street, making a beeline for his house.

Jason leaned against the storefront. Shaking his head, he muttered, “Well, I’ll be dogged.” He hoped Morelli was right about time fixing things. The last thing he needed was Solomon shooting up the place again.

He was opening the doors to Abigail’s place when someone fired a gun—and not too far from him! He whipped around and saw it was Solomon Cohen himself, gun in hand, screaming, “It’s a girl! It’s a girl!” He fired into the air once again, then took off at a dead run, right down the center of town.

Jason took off right after him.

He caught up with Solomon about six or seven steps later (Jason having the longer legs of the two, and not being nearly so giddy with joy) and wrested the gun away from Solomon.

“Yes, we know it’s a girl! I reckon even the Apache, practically down on the Mexican border, know it, too!”

Solomon wasn’t easily calmed or stilled. “It’s a girl, Jason, and she’s alive!” he shouted, so loudly it hurt Jason’s ears. He blinked, and had to quickly change position when Solomon tried to take his gun back.

“There’ll be none o’ that, now. Why don’t you come on over to the office, and we’ll toast her with a cup o’ coffee. I made it, Ward didn’t,” he added as an incentive. Ward made terrible coffee.

Solomon stood up straight. “Why, Jason! You’re not goin’ to arrest me!?”

“Just until you settle yourself down. I can’t have you runnin’ all over town, shootin’ and maimin’ folks.”

“I’m not—”

“I know, Solomon,” Jason said as he pointed Solomon toward the jail. “I know you’re not tryin’ to harm a soul. But you gotta admit you ain’t the best shot. What if you was to shoot somebody by accident and they died? Think about how bad you’d feel then! And think how bad I’d feel, havin’ to hang you after all we been through together!”

By this time, Jason had Solomon nearly to the office, and Sol wasn’t fighting him. But in the half second it took to let go of his arm and open the office door, Solomon snatched back the pistol, jumped away, and fired twice (toward the open ground by the stockade wall), hollering, “Yahoo!”

Jason grabbed him from behind, shaking his wrist until the gun fell into the dirt. “Jesus Christ, Solomon, gimme a break, all right?”

“You shouldn’t be taking the name of a prophet in vain,” Solomon scolded.

“And you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near firearms when your wife’s havin’ a baby!” Jason shoved him toward the jailhouse. He got him clear through the front door and locked in a cell, then had to run outside again to pick up his gun.

The first thing Solomon said to him, once he came back inside, was, “So, I was promised coffee, already?”

Across the street, the Reverend Milcher sat alone in his church. Lavinia and the children were nowhere to be seen. The shooting and the shouted news that Solomon Cohen’s child had lived weren’t enough to make him take his eyes from the broken clay-tiled floor.

Again, no one had come for Sunday service. No one except his family, and you could hardly count them.

How would he feed his children without some funding? How could he pass a collection plate when there was no one there to hand it to?

They had their milk cow still, and she was heavy with calf. She’d calve any day, and then they could be sure of having milk. But he couldn’t slaughter the calf until fall, until it had put on enough beef-weight to make it worthwhile. Lavinia had the few vegetables she could coax from the desert floor, but that was it.

This was indeed the wilderness, but there was no manna from heaven.

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