Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Emily lit a thin cigar, relieved that it was nearing eleven o’clock. Byron Clawson had come earlier than she had anticipated. Even a whore could take only so much, and the man’s fantasies seemed to have no end. She thought she knew all the ways there were to please a man, but Byron Clawson thought of things even Emily had never tried.
“So, you say this Sax fellow was gone,” she said, hoping to take a little break by striking up a conversation. Besides, she had to be sure everything was going as planned.
“The son of a bitch got away from me. I wish to hell I knew who informed him. I’d have his hide,” Byron fumed.
Emily smiled to herself, then turned to face Byron. He was such a pitiful sight, so thin and white—the most important part of him lying pink and limp between his legs. She puffed the cigar. “Well, maybe it was just a sixth sense. They say Indians have such things, you know.”
He grinned, motioning for her to come back to bed. He didn’t seem to mind her aging body or the scar on her face. She would do all the wild things he liked to do. That was all that mattered to him. She walked over and sat down beside him. He moved a hand up to toy with her breast.
“You ever lay with an Indian, Emily?” His eyes lit up with hideous curiosity.
She struggled to hide her revulsion of this pitiful specimen of man. She preferred turning her thoughts to Caleb. “Sure. A few times.”
“Who? When?”
She tossed back her hair. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard where I got this scar.”
“It’s true then? You were a captive of the Potawatomies?”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s true.”
He only grinned. “Is that why you’re a whore?”
She struggled to keep from slapping him, taking another puff of the cigar. “Partly. It’s really none of your business, Byron. The point is I know how to show you a good time.”
He laughed, sitting up slightly and kissing her thighs. “Are Indians really bigger than white men?”
She got up from the bed. “All men are about the same.”
He flopped down on the bed. “That Sarah Sax—she was a bitch. I gave her baby a name and saved her reputation by marrying her, but she never knew how to please me. Damn! I wouldn’t have minded getting my hands on her one more time. I would tie her down and make her do every damned thing there is to do! She’d be sorry she laid with that big buck! She’s never known a day of luxury with that half-breed. I could have given her the world. All she had to do was to be a normal woman in bed. But she was cold as ice.”
Emily looked at the time. It was five minutes before eleven. She put out her cigar. “I can’t imagine how she could be that way with someone like you—a man with money, power, and so good in bed,” she answered, wanting to laugh. She turned to face him again, then sauntered closer. “What will you do now? Are you going after this Sax?”
“I’d like to, but no one will try to find him. These worthless ruffians around here are satisfied that he’s left. None of them is brave enough to go out looking for him.” He sighed. “I will be going back to St. Louis soon to hire someone to take care of my new bank here, and the land. I’m a little nervous with this Sax fellow loose.”
He sat up and reached over, picking up a bottle of whiskey and taking a long swallow. His eyes were becoming glazed with alcohol and desire. “I’m safer in St. Louis. At any rate, that’s why I came early tonight. I won’t see you again for a while, unless you’d like to come back to St. Louis with me. I could set you up very well, Emily.”
“That’s a generous offer, Byron, but I like my setup here too much to move.” She tried to keep the harshness from her voice. What a detestable man! She forced a smile, coming back to the bed. It was almost eleven. The last thing she wanted was for Caleb Sax to see her this way, but she reminded herself that she was helping him kill this depraved man.
She moved her hands over Clawson, toying expertly with that part of him that repulsed her the most. In moments he was laughing and panting. It seemed his ability to go on and on with these things was endless. She lay back, pretending to enjoy it when his own fingers explored her with crude probes, and maniacal grunts came from his throat.
Emily kept watching the window. Finally a buckskin clad leg appeared. She began laughing, sprawling out on the bed wickedly to keep Byron’s attention away from the window. Then she suddenly rolled off the bed. “Catch me, Byron,” she teased.
He grinned hideously, licking his lips. He raised up to go after her, but suddenly he felt a strong arm come around him from behind, pulling tight against his throat, and the tip of a big knife pressed to his cheek just under his eye.
“One sound, and this eye gets popped right out of its socket,” Caleb warned.
Emily quickly grabbed up a robe and pulled it on, while Byron gaped at her. “You,” he squeaked. “You’re the one!”
Caleb bent his arm even harder, choking the man. “I told you not to make a sound,” he growled. He looked at Emily. “My pockets—some straw. Take it out and stuff it in his mouth.”
Emily nodded, wide-eyed with the tenseness of the moment. Byron began struggling wildly, but he was no match for Caleb. He pulled and tugged at Caleb’s arm, but his struggles only caused Caleb’s knife to cut into his skin and the sharp pain made him begin crying like a little boy.
