A Coffin for Santa Rosa (4 page)

No shots were fired.

‘Reckon they’re gone.’

‘Momma was right,’ Raven said after a pause. ‘Trouble follows you around like a lonely shadow.’

‘Don’t dispute that.’

‘Know what else she said?’

‘Maybe you should keep it to yourself.’

‘Said I should always listen to you, and could trust you with my life.’

‘Let’s hope it never comes to that.’

‘It just did and you lied to me. Why?’

Gabriel, deciding it was safe, slid out from under the wagon.

Raven immediately crawled out and stood up beside him.’I asked you a question, Gabe. Why’d you lie to me?’

‘Figured you had enough on your mind.’

‘In other words, you didn’t think I could handle it?’

His tight-lipped silence told her she was right.

‘Now who’s varying? First you tell me I’m responsible an’ next you won’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.’

She was right. What could he say?

Angry, she stared him in the eye. ‘Don’t ever lie to me again, all right? Otherwise, I swear I’ll never trust you. Ever.’

Gabriel looked at her, at her boyish innocent face, her big black eyes so full of grit and determination, her full-lipped mouth that smiled easily yet revealed her stubbornness, and knew she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

‘Got my word on it, scout.’ He stuck out his hand.

Raven continued looking into his light-blue eyes for another moment, as if trying to decide if he meant what he said, and then shook hands.

Up till then she had held her emotions in check. But now, as if overwhelmed by the whole experience, her lower lip trembled.

‘I sure could use a hug,’ she said, fighting tears.

She didn’t have to ask twice.

He hugged her like it was the last time he’d ever see her.

That night they made camp in a remote, sheltered gully.

While Gabriel built a fire Raven went off and killed a rabbit with her slingshot. They roasted it over the flames and ate it for supper. When they were finished, Raven threw the bones and carcass out in the desert for the scavengers, leaving Gabriel to water the horses.

When it came time to bed down, he hobbled the Morgan and built the fire up in case the bushwhackers returned and tried to jump them. He then took the first watch and told Raven he’d wake her in three hours.

‘You won’t forget, will you,’ she said skeptically.

‘Gave you my word I wouldn’t lie to you again, didn’t I?’

Raven nodded, satisfied. Kissing him on the cheek, she yawned, said goodnight and curled up in her blanket beside the fire.

Gabriel refilled his mug with coffee, fired a smoke and leaned back against his saddle to contemplate his future. Now that he had Raven to look after he could no longer go through life not caring what happened to him. He had to stay alive, no matter what, until she was old enough to look after herself. That meant they had to get Ingrid buried, return to Deming and board a train for California as fast as possible – all the time hoping that no more bounty hunters recognized him from the reward posters scattered throughout New Mexico, Texas and Arizona.

A coyote yip-yipped in the darkness, interrupting his thoughts.

Gabriel looked at Raven asleep in her blanket. Just the sight of her made him feel good. But it also reminded him of her mother, Ingrid, and that didn’t feel so good.

Rising, he went to the wagon. The pine coffin looked pale and lonely in the flickering firelight. Sadly he placed his hand on it, the wood feeling damp to his touch, and thought about the dead woman inside. Fate had thrown them together under the most unlikely of circumstances and now he was responsible for her daughter.

At first he’d thought Raven would be a burden, a nuisance even, but in fact the very opposite was true: having her around not only gave him comfort but added purpose to his life and now he couldn’t imagine being without her.

‘You miss her, don’t you?’

He turned and saw Raven sitting up, watching him from her blanket.

‘What’re you doin’ awake?’

‘Was having a nightmare. This big ol’ black bear was chasing me and…. You do, don’t you?’ she repeated. ‘Miss Momma, I mean?’

‘More’n I reckoned on.’

‘Me, too. Lots.’

Feeling her pain, Gabriel came and hunkered down beside her.

‘It’s too late now, I know,’ she continued, ‘but I wish I’d been nicer to her. Momma always loved me and treated me fairly – even when I didn’t deserve it – and I never realized that until she … till it was too late.’

