Faith took hold of the rake in both hands. “None of your business. You get moving, Clete Brown, you murderer. If there was any law out here, you’d hang for what you did to Johnny!”
His scowl turned to a grin, and he rested his hand on a six-gun he wore on his hip. “Well, ain’t this a miracle, and a lucky day for me,” he said through yellowed teeth. “I can tell by the look on your face there ain’t no man around. And you owe me, little lady. You owe me a horse, a six-gun, and a rifle…and a whole lot more.”
Faith’s skin crawled at the thought of what he meant. “After what you did to Johnny? I owe you a bullet in the gut, with a lot bigger gun than the last one I used!” She felt so helpless standing there with only the rake. He looked bigger and meaner than ever, his heavy beard unkempt, his eyes still full of lust and lies, his smell the same. She remembered it all as though she’d just left him for dead yesterday. “Where have you been all this time?” She took a defensive pose, moving away from the stall, holding out the rake in warning. “It’s been almost two years!”
“Been all over, little girl, like always. Been huntin’ buffalo, scoutin’ for the railroad, did a little gold diggin’. I come through here on my way back to the railroad camps way out east to work for them some more. The railroad pays good. They’re comin’ through here, you know, next couple of years or so.” He looked her over as though she stood there naked, even though she wore a heavy woolen dress and a wool sweater. “What the hell are you doin’ here at a stage depot? This place ain’t more than two or three days from where we parted.”
“From where you murdered Johnny. You get out now, Clete Brown, or I’ll see you dead for sure this time! I’m here because this is my home now. I’ve got a little boy and I’m happy here, and I won’t let you spoil it!”
He pulled out his handgun and cocked it. “You left me for dead, you little bitch. I was about to climb in your wagon an’ get my due. Night after night I had to lay awake listenin’ to Johnny Sommers hump his woman, me achin’ to be doin’ the same. I finally decided it was my turn, and I never got my due. Now here you are, like God himself led me here to you, and I aim to get what I got comin’ for you puttin’ them bullets in me and makin’ me suffer like that! Put that rake down, you redheaded whore, and take what you’ve got comin’, else that little boy you have will be growin’ up without his daddy and his mama!”
He held the gun straight out, pointed at her.
“Drop the rake,” he repeated. “We’ve got some talkin’ to do, like you promisin’ you won’t tell the law who killed Johnny.”
She slowly set the rake aside. “It wouldn’t matter. There is no law out here—yet. And I’ve already told plenty of people who killed Johnny,” she lied. She had told no one except Hilda and Tall Bear because she wanted to protect little Johnny from the truth. It was better he grew up thinking his father had drowned. “I have nothing to promise you. Just be glad you’re alive and get out of here, Clete Brown. Be glad no one has seen fit to put a noose around your neck! You’d best ride far and wide from here. Go to California or Texas, someplace where you won’t risk being found out.”
He frowned, questions in his eyes. “How’d you get here on your own?”
“It doesn’t matter now. Leave, and I won’t tell anyone I saw you. The next stage will arrive within a couple of hours. I won’t tell anyone on it that you’ve been here and you’re alive. Be glad for that much and leave.”
He shook his head. “And make it easy for you after you treated me like dirt, woman! You flauntin’ yourself around, makin’ me crazy with the want of you! Now here you are, ripe and ready and noplace to turn!”
He headed toward her, and all Faith could think about was Johnny. If she screamed for Hilda—
“Get them clothes off, little lady. I aim to see what it was that made Johnny pant after you every night.” He held his gun in one hand, rubbed at his privates with the other. “Get ’em off!” he repeated. “Once this is over, I’ll leave and you’ll never hear from me again. I’ll git, just like you want me to do, and you and your brat will be safe.”
Faith scrambled to think. What choice did she have? Maybe if she let him get close to her, she could find a way to grab something and hit him with it. She pulled off her woolen sweater, began unbuttoning the front of her plain brown dress. Perhaps if she got his full attention, she could lure him into doing something stupid, but she did not have to go far before they both heard the click of a gun hammer being cocked.
