Chasing the Sun

by Kaki Warner

  INTENT ON GETTING TO THE RANCH AND ELENA AS FAST as he could, Jack arranged with his ship’s captain to have his trunk sent to the ranch as soon as the harbor agent cleared the cargo, picked up some cash from his San Francisco bank, then hurried to the train depot. Figuring it would be better for his broken foot to sit rather than ride over twelve hundred miles by horseback, he sold his horse and tack to a disembarking passenger, then went inside to buy a ticket.

  He wasn’t sure how close to the ranch he could get before having to either take a coach or buy another horse. When he’d left New Mexico three years ago, the southern route of the transcontinental wasn’t even finished. Now, as he studied the giant railroad map painted across the back wall of the depot, he could see that dozens of intersecting lines and spurs and branches had sprung up in his absence. Even more surprising was the notation above a twenty-mile stretch of track that snaked down from the main line southeast of Santa Fe to a small town named Redemption. The notation read, “Wilkins Cattle and Mining.”

  Mining? When had they gotten into mining? And mining what?

  His second shock came a moment later when upon closer examination of the map he saw that Redemption was located well within the northwest corner of Wilkins land.

  Mines, a rail spur, and their own town too?

  We must be rich, Jack thought with a grin. Apparently his brothers had been busy in his absence.

  After purchasing a ticket on the eastbound departing that afternoon—which actually followed the coast south for four hundred miles before turning east—he hobbled over to a small cantina behind the depot, where he ordered a celebratory drink and a plate of frijoles.

  Wilkins Cattle and Mining. He liked the sound of that. The previous name—RosaRoja Rancho—was past history, too reminiscent of the feud between his family and Elena’s and all the lives that had been lost because of it. Besides, the roses it had been named for were gone. After Elena’s brother, Sancho, set the ranch afire, most of the roses their mother had planted around the foundation of the house in honor of his birth had been charred to cinders along with everything else.

  He wondered if his brothers had rebuilt the house yet. He hoped they hadn’t just copied the original. He hated the sprawling hacienda the Ramirez family had built so many years ago. All adobe and tile and dark carved wood, it had been a constant reminder of Elena’s lost heritage and the bloodshed that had followed. He’d always felt like an intruder in someone else’s home.

  The train arrived only five hours late, and by the time he’d hobbled on board and settled in a window seat on the shady side of the passenger car, they were heading out of the depot.

  The miles clickety-clacked by at an astounding pace. Jack had never moved so fast on land or sea, and if the train hadn’t lost a half hour out of every two hours stopping to fill the water tank on the tender, they could have made over three hundred miles in a day. A stupefying achievement.

  But boring.

  Luckily he was able to relieve the tedium for the first couple of days by joining a rolling low-stakes poker game in the mail and baggage car. But at Yuma, after losing two players when the Deputy United States Marshal and his prisoner disembarked, the other fellows called it quits.

  After that he mostly slept or took bets on how many jackrabbits he could shoot with his Sharps .50 as the train sped by. Having seen the damage rabbits had done in both Tasmania and parts of Australia, he had no great fondness for the little pests. But shooting them was harder than it looked—trying to hit a moving target from a bouncing platform while balanced on a crutch—and it wasn’t long before he’d lost almost everything he’d won in the poker game and had run out of bullets. He’d never been that good a shot.

  By the morning of the fifth day he was ready to get out and crawl the rest of the way to the ranch when they finally chugged into Redemption. Wilkins land at last. With a deep sigh of relief, he limped off the rear step onto the depot platform and looked around.

  Redemption was a typical bustling mining town. Newly built, it boasted unpainted wooden structures bordering a single street, with scattered canvas tents clustered along the creek south of town. Main Street housed the usual shops, saloons, and emporiums down one side; on the other, a hotel, an assay office, a bank, and a restaurant. Behind that, a back alley served the livery, a blacksmith, a Chinese laundry and bathhouse, and several outhouses. A small but busy town.

  Oddly busy, in fact.

  As he clumped down the boardwalk, Jack noticed that many of the wagons and carts moving past were loaded high with all manner of furniture and household belongings. Several men leading similarly loaded packhorses rode by as well. And they all seemed to be headed in the same direction: away from town.

