Riders on the Storm

by Rob Blackwell

  He eyed her impassively. She wondered if it was possible to surprise him.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “We’re going to rob the U.S. government.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “When Pearl Hart was arrested for robbing a stage coach in 1899, she told the judge, ‘I shall not consent to be tried under a law which my sex had no voice in making.’ This bold tactic didn’t work, and she was sentenced to prison. Still, her crimes made her so famous that she was eventually pardoned after serving only 18 months.”

  — Jessie Berry, “Overlooked Women of History,” 2016

  They left early the next morning and covered nearly thirty miles that day. Jules hated to push Onyx so hard, but time was against them.

  She’d stopped on the way out of town, finding one of her father’s hidden storehouses on the outskirts of town. He had a small safe hidden beneath a loose floorboard of an ostensibly abandoned house. Jules had hurriedly stored the keys there, making sure that nobody saw what she was doing. Normally, she would have kept them close, but her plan was risky—and there was every reason to expect she might get caught. If that happened, she didn’t want the U.S. government to have the keys. She’d never see them again.

  They’d traveled north across the grasslands, making decent time. Jules had studied the map before she left.

  The route between Fort Lincoln, on the eastern end of the Dakota Territory, and Fort Curtis, clear across the west, was mostly open plain, but it passed through a canyon.

  She’d traveled up that way before. If memory served, the trail was buttressed on both sides by high rock faces. It was the perfect place to set an ambush. Even with only three people and a long rifle, she guessed she could spook the driver if she could find an appropriate vantage.

  She wouldn’t even need to kill him or the soldiers guarding the pay. If she could make the soldiers believe there was a sufficient force in the area, they were likely to retreat. If she damaged the stage coach badly enough, they’d have to leave it — and the loot — behind.

  Her plan had drawbacks. If the soldiers stood and fought, they could likely repel any attack. And, of course, she had to get to the canyon before the stagecoach did. Without knowing exactly when they would arrive, that meant she had to hurry.

  When she told Miranda and Luke her plan that evening at the campfire, Miranda ignored her entirely, turning in early after cooking their meal. Luke asked all the right questions, and appeared to have no hesitation about taking on an armed squad of professional soldiers.

  “You’ve done this before,” she said, not making it into a question.

  “Robbed a paymaster?” Luke said, cocking an eyebrow. “No. But I’ve stolen from soldiers before.”

  She waited for him to elaborate, but he wasn’t forthcoming.

  “What’s your story?” she asked.

  His dark eyes met hers. She knew he was probably only in his late forties, but those eyes seemed older. They’d seen a lot. She guessed much of it was unpleasant.

  “Came west looking for work,” he said.

  He took a bite of jerky he’d fished out of their supplies. Once again, she waited for him to say more, but nothing came.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Virginia,” he replied.

  It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. Slavery had been outlawed not twenty years earlier.

  “You were a slave?”

  “A long time ago.”

  His eyes suggested it hadn’t been that long to him, however many years had passed.

  “What did you do?”

  “Worked the fields,” he said, and she saw in his eyes it was a lie. She didn’t press him on it.

  “I meant when you left,” Jules said.

  He shrugged. “This and that.”

  “How’d you end up a tracker?”

  “Fell into it.”

  “You’re not much of a conversationalist, Luke.”

  “Nope.”

  Jules stoked the fire with a stick and watched the sparks fly. She got to the question she really wanted to ask.

  “Why are you coming with us?”

  He nodded, as if he’d known all along she’d been driving this direction. She supposed subtlety had never been her strong suit.

  “You offered me double pay,” he said.

  She smiled. “I paid you for your help at the bank and with Gilroy already. And you can’t tell me the prospect of more money is enough to walk into certain death. When we said we were going to the Maelstrom, I thought you’d bolt. But you barely reacted.”

  “I’ve never been spooked much by ghost stories. Seen enough real terror in this world.”