‘Only natural. All part of bein’ a young’un. When I was growin’ up I never thought much of my pa—’

She wasn’t listening. ‘You don’t know this, Gabe, but I used to hate Momma and be mean to her.’

Gabriel remembered Ingrid saying that she was having problems with Raven, but decided not to mention it. ‘Must’ve
thought you had a reason.’

‘Sure – on account of how Dad got killed. I blamed Momma for it. Said if she hadn’t made him take her into town to pick up her stupid birthday dress he’d ordered from St Louis, he wouldn’t have been in Santa Rosa and accidentally gotten shot by them three drunken cowboys. ’Course it wasn’t really Momma’s fault. Deep down, I knew that all along. Fact is, Dad was the one who nagged her into going. I heard him. Heard her telling him she didn’t mind waiting until another day, too. But it didn’t matter. Not to me. I was so angry about Dad dying on me when he didn’t have to … that … well, I had to blame someone.’ Raven paused, tears coming, and then said: ‘You think Momma knows I really loved her? Now that she’s dead, I mean?’

Gabriel smiled and put his hand against Raven’s cheek. ‘Sure.’

‘Not just saying that to make me feel better?’

‘Nope. Your mom knows. She knew all along, in fact.’

‘How you know that?’

‘Told me so … at the farm an’ at your uncle’s house in Old Calico. Said she was the luckiest woman alive. Said God had given her a fine husband who loved her an’ treated her special, and a loving daughter who meant more to her than anythin’ in the world.’

‘Momma said that?’

‘More’n once. So quit your worryin’, OK? Get some rest. You have to spell me in a couple of hours.’

Nodding, Raven lay back and smiled at Gabriel. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I know I say hateful things sometimes, things that make you madder than a spit-on hornet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I do. More than anyone else in the world. Never forget that.’

He smiled, and gently kissed her on the forehead. ‘Go to sleep.’

She yawned sleepily, ‘Hope that ol’ bear don’t come back,’ closed her eyes and almost immediately drifted off.

Gabriel pulled the blanket up under her chin. He then stirred the fire, sending sparks shooting up into the cool darkness. Stretching the aches from his weary muscles, he sat down, leaned back against his saddle and began rolling a smoke.

Being a surrogate father, he realized, was more complicated than he’d expected.

A little more than a year ago, when Ingrid and Raven had moved west to Old Calico, theirs was the farthest farm from Santa Rosa – almost an hour’s ride from the edge of town.

Now, as they crested Mimbres Hill and looked down the long slope that reached across the desert to the farm on which she’d been born, they saw three other small spreads had sprung up. Beyond that the framework of a fourth partially built house stood at the foot of the hill.

‘Good-God-awmighty,’ Raven said, whistling. ‘Where’d all them folks spring from?’

‘Easterners, most likely,’ Gabriel said disgustedly. ‘Ain’t enough they cluttered up all the land east of St Louis; now, thanks to the railroad, they have to stampede out here an’ crowd our territory, too. Progress!’ he spat out the word, adding: ‘Pretty soon there won’t be a place left where a man can ride without bumping shadows.’

Raven chuckled. ‘Now you sound like my Dad. He hated to be crowded. That’s why he and Momma moved way out here, even though she would have preferred to live in Santa Rosa or
even Las Cruces.’

‘I never met your father,’ Gabriel said as he guided the wagon down the hill. ‘But the more I hear ’bout him the more I wish I had.’

Twenty minutes later they reached the farm. The entire property was now fenced in and there was an arched gateway with a sign welcoming travelers.

Gabriel reined in the team and stared about him in surprise. Beside him, Raven couldn’t believe her eyes either: the new owner, Lylo Willis, who’d once owned the telegraph office in Santa Rosa, had turned the farm into a way station.

The cabin was now a large two-story wood-frame house, painted gray with white trim. Wooden steps led up to a shady front porch with a fancy trellis from which hung a sign announcing: ‘Hot Meals Available!’ The old barn in which Gabriel had recovered from near death had been enlarged and turned into sleeping accommodations. Next to it were two outhouses with ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gents’ signs on the doors. And beside the well, a well in which Ingrid had once hidden him from the law, stood a modern windmill bearing a sign with big red letters offering travelers water: fifty cents per adult,
twenty-five
cents per child and one dollar per horse.

