They rode out of Wolf Crossing with the dark clouds still clinging to the mountain peaks, seemingly poised and awaiting only the proper moment to open their overloaded bellies and send a flood cascading down the long slopes.
Shawn, though feeling hunger, had passed up the few minutes of grace permitted him while Harry Brandon made his final preparations—time during which he could have grabbed a hasty bite at the restaurant mentioned by Ed, the bartender—and instead made use of them to water the sorrel and see to his gear.
The marshal had said they would travel only a short distance before making camp; he could ignore his need for food until then—and the sorrel was a different matter. He had gone the entire day without water.
Riding beside Brandon, Starbuck glanced back as they broke clear of the town’s limits and turned off the well-defined road toward the towering mountains. Behind the lawman and him came Moody and Dave Gilder, their horses side by side and matching each step. Able Rome, his broad face emotionless, brought up the rear. He had not spoken, so far as Shawn knew, since he had been in the saloon.
“Mighty glad you showed up when you did,” Brandon said, shifting his holster forward on his leg. “I figured I had to have at least one good man along that I could depend on—and you was him.”
Starbuck half smiled. “You don’t know me, marshal. How can you say that?”
“Shows—that’s how. I’m a pretty good judge of men, and on you it shows.”
“Plain guess. Doubt if I’m any more reliable than the men you’ve got.”
The lawman snorted. “You talking about Gilder and Moody and that nigra?”
“I’m talking about Gilder and Moody and Able Rome,” Starbuck said coldly.
Brandon turned his head, considered Shawn for a long breath. “Yeah, them. Like I said, they don’t count for hardly nothing. Just three bags of corn husks setting on three saddles.” He paused, swept the riders behind him with a scornful glance. “Brandon’s posse—hell! Best you call them Brandon’s misfits.”
“Could be wrong about them.”
“Wrong—how?”
“All most men need sometimes is a chance, one that’ll make them face up to something hard and force them to prove themselves. Somebody once said that a hero was never born, he was made.”
“Not them! What can Dave Gilder prove to himself? He can’t even keep hisself sober long enough to do much of anything. And about all the proving he could do me is that he could go a whole day without a drink, which I sure doubt.
“And that greenhorn—Moody. What’s he got to prove? That he ain’t already dead from something that happened to him sometime or other? He’s done showed that he wasn’t man enough to take it—else he wouldn’t be nothing but a walking corpse.”
“Hard to know what’s in any man’s mind.”
“Not with them it ain’t. Gilder’s figuring how soon it’ll be before he can get back to town and blow what money he’ll make on whiskey. Moody’s trying to forget whatever it is that’s chewing on his guts, and far as that nig—that Rome’s concerned, he’s just out to show he’s good as any white man. Always the way with them black ones.”
Harry Brandon spat, looked ahead. The trail was slipping down into the bottom of a fairly narrow canyon to pick its course along the floor. Pine trees were beginning to be more plentiful, and the lesser growth common to the lower valley and flats area was thinning out.
“They might as well try changing their color,” the lawman said, resuming the subject. “That’s what’s eating them.” He frowned, fixed Shawn with his hard, fixed gaze. “You got a special feeling for blacks?”
“I never thought about it one way or another. Just a man like any other—”
“Then you sure’n hell ain’t never had much truck with them!”
“I’ve worked with a few, and we had a couple of hired hands back on the farm that were colored. Never figured them as being anything other than two men who worked for my pa.”
“Where was that?”
“Ohio. Place was on the Muskingum River. Town nearby had the same name.”
“Ohio,” Brandon repeated as if it explained much to him. “Your people still there?”
“No. My mother’s been dead a long time—about twelve years now. Pa died two years ago.”
“And that’s what cut you loose and started you hunting this brother you was talking about.”
Starbuck nodded. “I’ve been at it off an’ on ever since. I have to stop once in awhile, find myself a job and get a little traveling money together.”
“I come from a farm myself,” the lawman said in a thoughtful voice. “Pennsylvania. Wish’t the hell I’d a stayed there. Good land, good house and not no worrying to do like I’ve had since I got out here.”
“You always worn a badge?”
“Yep, first job I took was being a deputy sheriff. Up in Colorado. Had a couple others like it—Wyoming, Nebraska, then I got myself elected marshal of this damned hole ... Been sorry of it.”
Shawn glanced up, surprised. “I understood from that bartender—”
“Ed Christian—”
“Whatever his name is, that you were up for re-election next month.”
“He say that?”
“Not in so many words but it’s the way I took it.”
Brandon laughed. “Yeah, I reckon he’d be thinking that. He’s one of the town councilmen—him and Gooch and Stratton and Doc Marberry—and they’d be figuring on me going after the job again. But they got a big surprise coming. They can take the job and shove it because I’m pulling out. Had all of that town I want.” There was a bitterness in the lawman’s tone and his features had become grim.
