The Trail West (14 page)

Not far from where Monahan and his companions sat near their pot of simmering stew, Vincent George sat alone in the main room of his new bar. Well, new to him, anyway. There were no customers. There were never any customers. Heber’s Kiss was an Arizona town with two boots dangling over the edge of a grave.

Sean Jacoby, former owner of Jacoby’s Saloon, had sworn to him the saloon was a cash cow. When Vince pointed out he hadn’t seen a customer since he rode into “town” the day before, Jacoby had insisted the owlhoot had just come on an off day. Customers were thick as thieves in Heber’s Kiss, Jacoby swore. Folks in dire need of drink rode in day and night. The only place of business that could supply their demand and quench their thirst was his saloon!

Well, Vince had taken his word—like a blamed idiot—and he’d been sitting there day and night since Jacoby died, but he hadn’t seen one lousy soul, thirsty or otherwise. He wished he’d plugged Jacoby instead of letting him die naturally. For sure, he wished he hadn’t witnessed that paper for him, which had been Jacoby’s will, such as it was, naming Vince the sole beneficiary. Of course there was no lawyer in town to untangle the mess. Not that Vince had ever had much faith in the law.

The whole deal confused him so badly he’d hung around for a while, trying to get it straight in his head . . . and to see if anybody showed up.

Nobody had. And so Vince George had decided to take his leave of Heber’s Kiss, Arizona Territory, in general, and Jacoby’s Saloon in particular. He’d spent one day rummaging through Jacoby’s victuals and another trying to scare up some game.

Jacoby had owned a donkey or a burro or something, and he’d figured to take that along, too. He might get ten bucks for it in a town like Tucson, if he ended up going that way. On the other hand, he could always turn it loose, or butcher it if worse came to worse.

George poured himself a drink. That was one thing there hadn’t been a shortage of in Heber’s Kiss—liquor. For a man who’d claimed to be doing such a stellar business, old Jacoby certainly had a monstrous backlog of stock. There were cases of it, and not just the bad stuff, either!

At that moment, Vince decided he was riding out in the morning and
definitely
taking the mule, if only to haul its weight in booze. He poured out another drink, thinking of the man-high piles of cases in the back room, and tossed it back.

A few miles north, Julia and Sweeney had finally gone to sleep, but Monahan sat up and smoked for a time, thinking his next actions would shape the whole of his future. Surely, he had come to similar junctures before, but he couldn’t remember them. The ten years Buckshot Bob Hoskins had kept for him were already slipping away. He could feel the tides that ebbed and flowed in his mind sweeping them from the trembling sands of his memory.

He had known Bob from . . . prison, that was it. But which one? And why had he been in prison, anyway? He took a deep drag on his smoke. Damned if he could remember!

Monahan took another deep drag and concentrated on prison. He managed to dredge up a tiny snatch of a mental picture. He’d sat at night beside a feeble fire, manacles on his wrists, wishing he had some food or at least a smoke. Other men were there—live men, dead men, sick men, injured men.

Injured men . . . was it wartime? He concentrated harder on the mental picture, trying to see his sleeves to find a trace of a uniform, blue or gray, but couldn’t find one. He could see only muddy rags like those worn by the few men standing in the murky, misty background.

He took a last drag on his smoke and stubbed it out on a rock beside him. Stretching out, he decided to join Sweeney and Julia in comfortable slumber. He lay down in his spot beside the fire with the nagging half memory of those poor men in the mist, swathed in rags, and so lost.

 

 

Morning broke, and Monahan was up with the sun. By the time Julia and Sweeney woke, he had finished giving General Grant the grooming of a lifetime. The horse had fallen asleep twice, and threatened to doze off again. Stroking the General’s low-hanging neck, he ruffled the precisely combed mane with his fingers.

“When do we leave?” asked a soft, female voice from behind him.

He turned toward the source. She was familiar, safe—a slip of a little, redheaded girl, riding the cusp of womanhood. He squinted. Instead of asking for her name, he said, “What’s for breakfast?”

“I was about to ask you the same,” she replied.

“Somebody say breakfast?” asked a sleepy voice from across the camp. A young man sat up, scratching his neck and yawning.

The girl scrunched up her face. “Who’d want to waste good vittles by lettin’ you stuff your face with ’em, Butch?”

Monahan frowned.
Who the hell are these folks?
The boy was fully grown, but young enough to be his, he supposed, and the girl . . . well, he must have wed himself a fine young woman to have sired such a beauty with her. He was a lucky man!

He glanced over at the dog, still lying where it had been when he woke. It still stared at him curiously, occasionally cocking its head to the left or to the right, eyeing him with something akin to suspicion.

“And what’s the trouble with you?” he asked the dog. It didn’t even blink.

“You feed him any breakfast yet?” the girl asked.

“No, don’t think so,” Monahan replied, frowning again. He couldn’t remember waking up. He ran his hand through the horse’s mane again, realizing he could remember the horse’s name, and that it was his. He’d won it in a poker game. He couldn’t recall the monikers of either the man or the gal, but they both seemed familiar to him, as did the dog.

The girl stuck her arm in a big flour sack beside his bedroll and began to dig. Assuming she had located the grub, he finished up with the General, then sat down in what he took to be his place. If it wasn’t the damnedest thing, not being able to remember! He would’ve said something to somebody in the hopes that they could sort it out for him, but despite the feeling that his companions were familiar and could be trusted, there was still a niggling doubt at the back of his mind. He’d let the day play out and see what happened.

He leaned back, pulled the brim of his hat low to shield his eyes from the sun, and dozed off to the sounds of the girl making coffee.

