Maps of Fate

by Reid Lance Rosenthal

  “Good thing, Sarah, that Abraham said he’d drive your wagon, when Jacob came up missing at Badger Creek. Wouldn’t have even known it, except for his wagon standing there with the team milling around after the night guard dropped them off.”

  He turned and looked hard at the two women. Sarah became interested in plucking something from her shawl. Rebecca held his gaze but with unsteady eyes.

  “I was just thinking,” he said, pretending to adjust straps on Lahn’s saddle, “what are the odds he would have wandered into some scalp hungry Pawnee down there on the creek?” He shook his head, “Those Indians certainly saved some people a lot of trouble.”

  He leaned on the saddle and stared at them.

  “Well, we have all had experience with the Pawnee, but about Cherry Creek, I thought we were two days’ out,” asked Rebecca, her expression puzzled. “I thought we would be at Cherry Creek sometime tomorrow?”

  Reuben shook his head. “No. We’re this close, and, as Mac would’ve said, ‘no sense dee-daddling. We’re going to cut off a north loop of the South Platte. Zeb says he knows a little-used trail that’ll get us in late today, maybe this evening.

  “Sarah, you look a little green around the gills. Are you okay?”

  The redhead nodded but kept her lips tightly closed. Rebecca glanced at her, then back at Reuben. “Are we going into town tonight?” she asked quickly.

  Trying to divert attention again, she doesn’t realize Zeb and I figured that out after Two Otters Creek. “No. Zeb tells me you couldn’t really call Cherry Creek a town. There may be more Arapaho tipis than white man shacks and tents. Zeb is going in, though. He was good friends with Mac’s brother Randy, who runs the Mercantile, such that it is. Zeb and Mac went way back, and he wants to break the news about Mac. Once any of this outfit gets into town, the news will be all over.”

  Rebecca’s eyes dropped to the Colt. Reuben rested one arm over the saddle and held her gaze. “I suspect that will be news, too.” He smiled at her and she smiled in return, but there was worry in her eyes. “Rebecca,” he asked, “can we talk later?”

  Her eyes softened. “Of course, Reuben.”

  “Excuse…Excuse me,” Sarah raised one hand to her mouth and darted around the edge of the wagon. Rebecca peeked around the tailgate and then back at Reuben. “Poor Sarah, she’s coming down with a cold…”

  Reuben cut her off and looked her in the eye. “Uh-huh. Same as those dark spots around the hem of that riding dress of yours being boot polish.” Rebecca looked down at the several blotches of dark irregular stains that had obviously been scrubbed on the lower third of her skirt. “One thing you have to know, Rebecca…”

  “Yes?” her voice was apprehensive.

  “You can trust me. With anything, about anything.” He mounted Lahn and trotted out from the wagons, leaving her wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

  There were hoof beats close behind him—Johannes on Bente, a serious look on his friend’s face. As Bente fell into step next to the palomino, Reuben asked, “What is it, Johannes?”

  “They’re all dead. The fever got them all.”

  Reuben reined in, as did the Dane. Johannes shook his head, “I believe Thelma died yesterday. Perhaps last night. She was very weak and incoherent when I brought them their supplies yesterday morning. The lad with no kinfolk,” Johannes dropped his head for a moment, “he was scarcely more than a scarecrow. And that widower fellow, Andrew, that was traveling on his own, I’m pretty sure died yesterday after my morning visit. Damn. Come all this way, and then they die just before getting to the destination.”

  Reuben looked at him. “My friend, Cherry Creek was the goal; it is not the destination.”

  Johannes’ lips pursed, and he nodded, “True enough, Reuben, true enough.” Then he added, “I told Daniel that he can drive his own wagon today, instead of the sick rig.”

  “You plan on burning it then?”

  “I don’t see any other choice, Reuben. We simply can’t have other people moving those bodies and perhaps getting infected. If we bring the cholera into Cherry Creek, a couple hundred people could die.” The tall blonde stopped and watched the glowing, fiery edge of the morning sun as it emerged on the uneven horizon.

  “And we can’t leave the wagon out here. It’s got sickness all over it. Some other outfit comes by and climbs in, they’re going to be sick.”

