Massacre at Whip Station Page 11

  “No, you’re not,” Peterson told him.

  “Doc, I’m done surrendering!”

  “A lovely sentiment,” Peterson said dryly.

  “Doc’s right,” Kennedy told him. “But if you take ill on the trail, then someone has to stay with you.”

  “When, then?” Crane demanded.

  The doctor looked at the wounded man. “Tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, and not at a gallop that’ll pop the wound wide open.”

  “Sidesaddle, too?” Crane said. He lay back, once again urged by Ridgewood.

  Kennedy sighed. They were children, all of them.

  “I swear,” Kennedy quietly told his companion. “When this is over I will resign before I work with Southern guns again.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hathaway whispered. “When this is done there will be no need for us to come back. And your stool at Ebbitt’s place will still be there.”

  Kennedy smiled lightly. Hathaway was referring to Bill Ebbitt’s bar on the edge of Chinatown. Kennedy had been a patron since 1856, when he was thirty years old and relocated from Philadelphia to Washington. He took a room at Ebbitt’s new boardinghouse and was the bar’s first customer.

  “That alone is reason to right now,” Kennedy said. “Sooner this is done, sooner I get back.”

  There was a distant clopping that drew the attention of both men to the east. They squinted into the moonlit expanse and saw the movement of three horses pushing westward, hard.

  “Now what?” Kennedy wondered aloud.

  A rain of pebbles announced Marcus scrabbling back down the rocks. “Injuns,” he said in a low, breathless voice.

  “Yeah,” Hathaway said, squinting ahead. “They’re not headed this way. But they are in a hurry.”

  “Get the horses,” Kennedy decided, addressing no one in particular. No one moved. Anger rising, he turned and shouted into the mine. “Get the horses!”

  “What is it?” Peterson asked, rising with his plate.

  “Apache, most likely, and in a hurry,” Kennedy said.

  “Maybe they got to Silas,” Marcus said.

  “He’ll have to take care of himself, if he’s alive,” Kennedy said, moving toward the stable area. “Those renegades may be trying to pick off our quarry!”

  CHAPTER 10

  Taking the well-worn stage path but riding the flat ground between the deep wheel ridges, Joe and Clarity galloped into the entrance of the station. For all the times Joe had come this way over the years, this was the first in which he felt a sense of dread purpose. He was glad that, just now, Slash wasn’t present. The death of Young Thunder would have set him on a course of vengeance.

  Not that Joe felt much differently. As he rode, he considered the many ways these Rebels had crossed the lines of honor and consideration. By their actions they had endangered the very civilization the O’Malleys and others were attempting to establish out here.

  Which got Joe O’Malley wondering if that was in fact their purpose. He couldn’t think of any other.

  They were met halfway to the station by his son and by Sisquoc, who slid from one of the boulders and followed the horse in.

  “Thank God you’re okay,” Jackson said as his father reined. The younger O’Malley looked behind his father. “Thunder?”

  “Kilt,” Joe replied, his voice somber.

  As he helped Clarity down, Joe explained what had happened.

  “I’m glad Slash isn’t here,” Jackson said.

  “I was thinking that,” Joe replied. “Daylight, it’ll probably be safe enough here to ride out and get the saddle. How long since the stage left?”

  “About a quarter-hour,” Jackson answered.

  “We have to catch it,” Joe said, grabbing his water pouch and carbine from the saddle.

  “Why?”

  Joe offered Clarity a drink, then took one himself. “Apaches seem as interested in the medicine man as the Rebels.”

  While Jackson led White Paint to the stable, Sisquoc remarked, “Apache are not friends of the Serrano.”

  “I know,” Joe said as he headed for the station to see his daughter-in-law and granddaughter and refill the skin. “I don’t mind if the Rebs and Apache kill each other, but I don’t want Slash to have to kill one of our Indian neighbors and I don’t want Butterfield unhappy.”

  “What do you plan to do?” the Mission Indian asked, walking beside Joe as Clarity followed.

  “Not sure,” Joe admitted.