 

 

Something was wrong with Monahan. Julia was certain of it. From the looks of things, he had gotten up a long time before her and Sweeney, but hadn’t roused them to get a start on this supposedly important day. He’d wolfed down the breakfast she’d made before he hopped up and tacked her horse for her, something he never did! And the topper was that once they were mounted up, he had just sat there on General Grant, looking at her and Butch like they were supposed to lead the way.

Something was wrong when Dooley Monahan didn’t take charge right off the bat. Sweeney had noticed something too, so at least she wasn’t going crazy. Julia had caught his eye after they rode out of camp, and he looked as confused as she felt, but did no more than shrug by way of an answer. She had guessed, and rightly so, that she’d get no answers from him. Not at that time, anyway.

 

 

Sweeney gave a quick glance around, wondering how much longer they would continue riding aimlessly. He shook his head. They’d been moving since early morning, traveling for all the world as if they had nowhere to go and no business to see to. Monahan rode that old bay horse like some kind of saddle tramp, a man with no purpose and no goal. They couldn’t be more than a half hour from their goal, perhaps just minutes.

Sweeney mumbled, “You’d think he’d at least show some enthusiasm! Or ner vousness.”

But Monahan plodded along like there was nothing on his mind, like he hadn’t put Julia in danger just by bringing her along, and like there was nothing ahead of any particular import he had to attend to. It was a downright puzzle, that’s what it was!

Sweeney would have called a halt to everything and asked him outright, except . . . except, well, it was Dooley Monahan. Sweeney had too much respect for his elders to call the old cowboy on his behavior. Well, not his elders so much, but Monahan, anyway. With a sigh, Sweeney continued riding.

The vegetation was weird. They’d pass clumps of trees, then ride through desert for a while, then come to a big grove of trees, and all with the river rushing along not fifteen feet from his right ear. He tried to figure out how close they were to Mexico, but had no frame of reference upon which to draw. He figured they were pretty well near the border country, since Monahan had told them to watch for Apaches. They raided farther north, of course, but he hadn’t even seen
old
signs, let alone new, and that told him he and his companions were pretty safe from redskins.

Still, he kept his right hand near the butt of his gun.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, Sweeney involuntarily reined in Chili, stood in his stirrups, and pointed to the east. “Dooley!”

Julia reined in right away, but Monahan kept on riding until Sweeney hollered a second time.

Monahan reined his horse and turned around in his saddle. “You say somethin’, son?”

Sweeney was so taken by the salutation that he reined up short, but he managed to stutter, “Th-them buildings over there. Is that Heber’s Kiss?”

In the far distance, the roofs of two buildings peeked through the rocks. After taking a long look, Monahan turned back to Sweeney. “Heber’s Kiss?” He cocked a brow as if he’d never heard of the town before.

Julia broke in with the question Sweeney had been putting off. “Dooley, are you broke in the head or somethin’?”

Monahan tilted his head a little, “Why? Do I act like it?”

“You do,” Julia said right out and with no hint of a smile. “You been actin’ funny since this mornin’.”

Monahan crossed his wrists over his saddle horn and leaned toward her. “Do tell.”

Julia tucked her chin. “Well, you know! Stuff! You been actin’ like you got . . . Well, I dunno! But your head ain’t screwed on right!”

“Since this mornin’?”

Sweeney couldn’t stand it any longer. “Since this mornin’, Dooley,” he repeated firmly. He wasn’t going to let Monahan weasel his way out. As Sweeney figured it, he and Julia had risked life and limb, and at the least, were owed an explanation. He realized all of a sudden, Monahan hadn’t called either of them by name since the night before. Hell, the old cowboy hadn’t even used the
dog’s
name!

The young cowboy lost his patience. “Dooley, just what in the name of ever’thing holy is goin’ on with you?”

Monahan surprised everyone by calmly drawing his gun.

Sweeney heard an audible hiss as Julia abruptly took in air. “W-what are you g-gonna d-d-do?” he asked haltingly.

“Just who the hell are you, boy?”

Sweeney’s brows shot up. “It’s me, Dooley! Butch. Butch Sweeney!”

“And her?” Monahan indicated Julia with the nose of his gun.

“Ju—”

“Julia Cooperman,” she snapped, slapping her crossed arms over her chest. “As if you didn’t know!” When all he did was look annoyed, she jabbed a finger toward Blue and added, “You could at least say good mornin’ to your own dog.”

 

 

“But you called him a scruffy monster!” Julia said again, full of righteous indignation. They had just ridden into the town, but it was barely a wide spot in the road, conveniently equipped with a dusty old saloon, a falling-in-on-itself livery, and one other building, which she took for an outhouse. Blue tagged along happily, his tongue lolling, but she saw no signs of people until they rounded the saloon, to what she guessed was the front. It had a big sign, although she couldn’t make out the letters on the weathered boards, and a burro tethered to the remnants of a hitching rail. The burro was halfway packed.

She looked over at Sweeney, who shrugged. “This must be the place, I reckon. You got any more o’ them lemon drops?”

“’Course I do, but now ain’t the time to—”

“Shut up, the both of you!” Monahan growled as they stopped between the two ramshackle buildings. “Get down.”

He eased himself off his horse and down to the ground. He led the General forward. “Well, c’mon,” he said over his shoulder.

Sweeney dismounted and ran forward to catch him by the shoulder. “You’re
not
takin’ her in there!” he insisted.

Julia could tell he was plenty riled up, and made a mental note of it.

Monahan whirled about and brushed Sweeney’s hand aside. He kept his tone low. “I’m takin’ her, dammit! For sure, he saw us ridin’ up. If we leave her outside, he’s bound to figure somethin’s afoot.”

“Oh.” The angry look left Sweeney’s face. “She just better not got hurt, Dooley. I mean it.”

Curtly, Monahan nodded and continued forward, leading General Grant. Julia, feeling safe as a baby, hopped down off her horse and followed. Sweeney brought up the rear, leading their horses.