North of Forsaken

by Matthew P. Mayo

  NORTH OF FORSAKEN

  A ROAMER WESTERN

  NORTH OF FORSAKEN

  MATTHEW P. MAYO

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2017 by Matthew P. Mayo

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Mayo, Matthew P., author.

  Title: North of forsaken : a Roamer Western / Matthew P. Mayo.

  Description: First Edition. | Waterville, Maine : Five Star Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc., 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037330 (print) | LCCN 2016048369 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432832414 (hardback) | ISBN 1432832417 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781432834906 (ebook) | ISBN 1432834908 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432832384 (ebook) | ISBN 1432832387 (ebook)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3490-6 eISBN-10: 1-43283490-8

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Westerns. | GSAFD: Western stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A963 N67 2017 (print) | LCC PS3613.A963 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037330

  First Edition. First Printing: January 2017

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3490-6 ISBN-10: 1-43283490-8

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  Visit our website— http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star™ Publishing at FiveStar@cengage.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 21 20 19 18 17

  To Mean Pete and Miss Syd,

  who know the true worth of a darn good sidekick.

  “The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”

  —Aristotle

  CHAPTER ONE

  The rank tang of shit-stomped mud hung heavy in the dead autumn air. The street was busy, it being market day in the grubby little flyblown town of Forsaken, Wyoming. Never was a place more aptly named. I took in the dark storefronts, the clots of people moving not with intent but with the slow steps of resignation. Life on the frontier is difficult, to be sure, and it’s even tougher on some than others. From the looks of this town, hardship and deprivation were two of the more familiar traits the fine folks of Forsaken had to contend with.

  “Scorfano? Scorfano!”

  I walked a few steps before I realized the shouting voice was hailing me. Indeed, the word being shouted was my given name at birth. Scorfano means ugly one in Italian. The second cruel trick my father played on me—saddling me with that maligning name. The first was fathering me at all. Apt though it may be, it is not a name I like. And the only people who once knew me by that name would not know me now.

  I had left them all behind, back East, on the eve of my thirteenth birthday, though I was nearly a grown man by that time—at least in stature. I hadn’t heard that name in fifteen years. I’d spent that time doing my best to grow up in other ways. And trying to lose myself in the West. Mostly it hasn’t worked.

  A sudden gust of windblown grit pelted my face. I sighed and turned to see who was calling to me. I should have kept on walking. Hell, I should have run.

  “It is you!”

  A young man in bright blue dandy garb walked toward me. His clothes warred with the drab, earthy tones surrounding him as he crossed the street and walked straight into the path of an oncoming team of draft animals. The farmer driving them yarned hard on the reins, halting the mammoth beasts in time to avoid killing the young fool, who barely gave the situation a glance. He merely tossed the red-faced farmer a wave of forgiveness.

  The young man smiled as he advanced on me. He didn’t see the farmer leap down from his wagon seat and in two strides reach him. The beefy man of the fields balled the velvet lapels of the young man’s fancy-cut frock coat.

  “See . . . see here!” sputtered the young man. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Don’t care,” spat the farmer through gritted teeth, “but you’ll soon be less toothy.” The farmer’s Teutonic accent was as angular as his ropy forearms were thick. And he pulled one of those arms back for a straight-on ramming at the young fool’s as-yet-unmarred countenance.

  I don’t normally interfere in other men’s quarrels—it’s a good way to wind up hurt or worse—but technically I was the cause of this dispute, though I knew not why.

  I stepped in quick, and though the farmer himself was a brute of a man, every inch and then some of six feet, and as wide as a wagon wheel, I am rarely overpowered in height and girth. I am on the north end of six foot four and carry little in the way of paunch, or what my good friend, Maple Jack, refers to as “reserve flesh for hard times.” My hand closed around the farmer’s wrist and held fast, stalling the vicious blow, and he turned a bright red face from the young man to me.

  An oath of anger died on the farmer’s lips as his wide eyes took in my facial features. As I mentioned, I am not a pretty man. Truth be told, I am one of the homelier men you are ever likely to meet—a top lip split from birth beneath spiky black whiskers, pocked cheeks, an oft-broken nose, and dark eyes set in a wide, blocky head. What cruel quirks of circumstance conspired to make me so aberrant, I know not, nor do I care at this point. What’s done is done.

  “Friend,” I said, smiling through my beard stubble. “The greenhorn meant no harm. And besides, he is no match for you.” I straightened and looked down at the farmer, letting my unspoken invitation settle on him like street dust on new shoes. The spark of rage in his eyes dimmed. As I released his wrist he yanked, to show he could maintain a head of steam. I let him. His other hand freed the greenhorn with a shove and a flick from his meaty fingertips, as if he were shooing a bluebottle fly.