  As Jack pondered the meaning of that on his way to the livery to see about a horse, he heard a voice call his name.

  Pausing to look around, he saw a youngish, well-rounded woman waving from the doorway of a little shop on the other side of the street.

  “Jack Wilkins! Is that you?”

  He recognized the body, but not the face. She looked somewhat like Martha Burnett, his favorite Val Rosa whore, but her hair was darker and she wasn’t wearing face paint, and with her dress buttoned all the way to her chin and hiding the part of her he most vividly remembered, he couldn’t be sure.

  Stepping off the boardwalk, he dodged around a cart stuck in the road, and crossed toward her, his crutch making sucking noises in the four inches of mud churned up by the constant traffic.

  It was Martha Burnett, he realized as he drew near. Up close, she was surprisingly handsome. Or maybe she always had been but he’d been too distracted by her two best features to take much notice of her face. “Hello, Martha,” he said with a grin. “What are you doing here?”

  She grinned back. “I was about to ask you the same thing. Here to stay?”

  “For a while at least. You?”

  She glanced past him at the cart still stuck fast in the mud. “Until there’s no one left, I suppose.”

  He turned to follow her gaze. Several men had gathered to push against the rear of the cart, rocking it to free the mired wheels. “What’s going on? Where’s everybody going?”

  “California. Wyoming. Wherever there’s something worth digging out of the ground.”

  With triumphant shouts from the mud-spattered pushers, the wheels rolled forward. Jack returned his attention to Martha. “These mines are played out?”

  “Not yet, but with the government switching to the gold standard, the market for silver has gone flat as a toad in a road. Hank shut them down a couple of days ago. Lucky you made it in when you did. They’re sending the last of the ore to the smelter this week, then they’re shutting down the rail line too.”

  So much for being rich.

  Putting on a bright smile, Martha gestured to the storefront behind her. On the door was painted, MARTHA’S MISCELLANY AND MILLINERY SUPPLIES. “This here’s my shop. What do you think?”

  Jack studied the front window, which was crammed with hats, ribbons, bits of lace, and various female-type doodads. He didn’t know what to think. How did a woman go from being a whore to a shop owner? And why? He bet men from here to Val Rosa were crying into their whiskey glasses. “Catchy name.”

  She chuckled. “That was Miz Jessica’s doing. You know how she is with big words. The rest was Molly’s idea.”

  So Jessica was back. Jack was glad to hear it. He wondered if Brady had gone after her or if she and Ben had returned on their own. “Who’s Molly?”

  Martha’s grin bubbled into that hearty laugh he remembered from lazy afternoons he’d enjoyed in her brass-railed bed. “Hell, you have been gone a long time. Molly is Hank’s wife. Never met a smarter woman or a harder worker. She saved Hank’s life after the derailment.”

  Jack could only stare. Hank was married? To a woman named Molly? What happened to Melanie Kinderly from the fort? And what derailment?

  “What happened to your foot?” Martha asked, breaking into his c
onfused thoughts.

  Jack glanced down at the dirty wrappings around his right foot. “Busted.”

  “Won’t heal if you keep walking on it.”

  “So I’ve been told.” He needed to get home quick. His questions for his brothers were piling up fast.

  “Ask Molly to tend it,” Martha suggested. “Finest healer I ever saw.”

  A healer too? Jack was starting to get dizzy trying to sort through such an onslaught of information. “Best get going, I guess.” If he left now, he could be home late that afternoon. “The livery still operating?”

  Martha nodded. “It is, but you can’t get a horse there. And even if you could, your brothers wouldn’t let you ride it up to the house. Brady’s got the ranch buttoned tight because of the epizootic.”

  Jack had heard about the devastation the horse flu had visited on various parts of the country but he hadn’t realized it had spread this far west. “Is it that bad?” A cattle ranch couldn’t operate without horses.

  “Here? So, so. At the ranch, nothing so far. That’s why the quarantine. So the ranch wouldn’t be infected. ‘No horses in, no horses out.’ And they’re backing that up with guns.”

