A Man with a Past

by Mary Connealy

  When he heard the hammer click on an empty gun, he leapt up and charged the man, who was still yelling like a lunatic.

  Falcon had a notion of what he looked like by the sheer horror on the man’s face. He knew he had strange fiery golden-brown eyes. Eyes that he’d been told could go wild and mad.

  Ma had called him a berserker. She had talked of such in her family history and said he had the blood of Viking warriors in his veins.

  The man’s screams dropped to whimpers. Falcon slammed a fist into his face to shut him up. He jerked the knife out of the man’s leg and wiped it on the Tree Climber’s pants. He added it to the saddlebag he still carried.

  Then he stripped the man of his guns and knives. Tied him up and dragged him to where the other man lay, still out cold.

  Studying the two, he had no idea what to do about them.

  He could take them to the sheriff, but Falcon had bested them at every turn. If anything, he’d attacked them.

  They’d followed him. They’d taken their shots. They’d threatened him.

  But were they men a sheriff would hold? They’d done him no harm, despite making a good effort. And Falcon had done them plenty.

  A chill ran down his spine as he thought of stories he’d heard of men who had the ear of a sheriff. Such things happened up in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he’d grown up. Family roots ran deep, and a lawman might turn against an honest man and fight for kinfolk. For certain he’d do it if it was a choice between kin and a stranger.

  Grimly unsure, Falcon pondered it for a while, even sat on the ground and ate some jerky while he thought it over.

  Neither of them showed any sign of waking up. He wasn’t sure what he’d ask them if they did. The only real question he could come up with was, Why in tarnation did you pick me to rob?

  They were breathing steadily, and he figured they’d live. He’d never killed a man before, but he’d fought plenty. He was known for fighting at the drop of a hat. And he’d been known to drop the hat himself.

  Someone always needed a lickin’ back home. He’d hoped the world outside his Blue Ridge Mountains were a sight more peaceable.

  Just now he wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful.

  The day was wearing on, and he wanted to get on down the trail. He figured when these two woke up, they might be right behind him again.

  Finally, he decided to hand out his own kind of justice. He took the men’s guns, nice ones. Frisked them more carefully and took a hideout knife that’d come in handy.

  He even took one of their store-bought holsters. A sight better than Falcon’s handmade one.

  He found a leather pouch full of coins in one of the men’s pockets. The other man had a bit of cash money, too. And of course, they both had horses. They’d soon fight free of their bonds, but they’d be hard-pressed to ride after him without horses. There was a brand on the critters, not the same one on each. Falcon had no notion of what the brands might mean, who they’d be connected to. Well, he’d find out if the brands were trouble when he tried to sell them, but he wouldn’t get to that until he’d put plenty of miles between him and these would-be killers.

  About the time he scouted out their horses and gathered up the reins, figuring to search the saddlebags later and keep the leather along with the horses, Harvey came meandering down the trail. Falcon strung the two new horses end to end behind Harvey and rode on.

  He usually set up camp before dark but not tonight. Falcon set out to put some miles between him and those two sleepy men. Maybe even a whole state.

  He rode into the night a much richer man.

  THREE

  He kept the animals with him all the way to Omaha. There he’d gotten decent money for the horses and other things he’d taken from the men. Except he kept a six-gun and a rifle for himself and sold his own single-shot rifle and the ancient pistol that was a breechloader.

  He couldn’t shake the itch of concern between his shoulder blades ever since he’d snared those two men, so he decided to take the train west rather than ride Harvey. With some serious second thoughts, he sold Harvey to a nice family that pulled a cart delivering supplies from their general store. He expected that Harvey would be treated well.

  He had money enough after his train ticket to buy a horse when he got where he was going.

  He boarded the train, gritting his teeth against the roaring engine and the blasting whistle.

  Stowing his bedroll and satchel beside him, he sat down. They said he’d be in Casper, Wyoming, tomorrow or the next day. Train travel was a wonder.

  He’d planned on taking most of the summer to get there.

