Trail Angel (10 page)

His weathered face crinkled into a smile, not unlike the way her grandfather had smiled at her when she was a little girl. He moved off when Josey Angel rode up, stopping far enough away that Annabelle couldn't hear what they said. They exchanged only a few words before Josey Angel rode away. She watched with envy how the horse's flanks lunged with each powerful stride, Josey crouched forward, seeming to move as one with his horse.

“I wish I could ride like that.”

The Colonel drew up beside her. “No reason you can't learn.”

Annabelle rolled her eyes. “Don't mock me. I couldn't ride like that even when I had a proper saddle.”

“So don't use a proper saddle.”

“I could hardly ride like him in this,” she said, looking down at her black dress.

“A change of wardrobe might suit you, Annabelle.” The Colonel tipped his hat and rode ahead before she could ask what he meant.

It irked Caleb that the Union officers and their Sambo should feel so welcome at the Southern wagons. The scouts did enough work that they weren't expected to cook or wash clothes, taking their meals in turn among all the wagons. Yet it seemed they preferred Southern cooking.
Or at least the company of Southern women.

Fools hung on every word the Colonel said, like he was Jedediah Smith himself, back from the Rocky Mountains. Josey Angel didn't say much, but after he returned to camp with an antelope for the farmers to butcher, they acted like he was Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett.

Not that Caleb was above accepting a bowl of antelope stew when offered. He settled in next to the Daggett boys, hoping to put his mind on something else.

“Boys, we'll be eating even better once we reach Dakota territory,” he said. “Venison, grouse and pheasant, wild geese and ducks with enough feathers to fill a new bed, with extra for your pillows.”

“Not if you're counting on Clifton to shoot anything,” Willis said, nudging his brother so hard he nearly fell off the crate he used as a seat.

Clifton scoffed. “How do you know what we'll find?”

“Heard it from a mountain man outside Omaha,” Caleb said. “Montana's not like this dusty prairie. They've got plenty of timber to build houses, and so much wild game no one goes hungry.”

“If it was so great, why'd the mountain man leave?”

“To sell his skins. He told me he killed twelve buffalo in one day. The tongue is the best-tasting part, he said. Can you believe that? They got beaver in all the rivers. And bears, some so big when they stand they're tall as two men, one sitting on the other's shoulders. A bear that big will have a hide that would cover a bed, and enough oil to make soap for a year of washing.”

“A year?” Clifton sounded skeptical. “Maybe with as much as you wash.”

Willis laughed so hard their conversation drew the notice of the others around the cook fire. Caleb enjoyed the attention. “Shows how little you know, you cockchafer. They said one bear has enough oil to fry all the potatoes and make pie crust for at least six months.”

“That may be true, but only a fool would try to find out.”

Caleb and the Daggetts turned to see the Colonel standing over them, a bowl of food in his leathery hand. Caleb resented giving up his audience. “What do you know about it, old man?”

If the Colonel took offense, he gave no indication of it. “I've seen a bear as big as you say, and I can tell you, killing one ain't no easy thing.”

The Colonel turned toward the others, who were listening to
him
now. Annabelle, in particular, had her dark eyes locked on the codger. While she still wore her black dresses every day, she had lost her bonnet. Her dark hair hung loose about her shoulders, making it hard for any of the younger men to look anywhere else.

“Nobody fools with a grizzly bear,” the Colonel continued. “Even Indians, if they kill one, can claim the same honor as killing an enemy in battle. They count coup just for touching it.”

“What's coo?” one of Annabelle's whelp cousins asked.

The Colonel smiled at the boy. “It's how an Indian brave tests his courage. Courage is easy at a distance. You have to be brave to get close enough to your enemy to touch him. To some Indians, that's a greater feat than killing a foe.”

“Did you count coo with the bear?” the boy asked.

The Colonel choked back his laughter. “Never even thought to try,” he managed. He remained standing while the rest sat around the fire. He took a step toward the boy, handing him his bowl and raising his hands over his head. “It towered over us, like this,” he said, adding a roar for the benefit of the children seated near Annabelle. A coughing fit forced him to pause.

