“Griff is … he’s my … betrothed,” she fudged slightly. “I’ve come here looking for him. It has been so long since I last had a letter. The most recent came from here, from Saint Louis. He is seeking his son. When they returned to Maryland, we were to be married,” she invented.
Pierce suddenly beamed. “Well, now, that’s an entirely different matter. I’ll arrange you the finest room in the place. Make yourself comfortable. Though I don’t imagine you’ll be staying long.”
“Why is that?”
“Major Stark, he done moved on. Went to Saint Joe to learn what he could about his brother-in-law and that boy of his.”
“How far is Saint … ah … Joe from here?”
“Four days by stage. The Butterfield runs up there. Wells Fargo, too.”
“How soon could I leave for there?”
“Let me see. I have their schedules right here.” Pierce busied himself reading, one thick finger running down the fine print of a two-fold brochure.
“Ah-hum. Here it is. Wells Fargo runs Wednesday. That’s two days from now. Now, Butterfield. They’re new. Aah. Tomorrow afternoon, three-thirty. Would that be suitable?”
“Yes. Yes. Fine. I don’t know how to thank you, er …”
“Pierce. James Pierce. Pleased to be of assistance to the major in anything. I’ll arrange your ticket.”
“You’re so kind. Thank you.”
Heat even radiated from the insides of the walls. Griff and Ansel stood in front of a trestle table that served as a desk. Dark sweat rings showed at their arm pits and Griff felt a long trickle run down his back. The man across from them looked as though he had just stepped out of a cool grotto. He wore a white shirt, tan jacket, and trousers that suggested a uniform without being one. He pushed back the bill of a tan dragoon-style cap and riffled through a sheaf of papers.
“You say that the ambushed wagon train was headed to the Salt Lake? Hmmm. Yes. Here we are. Eleven wagons, thirty-three persons, livestock. Brethren and sisters from back East, seeking refuge from persecution. They are overdue.”
“I can assure you they won’t get here. Their train was attacked by, it seems, Cheyenne. You will notify the army?”
“The American Army has done little for us. We can handle this situation ourselves. Thank you Mr. Stark for reporting this. May I inquire how long you will be staying in our valley?”
“No longer than it takes to get out of it and head for the Snake River.”
“A wise decision. There are some among us who would insist that Americans attacked that train. Your presence among us could become … unfortunate.”
“Good-bye, then. Ansel, let’s find some place to get supplies and head on.”
Time seemed to run backward for Griff. The sameness of one day blended into the next. He was oblivious to the spectacular scenery around them, once they had left the arid valley of Utah. His spirits didn’t lift until they at last saw the square blockhouse guard towers of Bannerman’s Fort on the Snake. He gigged Boots in the ribs and spurted forward.
They entered Bannerman’s trading post and stronghold amid the frantic yelping of dogs, shouts of friendly Indian children, and the ring of a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. Helmut Bannerman welcomed them from the door of his commercial establishment.
“Gut day, chentlemen. Hier ist Helmut Bannerman. Velcome to my trading post. You are scouting for an immigrant train?”
“No, Mr. Bannerman,” Griff responded. “We’re looking for one. I’m Griffin Stark, this is Ansel Thorson.”
“Gruss Gott, Herr Thorson.”
“I’m Norwegian. Yerman don’t mean a ting to me. Ja, sure.”
“Velcome all the same. Now, vhat group of pilgrims is it you are seeking?”
“Captain Russel, Bert Russel, left Fort Laramie nearly four weeks ago. Some of my family are signed on with him. Has the train come by here yet?”
“No. Bert’s a good boy. He does not push the draft animals zo that they tire. He saves their enerchy for vhat is ahead. He could be t’ree to five days from here yet. Aber, come in. I haf’ some gut vhiskey und beer I keep cool in a zellar. Rest yourselves. Ve vill talk more of dis.”
In the dim interior, cool for its lack of airways, Griff and Ansel stood at a long, stained bar and accepted huge ceramic steins of foamy-topped beer. The heat and tension of the trip seemed to slide away and Griff’s face relaxed. Then he thought of the massacre of the Mormons.