  As he relaxed onto the wooden bench, he thought of Patsy and how she would have enjoyed this train ride. She’d always been a curious girl, ready for adventure. Though in the Blue Ridge Mountains the closest they came to adventure was riding over the ridge to see her folks.

  Back home, it was a twenty-mile ride on Harvey to reach a trading post. And since there wasn’t much Falcon couldn’t catch or build himself, he didn’t make the ride any more’n he could help it.

  A peddler came through pulling a brightly painted cart once or twice a year and carried more than anyone might need.

  Falcon had had a good life. A sturdy cabin, plenty of food, and a pretty wife who was quick with a smile and seemed to love him.

  And then Patsy had died.

  And her folks blamed him.

  Why wouldn’t they? He blamed himself.

  But havin’ a baby was as natural a part of living as breathing, and no healthy, happily married man and wife were gonna do naught but bring young’uns into the world.

  Patsy Sulky Hunt was the prettiest girl Falcon had ever seen. Blond and blue eyed. Smart too. That woman could find a possum in an apple tree, fetch the food home, and make everything up into a stew and a cobbler without hardly anyone knowin’ she’d been gone.

  She’d been the shinin’ light of his life. And she’d died in his arms.

  When Patsy died, the babe went with her. And Falcon’s heart went right on along.

  Then her menfolk came around, ragin’ mad. Falcon figured they’d shoot him, and he wasn’t much inclined to object. He was that sad. That weary of the thought of years stretching out before him without his Patsy.

  It must’ve been why he just plumb turned himself over to the Sulkys. And his not fighting back had saved him.

  After swingin’ a fist or two . . . or twenty . . . they saw he was like to just stand there while they beat him to death, and that must’ve taken any satisfaction out of it for ’em.

  Or maybe they could just see his broken heart—which matched their own.

  They headed on home and told him not to come around ever again.

  Falcon’s ma had died years ago, and he’d lived in that dirt-floor cabin that clung to the side of the mountain alone. He’d lived the kind of life where a boy got tough or died, and Falcon got tough. He was strong as a herd of bulls and mean as a badger.

  And then he’d met Patsy.

  She’d tamed the mean out of him and liked the rest. A strong, savvy woman to match him.

  A big strapping woman but not strong enough to bear his child, which meant he dare not ever have another, as no woman was going to be bigger and stronger than Patsy.

  And he’d been taken into Patsy’s family. When she died, he lost her family along with her.

  Before he’d more than healed from the beating, before he’d figured out how to go on living alone again, a rider came to his cabin carrying a telegram—and the rider was good enough to read it to him. That telegram tore loose everything he’d thought he knew about his raisin’.

  A telegram telling him he owned part of a ranch in Wyoming. Left to him by his pa.

  His pa who’d been dead, as far as Falcon knew, for twenty-some years. He’d sure enough been gone that long. A letter had come, back before Ma died, with the news of Pa’s passing. Falcon was sure of it, but it was a vague memory, something his ma spoke of now and th
en.

  But here was Pa newly dead again and owning a ranch. Part of it to go to his son Falcon. To share with his brother in Wyoming. Another family.

  It was a stab to his already bruised heart to think Pa had gone off to find a family he liked more’n the one here in Tennessee. Had another son. Probably hoping to do better.

  Well, Falcon wasn’t in any frame of mind to hurt even more.

  Instead of taking that stab like he’d taken the beating, he got mad.

  The mad in Falcon overcame the broken heart over Patsy, or at least distracted him from it. He actually owned the cabin he’d grown up in and had a few fixin’s. He sold what he could and scraped together a bit of money.

  Without speaking to a soul beyond those he sold to—who else was there to speak to?—he decided to claim his land and start a new life far away from this place of sadness, all the while wondering what exactly a ranch was.

  He made up a bedroll and packed all the food he could gather. He had a change of clothes besides the ones on his back. Then, because he knew he faced a long hard trail, he strapped his rifle gun on his shoulder, and his pistol on his hip and gathered every bullet he owned and the mold for making new ones. Finally, he saddled Harvey and set out for a place called Bear Claw Pass, Wyoming.