  Sisquoc turned and hurried back to the front entrance. He didn’t trust Apaches and would not have been surprised had they doubled back to make sure Joe O’Malley didn’t get involved with their pursuit of the stage.

  Sarah and Gert met Joe and Clarity at the door. Both were relieved to see Joe and he hugged them tightly in turn. The frontiersman left the door open when he entered. Though a closed door offered protection, it also afforded an opportunity for someone to sneak up on them.

  “Pa, I’m so glad—” Sarah blurted, then wept as she hugged him tight. “We didn’t know if you were hurt—what we should do!”

  “You did the right thing,” Joe assured her, touching her damp cheek as he wriggled free. He embraced Gert briefly in his strong arms, then looked at her in the moonlight. “We’ll have to talk about Apache ways when I get back.”

  “I want to hear it all.” She smiled.

  “Jackson’ll say what I told him, but now we have to hurry.” He gave Gert the deerskin. “We need supplies for four days, two sacks.”

  The women moved quickly toward the kitchen while Joe gathered ammunition. He stuffed the cartridges into pockets, to be transferred to their saddlebags when they left. While he did that, Clarity went to the washing basin to splash the dust from her eyes. The woman had learned, lying on her belly, waiting an hour or more for a morning deer, never to let dirt or eyelashes cost her a clean shot. The “little scoundrels,” as she called them, could lie in wait on the forehead, temples, or eyelids. Today, by the time she had faced the Apaches, Clarity was already trying to blink out sharp, painful grains.

  Sarah was nearby, knotting the ropes atop the two grips. She stole a look at the woman. Clarity did not know it, but the wide, oak bowl was one of the oldest possessions in the O’Malley household. Probably older than the person using it. Her father-in-law had carved it over forty years ago. He carried it with him wherever he went, Dolley had told her.

  “A little touch of civilization and home,” her mother-in-law had said. “It reminded him of his new wife and the other new wives he was helping to welcome west.”

  Clarity left to visit the privy. Looking out the back window, Sarah took a moment to remember her mother-in-law. Just outside was another of the grand old O’Malley homesteading items—the washboard and wooden tub with its long maiden-stick plunger. She couldn’t see it in the dark but she could hear the old boards of the tub creaking slightly in the wind. Joe had made that, too, made it so well it had served three generations. Only the clothesline strung between the house and the maple tree was new. Sarah could still see Jackson’s mother putting the rain-wrinkled or dirt-stiffened garments into the basin, plunging them clean with her strong grip and tireless arm, or scrubbing them on the board to remove burrs or soap or blood or even the guts of a snake that splattered because it had to be shot.

  A tear formed. Then another followed it down her right cheek. God, how she missed Dolley, remembering how the woman had protected her from the dangers around them. Home was sanctuary. And Joe—bless him—had never given up the sacred task of protecting it for everyone who crossed the mountains and rivers to be here.

  “You almost ready?” Joe asked. He came over, rattling with shells in his pockets as he walked. He stopped to settle them lest Apaches or Rebels hear him, too.

  “Done,” she said. “I still don’t like this, Pa.”

  “You never do when I go afar.”

  “This is different,” she said. “This is an army of Confederates who aren’t protecting anything like the Indians or M
exicans. They’re out for revenge.”

  “That makes them over-eager and sloppy,” Joe said. “We seen that twice now.”

  “The Indians won’t be,” she said as she handed him the two lumpy canvas bags. “Slash won’t even suspect that they’re coming, will he?”

  “Not as such, but there’re Indians other than Apache out there and he’ll be watching,” Joe assured her. “B.W. also. He’ll be alert. Always is, for Injuns.”

  “The Confederates surprised B.W. and Mr. Ocean,” she pointed out. “And that was in daylight.”

  “That was an ambush from on high, set up ahead of their coming,” Joe pointed out. “Can’t happen here. It’s mostly open trail they’ll be on tonight.”

  “But after that, at the next station—?”

  “We’ll pass ’em there, too, and ride ahead.”

  “Then you’ll be in danger,” Sarah said quietly.

