by Jim Woolard
Out on the street, Alana Birdsong didn’t linger in front of lawyer Abbott’s house. Sam again at her knee, they retraced their steps to the intersection of Fifth and Hunt. Nathan was hoping he might at least get a peek at the L.P. Millinery, but his aunt swung north on Hunt Street.
Though it was late afternoon, traffic, whether wheeled or afoot, was still heavy. Buildings were beginning to cast shadows and it was turning downright chilly under porch roofs. Had they walked a second block Nathan would have slipped into his newly purchased mackinaw.
Alana Birdsong cut diagonally across Hunt Street and beelined for Girty’s Eats, a large, rough-boarded dining hall whose sign was a mere twelve inches square and barely legible. Ignoring the freshly painted sign of equal size that read, No Dogs, Alana held the door for Sam. The huge dog’s habit of walking with his fangs bared, coupled with the sight of his female mistress, silenced Girty’s male diners. Men craned their necks and gawked at the beautiful woman in corduroy trousers bold enough to venture amongst them. Silence hung like a smothering blanket until Nathan and Alana reached an empty table near the kitchen. With the thump of Alana’s rifle on the table, bodies relaxed and talk resumed.
Intrigued by his aunt’s choice of restaurants, Nathan scanned the crowded eatery and quipped, “Doesn’t appear to be a popular choice with the ladies of Alamosa.”
“Why, Nephew, I believe you’re questioning my character,” Alana Birdsong said, laughing. She lifted a grease-smeared menu from the checkered tablecloth. “Actually, the food is excellent, and your Mr. Dawes would be uncomfortable at Costaine’s, where I normally dine.”
Their waiter, dour, red of skin, and looking undernourished given his place of employment, listened to their choice from the menu—the daily special, consisting of fried beefsteak garnished with onion and scrambled eggs, fried spuds, hard bread, and black coffee—and delivered their plates piping hot. It was workingman’s fare, which, Nathan noted, brought his aunt’s appetite to the fore, so much so that a number of men watching her eat nodded to each other.
They were well into their meal when chinless Burt Dawes wended through the crowd. He doffed his bowler hat and pulled a chair up to the table. Alana Birdsong signed for the waiter to fetch another plate of the special, and Ira Westfall’s messenger spoke while eating. “Went to the D&RG station master and told him who you are and what you need, Mrs. Tanner. Bull Haines was most cooperative. He cut our train tickets himself and said he’d talk with the conductor.”
“What about the buggy, the horse for you, and the other gear?”
“The livery has the buggy and the exact horses you requested harnessed and waiting and they’ve saddled a nag for me. The riding gear from the Payne stable is in the buggy like you wanted.”
“Excellent, Mr. Dawes, your fine efforts will be amply rewarded. When you’ve finished dinner please fetch the buggy and your saddle horse to the Imperial House. We want to give Roan Buckman’s spies a proper eye full, don’t we?”
A beaming Burt Dawes dove in and food disappeared from his plate with great rapidity. He slurped his coffee and literally jumped from his chair. “I’ll be in front of the hotel, Mrs. Tanner.”
Alana Birdsong rose, dropped an assortment of silver coins on the table, and laid hold of her rifle. Her abrupt ending of their meal precluded any questions from an increasingly frustrated Nathan. “Bear with me, Nephew. You’ll understand everything very shortly.”
Nathan didn’t like it, but he knew any protest would simply delay the inevitable. Sam cleared a path to the door and Nathan followed on Alana’s heels. Their departure generated as much silence as their entry, for diners arriving during their meal had yet to view the beautiful woman in long pants every man present was yapping about. A few whistles as they went through the door hinted how much Alana Birdsong had turned her doubters into believers.
They went south on Hunt Street, back the way they’d come. Building shadows had lengthened and a stiff breeze issued from the west, a regular feature of early October evenings in the San Luis Valley. It promised to be a cold night for travelers.
A two-seated buggy pulled by a team of brown horses with a saddled bay tied to its rear wheel was parked before the Imperial House. At their approach, Mr. Ming and Burt Dawes emerged from the hotel carrying Alana Birdsong’s valises. These were piled on the buggy’s rear seat atop the saddles and bridles used by Nathan and Alana on their ride to Alamosa seven days ago. Nathan was curious regarding the buggy. He felt himself perfectly capable of traveling on horseback, but again, he deferred to his aunt’s judgment.
