Adobe Moon

by Mark Warren

  Well into the territory, in the late afternoon, he made camp near a grove of cottonwoods and chanced to look up from his meal as a rider crested a rise to the east. Wyatt threw a bone into his fire, wiped his fingers on a rag, and reached for the old over-and-under. Standing, he watched the distant silhouette approach, one dark shape against the gray sea of grass until, with only a hundred yards separating them, he recognized Kennedy, the tanner he had jailed in the Sutherland Hotel. The stocky Irishman halted his mule twenty yards out.

  “That you, Earp?”

  “It’s me,” Wyatt said flatly, and put away the antiquated weapon.

  Kennedy looked around, still not dismounting. “You alone out here?”

  “I was.”

  “I see that you’re cooking. Can I share your fire? I’ve got some whiskey.”

  “Don’t need your whiskey. If you need the fire, there it is.”

  Kennedy slid off his mule. “This beast ain’t much of a ride. I need to find me a horse.”

  Wyatt sized up the man’s animal. It was sound and well-muscled. There was nothing wrong with a mule, he knew, as long as you didn’t figure to race it. But he said nothing.

  “So Judge Earp ain’t with you?”

  Wyatt turned his head slowly toward the man and stared, trying to read his face for the unspoken portion of that question. “I reckon he’s at his home.”

  Kennedy’s eyes pinched, and he busied himself with unscrewing the cap of his bottle. “No, it’s for certain he ain’t there,” he mumbled, a half smile pulling at his mouth. He sat down near the fire and drank and stared at Wyatt over the up-tilted bottle until he had to come up for air. Kennedy squinted. “You don’t know, do you?”

  Wyatt kept staring, his patience wearing thin. “Know what?”

  Kennedy softened his voice to an irritating whine. “A case was filed agin’ you for money that was owed. The city was tryin’ to get it out of your family’s properties.”

  “My family?” Wyatt stiffened as if he might kick something. He walked away a few paces and stopped, keeping his back to Kennedy. “Tell me the rest,” Wyatt said without turning.

  “Well . . . your pa . . . he sold everything off and pulled out before that come about.” Kennedy breathed in deeply and capped his bottle. “They’re even tryin’ to squeeze money out of the feller you sold your house to. I hate to be the one telling you all this. You treated me decent in Lamar.”

  Hardly hearing the man’s voice, Wyatt was back in Lamar, picturing the faces of the councilmen who would direct their discontent toward his father. “Where is my father now?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t know anybody who does.”

  Wyatt stilled, as if he were listening for something in the distance. After a time he began packing up his cookware, moving with the deliberation of a man who had made a decision.

  “You’re leavin’?” Kennedy asked.

  “Might be some weather come in tonight,” Wyatt said. “I’m gonna set up under the trees.” He nodded toward the fire. “You can have what’s left of that hen.”

  Kennedy’s eyes locked eagerly on the bird roasting on the spit. “Well, I won’t let it waste.”

  In the morning Wyatt rode out of the cottonwoods and found Kennedy sprawled out under a slicker, a light dusting of snow stippled across the contours of his body. The fire was dead. Chewing on a twist of dried venison, Wyatt rode west, stitching a line of tracks in the snow that followed him like a silent wraith.

  He wandered into Fort Gibson and, planning to winter over in the small settlement, purchased an axe and bucksaw and put money down on a wagon. Tramping through the frozen woods, he rang his axe against dead timber, supplying firewood to homes and stores, the bite of the axe blade like a private therapy, helping him chew up some of his sadness to spit back at the world. He had pushed the memory of Rilla into the past, where he swore never to revisit it. He came to realize he was not wholly broken by the loss of her, but what was left of him was less than what he had been before her. He had no ambitions. He could not think his way toward a plan that included improving his situation. Physical labor, he came to learn, passed as an anesthetic for a man who wanted to forget how to want anything.

  Physically, he was changed. Taller than most men . . . and stronger. There was not a soft part to his body. As a wood-splitter, he had learned something about the economy of applying his strength so as not to waste energy. More than one customer had watched him skid logs behind his team of horses, saw, or split the wood, and they had commented that he made difficult things look easy.