  Only then did I see that the entire town had paused in its duties, every eye of its meager populace fixed on the scene, pleading, hungering for excitement . . . for blood. As the German farmer strode to his wagon, I saw outright disappointment on not a few of the staring faces. Within seconds a small swarm of the farmer’s cronies clustered about him, yammering as groups of men will do—as much or more so than any clutch of women—cutting their eyes now and again in my direction.

  “Thank you. I—”

  I had momentarily forgotten about the fool who caused this ruckus, who I had not yet looked upon at this close range.

  I faced him and got a good look at the young man then. Of course up close I knew him. His was a face I doubted I’d ever see again in all my days.

  Unruffled by the recent affront to his dignity, the young man smoothed his lapels and smiled up at me, stretching his neck forward. “It is you, Scorfano! I never thought to see you again and certainly never expected to find you of all people here in this . . . this savage wasteland!”

  “Thomas,” I said, nodding down at him. For in truth, I could think of nothing else to say.

  He fidgeted in the street, with the entire town watching,
and finally grasped me tight about the middle with both arms, his blue derby hat with a wide, black silk band falling to the rutted street. I pushed him away.

  “It’s so good to see you,” he said, retrieving the garish topper.

  I knew if I asked him anything at all, there would be nothing for it but to listen to him explain every minute of the past fifteen years. And as I recalled, he was a talker even as a child. I saw no reason why that should have changed. By my math he was but twenty-two years old, and he looked less than that age. The intervening years had been kind to him.

  “I have to go,” I said, turning away.

  His frantic little boy’s voice reached me and I felt his hand on my arm. “You can’t leave like that. Old friends and all.”

  I kept walking toward the livery, temporary quarters for my big Percheron stallion, Tiny Boy. Thomas worked hard to keep up with me. When I’ve a mind, I can scissor my legs faster than any man I know and can cover a lot of ground in the process.

  “Scorfano . . . wait! At least let me buy you a drink. Or perhaps a meal?”

  I kept walking.

  “Please,” he said. “Slow down!” I heard his voice begin to take on a frantic, desperate edge I did not expect. Then in a lower tone he said, “I need help. I fear I may be in grave danger.”

  I closed my eyes and stopped, knowing I would come to regret this decision for a long time. I turned around.

  “One drink,” I said. “I have places to go.”

  He smiled again and I saw the same brown-headed boy I had played with so long ago, in a different life and in a different time. For a moment, I could almost believe I was looking into the eyes of a friend.

  Like I said before, I should have run.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I led the way to the Square Deal Saloon, the only one of a half dozen such establishments in Forsaken that didn’t have an assortment of drunks twitching outside the batwings. Once my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the bar, I took in the room with a quick sweep. It pays to get a bearing on your whereabouts, and adjust it as you go.

  This one looked and smelled much the same as all the others I’d been in over the years—not clean, by any stretch, but sporting that worn, comfortable look only oft-frequented bars get. It was a one-story affair. The close air smelled of the musky stink of sweat, old beer, and other scents I didn’t care to dwell on.

  Off to the left, in the far back corner, stood a precarious stack of snapped and crippled chairs. They’d been there a while. In their place at the four card tables were arranged nail kegs, some with sacking puffed up and tacked around the edges. The floor appeared to be little more than sawdust and dried clods of mud, though here and there rough planking was visible.

  The whole affair was streaked with tobacco juice like brown leavings. As if a flock of birds with gut trouble had flown through. On the trail, I like a chaw now and again, but refrain from using it in town. I’m always afraid I’ll be caught whipping a stream of spit in front of a lady. I have enough trouble keeping from drawing attention to myself, I don’t need to add to it.

  The bar itself was a fixed structure, not planks on barrels as so many others are. Evidently Forsaken had ambitions to rise above its name. I suspect that given enough time even the name would change. Probably something more cheerful like Hope Springs. I’ll ride clear of that one.

  I palmed the bar, and the keep nodded at us, waiting.

  “What’ll you have?” I said, looking at my companion for the first time since we left the street. He smiled, swept off that silly blue derby, and placed it on the sticky bartop as if it had value. “Never trust a man in a derby or a bowler,” says Maple Jack, my old trapping friend. And while I am inclined to shy away from generalizations, preferring to judge a man on his merits as I get to know him, I will say I have rarely seen Jack proved wrong in his assessment of people. I call it uncanny. He calls it a product of old age.

  “Good day, my friend,” said Thomas to the keep. “A dram of your finest malt all around.” He swept an arm that almost clipped my chin. The four other men in the place, barkeep included, stared in our direction as if something dead had festered in the sun then crawled in to find a little shade.

  “Ain’t no malt in here mister. Just whiskey and beer.”

  Thomas nodded as if in agreement. “Whiskey, then!”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said in a low voice. “You don’t know these people.”

  “Know them?” he said. “They are witness to the rebirth of an old friendship.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but I wished I had not acknowledged his greeting on the street.

  When the drinks had been passed around, the grunts of thanks offered by the other patrons, and his money paid, I waited for the inevitable questions. And he obliged me.