‘Is that legal?’ Raven asked, shocked.

‘It’s their well,’ Gabriel said grimly. ‘No law sayin’ they can’t charge for the use of it. But it sure ain’t neighborly.’

‘Well, I’m not paying for water. ’Specially water that used to be mine. And I’m gonna tell Mr Lylo Willis that right to his mean ol’ face!’

‘Caution’s the way,’ Gabriel warned softly.

But Raven had already jumped down from the wagon and was marching toward a tall, paunchy man with thinning dark hair and banker’s spectacles who was talking to a Mexican helper mending a fence.

Before she could reach him a short, pear-shaped woman wearing a green scarf over her gray hair and an apron tied around her enormous waist came waddling out of the house. Pausing on the porch, she was about to call to her husband, Lylo, when she spotted Raven and broke into a big smile.

‘Why, goodness gracious me,’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t believe it. Is that really you, Raven?’

‘Hello, Mrs Willis.’ Raven stopped and smiled at the woman. ‘Yeah, it’s me all right.’

‘Well, good heavens, child! You come over here and give me a big hug right this minute. Why, I never expected to see you again!’

Grudgingly, Raven went over and let Mrs Willis hug her.

‘Here, let me look at you.’ She stepped back and held Raven at arms length. ‘My o’ my, you’re all growed up. And so pretty. Your ma must be so proud of you.’ Mrs Willis looked at the wagon, frowning as she saw Gabriel instead of Ingrid holding the reins. ‘Where is your ma, child?’

‘She passed,’ Raven said.

‘Oh, no-o. You poor sweet lamb. When? What happened?’

‘Fever took her.’ Raven turned to Gabriel, still seated on the wagon box, her eyes asking him to explain for her.

‘Ingrid died a few days ago,’ he told Mrs Willis. ‘In Old Calico, a mining town near Placerville.’

‘I’ve heard of it. Out west in California, ain’t it, Mr uh—?’

‘Moonlight,’ Gabriel said. He climbed down from the wagon and stood, towering over the women. ‘It was typhoid … there was an outbreak. Had somethin’ to do with the water gettin’ contaminated after an earthquake. Ol’ Doc Guzman did his best to control it, but things got out of hand an’ by the time it’d run its course, a lot of good folks were dead.’

‘That’s why we’re here,’ Raven put in. ‘So we can bury Momma next to my Dad.’

Mrs Willis frowned. Subtly, her sunny demeanor changed and
she became uneasy. ‘Lylo,’ she called, waving to her husband. ‘Get on over here. You need to hear this.’

Lylo Willis knew better than to argue with his wife. Leaving his helper to finish repairing the fence, he trotted up to her.

‘Yes, dearest?’

‘You remember Raven?’

‘Why of course. What a delightful surprise. What brings you—?’

‘Now don’t get to jawing, mister,’ his wife snapped. ‘The poor child’s lost her momma and she and Mr uh—’

‘Moonlight,’ Gabriel reminded.

‘Moonlight, have come all the way from California to bury Ingrid next to her beloved husband.’

Lylo Willis looked at his wife as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. But the scowl on her round, beefy, cherry-cheeked face told him he had – and, more importantly, that she expected him to solve the unmentioned problem.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ he told Raven. ‘And there’s nothing I’d like more than to accommodate your Momma’s wishes—’

‘What’s stoppin’ you?’ Gabriel interrupted.

‘N-Nothing, nothing at all.’ Lylo avoided his wife’s glare and turned back to Raven. ‘It’s just … uhm … I didn’t know Sven was buried here.’

‘Over there,’ Raven said, pointing. ‘Behind the barn.’

‘Really?’ Lylo Willis removed his spectacles, pinched his nose as if he had a headache, replaced the steel-framed glasses and did his best to look puzzled. ‘Don’t remember seeing a marker when we were rebuilding.’