“A Mormon wagon train was attacked by the Cheyenne on the Upper Trail,” Griff told Bannerman.
“The Cheyenne? I find dat hard to belief. You like der beer?”
“It’s quite good,” Griff responded. Dark and malty, it tasted like no other beer he had sampled.
“I make it myself. An old Cherman brewing secret. Strong.”
It was, Griff began to find out. The long weeks in the saddle, from Ft. Kearny to Nebraska and on to here had provided few opportunities to imbibe and his abstinence began to tell. “A fellow doesn’t want to drink a lot of this at one time,” he observed.
“It makes you big … like me.” Bannerman slapped his ample front glacis. “Zo … Captain Russel is leading more folks to de promised land? I got dis far and decided to stop. In dose days, it seemed like an endless line of vagons. Too many people. I come here from Chermany to get away from all dat. I haf my vife und our children. The Indians are friendly und trade mit me. People come und go on the trail. Vhat more could a man vant?”
“Do you have space to put up travelers?”
“Some. If you don’t mind sleeping above a stable. Or you could use one of the guardhouses. I’ll not charge you for dat. Everyting else ist cash.”
“Ja, sure. And we need grain for our horses, supplies, powder and shot,” Ansel, always the practical one, put in.
“Those you will have. Den ve can spend some pleasant days talking about vhat is happening back beyond the plains. Vhere do you come from?”
“Saint Joseph,” Griff answered.
“Und before dat? I detect a bit of an akzent.”
“Georgia.”
“Zo. Es ist gut. I can alvays tell a man mit an akzent. The Zouth. Iss too bat you lost der var. All the same, it makes business for Bannerman. Drink up, chentlemen, und ve haf another.”
Two days went by with agonizing slowness. Then a third.
“Funny,” Bannerman observed. “Vun of Russel’s scouts could haf been here by now. Oh, veil, tomorrow iss alzo a day.”
When the fifth day passed with no sign of the wagons, Griff grew restless beyond containment. He saddled Boots before dawn the morning of the sixth day of waiting and spoke to Ansel. “I’m going looking. You can stay or go as you wish.”
“Ja, sure. I’ll be going, too. There’s a feeling I have—”
“Go on.”
“It’s not a good one, this is not right somehow.”
“All we can do is ride back toward Fort Laramie and find out.”
Chapter Ten
“HOW DO YOU mean, gone?” The information Jennifer received stunned her. After all her efforts, her high hopes, and the daydreams of her reunion with Griff, to find he was not in St. Joseph left her off balance.
“He turned in his badge, packed up, and he an’ that Ansel Thorson took off for parts unknown.”
“Surely, Mr. Mayor, he must have said something? Given you some idea of where his search was taking him.”
“To Fort Kearny, for certain. Beyond that, I’ve no idea.”
“Did he say when he expected to be back?”
“Not really. He did allow as how he planned to come back.”
“Well, then, it’s really quite simple. I’ll need a place to stay, some … decent accommodations. Then I’ll settle down to wait.”
“My bet is you’ll be in for a disappointment if you do, Miss Carmichael. Once the wanderlust bites them … there ain’t many come back. They either stay or they die out there. It’s a rough land. Hostile Injuns, badmen, fearsome weather. The strong survive, the others �
� fall by the way.”
“Are you suggesting that Griff is not strong enough to survive?”
“Oh, Lordy no. The thing is—” Mayor Ormsby paused, made a sweeping gesture with one arm, “—that out there sort of grows on a man. Say he finds his son. Say he an’ the boy like the country they’re in. Does he know you’ve come out here to find him?”
“No. No, he doesn’t.”
“Well, there it is. Chances are he’d write to you to let you know where to come. And you wouldn’t be home to get the letter. If I were you, I’d turn around and go back to Maryland. He’d know how to reach you there. Or, at worst, you could still pick up the pieces and start a new life among people you know. I’m tryin’ to be kind, miss. As kind as I know how.”
“Oooh,” Jennifer exploded in exasperation. “No, I intend to stay right here. When Griff finds Jeremy, he’ll have to come back this way.”
“What will you do in the meantime? I mean …?”