  Reuben couldn’t keep the alarm out of his voice. “Did you go in the wagon or touch any of them?”

  Johannes shook his head, “No, I was too much of a coward.” Reuben looked at him sharply. He’s not kidding. He’s serious.

  “Johannes, one thing I can definitely, without hesitation, tell you, one man to another and as your best friend, is that you are not a coward. Take three men and torch the wagon. Let’s make sure anything burnable is cleared for quite a ways around. This is about the driest green grass I’ve ever seen. Then catch up with us. You can follow the wagon tracks. Zeb says this trail will save us a day.”

  Johannes looked at him, “I was hoping you would do that. Let’s get there, already.”

  “We’ll get supplies, get some men hired, and you and I’ll go down south and see what we can do about buying some longhorns. If we can’t find them closer, Mac told me there might be a place near the New Mexico Territory border that has some that come up from Texas.”

  Reuben paused and held Johannes’ eye. “Then we have another big push—over those,” he nodded at the Rockies looming above them to the west.

  Johannes didn’t say anything. Reuben studied him closely. “Are you coming down to the Uncompahgre with me?”

  Johannes returned Reuben’s stare. “Right now, I am going to burn that sick wagon and the poor souls in it. The rest we can talk about this evening or tomorrow.” Johannes spurred Bente into a lope back toward the wagon train. Reuben watched his squared shoulders and retreating back, then fixed his eyes sadly on the solitary wagon two hundred feet from the circle. He breathed in and exhaled a large sigh. Lahn pricked his ears and flicked his eyes back at him. “Damn, Lahn, Damn.”

  Rebecca and Reuben rode at the head of the lines of wagons. They moved along briskly in the late afternoon, even the livestock seeming to sense the eagerness in the drivers. Zeb galloped up to them from ahead, leading Mac’s mare, Red. “Rebecca,” he nodded, and then turned to Reuben.

  “Up this next rise a few miles, you’ll be able to see it,” he pointed. “This is the last of the high ground before the land starts dropping into the basin where the South Platte and Cherry Creek meet.”

  Reuben looked off in the direction of the basin and took a deep breath. “Hard to believe.” Rebecca leaned over and smoothed her palm down his forearm, her eyes shining.

  “Yep, we are more or less here,” Zeb grinned. “You did a helluva job, son. It weren’t the reason I originally said yes to you back in St. Louis, but I’ll tell ya more on that later. I suspect you’ll welcome the news,” he grinned again.

  His eyes drifted past them and Reuben was sure they were fixed on the third wagon in the line, driven by a certain petite redhead.

  “Rebecca, Buck here is getting jealous of Red.” Buck’s muzzle moved up and down and Red moved her lips to the side, showing her teeth and whinnying. They all laughed. “Buck’s gettin’ new shoes too, and he ain’t all too happy about that, neither.” Buck rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Anyways, I know Mac was quite impressed with you. Said you was the prettiest marksman west of the Mississippi. I’m sure he’d like you to have Red, otherwise I’ll take her down to Randy.”

  Rebecca looked startled. She blushed, throwing a sideways look at Reuben. “That is so nice of you, Zeb. I have always like that mare. I can appreciate her feistiness.”

  Reuben looked down to hide his grin and he noticed Zeb’s cheeks twitch under his mustache, “But I don’t know what my plans are,” she continued, her eyes darted to Reuben and then back to Zeb, “and she deserves a long-term, stable home.”

  Reuben felt a deep chilly
pang run through his gut, and he pretended to be absorbed in looking at the mountains, so she couldn’t see his face.

  Zeb stared at her for a long moment, then shifted his attention to Reuben. “Reuben, I’m gonna head down in. I think you might wanna camp tonight up on one of them shelves over that rim. Those that are going on can get a start from there tomorrow. You will only be an hour’s ride in, and the ladies can stay away from…,” he paused and stroked his mustache, “the rougher sides of the place. I got to make sure I talk to Mac’s brother, Randy, before anyone else does.” He sighed, “And I ain’t looking forward to it—not one bit.”

  Reuben fumbled in his jacket, withdrew Mac’s telescope, and offered it to Zeb. “Randy ought to have this.” Zeb looked at the spyglass and shook his head. “Nope, I’m dead certain Mac would’ve wanted you to have it.”