  Wyatt had been hacking at timber for only two weeks when a US deputy marshal set up an office in the settlement. Knowing his misdeeds in Lamar could catch up to him, Wyatt, like any man who cannot stand still too long inside his flawed inner terrain, decided to move on. To anywhere. It didn’t matter.

  Many of the men in town were heading to the summer buffalo grounds north of the Kansas railheads. Wyatt had seen Kennedy, the one-time tanner, ride out of town on his mule with such a “buff’ler” outfit. Apparently anyone could try it, but Wyatt wagered that most would not take to the skinning and would eventually abandon the hard life of sleeping on the rough sod of the prairie for nights on end.

  Hunting was something he could do, so he decided to try his hand on the killing fields. Hides were selling at three and a half dollars. He could hire a skinner. He didn’t mind the killing, but he didn’t care to mire up to his elbows in blood. It was too close to the memory of Lamar.

  On a blustery morning in March he set it all into motion, the howl of the wind as good a reason to push on as any other. He sold his wagon, tools, and the old over-and-under and bought a Sharps “big-fifty” and ammunition. He would pick up another wagon somewhere near the Kansas rail lines. With his gear packed, in that first instant when he mounted his horse and looked at his entire belongings strapped onto the packhorse behind him, the bleakness of his future almost undermined his will to go on. But he was packed, and it seemed easier just to move out. Drifting might lead to something.

  On the fourth day crossing the prairie, he encountered Kennedy’s mule, dead and flyblown, lying beneath a vortex of vultures wheeling about the gray sky. Later that afternoon he spotted an unlikely sight: perched on a rise, a spring wagon sat with its tongue and traces angled down into the earth like an anchor. There were no horses in sight. Two figures hovered close around a campfire, its flame flapping in the wind like a yellow rag. Above the camp, racing off at an angle, a plume of gray smoke climbed into the sky, a shade paler than the clouds. The weather was volatile, and Wyatt wondered if there were people who were ignorant to the possibilities of lightning on the spring prairie. As he rode closer, a stocky man ran out to meet him. It was Kennedy.

  “My damn mule died!” he declared and propped his hands on his wide hips as though Wyatt might have something to say on the subject. Wyatt looked at the woman huddled near the fire. She was witch-like, stirring a long-handled spoon in a black pot. Her mouth moved as if she were conversing with the contents of the pot. Kennedy glanced over his shoulder at her.

  “I rode in the wagon with that woman and her husband. It was just one old nag a-pulling. But that damn horse will never make it through the Ozarks.”

  “Where’s the horse?”

  Kennedy pointed east. “Her husband rode off on it to somewhere. She told him to go and get some horses, so without a word, he up and goes. That woman’s crazy, I think . . . and he’s not far behind. She wants my saddle as payment for the ride, but I won’t part with it.”

  “Maybe you’d better hoof it back to Fort Gibson.”

  Kennedy licked his lips and frowned at the ground. “I can’t go back there.”

  Wyatt let that alone. “Best give the woman your saddle then and take the ride.”

  Kennedy’s eyes took a deliberate bead on Wyatt’s packhorse. “I could set my saddle on your gelding there. I can’t be walking out here in this devil’s land. I’d pay you back.”

  “Leave me
with one animal, and I’m no better off than you before your luck went bad.”

  “Earp, I need the favor. I’m out here in the goddamn middle o’ nowhere.”

  “It ain’t a favor you’re askin’ for. It’s foolishness.” Wyatt nodded to the wagon. “You’ve got a way out of this. You’d best take it.”

  Kennedy filled his cheeks and let the air spew out noisily. “These people ain’t right. I ain’t real sure what she’s saying mostly. Would you at least talk to her?”

  Wyatt looked at the woman again. She was sullen, staring back at him.

  “I’ll talk to her, but I ain’t promisin’ you nothin’. You made a bad decision settin’ out without a backup mount. You may have to turn back.”

  “Their name is Shown,” Kennedy said hopefully.

  Wyatt dismounted and walked just within speaking distance of the woman. She was missing part of an eyebrow, and her skin was splotched. Her concentration on him was fierce.

  “Can you give this man transportation to the next town?”

