And not one single shot was fired by either party. Jason was proud of that.
The three kept up their hollering until they came in sight of Matt and the girls. Matt was on his feet, trying to see what all the noise was about.
Jenny and Megan had taken shelter behind some weedy cottonwoods at the timber’s edge. Jenny had her shotgun raised and ready.
“Don’t shoot, Jenny!” Jason called, and they came out of hiding immediately.
“What the hell are you doing, Fury?” Matt demanded. The remains of a picnic, hastily abandoned, were scattered at his feet.
“Saving your butt from Apache,” Jason said, and then ordered the girls up on their horses. Matt remained where he stood, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“They’re going to come back, MacDonald,” Jason said. “No two ways about it. I’d get out of here fast if I were you.”
Jason took off the other way—Wash, Ward, and the girls behind him—before Matt had his foot in the stirrup. He started his horse running while he was still trying to gain his second stirrup.
Jason would have found it funny, but he was too busy trying to keep an eye on the girls, watch the east for returning Indians, and guide his horse back to the circle of wagons. When they came skidding in, Jason leapt from the saddle and tossed his reins to Ward, then immediately yanked Jenny down from Cleo’s saddle.
“Jason!” she cried.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded. “Don’t you know you could have been killed? Or worse?”
When she just stared at him, mouth open, he pushed her away and began hollering, shouting, “Apache, everybody! On your guard!”
Folks grabbed their guns, tucked their children away, dropped whatever they’d been doing before, and waited.
An hour passed before Jason allowed them to let down their guard, but he still assigned Ward and Wash to keep watch.
The people under his care might think he was crazy, but he didn’t care. He was still responsible for them.
And they were, by God, going to keep breathing so long as he was around, whether they liked it or not.
Chapter 29
Night fell and the Indians still hadn’t returned. Saul and Salmon and Milt had managed to dig deep enough to find water. Salmon immediately threw his hat in the air and climbed up out of the hole, certain that their work was done.
But Saul knew they’d have to go deeper. The stream was running now and the water level was high. It would go lower. How much lower, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he had forgotten how much he hated well-digging.
Saul also knew that Milt Billings had been hired by Jedediah to care for their livestock and help them across the western expanse, but somehow, Saul didn’t believe that Jedediah could have known Billings very well. The whole day long, Milt had complained about Jason seeing Indians where there weren’t any.
As far as Saul was concerned, if Jason said there were Apache out there, there were Apache. No two ways about it. And he found his anger with Milt slowly coming to a boil. First off, the ground was too hard. Well, they were all three having to dig it, weren’t they?
The next complaint on Milt’s list was that Jason had taken Milt’s horse when he galloped off into the scrub, and when he’d brought him back, he hadn’t even walked him out.
Well, Saul had seen Ward Wanamaker walking out four horses while they were all arming themselves for the supposed Apache attack, which, he was extremely glad hadn’t come.
By the time they crawled up out of that hole, the usually peaceable Saul was ready to whack Milt Billings over the head with a shovel.
But he didn’t.
As the three of them sat there, dangling their legs over the edge and watching the water level slowly rise, Saul’s boys came out to join them. David, the oldest at ten, said very formally, “Good evening, Father,” and helped himself to a little square of ground next to Saul. He dangled his legs over the edge, too. Jacob, eight, and Abraham, six, came next, and both tried to sit on Saul’s lap at the same time. Unfortunately, Saul didn’t have enough lap, and scooted the larger Jacob to his other side.
“Mother says dinner will be ready in a half hour,” David said, then made a face.
“What? You don’t like what we’re having?”
“Mrs. Jameson gave canned beets again.” His voice turned to a whisper. “Even Mr. Cow won’t eat them!”
Saul smiled. “Well, we’ll see what can be done, David.”
The boy visibly relaxed.
“If he was my kid,” said Milt, “he’d eat ’em whether he liked ’em or not.”
