LITMIR.BIZ

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for the night.

      “We never saw anything like that in Arkansas,” Walter said. “Did we, Mother?” Annie’s father often called his wife Mother.

      “Too many trees.” Harriet shook her head. “Never thought I’d miss those trees till we got out here. When’s the last time we saw a tree?”

      He laughed. “We’ll see them in Rapture Valley, Mother.” He winked at Annie. “The hillsides are filled with trees, piñon, and juniper, even pines farther up the hills. But the valley is wonderful and lush with grass. Paradise for sure. I’ll build my two girls a home in the hills, and the rest of the valley I’ll cover with my cattle.”

      He had been talking about this for years.

      The Reverend Primrose said the residents of Dead Trout had been driven out by carpetbaggers and Yankee scalawags, but Walter had been dreaming of leaving the Arkansas hills since even before the War Between the States. When that flyer showed up from the Concord mail stage, and someone posted it on the wall at the general store, he had seen it. He had been the first to suggest that a few families set out for the new country. Get away from the poverty and mosquitoes of the hills. Do what Horace Greeley—the newspaper man—said. Go West.

      If anyone asked Annie, the men of the wagon train should have elected her father as the head of the train, but the reverend had been a good soldier, at least if you listened to what he said. He had even once set out for California, spent three years there before returning to Arkansas. He knew the trails even though the one he had taken to California and back had been much farther north.

      “Do you trust the reverend?” Annie heard herself ask.

      “Child,” her mother, Harriet, scolded, “He’s a man of the cloth.”

      Annie’s eyes shot toward Five Scalps and the soddie across from the big trading post or whatever it was. She wondered if her first thought, Sergeant Major Primrose likely is not wearing any sort of cloth right now, would be declared a sin come Judgment Day.

      Her father smiled with the patience of a father. “He has been to California.”

      “We’re not going to California,” she pointed out.

      “But he knows the trails, or at least, how to handle a wagon train on the trail.” Walter reached over and patted her arm. “You see how he taught us to circle our wagons at camp, and he guided us across the Red River into Texas. Now here we are, deep in Comanche and Kiowa territory, and we have not been attacked yet.”

      “And he preaches a good sermon.” Harriet had always been one to admire some brimstone and vinegar.

      “We have traveled six hundred miles, Daughter. Perhaps farther, and that means we are almost halfway to our new home. I would not disservice our train’s duly elected captain by complaining or making disparaging comments as to his wisdom or leadership abilities. We are all in good health and have run into no trouble to speak of.” He looked over at Five Scalps and shook his head with a smile, sipped the last of his tea, and turned back toward Annie.

      “The Reverend Sergeant Major is a man, Annie, and men are—”

      “Idiots,” her mother said.

      They all laughed.

      “Well, I am not idiot enough to argue with your mother, Annie, so I will agree with her. When the Reverend Primrose returns with the others we shall continue on to our destination. Perhaps we are delayed by the evils that men do, but let the boys be boys. There is not much left for them until we reach Arizona Territory. Do not frown too much at this delay. It is, I feel, needed.”

      Her father’s face told Annie that he wasn’t speaking entirely truthfully. He was just trying to make things seem better than they were. That was her father’s way.

      “You didn’t want to go with them?” her mother asked and chuckled at her good humor.

      “I might have, Mother,” he said with a smile, and rose to collect the dishes. Most men would leave washing dishes to the women, but Walter liked to do things, liked to stay busy. He wasn’t one to waste time playing cards or drinking intoxicating spirits when he could be accomplishing something, like going to Arizona Territory to start a new life, or going around a place like Five Scalps to avoid unnecessary delay, or even washing the supper dishes.

      She helped him because she loved her father. Her mother came to help, too.

      This is the way a family should be, Annie thought.

      When she prayed that night before going to sleep, she thanked God for that greatest of gifts.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Matt McCulloch leaped away from the slashing knife again with yet another curse, and the momentum carried the Indian back toward the rocks. That gave McCulloch enough time to look at his belly. A scratch. He had cut himself worse shaving, although he had never been drunk enough to cut his stomach shaving. Hell, he wasn’t Sean Keegan. McCulloch rarely got drunk. But getting into fights? Well, that seemed to occupy a lot of his time—as a horse trader and as a Texas Ranger back in the day.

      The Apache turned, but stood with his back against the rocky wall. His right hand still held the blade of the deer-handled knife, a mean looking weapon. The blade had probably been taken from an old horse soldier’s saber, cut down to something a kid could use quite handily.

      McCulloch figured that this Indian was a kid, no more than sixteen years old, though guessing an Indian’s age often could be as risky as guessing a woman’s.

      A few facts became obvious. The boy was Comanche, not Apache. Remembering his late wife, his dead sons, and his missing daughter, had his opponent been Apache, McCulloch would have drawn his Colt and blown the kid’s head off. It wasn’t that McCulloch had any love for the Comanche—they could be as fearsome, as ruthless, and as hard to kill as any Apache—but this one was just a kid. And he was wounded.

      His left arm hung broken, raked with the claws from that bear he had managed to kill. He was sweating hard. The boy panted like he had just run all the way from the Rio Grande and needed time to catch his breath. McCulloch could wait in a Mexican standoff and hope the boy would finally pass out.

      Those eyes were like obsidian, staring briefly at McCulloch, then at the Winchester lying in the dirt between them, then back at McCulloch, and then at the belted Colt holstered on the white man’s right hip. Never did the Indian’s eyes focus on one particular spot for too long. His eyes moved like most Indians moved—like the wind.

      As the boy’s breathing slowed to some sort of normalcy, McCulloch figured he had little time before that deadly blade came slashing He wasn’t too worried. If things got desperate, all he had to do was draw the revolver and punch a hole through the kid’s middle. But he tried something different.

      He spoke a short warning in Comanche. “No. Me friend.”

      That being his entire Comanche vocabulary, “Let me help,” came out in English. He could turn to sign language easy enough, but the blackness in that boy’s eyes told him that he needed to keep both of his hands free. He pressed them down a little like he was training a puppy to stay down. Stay down, don’t jump.

      Don’t rip out my intestines with that damned pig-sticker you have.

      The black eyes of the Comanche brave hardened, moved again from McCulloch to the rifle to McCulloch to the holstered revolver, and finally the Indian lunged. He had lost a lot more blood than McCulloch figured. Although the kid’s first move was sudden and with lethal intensity, by the time he stepped over McCulloch’s Winchester, he was practically falling. The knife passed easily as McCulloch moved to his right, and the Indian boy staggered over. Falling headfirst, the knife plunged into the grasslands. He moved his left arm in an attempt to push himself up and screamed from pure agony. It looked like a bad break. The boy tried with his right hand, but collapsed, shuddered, and lay still.

      For a moment, McCulloch thought the boy was dead, but after gathering his Winchester and laying it behind

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