“There’s work for all of us, Jenny,” her father said. “I’m hoping you’ll take on the job of cooking meals for the passengers. Elspeth didn’t want anything to do with it.”
“Of course, Papa. I’ll be the cook. And I can help with the teams, too.”
“As the railroad moves west we’ll keep moving with it,” her father said. “Wells Fargo has a good business hauling passengers and mail between the end of track of one railroad and the other. But the overland stagecoach business will cease when the UP and the CP finally meet.”
“That’s all right,” Jenny said. “We’ll eventually get to California this way. Who needs a wagon.” She laughed and hugged her father’s waist.
Lieutenant Moretti strolled across the parade ground twisting on the ends of his mustache. “Will,” he said. “I’m glad you’re safe. And this must be Miss McNabb?”
“Yes, Luey,” Will said. “Meet Jenny McNabb.”
Moretti took Jenny’s hand and bowed over it. “Pleased to meet you, miss.” He nodded to her father and brother, and raised a hand in greeting to Bullfrog Charlie.
“I must talk to you, Will. Your uncle left instructions.” Moretti pointed to the Officers’ Club. “Let’s go in there.”
Once inside, Moretti told Will that his uncle had departed with General Dodge, in the company of General Rawlins, two days earlier. “Major Corcoran left an envelope for you. He directed me to give it to you . . . if you returned.”
His uncle Sean’s crisp handwriting addressed the envelope to The Honorable Judge Clyde Sampson, Burlington, Iowa. Will extracted the guardianship transfer papers. They bore his uncle’s signature.
The envelope also contained a note:
Will,
You may take these papers to the judge, if you have had enough of this life. Or if you decide to stay with the team, come west as soon as you can.
Your Uncle, Sean Corcoran.
Will looked at Moretti and grinned. “No way am I going back to become a blacksmith.”
Moretti laughed. The tips of his mustache quivered. “Your uncle’s a bit put out with you disobeying, but he said he thought that’d be your decision. Sergeant Winter is leading a detail west tomorrow. You can ride with them.”
Will stepped over to the club’s fireplace and tossed the judge’s papers onto the burning logs. The pages flared briefly, then curled down atop the logs, disintegrating into ashes.
CHAPTER 51
* * *
“Detail! Mount!” Sergeant Winter bellowed his order. Leather boots squeaked against saddles as a dozen cavalrymen mounted. Each trooper’s carbine hung suspended from a snap ring attached to a strap slung over his left shoulder, keeping the weapon within easy reach of his right hand.
Opposite the cavalry formation, Will sat on a horse. Jenny stood beside him. She wore her buckskin dress and moccasins. Her braided hair was free of tangles and shone with a black brilliance. She laid a hand on Will’s knee. “You be careful, Will. I’ve already lost a mother, and probably a sister. I don’t want to lose you too.”
“You do look like an Indian.” Will laughed. “A beautiful Indian.” He felt his face flush when he said that.
“Why thank you, Will Braddock. As soon as I earn some money, I’ll buy a regular dress.”
“Oh, I like the buckskin dress. You look fine. But the Wells Fargo passengers may think it strange to be served their meals by a Cheyenne.”
Duncan ran up with a bouquet of wildflowers and handed them to his sister. “Happy birthday, Jenny. I didn’t have any money to buy a present. So I picked these for you.”
“Thank you, Duncan.” Jenny lifted the bouquet to her nose. “They’re lovely.”
“Birthday?” Will asked. “Today’s your birthday? August sixth? I didn’t know. I would’ve gotten you a present if I’d known.”
“You don’t have any money either. I know that. But you already gave me a present. In fact, you gave me the best present ever when you freed me from slavery.” She smiled at him.
“You’re fourteen?” he asked.
“Same as you. You told me when we first met you were fourteen. But you never told me your birth date.”
“May tenth.”
“I’ll remember that,” she said.
Bullfrog Charlie guided Minnie up beside Will. Ida trailed behind.
“You going with them Bullfrog?” Jenny asked.
“Nah. Too early to go to the cabin. I reckon I’ll head back up into the Laramie Range to bag an antelope. Need one to trade with the sutler for some whiskey to see me through till spring. Snow gets mighty deep along the North Platte in winter. Once you settle in, you don’t wanna move ’lessen you have to.”
“Column of twos to the right! Ho!” Sergeant Winter’s detail wheeled out of its single line into a marching formation, two abreast. The sergeant saluted Lieutenant Moretti, who sat his horse near the gatehouse.
“Stay alert, Sergeant.” Moretti returned the salute.
“Always, sir.” The sergeant pulled his horse’s reins over its neck and fell in behind his troopers. The column of twos passed at a walk through the open gate of Fort Sanders.
Will and Bullfrog guided their mounts in behind the sergeant. Jenny walked beside Will’s horse. When they came abreast of Moretti, Will turned to him. “Luey, keep an eye out for that rascal Paddy O’Hannigan.”
Moretti raised a hand. “If I get the chance, I’ll arrest that horse thief.”
Alistair McNabb and Duncan stood off to one side of the gate. They exchanged goodbyes with Will when he rode by.
