BEAR CREEK (SAGE COUNTRY Book 1)

by Dan Arnold

  “Yes, I did, after you and Tom left. I asked him a lot of questions, not that it did me any good. I won’t bother telling you what he told me I should do to myself.”

  I told him what I had learned at the railroad depot.

  “That is interesting. I don’t see how it has any bearing on the murder of Willy Walker, though.”

  “Rawlins put his train ticket and the shipping of his horse, on the Bar C account. His horse carries the Bar C brand. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, Jack, but it might be interesting to ask Mr. Courtney if he knows Rawlins.”

  “I can do that,” Jack said. “I’ll see him again at some point, later this afternoon. There is another thing that’s interesting. When we were at the courthouse this morning, a local attorney, named Frank Perkins, came to me and informed me he would be the defense counsel for Rawlins. He wanted to bail him out of jail. I told him he would have to wait till after the arraignment.”

  “Hmmmmm…that is interesting. We need to find out who this guy Rawlins is.”

  There doesn’t seem to be any paper on him. If he’s wanted, I haven’t seen a poster.

  “I need to ask a favor,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “I haven’t had a change of clothes, a bath or a shave in days. Could I maybe take an hour or so, to go and get cleaned up?”

  “You bet, take all the time you need. Go to the hotel, and tell them what you need, and have them charge it to the city. Check in with me later. You’ll have to find me though, this afternoon I’ll be out and around.”

  At the hotel, the clerk told me one of the guests had checked out, and there was now a room available. I was able to get a room upstairs that looked out at the courthouse. The use of a bath tub and hot water was arranged, and in short order, I was clean and shaved. I had my suit and hat given a good brushing while I was bathing, and with the addition of a clean shirt, I felt like a new man.

  While it was nice the city was standing my expenses, it wasn’t that much of a necessity. I had somewhat more than two thousand dollars in paper money tucked into my gun belt.

  I was planning to give some of it to my folks, when I saw them. I was hoping that was going to happen sooner rather than later.

  When I went back down to the hotel lobby, I asked the clerk if they had recorded in the registry, at any time recently, a guest named Ed Rawlins. He looked through the book; they had no such name.

  The lobby of the hotel had a number of people in it, and the streets were still crowded around the square. People were visiting the courthouse, kids were playing games and vendors were selling everything from handicrafts to harness. The air was filled with the sounds of light banter and laughter, and the smells of cooking food.

  I was starving. As I wandered past several food vendors, I found a Mexican vender.

  “Quisiera el carne asado a la parilla en una tortilla, por favor.”

  “Si senor, y que mas?” he replied.

  “Nada mas, gracias.”

  He handed me my lunch, and I handed him a dime. I took a bite, worth every penny!

  I wanted some cold beer to wash it down, and I knew where to go to get it, but I decided against it. Instead,I headed over to the Marshal’s office.

  I found Tom in the Marshal’s office. He told me Jack was at the horse races, over on the other side of the tracks.

  “Have you been over there?” He asked.

  “No, I’ve only been to the depot and the freight office, on that side of town. I haven’t had occasion to cross the tracks.”

  “Well then, let me tell you a little bit about the layout of the town and why Bear Creek is such a boom town. West of here, if you go down Line Street, the road follows the creek up into the mountains. You’ll find a couple of towns up there. The first one, North Fork, is a wide open, hell on wheels source of entertainment for the miners. Higher up, is Flapjack City, a smaller mining town, with nearly a hundred miners. Everything either of those towns needs to survive comes from, or through, Bear Creek.”

  “…and is handled by the Atwater Freight Company,” I interrupted him.

  He nodded.

  “The mines ship the ore through Bear Creek, and the miner’s payroll comes from the First National Bank of Bear Creek,” he added.

  I nodded my understanding.

  “North and south of town is mostly farmland and ranches, irrigated by the various smaller creeks. There’s a tremendous amount of produce, hay and even fruit, grown in this county. We could grow anything you can imagine, if the growing season was longer. We ship produce all over the region.”

  “…and it’s all handled by the Atwater Freight Company?” I raised my eyebrows by way of a question.

  He nodded again.

  “East of town, going down, out onto the plains, there are several farms and ranches along Bear Creek. The Bar C is out there, and a couple of small towns.

  On the east side of town, just on the other side of the tracks is where most of the laborers live. There’s also a Mexican community. That’s where the Cantina is. Good food and good people over there. The old Spanish mission is now the Catholic Church. There wouldn’t be a town of Bear Creek, if the old mission hadn’t been here.”

  “But,” he held up his finger, “that side of town is where most of the trouble happens, or comes from. The Spanish speaking folks stay pretty much to themselves, and we don’t have much trouble with them, but there is a rough crowd over there on the other side of the tracks.

  If you take Omaha Street east, out past the freight depot, then on across the tracks, you’ll go through there, to get to the rodeo grounds, where the horse races are. Omaha Street is called that because it continues on east as a heavily used freight road. You can go from Bear Creek, across the plains into Nebraska, Kansas, or wherever. That road was part of the Santa Fe Trail”

  “The Goodnight/Loving Trail also went by here. Bear Creek really is a cross roads.” I mused. “From what you’ve said, it seems like this is the area center for mining, farming, ranching, shipping, banking and other service businesses.”