Caleb rolled his eyes and started to say something to the Daggetts but Willis shushed him as the Colonel recovered his breath. “We had been stalking a deer, Josey and me. Never thought to see a bear, certainly not one that big.”

“What did you do?” Annabelle asked.

“Lucky for us, the bear didn't charge. I think it meant to frighten us away. That gave me time to take aim. I had picked out a spot right between its eyes.” The Colonel extended his arms, as if holding a rifle, one eye closed in pantomime. “I cocked the rifle and held my breath to steady my hands.”

“Then what?”

The Colonel dropped his arms. “Josey knocked down my rifle.”

“What?” The boys didn't believe it. “Why?”

“That's what
I
said,” the Colonel told them. “We backed off, giving the bear a wide berth, and once we were away I asked him. Then Josey, he says to me the meanest thing he's ever said, at least to my face.” As he told this part, the Colonel laughed. “He said, ‘I wasn't sure you could kill it before it got us.' He didn't think one bullet would be enough, no matter where I hit it.”

“Coward,” Caleb said, though no one paid attention.

“I told him, ‘Well, you could have finished him off.' But Josey just shook his head. He said killing a bear wasn't like killing deer or a wild bird. Bears have a soul, he said.”

“But he's killed
men,
” Annabelle said, her face pinching into a frown. “I don't know about bears, but I know men have souls.”

The Colonel nodded. “I think I said nearly the same thing.” He took back his bowl from the boy. “You know what he said to me? ‘Yes, but most men got it coming.' ”

As he finished his story, another coughing fit overcame the Colonel, this one so bad he couldn't breathe. Annabelle rushed to him.

“He's burning up,” she said to her mother.

Others came to help. The old coot could barely stand. Annabelle sent one of the boys running for Josey Angel. Her aunt tried to get the Colonel to lie down while Mrs. Rutledge ordered the men to put him on a bed in their wagon. Having regained his breath, the Colonel wouldn't have it.

“A good night's sleep is all I need,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It's only the ague.”

Backing away along with the Daggett boys, Caleb hoped he was right. More than once the old man had warned them disease was a greater threat than Indians. Caleb didn't mean to find out.

The old man was sick.

Josey saw it coming but couldn't stop it. He told the Colonel to rest, to ride in a wagon or hold the emigrants in camp an extra day. They might have blamed it on a need for repairs or rest for the stock. The Colonel's pride wouldn't permit it. He didn't want to let on that he felt poorly.

There was no hiding it now. The first glow of morning bleached the sky and Josey saw his friend wouldn't be rising with the sun. The Colonel slept fitfully. His clothes and hair were damp from fever, and he looked wan and weak. Josey felt the heat pouring off the old man even before his hand made contact with his papery skin. Lord Byron kneeled beside Josey. His furrowed brow reflected everything Josey thought.

“We should get him into some dry clothes and a clean bedroll when he wakes,” Josey said.

Byron nodded, and Josey noticed the clothes on the ground behind him. He should have known Byron was a step ahead of him. “Best be getting to the wagons,” Byron told him. Josey smiled, realizing he'd been dismissed.

It had been a restless night for both. The old man shivered when they put him to bed. Byron stirred the fire to life and fixed the bedroll. Josey lay beside the Colonel, wrapping him in his arms to still the shakes. When the Colonel slept, Josey rose without disturbing him and sat beside Byron, who handed him a tin cup. Like most Union soldiers, Josey had practically lived on coffee. He gave it up on the march through Georgia, where the blockade made it impossible to find real beans and the bitterness of the roasted rye and sweet potato blends the rebels ground as a substitute put Josey off the stuff for good. Yet he accepted the cup from Byron, knowing neither would be sleeping.

All had suffered the ague that winter, one of the coldest anyone remembered. Ague left a man feeling like he'd been dragged behind a wagon for a day and a night, but he would rise eventually. Byron and Josey recovered quickly, but the illness lingered in the Colonel. He possessed such vigor, Josey forgot that most men his age spent their days rocking on a porch somewhere. Josey figured the Colonel had suffered a relapse, but until they knew for sure, he had to keep the Colonel away from the others, especially the children.