“Oh, I have means, Mr. Mayor. Considerable means to meet my needs.”
“I was gettin’ to how you would spend your time. Ain’t no fancy balls or charity parties in Saint Joe.” Suddenly flustered, Jennifer stammered out her half-thought-out answer. “I suppose I … I could read … and … and learn about the West.”
“Could you teach school? We don’t have a schoolmarm in Saint Joe. But we are raisin’ a regular pack of hellions. Kids from six up that ain’t had a lick of book learnin’ since their folks moved here. It would be a great service to the community. It would be a paid position and the town would provide all your needs. We could even build a schoolhouse.”
For the first time, Jennifer smiled. “You are a very persuasive man, Mr. Mayor. I ... I’d like to think that one over. I’ve not been to the Normal School. Only Miss Grover’s Eclectic for Young Ladies in Baltimore.”
“That would be more than enough to pound readin’ and writin’ and figgerin’ into the heads of our youngsters, wouldn’t it?”
“I ... I suppose so.”
“Then it’s settled? We can announce that there is a schoolteacher in town?”
“Not so fast, Mr. Mayor. I’m hardly settled in the hotel.”
Enthusiasm had captured the mayor now. “We’ll build you a place right onto the school. Free rent. Say you’ll do it, Miss Carmichael and I’ll promise never to say you made a mistake in deciding to wait for Griff Stark.”
“That’s a deal, Mr. Mayor. For that, I’d be willing to teach English to a school of fish.”
“Ja, sure. We’ve ridden three days along this trail. No sign of any wagons.”
“Your ‘something wrong,’ Ansel?” Griff inquired. Uneasiness had risen in him as each hour progressed. They should have come across advance scouts by this time. Long ago, in fact. How slowly could Russel be moving his charges?
“Ja, ja. It is what I have worried about. Those Cheyenne who attacked the Mormons? The hoof-prints showed mighty heavy horses for Indians. And then there was the wagons taken. Indians burn them or break them up for firewood. Something is not right. Now this. There could be a lot more to this, a lot bigger trouble than it appears. Ja, sure.”
It had been a long speech for Ansel. Griff considered that and an icy stream cascaded down his spine. For all his protestations that he had come along only to ‘learn the land,’ Ansel had a broad general knowledge of the terrain and the natives. He also had a sure frontiersman’s touch with animals, campsites, and natural disasters. Griff reined in and dismounted.
“Let’s walk them awhile, Ansel. Say to that second ridge over there.”
“Now you’re thinkin’, Griffin my friend.”
Griff’s thoughts continued to gnaw on him as his boots crunched on the dry, hard ground. He kept a silence that had grown to be customary during the long weeks since the pair of them had left St. Joseph. His strength had built during that time and his tolerance for the harsh sun. He walked with his shoulders back now and rarely felt need of his cane.
Among the things he pondered in these long periods of quiet was what motivated Evan Tucker.
All of the indications were there that Evan had become uprooted by the war, perhaps by the loss of his hand. An artisan, a man who depended on his hands to wrest a living out of the world could find that an even greater shock than other men. What people had told him about Evan seemed to support that. The blacksmith had been well liked, considered a friendly, if distant person. Thoughts of Jeremy, now nearing his eighth birthday, intruded. The images given him by those who had seen the boy filled him with pride. Stocky, he had been called. Sturdy. A wildcat. He liked the cannon at Fort Kearny and some considered him a crack shot for his age. It was good, Griff thought, that Evan had provided the boy a gun. Did that fit with Evan’s inability to find a place to settle? How? He dropped that line of reasoning and exerted more effort as they worked their way up the second rise.
They saw the Russel immigrant train at the bottom of the reverse slope.
Little remained except bloated and rotting corpses and scattered clothing and cooking utensils. Sickness rose in Griff’s throat and, though he tried, he could not choke out any words. He stumbled forward like a drunken man. The Tuckers had not been on the Bozeman train, nor with the Mormons. That left only here. Here with the stinking remnants of what had once been human. His eyes darted left and right, frantic in the confines of their sockets. He saw a swatch of blue polkadot dress that seemed familiar and ran to it.