Caleb’s hold on his throat was so tight he couldn’t get enough air, and Byron began to get weary. Emily walked over beside Caleb and grabbed straw from the pockets of his buckskin jacket. Caleb stood at the edge of the bed while Byron was still on it, his thin, naked body squirming while he cried. He kept his lips tightly shut.
“Open your mouth, you son of a bitch, or I’ll by God cut your balls off right here and now,” Caleb hissed.
The man shook violently. He opened his mouth and Emily stuffed straw into it. Caleb yanked the man from the bed then, shoving him to the floor and planting a knee against his chest so hard that he could breathe barely enough to stay alive. Caleb shoved his knife into its sheath for a moment, taking out a bandanna and quickly tying it around Byron Clawson’s mouth tightly so he couldn’t make a sound. He jerked the man to his feet. Emily was astounded at Caleb’s strength. If Caleb Sax was in pain, no one would know it, nor would a person believe the man had been a near cripple just a few days earlier.
“Get dressed,” he ordered Byron. “I want nothing of yours left in this room. For all intents and purposes, you left of your own free will.” He shoved the man over the bed and Byron rolled off it to the floor on the other side, grasping at his throat, choking on the dusty straw and trying to get his breath back from having Caleb’s knee against his chest. He was sure a rib had cracked.
He crawled to his clothes, hardly able to get them on straight, he shook so badly from fear. Byron could only hope Caleb Sax intended only to frighten him. Surely the man wouldn’t dare kill him. Everyone would suspect. But then maybe not. Everyone, including himself, thought Caleb Sax was on his way out of Texas.
He hastily pulled on and buttoned his pants, failing to get the right buttons into the right holes out of nervousness. He pulled on his shirt but left the tail hanging out. He stuffed his tie into a pocket of his suit jacket and pulled the jacket on. Tears ran down his face as he eyed Caleb, who seemed to fill the room with his size and power. Where had his strength come from? He was supposed to have been badly wounded by the Rangers.
The stinking whore Emily Stoner was helping Caleb Sax. He should have known! He should have known. Why had he come to Texas? And why had he come here tonight? If only he hadn’t drunk so much. He’d have been more alert. It was that damned whore’s fault! She got him drunk on purpose.
Caleb watched his every move, sensed the man would make a dash for it, which he did. Caleb was ready. He lunged before Byron could get to the door, grabbing the man back and whipping one arm behind him, bending until he heard a snap. A muffled groan came from Byron’s gagged mouth and Emily put a hand to her stomach. She was beginning to see just how ruthless Caleb Sax could be. Byron’s shoulder moved oddly as Caleb pulled both arms behind the man’s back and tied his wrists, then his ankles. He left the man lying on the floor and rose, facing Emily.
“Look around good. Make sure there’s nothing of his here.”
She turned away, scouring the room with her eyes. She walked to the bed and straightened the sheets, then looked under the bed. “Just his shoes and socks.” She picked them up and held them out. Caleb took them and tied the shoes to his belt, then stuffed the socks into another of Byron’s jacket pockets. He turned to Emily, stepping closer.
“Thank you, Emily. I’ll get as far away as possible. I came into town after dark and my horse is tied at the side in the alley. No one saw me. You stay in the room until everyone else has gone. If people ask, Byron decided to stay most of the night with you. He left early in the morning. That’s all you know.”
She nodded. “Good luck, Caleb. Be careful!”
Their eyes held. “I’m so goddamned sorry about everything, Emily—Howard and all. I’m sorry we couldn’t have stayed here. I’ll always think about you, wonder about you.”
She blinked back tears. “I’ll be doing the same. Try to write me sometime. Wait a while, until things settle around here.”
“I’ll do that.” He put a hand to her face. “I’ll never forget this.”
“And I’ll never forget you, Caleb. Take good care of that beautiful family.”
He smiled, tears in his eyes. She thought it odd that he could be so loving and gentle, yet could turn around and be as ruthless as he was with Byron Clawson. Caleb bent down and met her lips. How could he not give her one more kiss for old times’ sake? He would probably never see her again. The kiss lingered in a moment of old curiosity over what could have been. She had been Caleb Sax’s first awakening to woman. Where did time go? Why was youth such a fleeting thing?
He left her lips. “You know I love you, Caleb. I always have.”
He smiled sadly. “We love each other, in a special way.” He kissed her forehead then. “Good-bye, Emily.” His voice was choked. He turned then, reaching down and picking up Byron, slinging the man over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Turn down your lamp,” he said quietly to her.
