Lost Mountain Pass, page 5
“You fellas should get on with your business,” Trusty said. “Don’t pay us no mind. We’re all mourners, and nothing more. One for each of the Darbys. You’ll see no trouble from us. Not on this day.”
“They don’t deserve no mourners, them Darbys. None of ’em.” The Teamster glared at Trusty as he settled the wagon’s reins and hefted himself down from the seat.
“Doesn’t matter what you think a man deserves or not, now does it,” Judge Hadesworth said. “Every one of us has our judgment to face on our last day. This was theirs. Do you know when yours will be? Will you be welcomed or turned away at the gates that await you? No, I don’t think you do know. Perhaps you should show some decency and respect to the dead and to the living. You’d be reminded to mind your manners to this woman. You know nothing of her trials. She deserves a mourner’s respect, not a chide and the foul demeanor you have shown her.”
The Teamster started to say something but swallowed his words when his eyes met the judge’s. It didn’t take a smart man to know that Judge Gordon Hadesworth was not the kind of man to be made an enemy of. Trusty had seen the same kind of behavior from the judge when he’d held court. There was no question that Judge Hadesworth was always holding court of some kind. These two men had failed to consider that there might be a time in the future when the learned old man’s favor was needed. Instead of accepting the unsolicited advice, the Teamster walked to the back of the wagon and waited on the preacher to join him.
The hawk had flown off, leaving the sky barren of life, with only a few wispy clouds to be seen. Trusty was glad there was no weather coming their way. One less thing to worry about as he watched the hills around them for any sign of the hired men taking up a spot to cause trouble. There was none of that, either, so Trusty dismounted and joined the Teamster. “You look like you could use a hand.”
“I thought you was a mourner?”
“You don’t need to worry about what I am. Do you want my help or not?”
The Teamster shrugged and grabbed the closest coffin, while the preacher waited halfway to the grave with a relieved look on his face. Trusty grabbed the other side of the coffin and slid it out from the wagon’s bed with the help of his newly found partner. They made quick business of dispatching each coffin to the open graves.
Judge Hadesworth dismounted, walked over to Amelia, and offered her his hand.
“No,” she said. “I don’t wish my feet to touch the ground until I am far from this forsaken place. That I am even here, in a place I am not welcome, even under the shadow of death, is more than I can bear. I will wait here, thank you very much.” There was a finality to her words that was obvious enough to thwart the judge from arguing her off the back of her mount. Her attempt succeeded. Judge Hadesworth walked away, came to a stop in front of the graves, took off his hat, and lowered his head in respect.
Trusty smirked silently, tried not to show what he was thinking: Judge Gordon Hadesworth has met his match. Something to consider on the ride home.
The preacher stepped up and read from the Twenty-Third Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” He waited a second or two and let the wind carry the words away, then asked if anyone had anything to say.
Everyone looked to Amelia sitting on her skinny horse, all covered in her black garb, looking like a lone, frail crow waiting for the rest of its gang to show up. She shook her head no, then changed her mind and said, “I hope they rot in hell. All of them except Rascal. It wasn’t his fault that he was stupid and needy. Momma always said he had a hard birth and was destined to be a half-wit the rest of his life. Some things can’t be helped. Cleatus and Horace didn’t have no excuse for their meanness. Rattlesnakes don’t know they’re nothin’ else, but them boys had the choice to be human, kind or mean or not. They chose to be mean. I don’t know why. I never asked them. They would have hit me with no thought given to what they’d done if I had questioned them one more time. They drank trouble like it was fine whiskey. Thrived on it. Created it. Couldn’t get enough of it. They made their misery everybody else’s. Some men can blame it on the war, but those bloody days are faded and long gone. A man has to face that damage, come to terms with it after a while. You can’t make war your excuse like Cleatus and Horace tried to. They ruined my life. Made a mess of everything. I hope they rot in hell is what I got to say again. Those are my words from my mouth to God’s ears, and I ain’t ashamed of any of ’em. Not a damn one of them.” And with that, Amelia Darby spit at the graves with the same intensity as the Teamster had when he’d unloaded his tobacco juice, leaving all four men slack-jawed with nothing to say. Even the wind had stopped to listen, took a breath, was shocked at the words, too, which lingered in the air before echoing across the hills.