  “Then how am I supposed to get to the ranch?” And to Elena?

  After a quick look around, Martha stepped closer. Dropping her voice to a whisper, she said, “If you can make it on foot, about three miles south of town is a small box canyon. Your brothers keep a few horses there to ride to and from the ranch. Curly and Bishop are nursemaiding them. You remember those two, don’t you?”

  “I do.” After thanking her for her help, he headed out. It was hard going on a crutch with his saddlebags over one shoulder and his rifle scabbard over the other. The added weight wore his arm down, and by the time he reached the canyon, his armpit was almost as raw as his temper.

  Curly and Bishop acted glad to see him. But after the initial effusive, backslapping, arm-pounding greetings, they seemed to run out of things to say. They didn’t appear to have changed much. But then maybe Jack’s own travels had matured him more than he’d thought.

  “Stay on the road,” Curly advised as he tightened the cinch on the lively chestnut gelding he was saddling for Jack. “We’ve got patrols out. If they catch you cutting across country, they’ll shoot your horse out from under you and ask questions later.”

  Bishop nodded in agreement. “B-B-Boss’s or-or-orders.”

  Some things hadn’t changed, Jack thought dryly. Such as Bishop’s stutter and Brady’s fondness for issuing orders ... the latter being one of the things he had missed the least over the last three years. “Seems a bit harsh,” he muttered, vaulting into the saddle rather than using the stirrup out of concern for his throbbing foot. “But I’ll stay on the road.”

  “Boss is just worried about his new crossbreeds,” Curly said, stepping back as the energetic gelding came around.

  “B-B-Boy, you sh-sh-should s-s-see ’em,” Bishop added with a grin. “Pur-Pur-Purtiest horses you ever s-saw.”

  As if Brady would settle for anything less.

  With a backward wave, Jack pointed the gelding south.

  After spending over four days in a swaying, jostling train car, he was glad to settle into the easy rhythm of a smooth-gaited horse. RosaRoja had always produced fine horses. In addition to being a hardheaded, interfering, bossy sonofabitch, his oldest brother was also an excellent judge of horseflesh.

  It was a beautiful day—everything green with the flush of early spring, trees stretching over a hundred feet high, puffy lint ball clouds hanging in a bright sky almost the same clear blue as the shallow waters off Australia. Jack had learned a lot about stars and clouds and wind from his months at sea, and today promised to be dry and calm. He enjoyed the quiet solitude of it, knowing as soon as he got home his peaceful moments would be over for a while.

  He had a lot of questions to ask.

  And a confrontation with Elena to get through.

  But first he would have to answer to his brothers for his long silence.

  In the beginning, after Elena’s operation and the long months of recovery, he had put off writing in the hopes that she would improve and he’d have better news. Then she caught religion. Not wanting to accept that, or admit to his brothers that he had been cast aside by the woman he’d chased all the way to California, he hadn’t written then either. He was the brother, after all, with the golden touch where women were concerned. Instead he’d unsuccessfully tried to sear away his bitter disappointment with red rye whiskey. After a month-long binge, he had sobered up enough to find himself out of money and almost married to a pretty woman he hardly knew. Not wanting to admit that either, he had hired onto the nearest clipper headed west and had spent the next two years trying to figure out what to do next.

  He was still trying to figure that out, which was why he was out on this lonely road right now, still chasing after a woman who didn’t want him, and riding back to the ranch he’d tried so hard to leave behind. Hell.

  Time passed with the steady clop of the horse’s hooves on the rocky path. Timber gave way to bare ridges. The ground grew damper, and here and there, tiny flowers pushed up through the last patches of snow clinging to shady crevices. This was the roughest section of the ranch, but also one of the most beautiful. Steep bald cliffs, deep canyons, tumbled boulders as big as houses. Formidable country. Country even Brady didn’t try to tame.