Emily obeyed, watching his shadow disappear through the window then. She hurried over to it, but could see nothing in the darkness below. That was good. If she couldn’t see him, then neither could anyone else. She heard a horse trot quietly away toward the back of the building.
Her eyes teared as she clutched at a pain in her stomach. How could she tell him what the doctor had told her? She was dying. The symptoms had become manifest in the past few months, and it wouldn’t be too long before they intensified. What was the sense of adding that burden to all those he already carried? He might try to do something foolish if he knew, like try to come back for her. It was better this way.
Emily put her head down on the windowsill and wept. She would never see Caleb Sax again. She would die in this wild land called Texas and that would be that. Caleb Sax was off to new land, even more unsettled land. That was what he was made for. Texas had become too civilized for the likes of men like Caleb.
They made camp for the night. Sarah did as Caleb had ordered and kept her eyes on the southern horizon, waiting. They had been traveling for nine days, two days longer than Caleb had said it would take. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to find them. She couldn’t let herself think anything worse than that. He had just been somehow delayed, or he’d lost their trail. He would come. Yes, he would come. He’d promised.
She turned and helped pitch a tent, while Tom staked out a rope to tie all the horses up for the night. He would be glad when they reached hillier country. There was no place to hide on these open plains, but so far they had not been bothered.
He, too, was worried. But he refused to voice his feelings. Sarah was already a nervous wreck, and Lynda kept looking at him with those big, blue eyes full of sorrow. Jess did all he could to comfort and reassure her.
Both men were weary. They needed another man. If Caleb didn’t show, this journey would not only be difficult, but full of crushing sorrow. They all felt like lost sheep without a shepherd.
Jess tried to liven up the group after a meager supper of beans and biscuits by starting up some singing of humorous songs he had learned when he worked on docks along Lake Erie. When that didn’t work he began telling all of them about the Great Lakes, and they all tried to picture how big they must be, convinced that Jess exaggerated. But Sarah assured them it was true, telling them about Lake Michigan, which bordered Fort Dearborn, where she and Caleb had grown up. It all seemed so long ago, and it made her think of Caleb, the young Indian boy who had come to live with them when they were children. She remembered how fascinated he’d been over that big lake. “Maxe-ne hanenestse,” he called it.
The boys began asking questions about the lake, but suddenly Sarah stopped talking. Her eyes were glued to the horizon behind them and they all turned. Far off they could see a man on a horse. But there was another smaller horse with him. How could it be Caleb? He would be coming alone.
Sarah rose, her heart pounding. The figure had apparently spotted them and turned his horse into a gallop. Tom and Jess both reached for their rifles. “It’s him,” Sarah said boldly. “It’s Caleb!”
She began to run.
“Sarah, wait,” Jess called out.
But she didn’t have to wait. She knew her husband, even from such a distance. She knew those shoulders, the way he sat a horse. She could see the dance of the fringes of his buckskins. “Caleb,” she called out.
Tom and Jess lowered their rifles.
“Oh, God, Jess, I think it’s him,” Lynda said in a shaking voice. She started to run out behind her mother, but Jess caught her arm.
“Wait. Let them be.”
James stared, hardly able to believe his eyes but sure that the smaller horse with his father was the Appaloosa colt. Was it possible?
Caleb saw her coming. Sarah! It was over. He was leaving his beloved Texas, but not his memories. They could go with him. And so would Sarah and his family. He thought of some of the things Tom Sax and his good trapper friend Bo had said to Caleb so many years ago, when Caleb was just a youth.
“Half of you is their kind, Caleb. All manner of things will happen to you before you’re an old man. For all you know some day you’ll settle in the white man’s world.”
He had tried that. But he knew now he could never quite live completely as a white man.
“Life keeps turning around, Tom,” he had told his own son once. “I guess everything is a matter of perspective. There’s good and bad, no matter which side of the fence you’re on.”
Caleb rode hard until he was close to Sarah, then slowed his horse, reaching down and sweeping her up with one arm, perching her in front of him. She sat sideways, reaching around his neck and weeping uncontrollably.
“It’s all over,” he told her. “Byron Clawson will never cross your path again, and they’ll be a long time finding him.”
She clung to him, unable to speak. He kissed her hair, her cheek, her neck. She felt good, and he felt stronger than ever. Killing Clawson had given him a new energy and purpose, releasing long pent-up hatreds and vengeance. Open prairie or not, he would find a way to make love to this woman tonight, even if he had to send the others on ahead.
“Come on, Sarah. Stop your crying. I told you I would come. You have got to have more faith in me, woman.”
“Oh, Caleb,” she finally managed to speak between sobs. “I can go anywhere. Anywhere! It doesn’t matter. Just don’t ever let us be apart like that again!”