Flesh shrunken tightly to the skull, empty holes where insects and birds had gorged on once lively eyes, the face of a stranger stared back at him. He gagged and moved on. Behind him he heard Ansel’s sucked-in breath and soft, quickly stifled sob. A moment later the big Norwegian spoke to him.
“Griffin. Over here. You had better make sure.”
A man lay in an awkward, broken position, at least what was left of him. He wore faded gray trousers with a red artillery stripe, down-at-the-heels boots. His shirt had been pulled off and whoever had carried out this brutal massacre had mutilated his chest. He had only one hand … the right. Thin wisps of hair around the missing scalp lock were of the same soft brown color as Evan Tucker’s. The stump of the amputated hand had long ago healed and, Griff noticed idly, was bare. He had put up a fight.
Despite the tracks of predators, the evidence was clear. Evan Tucker had battled his enemy with a ferocity inconsistent with the personality he had shown to others along the trail. In death, he looked forlorn.
“It … it’s Evan,” he croaked, unwilling to accept the rest of what that would mean.
A few feet away lay what appeared at first glance to be a heap of gingham cloth. Loath to do so, but compelled to finish his sorrowful task, Griff walked over and glanced down at it. Slowly he sank to his knees. His body shook with a great convulsion and he raised his arms above his head, fists tightly clenched, and shook them impotently at an apparently uncaring and capricious God.
Julie. Julie Stark Tucker, the letters and numbers formed in his mind, boldly chiseled in hard, cold granite: Born 1827—Died 1867.
“No! No-no-no!” Griff howled in a primal scream from the depths of his being. The faceless, unfeeling hills echoed his anguish.
Later, when he regained his composure, he and Ansel buried Evan and Julie Tucker. All through the effort, Griff worked like one possessed. He didn’t want his mind to take the next logical step. He pushed it away with too rapid talk and wild speculations about the cause of the massacre.
Five wagons had burned. Where were the others? Where was Evan’s unusual blacksmith shop on wheels? They would have to search the area. The words spilled out in a torrent, and Ansel wisely remained silent, his eyes shifting, taking constant note of what he saw. Things that shouldn’t be. Not if the Cheyenne did this. At last the bodies had been lowered into the ground.
“God, I’m not good at this. These were good people. So, I am sure were all of these folks. We would like to put them to rest, too. There isn’t time, Lord, so I hope You understand. Evan Tucke
r and Julie Stark Tucker were dear to me. I hope You have a place for them. Our chaplain, when we had one, used to pray over the dead after a battle. He used to say, ‘The Lord giveth the and Lord taketh away.’ Well, this time I think You took a little too damn much. Amen.”
Regretfully, Ansel could protect his friend from it no longer. “Your boy,” he reminded Griff. “We have to find your boy and … and do what we can.” Ansel’s voice broke and tears formed in his eyes. He brushed at them angrily.
Griff sighed, his exhalation a shudder. “Yes. We … we do.”
“Nothing,” Ansel called out ten minutes later. “No one here who would look like your boy Jeremy.”
Amazingly, Griff had found not a single child that resembled the mental image he carried of Jeremy at seven. With each negative report, his spirits soared. Hope, that lost commodity, began to rekindle.
They searched the site of the massacre three times, crossed and recrossed each other’s path. No sign of a tow-headed lad with high cheekbones and a stocky body. At last, they had to admit that Jeremy was not among the dead.
“Where could he be?”
“Sometimes,” Ansel began in a slow, thoughtful voice. “Sometimes the Indians take small children when they raid white settlers. Replacements for children lost to disease or war. If they are brave, especially if they fought well, these children are highly prized. They are adopted and raised as members of the tribe.”
“Could it be that … that is what happened to Jeremy?”
“Ja, sure. It could be. We don’t know. We may never know.”
“No,” Griff snapped. “Now more than ever, I am going to find my son. I will search until I die if necessary. I’ll visit every Indian encampment for a hundred miles. Ask questions, offer rewards, trade, do anything.”
“A thankless task, I’m thinkin’,” the Norwegian replied. “There’s something else. Ja, sure. I have thought on it for a long time now. What I see here makes me certain.”
“What, Ansel? What is it?”
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