A wagon train left little time to care for the sick. Cattle needed fresh grass. Provisions were limited. If the Colonel didn't recover quickly, they couldn't ask the others to wait. Byron knew this as well as Josey. He said simply, “He won't be well enough by morning.”

“We can rest a day. Tomorrow is Saturday. We would have stopped on Sunday, anyway.” Byron didn't speak. A tilt of his head was question enough. They stopped on Sundays, in part, so the faithful among them could honor the Sabbath. “We won't give them a choice,” Josey said.

That would buy them a day. A sick man might ride in the back of the wagon, but they would have to bind the Colonel with every rope they had to keep him still. It would be a painful ride. The Colonel might regain his strength faster by staying put.

“If it comes to it, I'll stay with him,” Josey said. “Give him another couple of days to get strong. On horseback, we'll catch the wagons by the time you reach Kearny. It's at least another month before we reach Bozeman's cutoff.” Josey didn't want to think about what it would mean if he didn't catch the wagons by then.

“You'll have to go ahead with the train,” Josey told Byron. “Just in case.”

Byron rose without speaking and stepped away from the fire's light. The sound of his heavy footfalls carried from where Josey had hobbled the horses. They snorted and stamped at Byron's approach. He couldn't have shown his displeasure with Josey more clearly by shouting it in his face. Josey followed and found him rummaging through their gear, collecting extra canteens. The Colonel would need water in the morning, and it was just like Byron to anticipate the old man's needs. Josey put a hand on his thick shoulder. “I'm sorry, Byron. I—”

“He means as much to me as you.” Byron loomed over him, a good half a head taller and broader through the shoulders by a third. In the darkness, the whites of his eyes glowed like lamps, and they were moist with emotion. “I can care for him as well as you.”

“Better, I would say.”

Byron was missing a tooth and the black gap showed in the flash of his smile. He handed one of the canteens to Josey as they walked toward the fire. “It's not easy being the only black man in this company,” he said, a smile allaying some of the sting of his words. “You feel like a roach in another man's rice.”

“Any of those boot-lickers mistreating you?”

Byron shook his head. “It ain't like that.”

“They been tellin' you how nice they treated their negroes?” It was a joke between them. Every Southerner they met, at least the ones who weren't outright hostile to a black man, felt compelled to share how kindly they'd been to their slaves. After a while, Josey and Byron figured every Simon Legree must have thrown himself in front of the Union rifles on principle because only the big-hearted graybacks who'd read
Uncle Tom's Cabin
seemed to have survived the war.

“They nice enough,” Byron said, “but you know those white folks won't follow a black man.”

In the morning, when they found the Colonel still wracked with fever, Byron stayed with him. Josey went to the wagons where the men were hitching the teams. He spoke of the Colonel's condition and his plans to rest that day.

“But tomorrow is the Sabbath,” said Alexander Brewster, a New York farmer who had attended a seminary for a spell and assumed the duties of camp minister. On Sundays he stood at the center of the corral and read aloud from the Bible while the women saw to washing clothes and baking bread, the men to mending harnesses and yokes and shoeing the animals that needed it.

“If the Sabbath is that important to you, then I expect you will welcome the opportunity to display Christian charity,” Josey said, looking the larger man directly in the eye. “And I thank you for it.”

Ben Miller, the oldest of the bachelor miners, protested a delay of any kind. “At the pace we're going, the gold will be gone by the time we get there,” he said, scratching at the sunburn on his neck.

Rutledge spoke up. “We're making a good pace, a pace that will get us there without breaking down. That's the thing you should concern yourself with.” Turning to Brewster, he said, “We will make today our Sabbath, and the Lord will reward us for it.”

Luke Swift, Rutledge's brother-in-law, and the others agreed. Josey left them to work out the details of unhitching the teams and moving them to a fresh grazing area.

By the time he returned, he found Rutledge's wife, Mary, and Annabelle with Byron and the Colonel. Seeing mother and daughter working together, Josey realized how much they favored each other, Mrs. Rutledge's touch of gray doing nothing to diminish the strength of her features. They would need strength, given their patient's mulish disposition. Now awake, the Colonel looked more grumpy than frail.