  Mad as a rabid skunk, he rode across the country, aiming first for Independence, Missouri, and planning to follow the Oregon Trail to Wyoming. Once he got there, he could talk to the lawyer, some fella by the name of Randall Kingston, from Casper, who’d sent the telegram. He’d ask Kingston where the Rolling Hills Ranch was and get a few more details about his new life.

  Now, instead of a long ride on Harvey, he’d bought a ticket. The train was going straight to Casper, and the conductor would let him know when it was time to get off.

  He settled in to ride this rattling train across two states in two days.

  FOUR

  Falcon climbed off the train in Bear Claw Pass, glad to be on ground that wasn’t rolling.

  “Pa, is that you?”

  Falcon’s head snapped around. He raised his eyes to meet a brown-headed man an inch or so shorter than him, with eyes that were all too familiar. Even a man without a mirror knew his own eyes when he looked at ’em. They were a strange light brown with stripes of gold.

  The man was mighty confused if he thought someone mostly his own age was his pa. “I ain’t no one’s pa, mister.”

  “Of course you’re not. You must be Wyatt Hunt. I’m Kevin. Your . . . your . . . your b-brother from Kansas.”

  “I ain’t Wyatt Hunt, neither.” Kevin? A brother from Kansas? Falcon hadn’t been told of any brother in Kansas in this mess. “I’m here to meet Wyatt Hunt.”

  Kevin stared blankly at him. Falcon narrowed his eyes and repeated, “I’m here to meet Wyatt Hunt, my brother.”

  “If Wyatt is your brother, and he’s my brother, then . . .”

  A young woman and a younger boy, both blond as sunlight, started talking at Kevin.

  Clomping boots on the train station platform accompanied a new voice, one with a strange drawl. “I reckon we’re all three brothers.”

  Falcon turned. So did the others.

  They faced a tall, lean man with overlong brown hair clamped down with a Stetson.

  No sign of Pa in this man—except those same eyes. Ma had called them hazel.

  “I’m Wyatt Hunt.” The man with the clomping boots tugged his Stetson as if in greeting, but nothing in his expression was welcoming.

  Falcon wasn’t an educated man. No school within walking distance of his cabin. But he wasn’t stupid. He stood right now with the pure truth of his father being more than an abandoning liar. He was also a low-down cheat.

  “So y’all need help buryin’ Pa?” Falcon asked. “I’d be glad to tamp down the dirt hard enough to break both his legs.”

  ———

  No help needed for a burying, but Falcon got himself a ride out to the ranch he now owned. A ride with a bossy woman Wyatt had brought along to town, while Kevin got to ride his own horse, just like a real grown-up.

  But that bossy woman, he’d heard her called Win. Odd name . . . of course his name was the same as a bird, so he’d probably best not judge. . . . Win had declared there were horses by the dozen at this ranch he’d inherited, and a third of them would be his, so it’d be dumb to buy a horse.

  She liked to sass, but he took some satisfaction in seeing she tended to only do it with him when she was out of reach.

  He’d never hurt no woman, but this one he didn’t mind scaring a little.

  He rode in the back end of the wagon, his satchel, bedroll, and rifle to hand. They traveled through a scattered herd of black cows most all the way out to the Rolling Hills Ranch, and all were part of the Hunt herd. Falcon was figuring out what a ranch was, but it made no sense to him. A man needed one horse. If he was ambitious, he might have a packhorse, too, but Falcon had little enough to pack. Enough cows to give a man meat and milk . . . and all the rest was for show.

  A ranch seemed to be some strange possession meant to gather up more money than a man could spend in a lifetime. And that was before arriving at the fancy house, big enough for a family of ten . . . downstairs. Who cut the wood to heat this thing?

  There was a large barn no one should need if he had a reasonable number of horses and cows. And other smaller buildings he heard called a bunkhouse and a foreman’s house. A ramrod’s house . . . what in tarnation was a ramrod? It sounded like something a man used to whack pesky intruders over the head.

