Massacre at Whip Station Page 15

  “She’s at peace,” he answered, then regarded B.W. “I’m gonna double back along the trail. Anyone coming after you, I’ll slow ’em down.”

  “A shot will tell us how far they are,” Isaiah said. “I used ta gauge distance that way on—”

  “He won’t be shooting,” B.W. interrupted.

  Isaiah was about to ask “What then?” when he noticed the sheaths on Slash’s legs. Slash adjusted his hat against the high bright moon, then gave the animal his heels and went back into the lowlands.

  B.W. eased the brake back and started the rig rolling.

  “Knife fighter, eh?” Isaiah said.

  “’Tween Saint Louis and the Yerba Buena Cove at trail’s end, I never met one better,” the Whip replied. “There’s something I have seen plenty of, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Liars,” B.W. said, giving the word bite. “Lord doesn’t approve of ’em and I don’t much care for them myself. Don’t ever tell tales again.”

  “I apologize sincerely,” Isaiah said.

  “Now tell me true—that shoulder thing with the rifle,” B.W. said. “You telling me that works?”

  “No question. You lean your head forward a little, eye lines up with the sight,” Isaiah told him. “Recoil don’t blow back into your shoulder. Quicker t’get off a second shot.”

  B.W. shook his head. “Learned something new, and from a Colored man. That dust the Lord God used t’make us—I always believed it had all shades of earth in it.”

  “I like that,” Isaiah said. Then he coughed and spit.

  “Ya gotta keep yer teeth closed in the front box,” B.W. advised him. “We got bugs at night, right smack into ’em.”

  Isaiah pulled the remnants of a powdery moth from his tongue, spit out the rest.

  “You was apologizing before we got off the subject?” B.W. reminded him.

  “Yeah,” Isaiah said. “Colored man learns to try and put folks at ease, make sure they know that he don’t wanna rob or kill ’em.”

  “But ya set us up just the same,” B.W. reminded him. “And it was only yer elder ma on a horse! How ’n blazes was that gonna give us a fright?”

  “Two riders on horseback? In the dark? In the middle of the road?” Isaiah said, his voice sibilant as he tried to get the hang of speaking with his jaw locked in place.

  B.W. considered that. “Fair point. And—well, you was looking out for your ma.”

  “All I got left,” Isaiah said.

  “Your pa?”

  “Died with a chain around his ankle, turned his raw skin green. I got a wife and son but they somewhere else. I don’t know where.”

  “Out west, though?”

  “That’s why we come,” he said. “Master took ’em when Alabama, Georgia, the whole region was afire. He had boats, used one of ’em to run, to flee like the mouse he is. He separated son and mother so she would have to follow. Has property out here somewhere.”

  “Name?”

  “Bonita and Joshua—”

  “The mouse, I mean.”

  “Brent Diamond.”

  B.W.’s teeth opened. He quickly clopped them shut. That was the man who had been chartered to run the Vallicita Station.

  “You’re probably tired,” B.W. said. “Why don’t ya get a little shut-eye while you can. I’ll wake ya, I hear or see something. Slash behind us—I feel a lot safer.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” Isaiah conceded. “I gave my ma the same advice.”

  The big man—who looked bigger now that he was in the box, at least six-foot-three—snuggled into the seat, his rifle across his chest, and shut his mouth and eyes. Isaiah probably did not feel it, B.W. thought, but there was a big, fat Indian blanket of silence that fell over the coach. The driver was now faced with a Solomon-sized dilemma. Did he tell this man that he knew where his wife and child were, or did he warn the fiftyish, puffed-but-slight Diamond on the way east—when Dick Ocean was back in his perch—that there was a freed slave looking for him? B.W. was no friend of the Alabama jackanapes, who still dressed the part of a plantation owner but treated his maid like dirt. The place was a dump. Diamond always seemed like he had one foot somewhere else, like he didn’t expect to be where he was for very long.

  B.W. didn’t trust him. But that didn’t give him the right to want him beaten bloody or massacred. A head taller, Isaiah looked like he could do it. Especially if Diamond was the man who shackled his pa to death.