“Drop that gun, mister!” Hilda ordered from the doorway.
To Faith’s horror Clete whirled and fired. Hilda! Sweet Hilda! In an instant Faith grabbed a pitchfork just as Clete turned back around. She ducked when he fired again, then jabbed at him as hard as she could, sticking him in the left thigh. He cried out from the pain, aimed at her again. She rolled out of the way, heard another gunshot, thinking at first it was Clete shooting at her. But then Clete himself slumped to the floor, a bloody hole in his lower left back. The pitchfork was still stuck in his leg.
Faith turned to see Hilda in a sitting position, the rifle in her hand, a tiny bit of smoke coming from the barrel. She ran to the woman’s side, taking away the rifle she still gripped. “Hilda! Dear Hilda, let me help you back to the station.”
The old woman grasped her arms. “No, child. It ain’t gonna make no difference.” She managed a smile, but she was growing deathly white. “I saw him ride over here…wasn’t sure if you was…safe. I come out to see…heard the things he said. He’s the one…ain’t he? The one…who killed Johnny.”
“Yes, Hilda. He’s the man who killed Johnny.”
“Then I’m glad…I shot him.” The woman’s eyes teared. “Take good care…of Johnny…and Sommers Sta—”
She did not finish the statement. Faith’s heart tightened with sorrow as the old woman’s eyes closed and she slumped away from her. “Hilda!” She shook her, but to no avail. She leaned close, felt no breath, felt for a pulse, but there was none. She looked over at Clete. He was not moving. With great effort she got up from Hilda’s side and walked over to kick the man onto his back. His eyes were still open. Grimacing from having to touch him, she felt for a pulse and was glad to realize he also was dead.
At last! She no longer had to worry and wonder about him, but the cost of finally being rid of the haunting horror of Clete Brown was sweet Hilda’s life. Grief welled up in her soul, and she felt as though she were losing a mother all over again. She staggered past Hilda’s body and outside, her motherly instincts making her want to go to Johnny and make sure he was all right. She fled to the station and went inside to find her baby boy still sleeping on a cot.
She knelt beside it, never feeling more alone than she did at that moment, even after Johnny had been killed. Hilda was gone. They had become so close through two long, lonely winters. Now she was entirely alone…except for Johnny. Yes, she had Johnny. She could almost hear Hilda’s voice, telling her she must go on now, telling her not to give up. The woman had been letting her run the place practically all by herself for months now.
She struggled to think straight. She would close the shed door and tell Buck what had happened when the stage arrived. They would not tell the passengers. Buck could send the stage on with the shotgun as the driver. He could stay behind and help her bury Clete and Hilda, which meant she would have to tell him the truth about what had happened to Johnny. She had never told Buck, but he was the kind of man who would understand.
More death. When would it end? When would civilization come to the wilds of Wyoming? She walked on weak legs to the door, out onto the porch, numb to the cold air. Maybe she should take Johnny and leave, go to Cheyenne or Denver. Maybe she should give it all up, after all, even though Hilda would have told her not to. She fought an urge to scream and sob, but she didn’t want to frighten little Johnny. No. She had to be strong. She had survived so much already.
She walked off the porch, looked up at the sign. SOMMERS STATION. Hilda would say she could by-God run t
his place alone, and she’d do it. She’d do it. She glanced over at the shed.
“I love you, Hilda,” she said, a painful lump rising in her throat. She felt responsible for the woman’s death. If not for what had happened with Clete and Johnny…if she’d made sure Clete Brown was dead in the first place, he never could have come along and caused this terrible disaster.
She went back inside, deciding to get her wits together, stay in control for Johnny’s sake. How was she going to explain to him where Hilda was, why she wasn’t there anymore? She’d been like a grandmother to him.
“That’s what we’ll put on her marker,” she whispered to Johnny, touching his hair. “Grandma.”