  And that’s where he got told to sleep.

  Being told where to ride. Being told he didn’t need his own horse. Now being told where to sleep.

  It made him feel like a child. More than that, it told him he wasn’t good enough for their fancy house. Like an unwanted guest. And likely that described him pretty well. Might even be fair.

  Didn’t mean he liked it.

  He walked into his assigned house and dropped off his bedroll. He took a smaller fur bag out of his satchel, slinging it over his head and across his torso, and headed straight for the hills. He considered asking about a horse, but Wyatt had taken off, and the only people here were as much guests as him.

  Didn’t matter. He liked stretching his legs. And those mountains called to him. As he hiked, he headed for the high ground. He wanted to just keep going. Never come back. If he had it to do over, he’d’ve brought his satchel and bedroll along. Now he had ’em to fetch sometime, elsewise he might never have gone back.

  He found a likely trail on an uphill slope, leading into thick woods. They called to him like he was a horned owl looking for the treetops. When those trees closed over his head, he felt like he could breathe for the first time since he left the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  Oh, it was mighty different. In the mountains back home, everything bloomed. There were flowers everywhere in the spring and summer. For a time, as he walked along, he was homesick enough he couldn’t enjoy this land. He’d come from a cabin set back in a near forest of mountain laurels. His home was on a ridge, and along it strung azaleas and rhododendrons. The trees bloomed as big and beautiful as the bushes. And tucked beneath the bushes were wildflowers in every color and size.

  Here in these mountains, it was all leafed-out oaks and maples and cottonwoods. He recognized them. And the pine trees with their clean smell. But there were other trees he didn’t know. Clumps of trees, tall and skinny, with leaves on them that danced in the wind, almost like the whole tree quaked.

  He wondered about the animals. He’d heard tell of grizzly bears and elk with huge racks of antlers. And deer, mule deer much bigger than the deer back home.

  There were big cats. He had mountain lions back home, but he’d heard these were bigger. Meaner.

  He knew people liked to brag up their own land, so he only believed about half of what he’d heard. But he kept his eyes wide open just the same, lest a grizzly taller than a man came roaring at him from the forest.

  Th
ere were differences aplenty, but he let loose of missing home to take on the exploring. As he did, the new hills and trees eased a lot of his temper. It would be easy to just walk on forever. Find new lands. Find an empty wilderness, build a cabin, and never come back. Never have to face the angry people back at the Rolling Hills Ranch.

  Not sure what he’d do, he settled in to walk. He was a long-legged galoot with tireless strength. He could set a fast pace and keep it up for hours. He had his rifle over his shoulder and a pistol on his hip, he wasn’t careless enough to leave them behind. He could live forever out here. He’d hunt up a few rabbits or catch some fish if he found a stream, roast a meal, sleep, then just go on and on, up into the hills.

  He could hunt his clothes, bring down a couple of deer, and build a shelter from downed trees and stones. He could live up here for good.

  As he walked, he thought of how Kevin had asked, “Pa, is that you?”

  It dug at him. It’d always just been him and his ma. Her folks were long gone. Pa had taken off. And they were a long way from neighbors. Ma had never talked much about Pa ’ceptin’ he was dead. Though she had told him he looked like his father.

  But then, she’d died before Falcon was full grown. He’d thought little enough of looking like his pa after that. But even before she died, she hadn’t talked of him much. The two of them were busy diggin’ a living out of that hardscrabble mountain dirt. A garden was hard to bring along. They always managed it, but it took both of them working long days to raise and put up enough food for the winter. There wasn’t much time for spinning yarns about a man who’d deserted them.

  If a third of this land was his—and who could know where the boundaries lay?—then maybe he could have a stretch up here.

  He didn’t see any cows. Would they pasture cattle on a mountainside? They raised cows in the mountains of Tennessee. Not huge herds, but a milk cow or two could live on this rugged land. He wanted to be farther from all of them than this, but it just might work to be up here.