Trail Angel (24 page)

Rutledge seemed worried about his hired driver. “He's gone off before on his own, but he's always come back before dark. I'm afraid something's happened to him.”

“You think Indians?” Luke Swift asked.

“I would hate to think that.” Rutledge turned to the Colonel. “Maybe we should look for him?”

The old man had been chewing on the stem of his pipe while the others spoke. He looked to Josey, and without a word between them Josey sensed his message was delivered.

“It's too dark to do anything tonight,” the Colonel said. “We would risk losing more people in the dark or getting someone hurt.”

“We can't just leave him,” Rutledge said, wishing his words were true more than believing them. “What if he's hurt?”

Josey looked to the sky. The sun had fallen below a horizon of distant mountains, casting the land in shadow. “I'll range out as far as the woods once the moon rises,” he offered. “Won't see much, but I might hear something.”

The Colonel nodded, understanding the offer was more likely to give peace to the others than solve the dilemma. After a general agreement, the others returned to their fires. The Colonel lingered, a single eyebrow arched.

“Is it too much to hope the fool got himself lost?”

Josey shrugged. “Wasn't expecting Indian trouble 'til we got past Fort Reno.”

“Worst Indian trouble is always the kind you don't see coming.”

The next blow came to the back of the head. Could have been the rifle butt. Or maybe the pearl handle of the captain's revolver. Caleb's eyes had swollen shut by then, so he couldn't tell. He hoped the handgun. Maybe his head would break those fancy pearl inlays.

Tasting dust, Caleb couldn't move if he wanted. He closed his mouth to keep from swallowing dirt. Heard the captain's voice from somewhere.

“Who else knows about the gold?”

No one.
Caleb could no longer speak. He could only think the answer he had been repeating for—
what?
—hours? An entire day? His concept of time disappeared long before he became numb to the pain. The voices seemed as far away as Charleston.

“What did he say?”

“I don't think he
can
say anything. Maybe he told the truth.”

“You're probably right.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Don't be stupid. We need him to get the gold for us. Get him some water. And, get that bow Johnson took off the Indian. We're going to need that, too.”

The emigrants had camped early that afternoon because of the heat. Alexander Brewster told everyone within earshot his thermometer peaked at over 100 degrees in the shade. The New Yorker seemed amazed, but even in the sun Caleb didn't sweat like he would sitting in the shade back home. They were nearing high country. That meant it was hot, but only during the middle of the day when the sun baked them like potatoes in a stove.

They'd stopped a day shy of Fort Reno. After seeing to the oxen and wagons, Caleb slipped away with his pole, hoping to test the trout in a creek not far from the camp. At least the water would be cool, and time alone gave him an opportunity to think.

The others believed they'd beaten back the road agents, that Indians posed the only threat now. Caleb knew better. The captain wasn't going to let him get away with the gold. After the first attack, Caleb had expected another the following day. When it didn't happen that day, Caleb expected it the next day, all the way to Fort Laramie, when it dawned on Caleb the captain didn't want any part of Josey Angel again.

Instead of comforting him, the thought pricked at Caleb's mind.
What am I going to do when we reach Virginia City?
The captain would still be chasing the gold, and Caleb would no longer have the protection of the wagon train. He wouldn't be able to walk the street without looking over his shoulder, wondering when an attack would come. Because it would come. Of that he was sure.

Caleb had so convinced himself he would be jumped in Virginia City it never occurred to him he might be in danger in Wyoming. He didn't hear the horses over the sound of the running creek, didn't hear anything until Harrison stood over him, both hands on his carbine like it was a club.

The first blow came to the face.

“You thought I was dead.”

Caleb recognized the captain's voice before he could focus on his image.
I did.
Seated on a cot inside an old army tent, his hands bound behind his back, Caleb wasn't sure the captain heard him. They were alone. “Why didn't they kill you?”