  Joe frowned a little. “What’s got you in this state? I’ve been out there in dangerous situations many a time.”

  “I know.” She smiled, more tears falling. “I know. I just hope—well, I hope you come back so you can make me that second washbasin we need, the one you’re always threatening to carve me. We’re a growing business, you know.”

  Joe smiled and took her hand in his. “You spoilt my surprise,” he said.

  Sarah looked up at his dark face. “Surprise?”

  “In the hayloft . . . almost done.”

  She grinned. “The knife in the hayloft—the one that cut Slash?”

  “I didn’t think anybody’d be going up there,” Joe said in a boyish, bashful tone. He kissed her forehead. “I expect us all to be around for many more years, Sarah, but nothing is guaranteed, you know that. One thing they got out there, though, is B.W.’s mighty belief in God looking over them. I have to believe the shot that got Dick also got the attention of the Almighty. I pray that He or Dolley or both is watching all of us, even those who don’t practice their faith quite so strong.”

  Sarah smiled bravely as she took the lantern from the hook over the table and left—to see to Dick Ocean, she said. Joe could hear him snoring all the way out here. He suspected his daughter-in-law also wanted to say a silent prayer. Sarah liked to talk to God in private, just like Dolley did.

  Not like my granddaughter, he thought as she cleaned up bits of glass they’d missed before. He had seen her once when she went out at dawn, behind the stable, and lit fungus on fire. Then she sat beside it, whispering to heathen spirits over the fumes. Pechanga magic. He heard that in some colonies, years ago, that kind of thing got women hanged or burned alive. Those rituals hadn’t done the Indians any good and he just couldn’t understand why she bothered. Or how she had the time. When he was young, when Jackson was a boy, they didn’t have time for hocus-pocus and woolgathering.

  Joe set the grips on the table. Before leaving, he helped himself to some of the nearly burned coffee hanging over the fire. He actually liked it that way. Thinking back to his youth, it reminded him of the plains when he was first starting out. He never did get the knack for cooking it right, or else he got distracted by noises that could have been animals, could have been Indians. More often than not he left it boiling for too long. This taste and those days were inseparable, even separated by more than half a century.

  While downing the last of the hot, black cup Joe heard the clops of the horses. He took a moment to splash the sleep from his wizened eyes, then fetched the canvas bags and went out. His days usually ran from sunup to sundown, and this day had not only been long, it had been particularly tiring. It had been a while since he had taken a night ride, let alone two. They required a certain kind of alertness and he was eager for the coffee to fire him up.

  Clarity strode around the station as if she’d just had a long, rejuvenating nap. They met by the horses. Joe didn’t know if it was her relative youth or her bird-of-prey nature, but she seemed ready for whatever lay to the north.

  “Thank you, son,” he said to Jackson.

  He couldn’t see the boy’s face but he could hear his breathing, his feet shifting on the dirt. He was restless, wishing he could go. Joe touched him on the shoulder and squeezed.

  “Pa—”

  “I know,” Joe said. “But even if it was otherwise, you’re needed here.”

  Joe told Clarity to take the Appaloosa and mounted the calico. He handed the woman one of the grub sacks, which she looped around the back housing of the saddle, out of the way.

  Sarah and Gert came to the front door but stayed just inside the darkness. Joe could hear them and wheeled the horse so it was facing them.

  “Love you both,” he said before giving the horse a soft “gyah” and turning it toward the entrance to follow the stagecoach path. He threw a wave at the Mission Indian as he rode out. Clarity lingered a moment to thank them all before following Joe into the night. The sound of the horses was quickly lost to distance and the whistle of the wind.

  “I like her,” Gert said as Jackson joined them.

  “I’m betting she’ll have a better chance of taming San Francisco than her brother will,” her father suggested.

  “Taming it or running it?” Gert asked.

  Sarah sighed. “It’s too confusing a thought for me,” she said. “I’m not even sure who’ll break who, her or your granddad.”

  “I’m betting on Pa,” Jackson said as he headed back to the stables to feed and water the horse Joe had ridden in.

  “I’m just happy it’s even a question,” Gert said with a smile.