  “Cain’t give ’im nothin’,” she snapped. “Fort Gibson’s closer.” She turned her pale eyes back on the cookpot. Kennedy came up beside Wyatt, and she lifted her chin and stared a hole into the Irishman. “I’ll take his saddle for it.”

  “Where’s your husband?” Wyatt said.

  “Don’t rightly know.”

  Wyatt studied the sky. “You’re in a bad spot, come some lightning.” The woman did not acknowledge the warning. “We’ll ease your rig down into the swale for you.”

  “Already got my fire up here,” she said.

  Wyatt nodded. “We’ll move that, too.”

  He was not willing to hitch his horses to the tongue, as the offer might suggest something more permanent. They manhandled the wagon to the bottomland with the woman walking alongside, steadying a fry pan filled with hot coals. Kennedy went back up the hill for the cauldron.

  When the wheels were chocked and a new fire established out of the wind, the woman resumed her cooking. The first lightning bolt flickered in the west, and ten seconds later the sky grumbled with a deep and sonorous warning. The woman raised her pointed chin to Wyatt.

  “You’re the one sold firewood at Fort Gibson.”

  “Name is Earp.”

  “I don’t care ’bout your name,” she mumbled. Then she looked sharply to the east. Two horses and one rider approached from the high ground.

  “It’s Shown!” Kennedy called out.

  The rider bounced bareback on a bay as he led a sorrel behind. “Anna!” the man yelled and kicked his heels into his mount. She paid him no attention. The horses pulled up, heavily lathered and snorting strings of mucus. Both were well-muscled and newly shod.

  “Well,” Kennedy purred, “those are a sight better’n the one he rode out on.”

  With his attention fixed on Wyatt, the man named Shown scissored a leg over the bay’s mane and dropped to the ground. “Who the hell’re you?”

  “Helped get your wagon down to low ground. Storm’s coming in.”

  The man looked at his wife, but the gap in their communication remained an eerie constant. He turned as though studying the weather, but his gaze returned to the hill he had just crested.

  “You folks going to be able to take Mr. Kennedy to the next town?” Wyatt delivered his question direct, using the same tone of voice he had once regularly employed as a constable.

  “For one goddamn saddle,” the hag croaked. “Don’t nothing come for free!”

  The husband walked past Wyatt, jerked the woman by an arm, and pulled her to the back of the wagon where he commenced a freshet of harsh whispers. Kennedy stepped next to Wyatt.

  “Daft as a couple of cross-eyed crows,” the Irishman murmured.

  Wyatt turned up the collar of his coat and secured the button at his neck. The sky was almost black. Another lightning bolt trembled against the clouds, and the air filled with a cracking sound like splitting oak.

  “I’m moving on,” Wyatt said.

  “You’re leaving me with ’em?”

  “I am.”

  Raindrops intermittently dolloped in the pot and hissed in the coals. Wyatt mounted, took up his lead rope, and started past the two spent horses tied to the rear of the wagon. On each rump was the clear singe of a Circle K brand. Kennedy followed in Wyatt’s wake a few stumbling steps, but he stopped and said no more.

  CHAPTER 18

  * * *

  Spring, 1871: Indian Territory to Van Buren, Arkansas, and back

  The sky was clear and the morning washed clean from the night’s storm. Wyatt was carving a stick down to dry wood for kindling when he heard footsteps crashing through the brush. He laid down both stick and knife and slid the Sharps from its leather case.

  “Earp!” Kennedy’s voice rasped from the effort of running. “Thank God you’re still here!” He appeared like a bear pushing through the wet foliage. “That sonovabitch Shown run off with the horses last night. We’re stranded.” He approached tentatively, but his desperation had him wound tightly. “I think he must’ve stole the damned things and panicked.”

  Wyatt put away the rifle. “He left his wife?”

  “Hell, yes, and me with her.” Kennedy wiped his brow with his sleeve and sucked in air.

  Wyatt looked north, where the land rolled away into the hill country. He cursed, picked up his knife, and sheathed it. Keeping his expression empty, he turned back to Kennedy, knowing the man still thought of him as an officer of the law.