Mr. Ming’s final trek into the hotel produced three canteens with canvas shoulder straps and a red carpetbag with golden dragons painted on its sides. The slim Chinaman added these items to the rear seat, and then rearranged the pile to create a place for himself. Alana took up the traces and motioned for Nathan to join her on the front seat. Sam crowded between them. “Once we’re beyond town he can run free,” Alana said, and with her flick of the reins they were underway.
She drove them south on Hunt to Sixth. They crossed the D&RG tracks and Alana swung the buggy westward, their route paralleling the porch of Payne Merchandise. Nathan, always gawking, peered through the windows. Giles, Eldon Payne’s clerk, saw him first. The clerk charged to the front of the store, and nose pressed to the glass, examined Nathan and his companions like they were bugs on a microscopic slide.
“Hadn’t counted on that,” Alana Birdsong admitted. “But it might prove helpful if Eldon learns first hand we departed Alamosa by buggy. We won’t forego our final stop, though. Who knows, you might enjoy meeting Luther.”
“Who’s Luther?” Nathan asked around Sam’s head.
“He’s the youngest of the Buckman brothers. He worships Roan and would just love to have something important to tell him. We might as well give him his chance, huh, Nephew?”
The breeze, increasing in strength, ruffled the hair of Sam’s chest. Nathan shoved his arms into his mackinaw and buttoned the collar. Alana Birdsong, apparently no more affected by the wind’s bite than Sam, drove with a booted foot on the dashboard. When Nathan checked on Mr. Ming and Burt Dawes, the Chinaman was scrunched down behind the front seat, and Dawes, bringing up the rear on his rented horse, was shaking and shivering despite his canvas coat.
The forge fire of a blacksmith’s shop winked and glowed in the fading daylight, and then they were passing a tannery whose odorous stink assaulted their nostrils. A three-strand barbed wire fence enclosed the last business on Sixth Street. Letters constructed of tree branches and wired to a rectangular metal frame nailed to fence posts spelled out Kerosene, Coal, & Firewood. Mounds of coal and rows of stacked wood surrounded a small log cabin. The coal yard’s gates were tied open and Alana Birdsong reined the buggy inside, drew abreast of the cabin’s stone stoop, and yelled, “Luther! Luther Buckman! You in there?”
The person that answered Alana’s summons was a combination of his older brothers. Luther Buckman’s hair was wavy brown and his eyes hazel like Roan’s. His spectacular handlebar moustache and bulging biceps were duplicates of Calvin’s. The part of Luther that ran contrary to family bloodlines was his legs. They were pole thin from hip to ankle as if his lower body had forgotten to grow in league with his upper torso.
Luther’s expression was bland, though contempt and hostility hardened his eyes. “Evening, Mrs. Tanner,” Luther said, seeming to pay no attention to those accompanying Alana. “What’s your business?”
“I’m headed home to the ST. We’ll need six five-gallon cans of kerosene and coal for the bedroom fireplaces. I’ll send Spud in with the wagon as soon as we finish fall roundup.”
“Anything for you Tanners long as you pay at pick-up. I ain’t no banker, yuh know.”
“It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Luther,” Alana said, snapping the buggy reins.
They left the coal yard in a rush, raising a swirling cloud of dust. Alana centered the buggy on the westbound road and slowed long enough for Sam
to jump down. “Mr. Dawes,” she called over her shoulder, “you have your orders.”
Per her instructions, Burt Dawes gradually fell behind the buggy. Nathan had reconciled himself to being left in the dark regarding Alana Birdsong’s plans for the rest of the evening. This wasn’t particularly disconcerting since her actions so far made perfectly good sense. But for all that, he couldn’t figure how she intended to sneak them aboard the train to Creede without first sneaking back into town. The train wouldn’t stop short of the initial watering tower west of Alamosa, and to intercept it there would require them to traverse rugged country that would tear the wheels from the buggy.
His doubting of Alana Birdsong ended a few miles down the road. Burt Dawes pounded out of the growing darkness and drew alongside the buggy. “Road’s clear. No one followed us from town.”
“Now it gets interesting, Nephew. By my calculations we’ve three hours to catch the train to Creede. Hang on.”