“That’s a promise, Sarah Sax.” He urged his horse into motion, heading at a slower pace toward the camp. He grinned when he saw the look on James’s face as he came closer, leading the Appaloosa colt.
“Father!” Lynda came running up to him, hugging his leg. Caleb’s eyes moved to Tom, who just stood staring, tears on his cheeks.
“It’s goddamned good to see you, Caleb,” Jess said, coming up and squeezing his arm.
“How about getting your wife off me so I can get down,” Caleb teased.
Jess smiled, gently pulling Lynda away. Caleb gave a still-weeping Sarah a squeeze, easing off his horse and lifting her down. He urged his horse back out of the way and reached for the colt, keeping one arm around Sarah as he led the colt over to James. Cale stared at his grandfather as though he were some kind of spirit returned from the dead as Caleb handed out the colt’s reins to James.
“He’s all yours, James,” he told the boy.
James looked from the horse up into his father’s blue eyes. “Mine? I thought … I thought Mister Handel bought him.”
“He did. I bought him back. You have been brave about all of this, and it’s not been easy on you. I want you to have the colt.”
The boy’s eyes teared and he hugged his father, a lump so big in his throat he couldn’t talk. Caleb looked at Cale. “You take your pick from the younger horses of what we have with us, Cale. Take whatever horse you want and its your own.”
The boy’s lips puckered. “I’m glad you’re back, Grandpa,” he sniffed. “Will you help me pick out a good one?”
“If you want. Why don’t you take James and his colt and go look at the other horses?” He gently pulled James away. “Go on, son. Brush down your horse.”
James wiped at his eyes. “Thank you, Pa,” he muttered. He grabbed the colt’s reins and ran off with Cale.
Caleb kept hold of Sarah, eyeing Tom. “Everything all right?”
Tom just nodded. He quickly wiped his eyes. “We could use some meat,” he told the man then, his voice strained. “Jess and I didn’t want to go off hunting and leave the women alone. Now that you’re here, we can all take turns.”
Caleb nodded. “Tomorrow we’ll cover as much country as possible. We’ve got to get to some hills. We’re too open here.”
Tom swallowed. “Something tells me we’re going to make it just fine.”
Caleb grinned then. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He walked with Sarah over to the campfire. “I’m kind of excited about going someplace new. I guess I’m a wandering man at heart anyway. Lord knows I’ve lived about everyplace there is to live in this land. So has Sarah.”
“So have all of us,” Lynda added.
Tom shrugged. “All I’ve known is Texas—and Mexico, but not exactly in a pleasurable way.”
Caleb met his son’s eyes. “And you’re yearning to know what else is out there, now that we’ve been displaced,” Caleb told Tom.
The young man sighed. “How did you know?”
“I was your age once, that’s how. All I ask is that you help us get settled first, Tom. Then if you want to do a little wandering, I won’t stop you.”
Their eyes held. It would be hard to leave Caleb Sax. And it would be hard on Caleb. But Tom Sax had to be his own man. “We won’t worry about it now,” he told Caleb. “Right now you look so damned good to me I can’t even begin to think of leaving.”
Caleb smiled. “You will, in time. And somewhere out there another woman is waiting for you. You had just better hope she’s as good a wife as Sarah.”
Tom smiled sadly. “If she’s as good as Bess was, I’ll be satisfied.”
Caleb looked over at James, who was hugging the colt around the neck. He looked back at Tom. “No sad thoughts tonight. We’ve left a lot behind, but we have each other and we’re going someplace new. Maybe it’s for the best.”
Tom nodded. “Maybe.”
Cale came running over, the blue quill necklace in his hand. “Hold this for me, Mother,” he told Lynda, handing it to her. “It gets kind of heavy on my neck.” He ran off again and Lynda clasped the necklace, looking down at it.
“This necklace … it’s kind of like a good luck charm,” she said, looking over at her father.
Caleb hugged Sarah close. The necklace had brought his family together, and every time he held it himself he felt a certain strength. Perhaps it possessed some powerful Indian spirit. All he knew was he had his family, and Byron Clawson was dead. There was no looking back now, no going back. It was done. They would go to Colorado—to the mountains—to Cheyenne country. But a good share of their hearts and spirits would forever belong to Texas, and memories of loved ones now buried there would forever live in their memories.
* * *
“There is a right time for everything:
A time to be born, a time to die …
A time to kill, a time to heal …
A time to destroy, a time to rebuild …
A time to cry, a time to laugh …
A time to grieve, a time to dance …
A time for loving, a time for hating …
A time for war, a time for peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3: Various verses from 1 through 8.
(The Way, The Living Bible)