“How long you been wearing the badge in Wolf Crossing?”
“Six years—almost, and that’s more’n enough. No help there when you need it, nobody ever willing to back you up. This posse’s a good example of how they feel about the law—me ... I need support, ask for it and what do I get? Them!” Brandon finished with a sweeping gesture toward the men behind him.
“I expect the fact that it was the Paradise Mine people they’d be helping was the big reason.”
The marshal shook his head, spat. “Nah, the mining company is just something to lay it on. Me—I’m the one they’re turning their backs on. But I don’t give a good goddam no more. Hell of a life, anyway. No future in it. A man gets too old to work, he gets let out, ends up swamping in a saloon or forking manure in a stable ... Pay’s never enough for him to lay any money aside.
“But I’m beating them at their own game. No little two-bit town’s going to do that to me. I’m quitting, getting out while the getting’s good. Already made my plans.”
“If that’s the way you feel about it,” Shawn said, “then that’s the thing to do. A man only lives once. I reckon he ought to fill his time doing what he likes.”
“That’s me exactly, from here on,” Brandon replied. “Leastwise it’ll be after I hand in my star.”
Starbuck made no comment. Darkness was growing and he began to look ahead for signs of the creek where they would be making night camp. He’d be glad to crawl off the saddle and have a meal. It had been a long, tiring day.
Brandon, noting his exploring glance, said, “We’ll be pulling up in another mile or so. Gold Creek ain’t far ... I hear you say you was headed for Santa Fe?”
Shawn nodded. He was a bit weary of conversation, hoped the lawman had talked himself out for awhile but evidently it was not to be.
“Somebody there you know—or maybe you’re just hoping to find your brother?”
“I aim to look for him, do some asking around.”
“I expect you’ve seen a passel of places, drifting around the way you have.”
“Quite a few, all right.”
“Country south of the mountains—the range we’re following—you been there?”
“Not too much. Worked around Las Cruces for a time.”
“Where’s that?”
“Lower Rio Grande Valley ...Some call it the Mesilla Valley.”
“Ain’t that pretty close to the Mexican border?”
“Forty, fifty miles, as I recall.”
Off to their right a piñon jay scolded noisily from the depths of a long-needled pine. Brandon listened briefly and then said, “What’s back up this side of Las Cruces?”
“A lot of open country—desert, unless you stay down in the valley where the Rio Grande is.”
“But east of that, there ain’t much of nothing, that it?”
“About right. A few lonesome hills, and a man can run into Indians if he’s not watching sharp. Apaches and Comanches both.”
“But a man could get through if he was well fixed for grub and water and kept his eyes peeled.”
Brandon was evidently thinking about the outlaws they were pursuing, the possibility of their escaping to make their way to the Mexican border.
“That’s what they’ll need—along with some good luck.”
“Which they sure’n hell ain’t going to get the chance of using!” the lawman said harshly.
Starbuck’s gaze rested on Harry Brandon. There was solid, cold determination in his tone and manner. Overtaking the killers and recovering the gold apparently was very important to him. He guessed he could understand the lawman’s thinking; he was turning in his star and he wanted to do it with success crowning the moment.
Perhaps he even hoped the people of Wolf Crossing would suddenly realize their loss and beg him to stay; then he could laugh in their faces and turn them down cold.
“Reckon we’re here—”
The marshal’s voice brought Shawn’s attention to the trail. A dozen strides ahead he saw a narrow ribbon of water sparkling dully in the fading daylight as it cut its way along the foot of a slope. He heaved a deep sigh. A hot meal was going to do him a lot of good.
Dave Gilder cupped his hands over the saddle horn and allowed his suffering body to rock back and forth with the motion of his horse. Every nerve within his being was crying that all too familiar cry.
He had known it was coming, that the craving would hit him hardest on the third day—and this was the third day, or rather the evening of the third. But this time he was going to lick it. He’d tipped his last bottle and from now on he was going to be master of his own self.
High time, he thought bitterly. He should have done it years ago. If he had, it would be an entirely different sort of life he’d be leading. Likely he’d be in business somewhere, or maybe he would have had himself a ranch or a farm. Hell, he had plenty of ability—he’d proved that during the war when he headed up the quartermaster department of the corps he was in.
But most of all he’d still have Felicity and the three boys. They’d all be together, living and growing as a family should ... He reckoned he could forget all that—them. He didn’t even blame Felicity anymore for taking the boys and leaving him and going home to her folks in Georgia. He hadn’t been a husband or a father, he’d been nothing but a worthless drunk.
Maybe—just maybe, mind you—if he could straighten up this time and stay that way, Felicity would come back. Oh, sure, he’d tried it before, but something always came up to change things and before he knew what was happening, he found himself sprawled in the back room of some saloon or in a flophouse of a hotel sleeping off a three-or four-day bout with old John Barleycorn.