Bracing her feet on the dashboard, Alana reined off the road. She slowed the mares and guided them on a winding course through clumps of sagebrush, greasewood, and cacti. A considerable distance from the road, she halted the buggy, stood, peered in all directions, declared,”This will do,” and stepped to the ground.
“Mr. Dawes, please help me unhitch the team while Nathan fetches our riding gear.”
Nathan shoved aside the luggage piled on the rear seat and lifted his saddle and bridle as well as Alana’s from the buggy, remembering Burt Dawes’s statement at Girty’s that the livery had made available the buggy and the exact horses Alana had requested. His aunt hadn’t rented just any team. She’d rented one broken to both harness and saddle. Nathan chuckled softly. The bachelorhood of Seth Tanner had probably fallen prey to the same kind of cleverness.
While Nathan and Burt Dawes saddled and bridled the buggy team, Alana Birdsong disappeared behind the vehicle with two large valises supplied by Mr. Ming. When she reappeared, she’d shed her silk shirtwaist and fringed leather coat, replacing them with a flannel shirt and a mackinaw similar to Nathan’s. She then seated herself on the buggy’s running board and exchanged her riding boots for lumberman shoes with top laces. Her final switch was an oversized canvas cap for her Stetson. “How’s this?” she asked, stuffing her loose hair beneath the cap. “I usually dress like this only in the middle of winter. Can I pass for a miner?”
Burt Dawes guffawed. “Yeah, you can. But you’re still gonna be the best looking miner in all of Creede.”
Alana grinned and turned to Mr. Ming in the back seat. “May I have the valise with Nathan’s things, please?”
Mr. Ming complied and Alana brought forth Nathan’s square-billed cap and flat-heeled pilgrim boots. “Luckily, Mr. Ming carted these to town with him. You need to doff that Stetson, Nephew, and change your boots. Lots of miners wear Levi’s, so the rest of you will pass muster. We may not fool anybody for long. At least we won’t draw stares from the Creede crowd the moment we step from the train.”
After their experience with the male crowd at Girty’s, what Alana said made perfectly good sense. During his change of footgear, Alana said, “Mr. Dawes, you have our train tickets and you’re clear about your orders?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dawes said, digging into a coat pocket. “Mr. Ming and I are to sneak back into Alamosa and watch for Ira. Once he arrives I’m to take him straight to Mr. Abbott. Then Ira and I are to follow you to Creede on the very next train. We’re to ask for you at Zhang’s Hotel.”
A pleased Alana folded the train tickets, slid them under her cap, retrieved her Winchester from the front seat of the buggy, and mounted her horse. “Mr. Dawes, just make sure you follow us as soon as possible. I’ve a nagging suspicion everything won’t continue to unfold in accordance with our wishes. And when things go awry I want the both you and Ira Westfall handy.”
Nathan straightened from the buggy’s running board. “What about Sam?”
“Though we can’t disguise him, he’s coming to Creede with us. Come, Sam,” Alana called, and the huge dog, always lingering close by for her next command, came running from the gloom.
Without waiting for Nathan to mount, she turned the buggy horse, thumped his ribs with her lumberman shoes, and set off to the northwest. Nathan, praying the very boldness he admired in her didn’t get the both of them killed before Ira Westfall arrived on the scene, clutched the canteens Mr. Ming held out to him, hustled into the saddle, and followed Alana Birdsong and the streaking Sam into the night.
Eighteen
The D&RG watering tower west of Alamosa hove into view three hours later. Nothing could have pleased Nathan more. He’d experienced enough shifting terrain, shadowed gullies that fooled you into believing they were flat ground, and hostile vegetation to last two lifetimes. And, by then, boiled Levi’s or no boiled Levi’s, his posterior and thighs were hurting only slightly less than the throbbing ache above his temple. All he could think about was the upcoming train ride on a cushioned seat in a warm passenger coach. Hell’s bells, if necessary he’d stand all the way to Creede to escape the saddle and the nighttime cold numbing his nose and fingers.
Ranging ahead of them, Sam trailed Alana up the grade of the D&RG right of way. They waited short of the tracks for the huge dog to sniff the area around the base of the watering tower and the brush beyond it. When Sam reappeared and sat between the rails, signaling no one was about, they crossed the tracks.
“Did you train Sam?”