“This lot?” The captain sniffed. The tent was large enough that he could stand so long as he stayed in the center. Somehow he looked as fresh as if he'd been sleeping in a hotel instead of camping in the wild. Even his clothes looked clean. “It wasn't hard to convince them I was chasing
after
you when they shot my horse out from under me. Had to kill Pickens, just to make the point of how angry I was.”

Caleb looked around, wishing somebody was near enough to hear this, but it wasn't like the captain to be anyone's fool. Caleb needed to outthink the bastard if he were to survive the day.

“You were clever not to stay in Charleston. Where did you go?”

Caleb shrugged. He saw no harm in talking now. Might give him time to devise a plan. “Wandered around. Took some work where I found it. Tried to figure out what to do.”

The captain found this amusing, his gabled mustache flattening into a smile. “All that gold and you were looking for work?” He slapped his thigh with his gloved hand. “So you weren't planning all along to double back to Charleston?”

Caleb shrugged again. He never saw the blow coming, and it spun him around, nearly knocked him off the cot. He tasted blood, saw bright pinpricks of light circling his head. The captain waited like nothing had happened. “It's important that I know.” His voice calm, like a banker explaining terms of a loan.

Caleb spit blood. “Why?”

This time he saw the hand rise for the blow, and he shrank back, managing to roll with the force of it.

He spit again. “I didn't plan it. I didn't.” The answer satisfied the captain, who relaxed, pulling at his sleeve where it bunched around his elbow. Caleb knew to avoid Charleston. It was only once he got the idea to go west, when he thought he would never be back again, that he decided to make one last visit.

“I went back to see Laurie.”

“Laurie? Your dead wife?” The captain's confusion gave way to laughter. He paced the tent, Caleb turning to keep him in sight. The laughter seemed genuine, though Caleb found nothing funny in the situation.

“All this time I wondered how you outwitted me. I don't suppose you appreciate the irony of your response. A great strategist should always know to look to his blind spot—but, then, they wouldn't call it a blind spot if we saw it, would they?”

Accustomed to the captain's verbal meanderings, Caleb knew the bastard didn't need a reply. He merely needed an audience.

“We waited near Charleston for you. I don't have to tell you how dangerous that was for me. I didn't think you had the imagination to go anyplace else, and so when it had been months and you still didn't come, things got . . . difficult. It's best not to let thieves grow idle. They become distrustful. Some of the boys began to doubt my veracity.”

Caleb saw a glimmer of hope in what the captain said.

“Taking the gold to Montana was a brilliant stroke. I suppose you intended to melt it down, pass it off as something you found in the hills?”

Caleb nodded.

“It wasn't your idea, though, was it? To go to Montana?” The captain didn't wait for a response. “Who was it? Was it Langdon?”

Caleb started to shrug, then flinched, wary of another blow. “That's what they say. I think Annabelle pushed him to it.”

“Annabelle. That is another surprise. Another blind spot, I suppose.” Caleb went along with the bastard's game. He had no choice. For some reason the captain wanted to know Caleb's motives. It was almost as if he resented Caleb's thinking of the idea first as much as he begrudged him the gold.

As they talked, Caleb tested the ropes binding his hands but gave it up. Even if he worked free and somehow overpowered the captain, he would be dead before he left camp. There might not be anyone standing near enough to overhear their conversation, but there were sure to be guards somewhere.

“You can have the gold. I never really wanted it. Just let me go.”

The captain stopped pacing. His spoke slowly, as if instructing a child in how to tie his laces. “I will get the gold, Caleb. I was always going to get the gold. You don't have what it takes to be a rich man. You weren't born to it. It's why I picked you. Offering me the gold is not going to save you.”

Caleb hadn't expected it to be that easy. It was time to make his play. “If you don't let me go, I'll tell the others it was your idea to steal the gold.”

The captain smiled. “I've been wondering when it would occur to you to betray me, Caleb. You very nearly disappointed me.”