The hairs on the back of Saul’s neck went up. “Lucky for him, he is not yours.”
“Don’t get uppity. All’s I meant was that out here, you gotta eat what you’re given, when you’re given it. ’Cause you ain’t likely to be given much of anything again.”
“Speak for yourself. I will see to my own.”
“Stop it, you two!” said Salmon, just as the alarm rose.
Wash Keough, atop the Kendall wagon, shouted, “Apache! Everybody in! Apache!”
Saul scooped up his boys and ran for the wagons, with Salmon hard on his heels.
* * *
“I thought Indians weren’t supposed to attack this close to night,” huffed Saul as he slid down next to Jason, rifle in hand.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” was all Jason said. Jenny was beside him, ready to reload.
Rachael, having secreted the boys in the bottom of their wagon, joined Saul.
“Sorry if your meal is ruined, Rachael,” Jason said. He could see the cloud of dust rising, now, growing nearer.
“It will do the stew good to wait a little,” she replied stoically. “And Olympia had already taken the biscuits off the fire.”
Jason tossed a box of cartridges toward Saul. “In case you run out.”
But Saul was staring out at something much closer than the approaching cloud of dust. “Dear God,” he whispered. “It’s Milt! He fell in!”
Jason shifted his gaze and saw the well that Saul had been digging, and saw Milt trying to pull his way out. The water must have risen, and it looked like he was having a hard time gaining any purchase on the muddy walls.
“Stay put, Milt!” Jason shouted. The cloud was getting closer. “Keep your head down!”
“I keep it down, I’m gonna drown!”
Jason stood up, muttering “Damn!” and made a run for Milt.
He heard his sister shouting behind him to come back, but he was already halfway there. When he reached Milt, the dust cloud was almost upon him, and he was vaguely surprised that the Indians weren’t screaming war cries, weren’t screaming anything at all. But he reached down and gripped Milt’s hand, and yanked with all his might. Milt came up out of that well like a catfish on a hook, and scrambled back toward the wagons on Jason’s heels, spraying well water as he went.
They both skidded inside just as the forms of the men within the cloud could be made out.
Not Apache.
Not Indians at all.
The party reined in about twenty feet from the circled wagons, and a single rider emerged from the yellow mist of dust still surrounding the rest of his comrades. “Hello the wagons!” he called. He was dressed in an ordinary way, with Levi’s, boots, and a flannel shirt. And he had a badge pinned to his belt.
Jason stood up. “Who’s that out there? Be careful, there’s a newly dug well about five yards from where you’re sitting that horse.”
“Thanks for the warning, friend. I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Gordon, with a party of deputies. We’ve been out after Juan Alba and his band. Finally picked up tracks, and here we are. Good thing, too, because we were about to lose sight of ’em.”
“How many men you got with you, Marshal?” Jason called.
“Fifteen.”
Jason leaned toward Rachael. “Can we feed fifteen extra?”
She nodded in the affirmative and Saul said, “They can have David’s beets.”
A muffled, “Hooray!” came from deep within the Cohens’ wagon.
“Come on in, Marshal,” Jason called with a wave of his hand. “We were just about to have some dinner.”
Nearby, Jason heard a still-sodden Milt grumble, “Apaches, my butt.”
* * *
There was plenty of stew to go around, and one of Marshal Gordon’s men gobbled up David’s detested beets and asked for more. Mrs. Jameson was visibly pleased, but offered no seconds, which came as a surprise to no one.
While they ate, Gordon regaled them all with the flamboyant—and sometimes grisly—exploits of Juan Alba, or, as the marshal frequently referred to him, the Scourge of the Borderlands. The kids, from little Constantine Morelli and Abraham Cohen to Sammy Kendall and Seth Milcher, were transfixed, and Gordon played to his audience.
Jason had the feeling that this Alba was someone akin to the outlaws of Kansas and Missouri—blamed for most of the deeds done by other gangs, whether they were in the area or not.