  Reuben tucked the glass back into his jacket. “Could not have done it without you, Zeb.”

  Zeb smiled and began to wheel Buck around. Then the mountain man turned in his saddle, “Thanks,” he said, grinning. “There weren’t nothin’ to it, and you and me son, we still got a fair ways to go.” He nodded over Buck’s ears at the mountains, then spun the tobiano. Let’s go, Buck. You too, Red.”

  A short while later, Reuben and Rebecca crested the ridge Zeb had described, the settlement seven miles to the southwest spread below them. Reuben reached into his jacket, pulled out Mac’s spyglass, and extended the brass. The image blurred. He lowered the glass slowly and wiped his eyes.

  Rebecca edged the small sorrel she was riding, which had been part of the team pulling the sick wagon, closer to Lahn and put her hand on Reuben’s thigh. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was just thinking about the folks we lost, dreams not finished, loves left dangling. It ought to be Mac looking through this telescope right now, from this spot.”

  He raised the spyglass again. West of the small, unorganized settlement, the Rockies rose rugged and inviting, their highest peaks swathed in clouds and intermittent sun, their flanks cascading down to steep but lesser and lesser foothills as the mountains spilled toward the prairie. East of the foothills were great hogbacks with reddish soil and rock, bearded with some type of brushy cover, which he couldn’t distinguish from this distance. The town, dusty with haze, seemed to have several short dirt streets. Reuben could see movement and assumed that carriages, wagons, and horses were stirring up the dust. People, of course, too, but it was still too far to pick out details.

  Spread out, apparently without thought, from the center of the settlement, were a number of small buildings and many tents. Wood smoke rose in lazy spirals from most of the structures. Between them and the fledgling town was a large cluster of tipis interspersed on the higher ground above the trees and meadows at the juncture of one larger and one smaller stream, which glistened a silver reflection from the west sun that hung suspended, its lower edge just kissing the tops of the snow-covered peaks.

  He felt Rebecca’s hand again on his thigh. She was looking at him with a dazzling smile. “Zeb is not the only one proud of you, Reuben.”

  He smiled and handed her the telescope. “Want to take a look?” She raised it to her eye. “You can steady it up some,” he said, “if you hold it against the brim of your hat.” Damn I miss Mac.

  Rebecca followed his advice. “Oh, that is much better. It’s not much of a town. In fact, it’s far less than I expected.”

  He drank in her profile, allowed his eyes the luxury of traveling down the silhouetted curves of her body, and tried to ignore the gnawing uncertainty in his gut. She chuckled as she lowered the spyglass. “It most certainly is not London.”

  Reuben had been about to pose a question he had been thinking about for some time. He stopped himself before the first word. She looked at him, her head cocked, “Were you going to say something, Reuben?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, was just going to suggest we get back to the wagons and call a meeting tonight. I expect a number of families to be leaving in the morning. Might be some will just continue on today, although it’s getting late. We can say our goodbyes and Godspeed, and folks can start getting organized.”

  She held his eye, her face impassive except for the curiosity in the rise of her eyebrows. Reuben wheeled Lahn, she turned the sorrel, and they loped back toward the wagons.

  CHAPTER 45

  MAY 27, 1855

  SNAKE BITE

  “Patron.”

  Black Feather heard Pedro behind him, but neither turned nor stopped riding. The rotund Mexican sped up his horse until he was even with the black stallion, and abreast of Black Feather and Dot, who clung tenaciously, as always, to Black Feather’s wool army jacket.

  “Patron.”

  “What’s on your mind, Pedro?”

  The fat man’s voice was intense, excited. “Patron, we must stop. González needs rest. He is bleeding again, badly. He is losing much blood.”

  “Well that’s what he gets for getting in the way of a .36-caliber slug from a Navy Colt. We ain’t stopping. Now that we are across the South Platte, I want to get into those foothills between the Big Thompson and the Poudre. We’re easy targets out here for cavalry patrols in this open country.”

  “But Patron, González is my second cousin. This you know.” Pedro’s voice was plaintive, a vestige of surprise and anger in it. “That hombre with the pistolero, este muchacho es un mal hombre.”