  He nodded and grinned.

  “Well then,” I said, as I opened the door. “I’m off to the races.”

  I didn’t have any trouble finding the race track. It was only about a half mile on the other side of the railroad tracks. The race track went around the rodeo grounds, and the people could watch most of the racing from the stands. A little farther along the road, on a bend of the creek, I could see where the carnival was set up. There was a bridge across the creek at that point. I was amused by the fact that, down in Texas, this “creek” would have been called a river.

  There was a pretty good crowd of people at the rodeo grounds. Rather prominent was a huge wagon, with bunting, an awning over the top, and a big Bar C brand painted on the side.

  That’s where I found Jack, and he introduced me to several people, William Courtney, his wife Annabelle, his lovely daughter Lacey and the Governor, among others.

  “Marshal, I checked in with Tom, he told me you were over here. What would you like me to do?” I asked him.

  “I need you to go over to the carnival and show the badge, just to keep everybody honest”

  “Yes sir, I’ll head on over there, right now.”

  From the moment I’d heard there was a carnival at Bear Creek, this was just what I had been hoping I would get the chance to do.

  When I had first seen the carnival, even from a distance, I had recognized the tents and wagons. I had seen this carnival before.

  There were horses, buggies, carts and wagons of various kinds, parked in the shade under the cottonwoods along the creek, where local people had tied them up while they went inside to spend their money. On the other side of the creek, just past the bridge, there was an encampment of the carnival people, with their wagons in a circle. I headed for the carnival entrance.

  The area had been roped off, to guide people to the entrance gate. I went to the front gate, where the ticket salesman seeing my badge, wa
ived me through.

  There were various tents and partitioned booths lining both sides of a wide aisle. In some of the tents there were people performing acrobatics, pretty girls dancing, knife throwing, tight rope walking, and the like. Some of the booths had games of skill or chance. There was a juggler walking through the crowd and the man on stilts was selling balloons. Pretty much everything here was designed to provide entertainment while separating people from their money. I wandered around for a little while, just letting people see that the law was represented.

  Eventually I came to a fortune teller’s tent. I read the sign “Madame Cleopatra, Sooth Sayer and Palm Reader; have your fortune told for twenty five cents.”

  I ducked inside.

  There was a woman in a colorful dress, with a white, peasant style blouse. She was laying out the ever popular Tarot cards. She had her dark hair pulled back and tied with a bright silk scarf. Her back was turned as I entered. I had pulled my hat down over my eyes before I came in, and I ducked my head as she started to turn toward me, so when she turned to look at me, we couldn’t see each other’s faces.

  “Hello mother,” I said, spreading my arms and looking up.

  She was still beautiful after all those years. Her dark eyes sparkled, as she broke into a smile, but the woman who stood before me wasn’t my mother!

  “Hello, John.” Katya said.

  8.

  I was completely overwhelmed by the memories of our years together, of our years apart, of my time spent searching for her, and of all the changes that come with the experience of this life. I was at first, speechless, then simply at a loss for words. My mind whirled and when at last I spoke, I was only able to say four words.

  “Where is our son?”

  ***

  Decades had passed, since I had been the ten year old boy who staggered into their circle of firelight. I was nearly frozen, half naked, and covered in blood. Some of the blood was my own.

  That group of Romani had saved my life, and since I had no one else, become my family. Sasha and Kergi Borostoya, were the leaders of this band of Romani. They had no children, so Sasha became my mother and Kergi became my father.

  We had traveled thousands of miles together. The Romani are travelers, always on the move. Some are horse traders, tinkers, skilled laborers, entertainers, and the like. Over the years, I had learned many useful skills.

  Katya was my first love.

  When I was twenty, I took a job in one of the towns where we had been camped, and persuaded Katya to be my wife. I had tried to make a life with Katya, and she had tried to make it work. We had a son, who we named Nicolai. But life in a town, apart from her people, was not for Katya. She was heartsick and miserable.

  One day, while I was gone driving a herd of cattle to Cheyenne, she took our son and joined a different band of Romani, who happened to be passing through. They were her people, and distant relatives, so they were happy to have her, I suppose.

  By the time I returned to Texas, they had already been gone for a month. It took me seventeen more days to catch up with that band of travelers. When I did, Katya and Nicky were no longer with them. Pleading and threatening were of no use. No information about where my wife and son had gone was given me.

  After months of searching and many false leads, I eventually had to stop looking for them..

  I would go home to Sasha and Kergi, whenever I could, whenever their travels brought them close enough. Sasha always told me she had heard good things, and all was well with Katya and Nicolae, but she did not know where they were. I would leave money with Kergi, and he would see to it their needs were met, somehow. After many years, I eventually gave up any hope of finding them, and got on with my life.

  As I was pondering these things, a man parted the curtains behind Katya, and held them open.