  Once he cleared the pass and headed down the long slope that led to the home valley, he began to feel impatient and excited. He loved this place, loved the wildness of it, the starkness of upthrust rock and eroded spires. He loved the clean smell of juniper, sweet cactus blooms, and sharp-scented creosote. He loved the sound of wind through pine needles, the taste of cool alkaline water after a long hot day, the sense of smallness that overcame him when he looked at the mountains. He loved it all. He just couldn’t live here. He needed something ... else.

  Maybe this time his brothers would accept that.

  It was late afternoon when he rode out of the trees and onto the rolling flats that were the heart of the ranch. Twice as long as it was wide, the dished basin stretched for miles from one rising slope to the other. Yet as he rode slowly across it, the valley seemed smaller than he remembered.

  Maybe it was because he’d spent so many months at sea, where the horizon hung at the far edge of the world, flat and undisturbed. Unconfining. Here, the mountains brought it closer, creating a looming barrier that reduced vision to a few miles and blotted out almost half of the sky. Yet, strangely, that old feeling of entrapment wasn’t as strong as it had been when he’d left. Probably because he’d escaped this country once, and he knew if he had to, he could do it again. Smiling, he kicked the horse into a lope. Or maybe he was just homesick and glad to be back.

  He could see the house from two miles away. It was a monster and looked more like a grand hotel than a home. Rising a full three stories, it was all log and stone, with a broad covered porch sweeping across the front. He figured Brady must have designed it. Having a deep aversion to confined spaces, his brother had always been partial to big open structures.

  Carl Langley came to meet him as he rode up, a wide grin splitting his grizzled features. “Well, I’ll be. You finally came home.” His grin folded into a frown when he saw the crutch. “What happened?” he asked, holding the restive gelding as Jack slid down onto his good foot.

  “Long story. Where is everybody?”

  “Eating. Your brothers expecting you?”

  “Thought I’d surprise them.”

  “Lots of surprises this week.”

  Jack gave the older man a sharp look. “Oh?”

  “Miss—Sister—Elena’s here too.”

  “Is she?” Jack tried to sound unconcerned, but knowing she was so close set his heart pounding.

  “You know she’s a nun?” Langley asked.

  “I do.” So she hadn’t changed her mind. He hadn’t really expected her to, but had still nurtured a spark of hop
e. Hiding his disappointment, he headed up the porch steps on his crutch. “Tell the boys I’ll stop by the bunkhouse later to give my hellos.”

  “They’ll be glad to see you.”

  He entered quietly then followed the sound of voices across a huge open room, past a long, empty dining table, and through a deep archway that opened into a kitchen as large as a clipper’s forecastle.

  And there they were, all the faces he remembered. And a lot he didn’t.

  And Elena.

  A warm, tight feeling surged through him.

  Unnoticed, he paused for a moment in the shadows of the arched doorway, struggling to bring his emotions under control. Then he took a deep breath and stepped into the room. “Anything left for me?”

  Stunned silence. Then the room erupted into a tumultuous uproar as people rushed toward him—Jessica crying and laughing and hugging him, Brady pounding him on the back, Hank grinning and shoving a pretty woman in his face, Consuelo jabbering, a stern-faced old Scottish fellow speaking with such a strong accent Jack didn’t know if he was being greeted or cursed, kids everywhere, and Elena ... observing quietly from her chair, a joyful yet sad smile on her face.

  He was home.

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN,” BRADY SAID.

  The kids were long in bed, and the women had retired after a rowdy evening catching up on all the news. Now Jack and Brady sat in stuffed leather chairs in Hank’s office sipping aged Scotch whiskey from tiny crystal glasses, while Hank hunched over his desk, tinkering with something that looked like two hoops with a wheel spinning in the middle. Jack still hadn’t had a chance to talk to Elena.

  Slumping back against the cushions, Jack propped his sore foot on the corner of Hank’s desk and enjoyed the smooth slide of fine whiskey down his throat.

  No jug of Buck’s home brew now. No coarse laughter or plinking guitar music drifting out of the nearby bunkhouse. No whiffling snore from a rank-smelling hound dog dozing at their feet.

  Now they were rich. Now they were living in this overbuilt, sprawling, doily-laden home that his brothers had built on the ashes of destruction. Now it was all fine bone china and silver teapots and women’s soft laughter.