He's bluffing.
“I can get you the gold, if you let me go. Or I can tell Harrison and the others it was your idea to take it.” His ace, for once, was the low regard everyone held him in. “Who's going to believe I thought of this by myself?”

Caleb braced for another blow, a cost he was willing to pay to frustrate the captain. Instead, the bastard acted almost gleeful. He strode past Caleb to the tent's opening and called for Harrison. A moment later, the slender gunman was with them, looking unhappy to have been excluded for so long. Caleb tried to look him in the eye, but his confidence ebbed in the glow of the captain's obvious delight.

“Tell him. Tell him what you just told me,” the captain ordered.

There were too many angles, and Caleb had never seen them as well as the captain. “It doesn't have to be this way—”

“Tell him!” The captain's scream struck almost like a physical blow, and Caleb flinched. “Tell him about the gold.”

Speaking was a mistake. Caleb knew it. But he could see no alternative. “It was you,” Caleb said, his voice barely audible, his eyes cast to the ground. “It was your idea to steal the gold.”

Harrison swore. Caleb looked up in time to see him reach into his pocket for a gold piece. Swearing again, he handed it to the captain.

“Thank you, Harrison.” He turned back to Caleb. “You see, we had a wager that you would blame me for your misdeeds.”

Harrison was nearly out of the tent when he stopped and looked back to Caleb. “He didn't put you up to saying it, did he?”

“No, it was him! It was his idea all along.”

Harrison held up a hand as the captain laughed. “Stop. I can't afford no more.” He left the tent. The captain flipped his new coin in the air, watching it spin and fall into his hand.

“I told you, Caleb. I was always going to get the gold. Now with that out of the way, we're going to talk about what you can do to help me get the rest of it.”

Caleb trudged to camp, footsore and shivering in air so cold he saw his breath. After the heat of the afternoon, Caleb couldn't get over the cold. He had experienced hotter days in South Carolina, and he had endured colder nights in the army. But those hot days and cold nights
had never been in the same damn day.

Emerging from the tree line on the hill overlooking a basin of sage and cactus, he spotted the wagons. Their white canvas covers practically glowed in the light of a waxing moon.
Just keep walking.

Caleb knew he was lucky to be alive. Once the captain was confident no one else knew about the gold, he let Caleb go. For his plan to work, the captain said, there had to be an explanation for Caleb's absence from the wagons. Caleb would have liked an opportunity to suggest an alternative to the captain's plan, but both he and Harrison took too much pleasure in carrying out their part. Caleb could feel the bruises swelling his face. Hell, he could almost
see
them when he focused on the end of his nose. His left arm dangled uselessly by his side. If he turned his head, he just saw the arrow that protruded from the back of his shoulder.

“We have to provide a sense of verisimilitude,” the captain said, practically singing the last word.
Bastard always had a sense of the theatric.

A lone tree stood over a thicket of chaparral at the bottom of the hill, its scraggly branches reaching out in a manner that looked sinister in the darkness. It's always one tree in a field like this. One bull in the pasture. One cock in the yard. One stallion in the herd. Nature's way.

The one tree sank its roots deep into the ground, soaking up the water in the dry soil so that no other tree rivaled it. Its branches reached high above the brush to the sunlight, leaving all beneath to wither in shadow. Man was no different. Caleb's mistake had been viewing the war as a vast fire that burned away the big trees, creating openings for men like Caleb to grow from the ashes and rise high. The lone trees did not give up their position so easily.

The slow, painful walk through the bitter cold left Caleb time to think. The captain had his plan, but now Caleb began to perceive another path, one that might see him safely to Virginia City—with the gold. And the key to it all was the man whose presence on the wagon train Caleb had resented from the start.

There was a word for that kind of coincidence, but Caleb couldn't think of it. He started to doubt his mind. He thought he saw a horseman in the silvery light, a shape in silhouette that blocked Caleb's view of the wagons. He raised a hand in greeting, but everything hurt too much. His legs gave out as he recognized the rider.

Speak of the devil . . .