Another gust of wind pushed up the hill, causing Trusty to look away from the graves. His line of vision fell on the rising hill across the way, no more than thirty yards. A man was standing atop it. The man, like Amelia, was dressed in all black, but not in riding pants or well-worn boots. His footwear could not be seen, covered up by a long, flowing cassock. A wide-brimmed padre’s hat sat on his head, and in the distance, the man, a papist priest, looked vaguely familiar, though Trusty was sure he’d never seen him before. With the wind as riled as it was, and the man’s position on the open hill, he looked like a dark angel descended from the heavens; his arrival quiet and concerning to Trusty, who had let his eye off the ridge to consider Amelia Darby’s harsh words. If the priest was a sniper, he would have had a clear shot at any one of them standing around the graves, including the judge.
Trusty thought it was odd that a priest would choose such a distant spot to attend a funeral. “Are any of you papists?”
The question got Amelia’s attention. She had not been aware of the priest’s presence any more than Trusty had been. Her demeanor changed instantly. She became more tense, more brittle, if that was possible. Her face looked like it was made of glass, about to shatter into a million pieces. “My mother was a papist, but her associations with that religion were not passed to those of us who lived under my father’s roof.” Her eyes narrowed, and the two, Amelia and the priest, made eye contact across the expanse of the hill and the cemetery. They were the only two humans in the world at that moment; their gaze a battle of will, of good and evil, or evil and evil, for all Trusty knew. He didn’t like what he was seeing, was more fidgety than he already was to get on the trail.
Once he had been noticed, the priest turned slowly and walked away, the cassock fluttering behind him like the broken hem in an unrestrained dress, dragging along the ground like a broken wing.
* * *
Judge Hadesworth fancied himself a whistler. It wasn’t like the judge took to bird whistles or impromptu strings of notes. He whistled full songs, one after the other, “Camptown Races,” followed by the well-worn Foster tune, “Oh! Susanna.” Trusty in particular hated “Camptown Races,” but he held his tongue and didn’t offer the judge any criticism. He knew better. The judge had thin skin when it came to any commentary on his abilities—of any kind.
The three of them were riding in single file—the judge in the lead, Amelia Darby in the center, with Trusty bringing up the rear—through a shallow glide of head-high boulder and rock formations as Lost Mountain welcomed them on its rocky bib. With Amelia riding at a decent pace in the center, protected as a woman should be, Trusty was cut off from the judge, and he didn’t like that, not even for the short time it would take for them to come outside of the narrow, unnamed pass. This, along with the fact that he didn’t know Amelia’s true intentions, was one of the reasons that Trusty had been opposed to Amelia’s position on the ride. But the judge had insisted, just like he had insisted on placing the girl between them. Gordon Hadesworth was too used to getting his own way.
The sky overhead remained clear, blue as an expensive jewel, void of any predatory birds and their shadows. There had not been any other travelers on the trail since they had left the cemetery—or any sign of the priest. It was almost like the image had been a figment of Trusty’s imagination, even though he knew better. And he was relieved to bid the preacher and the Teamster farewell and send them back to the stinking waters of Kosoma where they belonged. He hoped he never saw either man again.
“You spoke of your mother, Miss Darby,” Trusty said to Amelia as they squeezed through the rocks, “but what of your father? Didn’t he enforce any discipline to your brothers? Or was he just their maker, a mirror from which they grew, lived, and died?”
Amelia didn’t turn to address Trusty, just kept her head faced forward, staring directly into the judge’s back. “Haven’t you had enough of my family woes today, Deputy? I would think you would have other things on your mind. Not the conflicts that might or might not have existed under the roof where I was raised.”
“You sure don’t make friends easy, do you?”
“Why on God’s green earth would you think I would want to be your friend?” she said, turning around to glare at Trusty, all the while holding the reins to her horse steady.