Milt Billings was still drying out beside the fire, and still grousing about getting dunked in the well, and the Apache alarm being raised, and having hired on in the first place.
Finally, Jason couldn’t stand it any longer—he was enjoying Gordon’s stories, too—and quietly stood up. He walked over to Milt and said, “You can leave any time, you know. Nothing’s holding you here.”
“I just might,” Billings said. “These people are daft! Wanting to build a town in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Apache country!”
“I agree with you, Milt. But this is the place they picked.”
Milt picked up his socks from the edge of the fire and shook them out to see if they were dry. He was barefoot, because he’d propped his boots upside down on sticks a little farther from the flames. “Well, it sure ain’t my choice for a quiet neighborhood.”
“Like I said, Milt, the door’s open. Marshal Gordon’s pulling out in the morning. You can go with him.”
“Where’s he headed?”
“Prescott.”
Milt appeared to mull this over for a moment, and then said, “I’ll take the last of my wages tonight, if you don’t mind, Jason.”
Jason paid him on the spot. He was sorry to lose Milt’s gun, but that was all.
* * *
“You were horrible to Jenny this afternoon,” Megan said as they walked around the inside of the circled wagons.
“I should have been horrible to you, too,” Jason said. As if he could be horrible to Megan. “You were in real danger. Those two braves were eyeing you. Tonight, by rights, Matt would be dead and you and Jenny would be Mrs. Kills-with-a-Spear or something.”
Megan snorted out a little laugh. They spoke quietly, for most of the camp was asleep. The sound of Salmon Kendall’s snores made a steady, rhythmic bass note in the background, overridden by the calls of night birds and the rustle of soft wind that played the brush and scrub like a harp.
Well, a very dry and brittle harp.
“Well, I’m glad you came and saved us. I don’t want to be Mrs. Kills-with-a-Spear.”
He looked down at her, this setter-haired, elfin thing who had stolen his heart, and he was tempted, so tempted to just throw his future aside, just chuck it all and promise to stay with her, ask her to marry him, to be with him always.
But he fought off the temptation.
He walked her back to the wagon, then relieved Wash of sentry duty.
He had a lot of thinking to do.
Chapter 30
Summer came, and under the blistering heat, the pioneers built homes and businesses from the adobe bricks Jason showed them how to make from dirt, water, and straw. Saul dug his well deeper and deeper and deeper, and eventually the stream dried up.
Matt MacDonald began construction of his new ranch house, several miles south of Fury. He had grand dreams, all right, and he labored out there night and day with no one but Gil Collins, whom he had hired away from Jason, to help him.
Jason oversaw the town proper. He and Ward and Salmon and several other men helped Saul build his hardware store, with living quarters on a second floor. They used the beds and side timbers of both Saul’s wagons to floor the second story, and chopped down ten enormous cottonwoods to make the exposed beams of the ceilings.
Somewhere along the line, they had mutually decided to all work on one man’s home or business until it was finished, and then move on, as a gang, to the next. It worked fine, and in this way they also built the Nordstroms’ mercantile and a livery and got started on a house for Salmon Kendall, who had recently wed Carrie English and taken on Chrissy and Rags as his own, too. Chrissy seemed to be getting along famously with Sammy and Peony, who enjoyed having a little sister. They had taken to Carrie, too, although it was obvious that the loss of their mother still cut deep.
Around Saul’s well they built a low wall, put an A-frame over it for reeling buckets up and down, and it sat in the center of a large patio in the very center of what was becoming the town of Fury.
Around the perimeter of this “town square,” the buildings slowly rose here and there, like the scattered teeth of an old man. In between, there sat wagons not yet evacuated or abandoned, their canvases spread and staked like open-air tents.
“It’s really turning into something,” Jason said to Jenny, one night after the work was done and they finished their supper.
“You didn’t think it would?” Jenny asked him. “I always knew they’d make something wonderful.”