‘Then I’ll show you. C’mon.’ Raven led him and Gabriel to the barn and on, around in back, where Lylo’s 16-year-old son, Cory, was chopping logs into kindling.

Surprised to see Raven, he lowered his axe and rubbed the sweat from his eyes. ‘What’re you doin’ here? Thought you’n your ma had high-tailed it to Californee.’

‘Shows you how much you know, don’t it?’ Raven said.

‘Get on with your work, boy,’ Lylo told Cory. ‘Got a
wagonload
of folks to cook for tonight and your ma’s low on firewood.’

Raven, who’d been looking around, now frowned, confused. ‘It was right here,’ she indicated, ‘where we’re standing.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Lylo said, uneasily. ‘There was no marker here when we tore the old barn down. Isn’t that right, son?’

‘Sure is, Pa.’ Cory kept his eyes lowered and went on chopping.

‘You’re wrong, both of you,’ Raven said. ‘You saw it, didn’t you?’ she said to Gabriel.

He nodded. ‘I watched her mother place flowers on the grave. Only it wasn’t here,’ he said, pointing to his left, ‘it was about ten, twelve feet over there – ground that’s now buried under your barn.’

Raven’s eyes became saucers. ‘You’re right, Gabe! Dang it, I didn’t think of that. You built over my Dad’s grave,’ she said to Lylo Willis.

‘That’s absurd,’ he exclaimed. ‘Your father and I were old friends. I wouldn’t dream of desecrating his last resting place like that.’

‘Mister,’ Gabriel said, deadly quiet, ‘I don’t give a hoot about what you’d dream of doin’. It’s what you done that matters.’

Lylo reddened, indignantly. ‘You calling me a liar, sir?’

‘There’s a coffin in that wagon,’ Gabriel continued as if Lylo hadn’t spoken, ‘a coffin containing the body of a fine, gentle woman who’s waitin’ to join her husband. An’ I’ll be damned ten ways to Tucson if I’ll let her rot in the sun while you spin the truth around.’ He pulled his duster back to reveal the Peacemaker on his hip. ‘Now what’d you do with it, Mr Willis?’

‘D-Do with what?’

‘Sven Bjorkman’s body? Did you dig it up an’ bury it some place else or did you, in your greed to turn a fast dollar, just tear the marker down an’ build right over your “old friend”?’

Lylo Willis, about to erupt, wilted under Gabriel’s ice-blue stare.

‘I’ll take you to him,’ he said. Then to his son: ‘Tell your ma where I’ve gone.’

‘Sure, Pa.’ Cory buried his axe into a half-split log and walked past Raven.

She tripped him, sending him sprawling. ‘Liar! Dirty little weasel!’

Cory jumped up and took an angry step toward Raven, then he saw the rage on Gabriel’s face and stopped, turned and hurried off to the house.

Twenty minutes later, with the sun blazing down on them, Gabriel halted the wagon alongside a crude wooden cross poking out of a small pile of rocks at the edge of Lylo Willis’ property.

The three of them climbed down.

‘See,’ Lylo said, indicating Sven’s grave. ‘I done right by him, like I told you. I didn’t have to rebury him, you know. I could’ve – and most folks would’ve – just built right on top of him. But I didn’t. I—’

Gabriel cut him off. ‘Get movin’, mister.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Start walkin’.’

‘In this heat?’

‘Now.’

‘B-But it’s almost a mile to the house.’

‘Mile – ten miles – don’t much matter. I’m about to bury a good woman and you, mister, ain’t fit to be in her company. Now, git.’

Lylo Willis grudgingly took a few steps then turned and glared at them. ‘You’ll be sorry for this.’

‘Keep jawin’,’ Raven warned him, ‘and you’re the one who’ll be sorry.’ Reaching into the wagon, she grabbed the Winchester
laying beside two long-handled shovels and levered a shell into the chamber.

Lylo Willis paled, turned and hurried off.

‘I should’ve shot him,’ she grumbled to Gabriel.

‘It’s a thought crossed my mind, too,’ he admitted.

‘Yet you let him walk away?’

‘Got to thinkin’, a fella like him ain’t worth the price of lead.’