Her hateful look almost knocked Trusty off of his horse, though he should have been accustomed to Amelia Darby’s acid tongue. He wasn’t though. It was difficult to recall a woman so enraged by her position. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I was just passin’ the time, tryin’ to have a conversation with you is all. I don’t mean no offense.”
Amelia looked as if she considered his words poisonous, let her high cheekbones fall an inch, then cranked them back up. With that, she pointed her nose to the air, let out a “humph,” and faced forward again, boring holes into the back of Judge Hadesworth’s neck.
I suppose that’ll teach me, Trusty thought to himself, allowing Horse to step off the pace and fall back a couple of lengths, just in case Amelia Darby had something untoward in mind. Lucky for all of them they were deep into the pass, otherwise he might have passed her up, taken ahold of Judge Hadesworth’s reins, and left the spiteful woman in the dust—regardless of the judge’s orders or objections.
It didn’t take long to pad out of the pass, as a rocky expanse opened before the trio. Trusty remained eagle-eyed, perusing the shadows above and below with a slow, methodical gaze, seeing nothing that alarmed him. That didn’t cause him to relax. That wasn’t possible. Not with the company he had been forced to keep. A wiser man would have learned to ignore Amelia Darby, but Trusty didn’t count himself among the sages. He left that to the judge. All he could do now was ride in silence, keep an eye out for trouble, find a decent spot to pitch camp, and get Judge Hadesworth back to Muskogee as quickly as possible.
It was almost like the judge could read Trusty’s mind and sense the tension in the air. Hadesworth gave up whistling and began singing “Camptown Races” in a deep, cheerful voice—loud enough to scatter bobcats and birds and draw anyone with a threat on their mind closer.
“Camptown ladies sing dis song, doo-dah! doo-dah! Camptown racetrack five miles long, oh, doo-dah day! I come down dah wid my hat caved in, doo-dah! doo-dah! I go back home wid a pocket full of tin, oh, doo-dah day!”
The words and tune didn’t improve Amelia Darby’s attitude at all.
St. Louis, Missouri, winter 1865
Even though he was just a seven-year-old boy, Sam knew the rattle in his mother’s chest was getting worse. She refused to eat most days no matter how much he begged her to take a taste of food. He didn’t want to have to lie to his father and he didn’t want to lose his mother. He knew she had to eat to live. She was shrinking before his very eyes, finding her way quickly to the front stoop of death’s door. Her voice was a whisper, more like the crackle of a dying fire, and she slept for long periods of the day. It was a reason to celebrate when Sam found his mother awake, looking refreshed, her face full of life and her eyes blue as a perfect summer day.
“Would you like some breakfast, Ma?” he said with a smile.
“Yes, that would be wonderful. I’m awfully hungry. I dreamed I was in a great desert left on my own. I prayed for an oasis, and here you are.”
“I was here all along, Ma.” Sam stood stiff in the middle of the bedroom. It smelled of sickness and dust. The windows were nailed shut and the thick draperies hadn’t been opened in months. “Do you want some water before I get your breakfast?”
Mamie Dawson shook her head, turned it so she was facing Sam, and smiled broadly, as if it were the first time he had ever shown her such care. “That would be nice.”
Sam hurried to the chest of drawers that sat opposite the iron-framed bed his father had built, and poured a glass of water from the pitcher that always sat there.
His mother tapped the side of the bed, inviting him to sit next to her. Sam hesitated. Any movement of the mattress usually caused her discomfort and unimaginable pain; he always treated her like she was made of fragile porcelain. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course.” There was a brightness to Mamie that seemed unreal, conjured from a distant memory when Sam was much younger, and she was much stronger. Something felt off, but it was hard to figure out what.
Sam slid gently onto the feather bed and handed his mother the glass of water, holding the bottom of it as she tipped it to her mouth. She guzzled the water with enthusiasm. Drinking almost all of it in one gulp—like the dream about the desert. When he pulled the glass away from her mouth, he touched her forehead to make sure it was as cool as it looked. It was. Which was just as perplexing. His mother was usually feverish. In and out of consciousness.