Will, Bullfrog, and Jenny had just passed through the gate when one of the cavalryman reined in his horse and raised his carbine.
“Put that weapon away!” Sergeant Winter ordered. “We don’t need to start a war over one Indian.”
Beyond the column Will saw what had caused the soldier to raise his carbine. On a ridge, two hundred yards away, a lone Indian sat on a pony. Beside the Indian stood a black horse—the white blaze on its forehead visible even at this distance.
“It’s Lone Eagle,” Will said. “With Buck.”
“Why, so it is,” Jenny said.
Lone Eagle waived his coup stick above his head.
Will puckered his lips and whistled. “Tseeeee, Tse, Tse, Tse.”
Buck’s ears pricked forward. Lone Eagle slapped the Morgan’s rump and Buck raced down the slope toward Will. The detail halted as if on command to watch.
Buck skidded to a halt, nuzzled Will’s leg, and whinnied. “Welcome back, Bucephalus.” Will patted his forehead and leaned over to stroke his mane.
Will looked back to the ridge. He drew Lone Eagle’s knife from his waistband and raised it above his head by its blade, then handed the knife to Bullfrog Charlie.
“Thank Lone Eagle for the use of his knife,” Will said. “And thank him for freeing Jenny . . . and Buck.”
Bullfrog took the knife. “I’ll see he gets the message.” He snapped the reins over Minnie’s neck and headed up the ridge. Ida trotted behind. Bullfrog called back over his shoulder. “When you find yourself near the North Platte, look me up. Only cabin north of the Overland Trail.”
Sergeant Winter urged his horse to the front of his column. “Forward! Ho!” He ordered the soldiers back into motion.
Will dismounted and transferred the blanket and saddle to Buck’s back. He removed the simple Indian bridle from Buck and replaced it with the Army bridle, then looped the Indian bridle into the saddle horse’s mouth.
“Duncan, how about taking this horse back to the stable?” Will asked.
“Sure thing, Will.”
Will mounted Buck, removed his hat, and looked down. “I’m not sure when I’ll see you again, Jenny. Maybe next spring.”
“Until spring then.” She reached up and squeezed his hand.
Will shielded his eyes from the sun with his hat and watched the cavalry column approach the Laramie River, some distance from the fort. A lone eagle soared above the river’s bank.
/> Jenny followed his gaze. “It is good to be free,” she said. “Free as that eagle.”
“Yes, it is.” He gazed into her eyes. They were pale blue today. “You still have your eagle talon?”
She lifted the talon from beneath the neck of her dress. “And you?” she asked.
Will pulled his talon from his shirt front. He bent forward and tapped his talon against hers. “Think of me each time you feel its scratch, Jennifer McNabb.”
“Likewise, William Braddock. May they continue to bring us good luck.”
Will slapped his hat against the Morgan’s flank. Buck leaped down the trail. Will swung his hat high overhead. “Run, Buck, run!”
HISTORICAL NOTES
* * *
Throughout Eagle Talons, Will Braddock encounters the following historical characters:
Grenville M. Dodge, Union Pacific’s chief engineer
General John A. Rawlins, chief of staff to General Ulysses S. Grant
Jack Casement, Union Pacific’s construction contractor
Dan Casement, Union Pacific’s construction contractor (Jack’s brother and partner)
Jack Ellis, Dan Casement’s black servant
Thomas “Doc” Durant, Union Pacific’s vice president and general manager
“Colonel” Silas Seymour, Durant’s consulting engineer
Jacob Blickensderfer, Department of Interior railroad inspector
Doctor Henry Parry, Army surgeon (officially assigned to Fort Sedgwick’s garrison)
Colonel John Stevenson, Fort D. A. Russell’s commanding officer
Colonel John Gibbon, Fort Sanders’s commanding officer
All other characters are fictitious.
Will’s adventures in Eagle Talons take place during 1867, the first significant year of construction on the transcontinental railroad. The sequence of events in the book occurred when and as written.
Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and Wells Fargo are authentic companies, and the Cheyenne Gazette was a local newspaper publishing at the time. The other businesses Will encounters are fictional. The towns, mountains, streams, and other geographical locales mentioned in the book are real. Hell on Wheels, the itinerant shack town, moved and reestablished itself more frequently than described. Cheyenne, Dakota Territory (later Wyoming), was founded as depicted, except that General Rawlins’s speech on the Fourth of July was not officially recorded and is the author’s creation. The beaver dam is fictitious, but research reveals it could have been where it is sited.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
* * *
Robert Lee Murphy graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a business degree. Throughout his career he worked with national and international agencies and institutions on all seven continents, including Antarctica, where Murphy Peak bears his name. He sold his first article, illustrated with his own photographs, many years ago to Backpacker Magazine. He has published technical articles in various trade journals and magazines, such as Military Engineer. Most recently, The Gettysburg Magazine published his annotated Civil War cavalry article in its July 2011 issue. Eagle Talons is Murphy’s first novel, and the first book in his trilogy, The Iron Horse Chronicles.
Murphy is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and of Western Writers of America. The author invites you to visit his website at http://robertleemurphy.net.
Eagle Talons (The Iron Horse Chronicles: Book One) Page 24