  “It’s not a story, Luke. The things that live there are the real terror—you’ve killed them yourself. No amount of money could be worth this.”

  He set his jaw, fixing her with a stare for a long time. She’d learned enough about him in the past five minutes not to look away.

  “The truth of it is I’m curious. I’ve been curious about the Maelstrom since I came out here.”

  “Which was when?”

  “A while ago,” he replied.

  “That’s it? You know what they say? Care killed a cat.”

  “Didn’t realize you knew Shakespeare.”

  Jules was surprised. “Didn’t know it was.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Luke said.

  And that was apparently all he wanted to say on the matter. She looked at him for a while, but he shortly thereafter lay down on his bedroll and went to sleep.

  Jules was left to think. She wasn’t sure she believed him. Perhaps Luke wasn’t to be trusted after all. What kind of a man would risk his life on an errand such as this?

  She looked at the night sky and found no answers.

  *****

  In the morning, they made a quick breakfast and headed out, again driving the horses as hard as Jules dared. By afternoon, she could see the canyon in the distance. It loomed large on the horizon, a break from the relative evenness of the land before them.

  The rocks grew larger as they rode, towering over them by the time they reached them at nightfall.

  There was no sign of the paymaster’s stage coach. That was either a very good sign or very bad one. But after scouting for a bit, Luke reported there was no sign of recent travelers.

  Jules couldn’t have been more pleased with their position. The canyon wall had a small break in it that led to the main trail, which ran along a dried river bed. The trail followed it for only a few miles, but while anyone traveled along it, there would be no place for them to go. High canyon walls, red tinged from the dirt and clay, stood guard along each side.

  It was getting dark, but Jules strapped a rifle on her back and climbed up into the canyon rocks, aiming to find an outcropping. She found one thirty feet up leading to rock that jutted out over the canyon. She could see for miles up and down the canyon walls from there.

  “Hello!” she shouted. The sound bounced off the rocks, and she could hear her call echo for a few seconds. She smiled to herself. It should be easy to make it sound like there were dozens of Indians hiding up here.

  She climbed down again to get their supplies. They made camp on a narrow ledge up in the canyon, one that couldn’t be seen by any who might happen nearby. Having ridden all night, they were too tired to talk to each other and went straight to bed as soon as the sun was down.

  When they awoke the next morning, Miranda appeared listless and distracted. She made breakfast over a small fire, the sun breaking beautifully across the canyon. But Miranda held her fingers to her temple, rubbing them distractedly.

  “You okay?” Jules asked.

  Miranda smiled weakly at her, opened her mouth to say something, and then slipped and fell. Jules grabbed her before she collapsed to the canyon floor.

  She started convulsing. Jules screamed for help, her call echoing throughout the canyon. Luke, who’d been feeding the horses, came scrambling up to their camp.

  Mir
anda’s body was wracked with spams before abruptly becoming still. Her eyes briefly fluttered and then snapped open.

  “Miranda!” Jules said. “Are you okay? You scared me half—“

  “I see you,” her sister said in a voice that was not her own.

  The voice was deep and guttural, and it sounded like maybe ten people speaking in unison.

  “Miranda?”

  “I see you,” she said again in the same voice.

  A chill ran down Jules’ spine. Miranda’s eyes had turned jet black. Her expression was twisted and cruel.

  “What are you?” Jules asked, sure something had taken hold of her sister.

  “Salvation,” the cold voice answered. “Behold, witness, we bring you tidings of joy. The world is being cleansed of its wickedness, freed from its misery.”

  “Whatever you are, get out of my sister,” Jules said.

  She meant it as a warning, though she had no idea how to carry through on any threat.

  “She is a thief who steals in the night,” the voice answered. “She comes where she should not.”

  “If you want to punish a thief, I’m your girl,” Jules said. “Leave her out of this!”