  “So, where have you been, Scorfano? It has been, what, a dozen years since you left?” He sipped, grimaced as the tangle-foot scorched his throat, never taking his eyes from my face. “You never said where you were heading, never sent word as to your whereabouts. I missed you, Scorfano. You were like an older brother to me.”

  I bit back angry words, words that change situations, words that have no place but buried in the past. “I had to leave. It was time,” I said. “And it’s been fifteen years.”

  “Fifteen . . .” His face took on that long look of deep disbelief that comes to all of us when we realize we’ve lost hunks of our lives to the steady roll of life’s clock. “Where did it go?”

  I looked back to my drink. Toyed with the glass.

  “They picked on me, you know,” he said. “Said I wasn’t to play with the stable boy.”

  I could tell he was looking at me for a reaction. I would not oblige him.

  He continued, “I fished at the bridge a few more times after you left, but it wasn’t the same. Even Mimsy stopped talking about you.”

  He got me with that one. The one name in all the world I hadn’t allowed myself to think back on for years, had forced down to the bottom of the war bag in my mind. Mimsy. The closest I’d ever come to having a mother. A harsh woman, to be sure, but a good old woman. And the cause of the sole regret I’ve harbored since taking to the open trails of the West. I didn’t dare ask, though by my clenched jaw muscles and the way I pressed my fingers to the bartop, Thomas no doubt guessed my question.

  “Scorfano,” he said in a low voice. “Scorfano, old friend, please look at me.”

  I sighed and half turned toward him.

  “Mimsy is gone. A long time ago.”

  My vile features settled deeper into themselves then and I looked away from him, from the sadness and pity in his little boy’s eyes. I pushed back from the bar and inhaled deeply. “Was it me?” I said, low, hoping he had not heard me.

  A tall, horse-faced man in a ragged brown coat bumped my shoulder on his way to the door, mumbled something I didn’t hear.

  Thomas swallowed the last of his shot and nudged his glass. “She did not last a year after you left. We were all upset by this.” He looked at me again. “My parents, also gone. Both of them.”

  That news affected me far less than hearing Mimsy had passed. Thomas’s parents were my parents, nothing he ever need know. And their deaths did not bother me.

  I looked him in the eye. “For your sake I am truly sorry to hear that, Thomas.”

  He looked as if he were about to speak once more.

  “I have to go.” I pushed by him. “It’s been good to see you. Good luck to you.”

  He put a hand on my arm, looked up at me, his eyes hard and bright. “They all blamed you. All of them. Mother, Father . . . But I didn’t believe it. Not for one moment. And neither did Mimsy.”

  He was kind, as I remembered him, but he was wrong. The parents, I could care less about. But Mimsy . . . I killed that poor old woman as surely as if I had shot her. I broke her heart. But only after she broke mine.

  “Good-bye, Thomas.” I pushed past him and out the door, into the sunshine-filled afternoon.


  He didn’t follow me, and for that I was grateful. I needed to be alone. I needed to not think about all the people in my past. As I descended one boardwalk, making for another toward the mercantile, a woman’s brief, sharp shout of surprise cut the air.

  “That’s him!” she shouted.

  I looked up to see a burly, jowl-faced woman two buildings ahead, pointing at me and scowling. She wore a flouncy, bruise-colored dress far too fancy for her squat build, and as unsuited to this town as a diamond necklace would be on a javelina. A white-gloved hand fluttered at her throat like a confused pigeon.

  Beside her stood a smallish, thin man in a dark jacket and gray brocade vest, knee-high boots of black leather, polished to a sheen, and a black derby perched atop his pate. Below his chin he sported a cravat matching the woman’s dress. A wide sneer spread across his mouth, leaving him looking like a satisfied catfish. His whiskers looked to be a load of work, all shaped and waxed to points. His eyes, hard and dark, narrowed and glinted.

  Behind him I saw a brown shape, a tall man, whose long face looked familiar, but from where I didn’t recall. And then I did—the man from the bar. The one who’d looked at us longer than most when I first walked in there. The same man who’d pushed by me, knocking against me on his way to the door not five minutes before. So that was the game—send in a ringer, find out when I’d be leaving, then wait for me. Wait to set me up. But why?

  I’ve been down this road too many times before. Nearly always, my accusers have mistaken me for someone else. And nearly always I’m at least interrogated by the marshal or a deputy eager to prove he’s filling his boots in good order. This had the stink of a put-up job from the moment the woman mouthed her fake scream. And I had no intention of putting up with this one. Not today, I thought. All I wanted to do was hit the trail, visit with Maple Jack, then head deeper into the mountains.

  I shook my head, barely gave them a look, and kept walking. I strode up onto their boardwalk, edged through the crowd of onlookers and past them, and the small dandy man shouted, “Someone stop him! He’s wronged my wife!”