  Dear Lord Jesus, the driver thought plaintively. What do I do?

  Before B.W. could consider it further, something reached his ears that he had never heard from the cabin of the stagecoach. Even Isaiah, who had shut his eyes and relaxed, shot alert.

  Then he laughed.

  “What was that?” B.W. asked.

  The black man settled back and replied, “Kinfolk.”

  * * *

  Fletcher Small had looked at the woman across from him as she settled in. She was wearing a housedress that was torn and ragged. She had on a shawl that was made of wool or cotton—he couldn’t tell which, but was in better repair than her dress. No doubt it had come from the house of whoever had owned her. She had on a small red bonnet, a mop hat. The frayed strings hung at its sides.

  The woman’s teeth were yellow, but most were present. The stren’th came from a diet of tough meat, cow and horse, and the color came from grits. Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight—bloodshot from dust but alert. Her fingers were bony but nimble. A house slave, no doubt, who had darned, did laundry—judging from the shattered nails—and did not cook, from the lanky look of her. Kitchen slaves always sampled what they served.

  The gun she had used to fire over the top of the stagecoach sat upright, between her legs. Although there was a regulation on the Butterfield books that forbade passengers from carrying firearms, it was not enforced. On several occasions, passenger weapons had forestalled attacks from savages or outlaws.

  “Madam, it is a pleasure to welcome you,” Fletcher Small had said. “I admit being abuzz with curiosity about what you are doing out here.”

  The woman then laughed. “Abuzz!” she had repeated. “Never heared a man who thought he was a bee.”

  The Indian sat still, the reverend was lost in reflection, and the reporter was amused by her innocent unfamiliarity with the term.

  “It’s a figure of—” Small had started, then said, “it’s merely an expression. It means that a man is eager for something, the way a bee is eager for nectar. In my case, I am eager to hear more about you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a reporter,” Small had said. “I write for newspapers.”

  “I cain’t read,” she answered without apology. “Neither does my boy.”

  “I am gravely sorry to hear that, but what I am interested in are peoples’ stories.”

  “‘Gravely sorry,’” she repeated. “‘Gravely sorry.’ That sounds very serious.”

  Small smiled benignly. He gave up trying to get any more from the woman just now.

  And then, suddenly, the shaman had raised his hands, cupped them beside his mouth, and howled. That was the sound that had alarmed B.W. and roused Isaiah. To both the reverend and the reporter, it was a reason for sudden and deep consternation. But to Willa, it was cause to join in.

  She slapped her knees, tilted back her head, and made a noise using throat and cheeks that sounded like an owl. Then both she and the Serrano looked at each other in the dark and laughed. It was the most animated the medicine man had been since beginning this journey.

  “Can you explain?” asked Small behind a nervous smile.

  “Is an explanation even possible?” asked Reverend Michaels, still shaken and turning toward the window for air.

  “Brother Moon, Sister Sky,” Willa replied as if it were obvious. “The wolf and the owl.” The woman dropped the shawl from her right shoulder to reveal a white feather sewn to the sleeve of her arm. It was missing large chunks and others were soiled. But she looked at it admi
ringly. “It’s to watch over me and my family when I sleep,” she said. “A custom from my African mother.”

  “And how did the shaman know about it?” Small asked.

  She touched a slender index finger to her temple and made a face. “He know! That’s all. He know.”

  The parson made a tsking sound. “Superstitious nonsense,” he muttered.

  “Superstitious, yes,” Small agreed. “Nonsense, not necessarily.”

  “Oh surely, Mr. Small, you don’t believe any of that,” Michaels said.

  “I am neither religious nor anti-religious—”

  “Religion?” Michaels exclaimed. “You call this . . . this black magic a religion?”

  “They have their talking owls and wolves, you have tempting snakes and a man dwelling inside a whale,” Small replied.

  “You, sir, are a blasphemer,” Michaels said. “‘For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish.’ That is the work of God’s mighty hand!”