  Miranda sat bolt upright, a sudden motion that caused Jules to jump back in alarm. Instinctively, she wanted to aim her gun at her sister, but didn’t dare.

  “I see you,” the voice said. “I see you.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that,” Jules said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

  She stared into the deep pool of blackness of her sister’s eyes.

  “We come as the promise of old,” Miranda said. “We return to cleanse this land, spreading across it like fire. We are heralds of a new age, where men will live no more.”

  Miranda’s lips curled into a ghastly smile and she fell backwards again. Jules caught her before her head hit the ground. Her sister’s eyes fluttered again, and when they opened, Jules was relieved to see they’d returned to dark brown. But Miranda was shaking.

  Jules pulled her close, holding her. After a moment, she could hear weeping. She pulled back, looking at Miranda’s face. Her sister had tears on her cheeks and looked more terrified than Jules had ever seen her.

  “Oh God, Jules,” she said. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

  “It’s okay, Mira,” Jules said. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

  Miranda’s eyes met hers.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no, no. We’re not safe. No one is. They’re coming, Jules.”

  “Who?” Jules asked, though she had a sinking feeling she knew who she was talking about.

  “The Vipers,” Miranda replied. “I saw them issuing forth, the storm growing bigger and bigger until it encompassed the whole earth. They came out of the mountain like a plague. They are a second flood, Jules, sent to drown us all.”

  Her sister started weeping again. Jules looked back at Luke to see what he made of all of this, but he appeared strangely distracted. He was looking out across the canyon.

  “Luke?” she asked inquiringly, wondering what could pull him away from a situation like this.

  Luke raised his hand in a gesture to be silent and Jules immediately stopped talking. He yanked a spyglass from his pocket and lay down on the ridge.

  “Are you okay?” Jules whispered to her sister, who nodded but said nothing out loud.

  Jules gently lay her down and crawled over to the spot where Luke lay. He handed her the spyglass without a word.

  There was a cloud of dust on the trail in the distance. For a moment, she was hopeful it was their target. But this was no stagecoach with armed escort.

  Instead, it appeared to be a group of six riders. She watched them as they grew close, hoping they would be miners, settlers or anyone with business other than the one she had in mind.

  But she thought she recognized the lead horse, a white mare with a distinctive black spot on its front that looked like an ink stain. The rider wore a bandanna over his face, but she could see who he was by his shape and bulk.

  Her heart sank. The rider was all too familiar.

  It was Rezzor and what remained of her father’s gang.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Trent Castle had his own band of outlaws. The most notable member of his gang was Rezzor Thompson. His real first name was Eugene, but it was considered dangerous to call him that. Rezzor was bold, but unlike his leader, he earned a reputation for brutality. It’s said he once beat an unarmed bank guard to death with a rock just because he wanted to. He was also uncommonly crafty. He was that unfortunate combination of wiles and sadism that plagued settlers, Native Americans and anyone else who got in his way.”

  — Stephen Kaper, “Legends of the Old West,” 2015

  Jules swore under her breath. She handed the spyglass back to Luke.

  “Is that who I think it is?” he asked.

  Jules nodded. She hoped Rezzor would pass through the canyon, but she knew that wasn’t likely. He was probably after the same paymaster load that she was. If so, he would have taken one look at the map and assessed the same thing she did. This was the best play for an ambush.

  Damn, why could nothing ever be easy in this world? It wasn’t enough that she was going up against a dozen soldiers with only three men, now she had to have Rezzor’s gang in the mix. Unless…

  She looked at Luke, gesturing toward the rifle on his back.

  “Take up a position here,” she said. “When I raise my finger in the air, do something dramatic without killing or wounding anyone.”

  He nodded and she turned back to Miranda. Color had returned to her face, and she seemed better than just a few minutes earlier. Satisfied that she was okay, Jules started to move away, intending to scramble down off the rock.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Miranda asked.

  “What, you want to make more dark pronouncements before I go? Maybe tell me that we’re all doomed again? It’d be a great sendoff.”