  “Tracks go north,” Kennedy said hurriedly. “A little west of the way he come in last night. He’s done lit out, and she don’t seem to give a damn.”

  Wyatt gave his wet canvas tarpaulin a smart flap, snapping droplets of water into the air, and then he turned his anger on Kennedy. “Go back to her. I’ll be over directly.”

  Within the hour, Wyatt’s belongings were stowed in the bed of the wagon and his two horses harnessed to the rig. Alone up front in the driver’s box, he snapped the reins, speaking to no one. Mute as children who had earned a scolding, the two passengers sat in the bed, as Wyatt could tolerate neither of them in his dark mood. The night’s rain had softened the ground, making the tracking easy but the going slow.

  They found Shown two days later in a stand of willows at the foot of the Ozarks. Wyatt pulled the wagon up, tied off the reins, and climbed down. Shown started talking so fast, his words ran together in a meaningless chain of babble.

  “I had to keep going. I think these horses was stole by some Injuns. There’s probably men looking for them. When I—”

  Wyatt slapped him hard across the mouth, and Shown stumbled into the rear wheel hub. Anna Shown shrieked something unintelligible and jumped down from the wagon. When Wyatt slapped her husband again, Shown slid off the wheel and dropped onto the seat of his pants, and the woman began flailing at Wyatt with her bony fists.

  “Get her off me!” he ordered Kennedy, and the Irishman reluctantly complied.

  Setting his face with purpose, Wyatt unharnessed his horses from the wagon tongue and began loading his gear onto his packhorse. Kennedy began hitching the bay and sorrel to the traces. When Wyatt threw his saddle over his mount, Kennedy brought over Wyatt’s roll of canvas and stood like a supplicant come to make his offering.

  “She must’a thought you were going to kill him. She’s calmed down some now.”

  Wyatt lashed down the canvas, keeping his eyes on his work. “He probably needs killing.”

  Kennedy took off his hat and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “You ain’t still gonna leave me here, are you?” Wyatt toed into the stirrup and rose and sat his horse. “What’s coming up here is the worse leg of it,” Kennedy pleaded. “The law don’t reach this far. There’s white men out here who’ll kill a man for his boots. Indians are probably worse. All I got is a single-shot, and it jams sometimes.”

  “You think about that when you started out?” Wyatt said.

  “When I started out, I didn’t know my m
ule would die and leave me with these addle-brained mooncalves.”

  “If those horses are stolen,” Wyatt said, “it’s likely Shown stole ’em. You may as well re-steal one and get the hell away from these people. They started with one horse. I don’t see as how you’re leaving ’em any worse off.”

  Kennedy looked back at the woman, squatting over her husband and weeping. “I can’t be traveling on a stole horse in this country. There’s people already looking for me.” He put a hand on Wyatt’s arm. “You were a lawman, Earp.”

  “Well, I ain’t no more,” Wyatt shot back.

  “But your family is connected to the law . . . your pa was a judge.”

  Wyatt’s gaze cut to the man’s grip on his sleeve, and the Irishman’s hand slid deferentially from Wyatt’s coat. The image of Nicholas Earp dressed out in his fine dark suit floated into sharp resolution in Wyatt’s mind.

  “He’s already drunk out of his head,” Kennedy said, scowling at the couple. “Don’t leave me stranded out here, not with the likes of those two.”

  When Wyatt lifted his reins, Kennedy turned desperate and grabbed the cheek strap on the horse’s bridle, but the Irishman stilled as his attention fixed on something out on the prairie. Wyatt turned in his saddle to see six men riding up on their camp, each carrying a repeater rifle balanced behind the pommel. They fanned out into a flank and reined up in a semicircle. None wore badges, but by the way they took in the harnessed horses and the party before them, Wyatt knew they had come to recover stolen goods.

  The man in the center leveled his rifle on Wyatt, eased his horse closer, leaned, and slipped Wyatt’s pistol from the scabbard at his belt. “My name is Keys. I need you to climb down off o’ there and stand with this’n here.” He indicated Kennedy with a jerk of his head, and then, without taking his gaze off Wyatt, he pivoted his head partway toward his party. “You boys keep these two covered, whilst I have a talk with the woman.”