  * * *

  Two miles to the northeast, another departure was taking place.

  Leaving behind just two men, Tod Crane and Dr. Peterson, the remaining members of the Kennedy party rode from the copper mine into the silver night. Dr. Peterson and his patient would remain in the mine until the latter was deemed well enough to travel. Peterson would decide that when he saw how Crane sat a horse.

  Peterson was crouched in the middle of the shaft, about ten feet from the entrance. He watched the men grow smaller and smaller until they turned north and weren’t visible at all.

  That was fine with Peterson. He found most of them insufferable, especially the two from the East. And, besides, he had something he needed to do. He just couldn’t do it while they were here.

  The injured man was propped against a flat section of rock wall, his legs spread before him. His chest was bare, save for the shoulder-girdling bandage. There was no light other than the moon, which shone into the mouth of the mine and made both men look like ghosts. The departure of the men had let the night breeze flow unimpaired, which felt good on Crane’s sweaty skin and Peterson’s grizzled, thoughtful face.

  He was thinking now. Not about what happened or what was happening but what would happen.

  Peterson was not a Rebel at heart but by default. He was not a friend of any federal government, that of Abe Lincoln or Jeff Davis. He believed that people and communities should determine their own fate, and what was good for Boston wasn’t necessarily good for Cincinnati or St. Louis or Dallas. The entire war had been the bloody result of pride over intelligence, of moral certainty over life itself. As a doctor, he had yet to hear an opinion that was worth more than the breath it rode out on.

  What the hell is wrong with everyone?

  They started one war after another, convinced that one way of life was better than another. And all that was accomplished was violently, painfully, needlessly ending so many of those lives.

  The Maryland-born Peterson had supported the Confederacy for two reasons. First, he did not believe bankers and manufacturers and politicians from the North should impose their views on farmers and politicians in the South. That was wrong. Second, it was a matter of where he had been living. Peterson had married a Georgia girl and she was adamant and that was that.

  Now forty-nine, the doctor had lost everything that had mattered to him. It was consumed in the fiery sack of Atlanta. His practice went up in converging seas of blood and fla
me. He was a Confederate in the eyes of the invading army and was forced to work in a Union hospital. That made him a traitor in the eyes of his family and patients. When it was all over, he was truly a man without a country. There was nothing left for him but to go west with mercenaries who had their own mission: to prolong the struggle and avenge themselves on the Yankees.

  None of it sat well with the man whose only desire had ever been to heal the sick or injured. He certainly did not have the bullying nature of Tod Crane, Silas Welch, Marcus Stone, or the others in the makeshift unit.

  But then, Gus Peterson had a plan. A plan that was different from those of these other men. A plan that would take everyone by surprise, especially Kennedy and Hathaway.

  Those two particularly annoyed him. They were bureaucrats, the kind who had ground down and looted the people of the South. The fact that these two had transferred their wicked policies from Confederates to Indians did not make him feel any better about working with them. The only thing that made his association with them bearable was the help they were inadvertently providing.

  “Sure seems bigger and airier without all them horses,” Crane muttered.

  The man was trying hard to muster his stren’th, to stay sharp and alert.

  Peterson half-turned toward the other. “Seems roomier without all your friends, too,” he said. “Quieter, anyway. You really ought to rest.”

  “I rested enough,” Crane protested.

  Peterson shook his head. “Lord help you, you’re as stubborn as the rest.”

  Crane made a disapproving sound. “Why you always such a naysayer with everyone?”

  Peterson rose, arched his back, and walked to where Crane was sprawled. “I keep hoping someone’ll listen to me,” he said. “Stop fighting a lost war.”

  “Wars and causes ain’t always the same thing. Anyway,” he said, wincing as he shifted his shoulders, “I didn’t surrender to nobody.”

  “That’s true, but the Confederacy is as dead as a beaver hat,” Peterson said. “Plantations are not coming back. Slaves are gone for good. So many gentlemen are dead—I know, I watched ’em die. Some of them with proud little feathers still in their hatbands. I fear civility may also be dead.”