  “Mighty indeed, and surely strong enough to make kin of the wolf and the owl, if He so chooses,” the reporter replied.

  “Madness,” Merritt Michael huffed, and turned back to the window.

  The Indian and freed slave had settled back into their previous composure, though each wore the hint of a smile, a new and relaxed fellowship.

  The reporter decided not to continue his pursuit of another story. He had the main one to consider, the Butterfield account, and the two Colored passengers had additional color. He took out his notebook and marked it all down, thinking for certain now that Willa Sunday herself was a better story for Beadle’s than for the Daily Missouri Republican. The magazine that published his stories “Mrs. Calderwell and the Cussing Cowboy,” “Master Melville and the Maverick Mule,” and “Mr. Rockefeller and his Randy Rooster” should be proud to publish “Mrs. Sunday and the Serrano Shaman.”

  After he finished making his notes, the tired journalist leaned against the side of the cabin and shut his eyes. He knew he wasn’t likely to sleep, though coming up with opening lines for his story helped him to forget where he was.

  * * *

  B.W. wondered if the Good Lord might be testing him.

  There was a freed slave snoring beside him, his mother—an owl—inside, her Serrano companion—a wolf—beside her, and a Rebel unit on his trail. The two white men aboard were useless as defenders and the one man who could help protect the stage was headed off in a direction opposite the one they were traveling.

  Dear God, I pray that I am strong enough to bear the burdens you have placed upon your humblest of servants.

  That was when the Whip heard another sound. A sound he knew. One that sent fire up his back.

  It was a snap, sharp and quick, and it was followed by a clattering.

  The spoke that had been coated with pitch had broken, the pieces tossed away by the spinning wheel.

  There were thirteen more rods, but supporting the entire wheel wasn’t the problem. Every time it turned and pressure hit that unsupported spot it would weaken.

  Eventually it would break.

  The question was whether that would happen before they reached the next station. And then he was facing a two-hour delay—time enough to be caught.

  He nudged Isaiah. The man started awake.

  “We got a decision to make,” B.W. said.

  “What’s that?”

  B.W. gently, carefully applied the brake. When the coach stopped, he faced the black man.

  “We got a missing spoke,” the driver said. “Need to lighten our load, less’n the wheel come off. Then we’re dead.”

  Isaiah didn’t like what he was hearing at first. B.W. could see it in his expression—and knew he’d mistaken the driver’s intention.

  “The bags, the saddle,” B.W. said. “Everything’s gotta go.”

  The big man relaxed. “Oh. Okay.”

  B.W. looked around. “Let’s put it somewhere off the trail—there, that patch o’ scrub.”

  “Good spot. No one likely to see it till the sun comes over the mountains eastward.”

  “Exactly.”

  B.W. climbed from the box and told Michaels and Small to come out. He explained why.

  “Our belongings?” the reverend said. “All of them?”

  “It’s just temporary,” B.W. informed him. “Either that, or we risk a full breakdown.”

  There was no further discussion. Isaiah was already on the top of the coach and he began handing bags to B.W. With the preacher and the reporter they formed a chain to the patch of tall grass. For her part, Willa went to the back box and began undoing the crisscrossing straps.

  “I am grievously disappointed in the way we have been treated,” Michaels grumped. “Medicine men, picking up stragglers on the road, my own sister leaving the journey to fight Confederates with an old man—”

  “Your sister is gonna learn more from that ‘old man’ than she ever has learned in her life,” B.W. said. “And she’s safer with him than she is anywhere west of the Mississippi.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Michaels said. “I pray to God that you are.”

  “You do that,” B.W. said. He cast his eyes heavenward. “And I most sincerely wish you better luck with the Almighty than I have had of late.”

  “Will there be time to get anything I might need?” the preacher asked.

  “Not at present,” the Whip told him. “We keep the mail in the back box and send a cart from the next station to collect everything.”

  “Why the mail?” the preacher demanded. “That’s got weight!”

  “It do, and we need some traction,” B.W. replied. “Your things will get to you, I promise.”