  Miranda grabbed her arm. “Is that Rezzor out there?”

  “Yes, and if you don’t let me go, I’ll be late for my meeting with him.”

  “You’re meeting with him?” she asked.

  Jules nodded, while Miranda shook her head. “I know that look in your eye. You’re going to do something crazy.”

  “Stars alive, Mira, that doesn’t sound like me at all.”

  Jules smirked at her as she climbed back over the cliff edge and descended to the canyon floor below.

  She found Onyx nearby, mounted her, and rode around the side of the canyon to a narrow passageway she’d found in the rocks when she’d scouted the place the night before.

  By the time she’d passed through and reached the trail, Rezzor and his men had already ridden past. He was pointing up to the opposite ridge on the right, clearly planning to take up a position there.

  Jules whistled loudly, the sound echoing through the canyon. Rezzor turned immediately, took one look in her direction, and rode hard toward her. His men followed suit, taking up a position behind him.

  Jules didn’t look up to see if Luke was watching. Doing so would have given him away. She’d just have to trust he’d be there when she needed.

  Rezzor stopped his horse a few feet from hers. Behind him, his men drew their weapons. Rezzor gestured for them to lower them.

  “Well, well, well, the prodigal daughter returns,” Rezzor said, his voice somewhat muffled by the bandanna he wore.

  He lowered it a moment later, giving her a clear look at his ragged face. Rezzor was in his late thirties, with a lanky form that belied his strength and aggressiveness. He might not have looked particularly intimidating except for an ugly red scar on the right side of his face just below his eye.

  He wore a black cowboy hat over an unruly mat of black hair. He was dressed in tan buckskin leggings and a matching coat with fringe. Rezzor’s brown eyes stared at her intensely.

  “And what’s your business on this fine spring day?” Jules said, glancing br
iefly at the blue sky overhead.

  “The same as yours, I expect,” Rezzor said. “We’re expecting visitors within a few hours.”

  Jules was relieved to hear the paymaster was that close. She’d had a nagging worry that they’d arrived at the canyon too late.

  “As it happens, you are correct,” she said. “I’m waiting on them myself.”

  Rezzor nodded. “Where’s my key, Jules? Gilroy said you weren’t very kind to him when he asked politely.”

  Jules eyed the men behind Rezzor, but didn’t spot Gilroy among them.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  Rezzor only smiled in return. “On an errand.”

  Jules frowned. She didn’t like the way Rezzor was grinning at her, or whatever Gilroy might be up to. It might be nothing, but it made her uneasy.

  “I hope it’s nothing complicated,” she replied. “That man couldn’t find the moon on a cloudless night.”

  Rezzor didn’t respond directly, but shook his head.

  “Is there a reason I shouldn’t shoot you? You’ve become quite the thorn in my side, Jules.”

  She smiled back at him.

  “If you shoot me here, you’ll never get your precious key back,” Jules said. “And you’ll pass up a different kind of opportunity.”

  Rezzor nodded as she’d said exactly what he was expecting.

  “Get to the point, girl,” he said.

  “I’m suggesting we strike an alliance,” Jules said. “For the time being. There are at least a dozen soldiers headed our way, and you could do with a few extra men.”

  One of the men behind him laughed at that, but Rezzor held up a single finger and the laughter died immediately.

  “I’m the best shot in the world and you know it,” Jules said.

  “The world, now? Last time I heard you brag on yourself, it was just the Dakota Territory,” Rezzor replied.

  “Modesty has never been one of my sins,” Jules said sweetly. “You’ve seen me shoot enough times. You put me on the ridge to the right, and you know we’ll come out on top. I’ll disable the stagecoach first, you can fire on the guards. They’ll flee.”

  “I wasn’t planning on letting them escape, Jules,” Rezzor said, smiling coldly. “Never could understand why your daddy sometimes let men go.”