But this time it was different. He had a feeling about it. He’d not slip, he’d stay cold, stone sober and not even think about a drink ... Three days now, and while all hell was breaking loose inside him, he’d fight it out to a finish. This time he’d beat it—win.
Walt Moody slid a glance at the, man riding beside him. The marshal had evidently just said something about them to that gunslinger he’d talked into becoming a member of his posse, and he wondered if the fellow had noticed. It hadn’t been complimentary, that was for sure. The look on the lawman’s face had proved that.
Not that it mattered. Nothing did anymore, although he had tried often enough to pick up the bits and pieces of his life and fit them back together into a satisfactory whole. Perhaps he would be better off if he were like Gilder and could submerge his memories and thoughts and lost hopes in a bottle of whiskey. But liquor had never been of any help; indeed, it had only made matters worse.
It did something to his mind, brought into sharp focus all the plans he’d once entertained and the dreams he had sought to convert into reality. But worst of all it called forth from the dark, shadowy corners of his brain a graphic remembrance, a vivid portrait of Rozella in all her haunting, ethereal beauty to stand before him like a vengeful, accusing ghost.
It never entirely faded, simply receded leaving him always aware of its lurking, destroying presence. He didn’t know what the answer to his life would be, and for a year now he’d been searching for it. Somewhere there was a solution, a relief from the past and thoughts of all the things that could have been but were not.
Perhaps he would find it on this manhunt; maybe it lay in danger, in the hammer of gunshots, the whir of bullets—the sight of blood. He had looked everywhere else and found nothing. Could it be that death was the key—the final vindication? If so, and the espousers of religion were right, he’d be with Rozella again.
Able Rome considered the heavy clouds hanging low in the already dark sky. It was going to rain, no doubt of it. Maybe not that very night but it would come before sundown tomorrow. A hard rain would make him feel good. It always did. It gave him a sort of cleaned-off, scoured sensation like when, as a boy, his ma had worked him over in a tubful of suds with a stiff bristled brush.
A storm could complicate the marshal’s plans to track down those outlaws and the gold they were running with, however. That was good, too; he was drawing five big dollars for every day he put in with the posse. There could be a little something extra, too, the marshal had said, if they recovered the gold for the mining company.
He could use a couple of hundred dollars. It would give his poke a real boost and put him that much closer to owning that place down in Arizona he planned to have. But he still had a long way to go before he’d be in shape to settle down. Money wasn’t easy to come by. He was always the first to be laid off a job, the last to be hired—not because he wasn’t a good cowhand; he knew he was better and more reliable than most, but a black man always had to take the leavings.
His pa had been wrong there, even if he had been plenty smart in almost everything else. The personal body servant of a New Orleans plantation owner, he had been tutored privately and had learned to read and write—even think—like a white man.
He had passed on his learning to Able, assuring him all the while that education and knowledge was the open door to things, that by possessing it he would be the equal of any man regardless of where he went. It’s being ignorant that makes the difference, he had said.
But Able had found it to be untrue. In fact, it seemingly had just the opposite effect; those of his own kind shunned him, called him high-toned, and as for the whites, they either ignored him or were suspicious and hated him.
During the war when he had served with the Union Army he had attempted to make use of his abilities for the good of the Cause but his superiors had been uninterested and he had stayed in the ranks along with others of his color, doing the same menial tasks assigned to those with no education at all.
That was when it began to dawn on him that his father had been wrong; there was more to it than being able to read and write and talk intelligently. Somewhere along the way you had to reach a different level of proof as to a man being a man.
The burgeoning West offered possibilities where it could be attained, and when the fighting was over he had taken the money he’d managed to accumulate, bought himself a horse and gear, and headed for Texas and points farther on.
Now, eleven years later, he was still searching for that level of proof, that elusive something that would provide him with the means by which he could take his rightful place and be accepted and equal to all those with whom he came in contact.
It shouldn’t really be so important to him anymore, he often told himself; he was doing pretty good, actually far better than most of his kind. He had money saved, plans for a small ranch of his own, and while he was relegated to that airless, lonely chasm lying between the black people and the white—a limbo where he was neither fish nor fowl—he reckoned he should not complain.
But it troubled Able Rome nevertheless. Just what was it he must do to attain that intangible factor Mr. Lincoln had called equality? Just as all journeys must begin with a first step, he had begun at the knee of his father; after that it had all seemed to stall and the goal he sought receded farther into the gloomy distance.
He shrugged. It was a thing to puzzle a man, and he for one would like to find the answer ... Not that it really mattered ... A wry smile tugged at his lips as the old, familiar rationalization slipped effortlessly into his mind. The hell it didn’t matter! It mattered a lot. The five dollars a day he was to get as a posse member wasn’t important at all—it was the chance to prove that he was a man—a damn good man equal to any that walked the earth with him and not just another black—a nigra—with a bit of education.