Part Three
Chapter Sixteen
March 1867…
The stagecoach rumbled into the depot, snow and mud splattering in every direction as horses and wheels splashed through thawing ground and standing water from snowmelt. Faith ordered two-year-old Johnny to stay on the porch of the station and out of the way. He sat down obediently, the buttons of his little woolen coat nearly popping because it was already too small for his growing frame. He was a good boy, charmingly handsome, as his father had been. He had Johnny’s thick, sandy hair, his impish brown eyes, his fetching smile, which showed dimples in his chubby cheeks. Faith loved him more than her own life, and he was all she’d had to keep her company over the past winter, her first winter alone.
She so often longed for a woman’s company and missed Hilda achingly. Few women traveled the stage route because of the dangers. Usually the only women who did venture into this country were ones like Bret Flowers. She smiled at the thought that she actually missed Bret sometimes. She was most certainly a “soiled dove,” as she’d heard some men call such women, but there was a lot about Bret to like. She wondered how she was doing down in Colorado.
To think of Bret reminded her that she hadn’t been with a man herself for almost three years, ever since Johnny’s death. He had left her not particularly wanting a man in her life, or in her bed, though sometimes she would feel a deep ache for such things. And there was little Johnny to think about. He would be needing a father more and more as he got older. The trouble was, out there she saw men only in passing, and none stayed long enough to get to know well. She supposed that those who did come through didn’t even see her as pretty or feminine anymore. She lived like a man, worked like a man, dressed plainly, never used color on her face, never wore her hair in a fancy do. Her hands were callused, her fingernails always worn down to stubs.
Besides all that, she’d done things no decent, properly bred woman would do. She’d tried twice to kill Clete Brown, left him for dead once. She’d killed Indians and once an outlaw, and she wouldn’t hesitate to kill again if it meant protecting the station and Johnny. Some folks might consider it even worse that she had kept the dead men’s belongings to sell. She now owned two horses, two six-guns, a pistol, and three rifles—much of that once the property of Clete Brown. She also possessed all his gear, two saddles, bridles, blankets, and even had kept the money she had found on him.
Wrong or not, all of those things could come in handy when she needed the money for Johnny, and when the day came to build Sommers Station into something bigger.
Finding a man would have to wait. For now she cared only about this wonderful freedom, this beautiful, wild land, her baby boy, and Sommers Station. When passengers asked about Hilda, she told them only that she had died of old age. Buck knew the truth. He had helped her bury Hilda behind the depot next to the woman’s husband, but he had buried Clete Brown far off in a stand of trees, leaving the grave unmarked. No one would ever know it was even there now, and that was fine with Faith. The man did not deserve any recognition. She wished she knew the address of Hilda’s son in California for she had no way of telling him the woman was dead. The man had never even written to his mother. It saddened her that he apparently didn’t care about his mother’s welfare.
Her sweet Johnny would never be such a negligent son. She watched him now, standing up and clapping his hands excitedly as passengers climbed down from the coach and gingerly made their way through the mud to the depot. One of them grumbled about the mud and cold, wondering aloud how people survived in “these desolate places.” They all sported expensive-looking overcoats, obviously some kind of businessmen. Faith greeted each of them with a friendly smile, and each in turn seemed surprised to find a young woman and small boy there.
“Welcome to Sommers Station,” she told them. “There is food inside, gentlemen. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll serve you myself.”
“And who are you, little lady?” one of them asked, removing a felt hat. Faith guessed he was only five or six years older than she. His dark-brown eyes were outlined with thick lashes, and a thin mustache accented his full lips. His hair was neatly cut, and Faith could not help taking special notice of him.
“I’m Faith Sommers, and I run this station.”
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Alone?”
“I can hitch teams and cut wood and shoot a rifle good as any man, mister,” she answered. “I’ve fought Indians many times, ridden out and rounded up horses they stole, and a gang of outlaws tried to steal our supplies once. I shot one in the rear and one in the head. They took the dead one and rode off and never came back. Does that answer your question as to whether or not I can run this place?”