  Unless Injuns get to it first.

  The nine bags and grips were higher than B.W. had anticipated, but there was no time to do additional arranging. While Isaiah helped his mother back inside, B.W. shooed the two men back to their seats. He shut the door, then joined the black man in the front box. B.W. made sure his Bible was still in its place, then carefully released the brake and gently flicked his whip. The horses started up. God no doubt had His reasons for testing the Whip, but B.W. loved his Jehovah no less.

  God is giving me His sacred attention, B.W. told himself. In a way, that could be a sign of heavenly love and affection. His heart swelled with the thought.

  The stagecoach felt strangely light, almost rickety without the weight of the luggage. He hoped he had done the right thing. The team was used to pulling more and he had to rein them a little to make sure they didn’t rush ahead. That would be as bad for the wheel as the heavy bags.

  He decided that it would do no good to worry, so he did his best to just guide the stage through the night, taking comfort in the parts of the territory that were familiar and the fact that each moment brought them closer to safety.

  CHAPTER 14

  General Rhodes Guilford was sitting at his large desk in the fort, smoking locomotive-steady puffs from a cigar, drinking a whiskey—two shots was enough, for now—and waiting. He was waiting impatiently for two things.

  One was the return of the two Mission Indians he had dispatched to the O’Malley family’s Whip Station. The two men he had sent to the previous stop in Vallicita had already returned. The stage had stopped there, the shaman Tuchahu was aboard, and it left for Whip Station on time. Malibu and Sisquoc should have returned by now with news that the coach had reached the O’Malley place late with the shaman no longer aboard.

  Everything depended on that. Kennedy and Hathaway knew it. If that had not occurred . . .

  That left the other thing he was waiting for. Word from those two Eastern functionaries. A dispatch . . .

  No, “information,” he reminded himself. Civilians don’t call it a dispatch or intelligence or orders. They call it information. News. They write it on a piece of paper without formality or regimental detail.

  “Bloody brown,” he muttered, blowing smoke and using the expression he had uttered so often during the
War. It was a short phrase that described the rivers and streams his men often had to cross during the War Between the States. Waters turned from clear to brown by the bleeding bodies within the cool flow or on the uncaring shores.

  General Guilford was waiting for information. He had been waiting since sunset. Now, nearly eight hours later, he was restless and tired. It was a bad combination.

  The other thing the fifty-one-year-old officer was waiting for was the event that would follow. The abduction of Tuchahu was just the start. The war against the Indians . . .

  He pulled on his cigar and drained his glass and resisted the desire to refill it. He had to stay clearheaded, at least for the next several days. Maneuvers had to be done carefully, as they had been against General Lee.

  Of course, Andrew Johnson and his macaronis on the Potomac were not the adversaries that Lee had been. For one thing, they were not in the field, had no idea what was really going on. For another, they were fools. They could never imagine what was coming. The greatest event in the four centuries during which white men had trod upon this land.

  One of the greatest events in the history of the world.

  The honored Civil War officer was not a patient man. That was one of his greatest strengths. Short of stature, with a neatly clipped beard he nonetheless commanded a room with his barrel chest, penetrating, pale gray eyes, and a voice that could be heard over cannon fire. It had been tested time and again as his troops pummeled Confederate positions with ball and bayonet, sometimes with fist and teeth.

  Men served Guilford. They wanted to please him. They did what he ordered.

  They would do this.

  The stocky man rose and walked around the ornately carved mahogany desk. He went to the open window through which a muscular breeze blew. Fort Yuma had no stockade. It sat on a high hill, was open to the elements that came from east and west, that rose from the Colorado River. Day and night came the sound of boats. The fluttering of the flag high atop its tall, white pole. The regular rattle of the stagecoaches that charged along the Butterfield route.

  Fort Yuma was the most important stop along the line. Here, any substantial repair or reinforcement could be made. Arms could be purchased if an accident or carelessness had claimed a firearm. Medical care was available. So was a bath, for those who had had enough of dirt and sweat.