Jenny, now sixteen, had bloomed over these last few months. Her blond hair was streaked quite fetchingly by the sun, her complexion glowed, and she had grown a half inch taller and filled out. She was no longer the gawky colt of a girl he remembered, but a beautiful young woman. The realization came as something of a shock to him.
“You always had more faith than anybody I ever knew, baby sister,” he said.
“Papa used to call me that, too.”
“I know.” He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a little hug.
“You’re thinking about leaving, aren’t you?”
Once again, he was surprised. He hadn’t known it was that obvious. “Yes, I guess I am.”
“Then you’ll go alone, Jason. I’m not going with you.”
He stared at her, lost for words.
“I’m going to marry Matt MacDonald and stay here and raise babies, horses, and cattle, in that order.”
This time, he found the words. “No! No, you’re not! You’re coming with me. You’re going to live where there are no Indians, no bandits, where people can act like people and not animals, Jenny. And you’re going to marry some nice, civilized, educated man, not a fool like Matt MacDonald!”
She slapped his face so hard it rattled his teeth. “I am too going to marry Matt!”
“Jenny, has he even asked?”
“He’s not a fool!” She turned and ran to the wagon before he could think to say anything. She was probably hurrying to repeat everything he’d said to Megan.
Great, just great.
And he stood there, rubbing his cheek and wondering what in the world had possessed him to choose those particular words. He probably shouldn’t have called Matt a fool, for one thing, although that was the nicest tag he could think of to hang on him. Stupid, dumb son of a bitch would have been closer to it.
And then he began to think about what she’d said. Raise babies and horses and cattle.
In that order?
He marched after her, hands and jaw clenched. If that bastard had been at her, he’d kill him.
He reached the wagon and climbed up onto the seat. Turning backward to face the cargo area, he shouted, “Jenny!”
Two faces popped up from beneath the quilts: Megan’s and Jenny’s. Megan looked surprised, but Jenny just looked mad.
“Jenny, has Matt MacDonald . . . has he . . . ?”
Megan cried, “Jason Fury!”
But Jason only had eyes for his sister. He forced himself
to spit out the words. “Has he got you in a family way, Jenny?”
Jenny looked completely shocked. “Jason! Of course not! How dare you even think that I—”
Jason closed his eyes. “Thank God,” he whispered, and slipped away.
* * *
The next morning, after talking to Jenny again and making something of a peace with her, Jason made ready to leave. He’d resigned himself to follow Jenny’s wishes. After all, she was grown, and he couldn’t exactly kidnap her to bring her along, could he? He had decided to go up to San Francisco instead of back East. It was a big town, and a rich one. Surely they had colleges up there, too, and plenty of opportunities for an enterprising young man to work his way through school.
Also, it meant that he’d be closer to Jenny.
And Megan.
Maybe, after he got settled and got some education under his belt, he could come back for Megan. If she’d have him. If she hadn’t already married.
“Stop it, you peckerwood,” he muttered as he saddled up Cleo. If he didn’t, he’d talk himself into staying. That was the last thing he wanted to do.
So he managed to pull his mind away from Megan and set it on a more useful purpose—plotting his course to San Francisco.
He figured to head due west, to the coast, and then ride straight north. He’d never exactly taken that route before—his total experience of the road west was one trip over the southern route when he was fourteen and one trip over the Oregon Trail when he was twelve, both of which had been overseen by his father. But he figured that if he did as he had planned, he couldn’t miss San Francisco.
He heard footsteps behind him. “Jason?” It was Megan. She said, “You’re really going, then. Jenny told me, but I didn’t believe her. I thought you’d stay until the whole town was built, anyway.”
“You’ve got a good enough start on everything,” he replied. “And you know towns. It’ll never be finished.” They had picked up four more wagonloads of folks just last week. He tried not to look at her, but then she put her hand on his arm, and he turned toward her as if her touch had magnetized him.
A Town Called Fury Page 18