The man nodded respectfully, but there was a rather cocky look in his eyes. “Yes, ma’am. I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t handle it.”
“Yes, you did, but I’m used to it.” She pointed at a water pump to the left of the depot while the others also stared at her. “You can wash over there if you’ve a mind. Our facilities aren’t fancy, but the food is good. I’m not a bad cook, if I must say so myself.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he answered, his eyes moving over her appreciatively. For the first time in years Faith felt self-conscious about her appearance. She supposed the man was wondering if she was really even a woman. “Actually, if you’re the one in charge,” he said, “you’re the one we need to talk to inside.”
“Fine. Go ahead and wash. I’ll help the driver switch teams. If you don’t mind, you could watch my boy for me. He’s not bashful.”
“Certainly!” The young one looked down at Johnny with a smile, then looked questioningly at Faith. “Where is the boy’s father, if I may ask?”
“His father drowned on our trip west. I got as far as this station and decided to stay. The old woman who used to run the station died last year.”
He shook his head in wonder. “My, oh my. Such a brave woman you are.” He looked at the others. “Well, gentlemen, the lady says we should wash first, so I suppose we’d better.” He herded them over to the pump, and a couple of them looked back at her as though she were something unusual and fascinating.
“I’ll be damned,” Faith heard one of them comment.
She shook her head and told Johnny to go inside with the men when they returned. She walked to the coach to help the driver unhitch the team. “Any problems, Buck?”
“No, ma’am. Course, you know me. I been doin’ this for five years now, since afore you come here, so there ain’t much I ain’t seen. Took three bullets in me over the years and survived every one of them.”
Faith grinned. Buck liked to brag about all the dangerous adventures he’d survived.
“The Indian situation seems to be calmin’ down some,” he added, smacking a horse on the rump and heading it toward the corral. “Now that the government is talkin’ treaty with the Sioux, and Red Cloud has pretty much got his way, he’s layin’ low for a while. Trouble is, there’s a couple of new troublemakers keepin’ the fires stirred. Some leader called Sitting Bull and a young one called Crazy Horse. I don’t expect that we’re out of the woods yet, but, then, they stick pretty much to the Powder and the Black Hills. With the railroad comin’ through next year, I think they’ll stay away from this neck of the woods.”
Faith walked with him, leading two other horses. “It’s really coming, then?”
He nodded. “Track is laid almost clean through Nebraska already, headin’ this way. Them men in there, they’re railroad people, wantin’ to talk about what will happen here once the stage line don’t run no more. Watch out for the young one. He’s a fancy-talkin’ son of a bitch, seems like one of them spoiled rich boys, if you know what I mean. I hear he’s buyin’ up land for the railroad and investin’ in plenty of it himself. I don’t trust them kind. His name is Tod Harding.”
Somehow the possibility of a railroad had remained unreal to Faith, even though surveyors had already been through there, about a mile to the south of the depot. She’d ridden out to see their stakes, and it worried her what could happen to Sommers Station once the stage line was no longer needed.
“What will you do, Buck, if they stop running the stage line?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m gettin’ old, you know. It’s probably about time for me to quit anyway. I reckon I’ll go to some minin’ town and do some gamblin’, find me some kind of work. I’ve got no family, so it don’t matter much what I do.”
Faith suddenly felt like crying. “I’d miss you, Buck. Maybe you could stay on here. With the railroad coming, this place will grow. I intend to see to it. There would be work right here for you.”
He grinned and nodded. “Well, now, I’ll keep an eye on things here, and I just might stay at that.”
“I’d like that, Buck.”
He sniffed, scratching at a scruffy beard, thinking what a brave little thing Faith Sommers was. He’d never known a woman so pretty who was willing to live the way she was living. Some thought her eccentric. He just figured she was a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. “Well, I guess I’d like that, too.” He turned and began walking again, taking the bridle of one of her horses. “You go on inside. I’ll finish with the teams.”
Tame the Wild Wind Page 18