“Yes, I’ve had dogs since I was a child. Sam’s not a pet. He’s a working guard dog, and I purposely taught him not to trust any man until I tell him otherwise. Beauty, Nephew, brings out the best or the worst in a man and a woman can’t always separate the wolf from the honest hound right off.”
“Uncle Seth didn’t mind Sam?”
“No, he understood that in marrying me he accepted Sam as a member of the family.”
They dismounted beside the skeletal legs of the watering tower. Nathan passed Alana one of Mr. Ming’s canteens and drank from the other. Far off, down the roadbed toward Alamosa, a faint chuffing could be heard above the wind.
Alana screwed the metal cap on her canteen. “Smack on schedule, huh, Nephew? We’ll turn the horses loose in the brush and stash our saddles behind the tool shed over there. Whoever chances upon the team will take them back to town. The train’s the fastest way to Creede, so I’m not concerned if we lose the two saddles. We best hurry.”
Nathan looped the canvas straps of the canteens over his shoulder, after which they led the buggy horses to the tool shed and unsaddled them. Nathan then led the team into the brush a short ways, removed their bridles, and shooed them off with a slap of the rump.
When he was in sight of the tracks again, the chuffing they’d heard was much louder. Despite the growing noise, his ear caught a human whistle from the same direction. He threw the bridles atop their discarded saddles, and trotted down the tracks to where Alana, gripping the ruff of Sam’s neck, was crouched within a few yards of the right of way.
“The caboose should stop about here,” Alana predicted. “We’ll soon know if Bull Haines talked to the conductor.”
Spewing black coal dust from its stack, the 488 to Creede rolled from the darkness in a burst of white steam. Heads showed at every window of the seven passenger coaches, confirming that the lure of quick riches up the line never slackened. Wheels clacked, drivers locked, and the 488 squealed to a halt with its engine aligned beneath the spout of the watering tower.
The crewmembers riding the caboose dropped to the roadbed, and the “tail-end” brakeman, the End Man, his red lantern swinging to and fro, walked the ties toward Nathan and Alana. At Sam’s growl, Alana stroked his head and whispered, “Quiet, boy.”
Nathan was curious how Alana meant to make the brakeman aware of their presence without causing him to yell out, for they needed to board the train, not alarm its crew. Railroad crews weren’t accustomed to legitimate passengers emerging from the night at isolated watering towers
, and conductors and brakemen occasionally carried firearms for defense against robbers as well as tramps trying to steal a ride.
As usual, his aunt’s approach was both clever and unique. First, she handed Nathan her rifle and removed her cap, letting her hair spill to her shoulders. She then rose slowly to her feet and called out softly. “I’m a woman. I’ve a ticket to Creede and Bull Haines arranged for me to board here.”
To his credit, the brakeman didn’t panic. He fished a stubby Billy club from his coat pocket, sat his lantern on the flat of a tie, and moved back a few strides. ”Whoever you are, ease into the light with your hands high and empty,” he ordered.
Alana stepped between the rails and moved into the light of the lantern, hands high and empty as ordered. “Okay, you’re a female. You alone?” the cautious brakeman demanded.
“No, my nephew and my dog are with me. He has a ticket to Creede, also.”
“Which one, your dog or your nephew?”
Fearful the squaring of his aunt’s shoulders presaged an angry outburst that might leave them afoot, Nathan sang out, “Sam and I will move into the light. You’ll notice I have a rifle. If you like, I’ll lay it on the roadbed and step away from it.”
“Do that,” the brakeman ordered. “I’ll keep the two of you covered while we hunt up the conductor.”
Nathan gripped Alana’s Winchester by the barrel and held it in front of him. It wasn’t Nathan or the rifle that wrung a gasp from the trainman. It was Sam’s ruby eyes shining in the lantern light. “Holy Mother of God,” the brakeman exclaimed. “If that ain’t the biggest dog on earth, elephants can fly.”
“Sam, sit!” Alana ordered. Sam immediately sat, which impressed the brakeman greatly. “Too bad I can’t sic him on my snooty mother-in-law,” he snickered, pointing at the roadbed.
Nathan laid the rifle next to the brakeman’s lantern. Pocketing his Billy club, the End Man inched close enough to scoop the rifle from the roadbed and reclaim his lantern. “Mind your dog, ma’am. Our conductor ain’t fond of beasts, large or small.”