“I want you to promise me something,” Mamie said, wide-eyed with a peaceful look on her face, but with a solid demand in her brittle voice.
“What?” Sam said.
“You’ll do what your father wants you to do. I know you think he is hard on you, and he is, but that is only because he loves you . . . wants the best for you. Be a nice boy and don’t fight with him about the silly daily things.”
“I hate the shop,” Sam said, looking away from his mother. “I want to be outside with the other boys. They don’t have to work as hard as I do.”
“It won’t always be like this . . . you’ll see. You’re a strong, smart boy. Promise me you’ll be as good for your father as you are for me.”
Sam looked at her, piercing the silence left by her plea. “I don’t want you to go away.”
“It’s a journey, Samuel. I’m too weak for this world. But you’ll always know I loved you. If you can’t promise me anything else, promise me that you won’t forget that no matter what.”
“I promise.”
“Good.”
Sam leaned in and kissed his mother on the forehead, and heard the distant, familiar rattle in her chest. It sounded like the crackle of a dying forge. “I’ll fry you up some bacon. How’s that?”
“No, I’ve changed my mind, Samuel. I want you to go get the preacher for me. I need to talk to him.”
“What about, Ma?”
“Don’t you worry about it. Now, go on, do what I ask of you.”
“But what about your breakfast?”
“I’ll be fine until you get back.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. Now go on.”
Sam hesitated; knew he was supposed to feed his ma, then go into the shop to help his pa. But she asked. So he did what she wanted. He ran down the road to the Methodist church that he had been baptized in but rarely had seen the inside of since. It was hard for his ma to make the trip on Sundays. The preacher usually came by once a week on his own accord. It was one time when Sam was glad to stand in front of a pit of fire instead of having to listen to what was going to happen to him if he didn’t walk the straight-and-narrow. His pa had no time for the preacher either; a commonality between the two of them that went unspoken. Hellfire and brimstone made their fortunes every day, no matter how meager. The preacher man had no idea how to survive the heat of a St. Louis summer day in a blacksmith shop—every day was an eternity stoked of fire and washed in ash. Sam knew more about hell than he wanted to.
The preacher, named James Brownly, a tall, middle-aged man with three daughters, seemed to understand what Sam’s mother wanted right away and matched the boy’s run home. But they were too late. She had taken her last breath alone. No fancy religious words or invisible god could save her or bring her back to life. His mother was dead, and Sam was sure his father would blame him for the loss. No matter the cause, her death would be his fault. But even if that didn’t happen, something worse would: Sam would be left alone to fend for himself with his father. At least he didn’t promise his mother that he would spend the rest of his life doing exactly what his father wanted him to.
Chapter 5
Paris, Texas, May 1888
The room that any woman had given birth in might as well have been No Man’s Land for Vance Calhoun. Not only was the room off-limits, but the entrance to such a sanctuary was undesirable even for Calhoun, who was not a man of normal reservations. Blood, feminine rules, and hidden mysteries held little sway over his thinking and actions. He hesitated a breath before he pushed inside the bedroom with the angry palms of both hands.
There was no knock, no light tap to gain permission for access, just a determined, dreadful walk with Sally Hoyle close on his heels. “Brother, you mustn’t upset her,” she was saying, trailing after Calhoun, grabbing at his thick, sweaty arm, unconcerned about being swatted away.
Jealousy and rage pulsed through every vein of Calhoun’s body. A man’s name, Samuel, bounced around in his mind like a bullet doing damage to every fiber of flesh and matter in his brain. His fists ached to hurt something. His ears begged to hear bones breaking. Instead, the door slammed hard against the wall; a loud bang shattering the silence of the interior room. The explosion of sound brought a sudden cry from the baby, accosting Calhoun’s anger without raising any concern at all. He didn’t know any man named Samuel that he could think of, not one that had come between him and Jessica and had relations with his wife. But then he hadn’t known his wife all that long. Samuel could have been anybody from her past.