  Black Feather turned to look at Pedro for the first time in this short-lived conversation. “Don’t know if he’s a bad man, Pedro, but he’s about the fastest I’ve ever seen with a Colt.”

  “But Patron…” Pedro’s voice was louder and higher pitched, “just for an hour, so I can bandage him up again and stop the bleeding. We can find some cover.”

  Black Feather reined in the stallion abruptly, the horse flicking its muzzle up and down in disapproval, surprised at the sudden stop. Pedro had overridden a few feet further. He drew up and partially turned in the saddle to look back at Black Feather.

  Without taking his eyes off the Mexican, Black Feather raised his voice, “González. González, get up here so we can take a look at you.”

  Pedro’s face seemed to relax, and he nodded his head slightly.

  That appreciation ain’t warranted yet, compadre, thought Black Feather. González’s horse approached from the rear of the scattered line of men. He swayed in the saddle, clinging to the saddle horn with both hands, and drew almost abreast of Black Feather, his mustang seeming to stop of its own volition. You know, don’t you horse? Black Feather looked González up and down quickly. The tan was gone from the wiry Mexican’s skin, replaced by pasty white. He seemed to lack the strength to even lift his head, staring down instead at his hands clasped around the saddle horn, a small pool of blood on the saddle dammed on either side by his thighs. Blood flowed with each heartbeat from where the young man’s Colt had made a hole in the Mexican’s belly. The entire front of his shirt was soaked in red, and the blood seeped halfway down his trousers. “How are you feeling, González?”

  González shook his head very slowly from side to side. He partially lifted his chin, just enough so that by raising his eyes, he could look at Black Feather.

  “Not so good, Patron. I am very thirsty.” His eyes lowered and his head sank down again, the hole in his shirt pulsing blood.

  “Well, González, we don’t want you dying of thirst.” Black Feather drew his Colt Army and, with one smooth motion, fired once, and then again, into González’s body before it fell fully from the saddle.

  “Patron!” wailed Pedro, shock, anger, and surprise serrating his cry, one pudgy hand moving slightly toward the pistol at his belt. He froze as Black Feather pointed the revolver at his head and pulled back the hammer.

  “Pedro, we run this trail for a long time, you and me. You might be the only one I fully trust…” Black Feather paused, “mostly trust. So putting a hole in your head is not something I want to do, but I sure as hell will.”

  His lieu
tenant’s hands relaxed reluctantly and crept back a few inches to their former position. Pedro said nothing, but his lower lip stuck out, his eyes were masked, and his heavy cheeks quivered with rage.

  “Pedro, you know as well as I do, González was done for. Should’ve died two weeks ago. You couldn’t even give him water with that gut shot. Did you want to see your cousin suffer? On top of that, he was slowin’ us down. There could be three or four more of us like him. Maybe you. You ever think of that?”

  Pedro shook his head, but Black Feather could tell his anger had not subsided.

  “We seen two likely targets and they both had cavalry escorts.” Black Feather spat on the ground. “Since when did the cavalry start accompanying wagons? It’s only the smaller outfits, the ones we look for. That other train, hell, must’ve been eighty or ninety wagons. We couldn’t take them on even if we weren’t as shot up as we are. That was the last of the wounded. Perhaps we will be rid of the bad medicine of that youngster’s Colt.”

  The men had gathered around him and Pedro. Their demeanor matched Pedro’s eyes. Dark clouds before a big rain.

  “I know we’ve been riding hard, men. Between them Indians, dragoons, the wagon trains, it was too damn busy back there for me. Only a fool disregards signs. We will be much safer up in the foothills. We will bide our time for stray wagons sure to come by, or maybe we will scout out a homestead or two, take them down, and set up camp there for a while until we get our medicine back.”

  Black Feather moved his eyes to Pedro and, with one deft motion, slid the Colt back in his belt. “Pretty fast, eh? Faster than that boy’s Colt, don’t you think? We owe him one. Next time…”

  “We owe him six.” It was Snake. He was staring at the red-stained corpse of González. There were already flies buzzing around the wounds.

  “Good observation, Snake. If we want to be technical, maybe we owe him eight. That Colt gave the others time. That red-haired bastard wagon master had a chance to use that scattergun, and those marksmen they had to the side would have never had their shots neither.”