  “John,” Sasha cried, as she rushed into the tent and threw her arms around me. “My son is home again.”

  We hugged, and I held her out at arm’s length. Her hair was more silver than black now, her face more deeply etched, but the tears in her eyes did not mar the beauty and the wisdom there.

  “How long has it been, this time?” she asked.

  “Too long, mother…about three years, I think.”

  “Three years, this month, it was in New Orleans, wasn’t it? Thank God you were there.”

  “I’m so glad to find you here,” I said. “I was on my way to see you; I heard y’all were in Wyoming.”

  “We were, but there were not enough towns, and it is time we are heading south, before winter comes.”

  “Will you be going to Texas?”

  “No, John. We will go down into New Mexico and then head west.”

  She turned to indicate the man who had opened the curtains for her. She introduced us.

  “John, this is Matthew Vilokova. Matthew, meet my son… John Sage.”

  I was aware of the way Katya was watching us.

  We shook hands.

  “Matthew is our leader now, John,” Sasha said, giving me a look I could not interpret.

  “Oh? Where is my father?” I asked, hoping I was reading the whole thing wrongly.

  Sasha put her hands on my shoulders.

  “John, I am so sorry…Kergi was killed in a wagon wreck, coming down a mountain, back in the spring.”

  She put her face against my chest, and I held her. There were tears in my eyes now.

  Katya motioned to Matthew, who silently stepped out of the tent, leaving the three of us alone.

  We spent some moments with our grief, then Sasha sniffed and wiping her eyes, she motioned we should sit at the table.

  She held my right hand in both of hers on the table top, and looked me in the eye.

  “John, everything that has been done, has been done according to our customs, and the Roma Law.” She said. “You have a right to know your son…and you have a right to claim leadership of our people.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “You are the son of Kergi Alexiev Borostoya. You have the right to leadership of our people, by direct succession. Do you understand?”

  “Mother, I was not born Romani…”

  She made a cutting motion with her hand.

  “According to our customs and Roma Law, John, it is your right. Among us, you are ‘Vlad’, a prince. Beyond that, everyone knows you and respects you. You have served and protected our people. What you did in New Orleans has become a story told among us, in every camp. Matthew was only chosen as our leader because you were not home with us.”

  I was again overwhelmed and confused.

  “You need some time to think on this,” She said.

  She looked at Katya, and nodded.

  “John, Nicky is here, with us. He is working now, but you can see him later.” Katya said.

  I looked at her.

  “There is something else…Matthew and I, are married now. We have been for several years.”

  Sasha reached out and turned my face toward hers. She held my eyes,

  “John, you must think and pray about these things. Go away from here, for a while. We will meet again to discuss your decision tonight, after the townspeople go home. Already they are leaving. Tonight, we will celebrate your return home, no matter your decision. Come back tonight and you will see your son.”

  It was the custom of our people, not to allow the “townies” to be among us after dark, nothing good could come of it. Over the centuries, we had learned the dangers associated with staying too long in one place, or of having townspeople get too close. They did not trust us, and we did not trust them. Most of the townies wanted to get home before dark, anyway.

  I left the tent, and as I was leaving the carnival, I was watching everyone with new eyes. We all learned to juggle and walk on stilts. We all learned to operate all of the games. Many of us were trained in a variety of acrobatics, sleight of hand, or “specialty” skills, according to our talents. My son could be any of these Romani. Which one was he?

  As I w
as pondering this, a commotion broke out in the tent where the girls who did the Kheliben dancing were performing. I ducked inside.

  Roma Kheliben dancing is ancient. It is as old as the Romani. We brought it with us from the Middle East. To some it has been considered scandalous and lascivious. To us it is common and respected as a dance form. To many of the men in the towns, it is an exotic spectacle, for which they are willing to pay. Sometimes they make the mistake of thinking the girls are of questionable morals, or simply prostitutes. They are wrong. They might not make the same assumption about ballet dancers. Regardless; we protect our girls and do not tolerate lewd or offensive conduct toward them, from anyone.

  Inside the tent, two of the Romani men were down and appeared to be injured. The cause of the commotion was the man from the Ox Bow, who had tried to impress me with his toughness.

  He was pawing at the only girl who had failed to escape from the tent.

  “Hey, Bob,” I called as I approached him, “Where’d you find that gal?”

  He crouched over her.

  “Geshur own,” he growled.

  It was obvious he’d been drinking all day.

  He narrowed his eyes when I got right up close to him.

  “You that gummen,” he slurred. “I’ll brekyu laka twig.”

  I slowly held up both my hands, very high, so he could see that I was not reaching for my gun.

  “Now, Bob, you know I’m your friend.” I said, as I looked up at my right hand, just above his head

  He looked up at it too.

  I hit him in the throat with my left hand, and as he started to reach up to clutch his throat, I hit him with two hard blows to the midsection and one to the crotch. He doubled over. I only hesitated a second, then I brought my knee up hard, into his face.

  He flew over backward, and crashed down on the platform.

  Romani men rushed in, led by Matthew. They had daggers and guns in their hands.