CHAPTER ONE

 

Dr. Logan Munro was conscious of the blood splattered across the front of his shirt. The woman had bled profusely, and although he had moved quickly, he had been unable to protect himself from the gush of the severed vessels.

He looked a mess, but despite himself, he smiled as he walked down the boardwalk on Fourth Street. He was a tall, slim man of almost forty years, with black hair going grey at the temples, and with a pepper and salt mustache. His face was weather-beaten from years spent under the tropical sun of far-off India, and he walked with the upright posture of one who had served in the army, which indeed he had. Dr. Logan Munro had served as a surgeon in three conflicts around the world. First, during the Crimean War, where he had worked at the British Army Hospital in Scutari in Constantinople. There, he’d had the honor of working with the nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale, who had been dubbed the Lady of the Lamp after her habit of making a nightly round of her patients. After a few months, he had been sent to the front with the 21st Regiment of Foot where he had ample opportunity to hone his surgical skills at the Siege of Sevastopol. Then, when the war was over, he had gone to India with the British East India Company Army, and was unfortunate enough to get embroiled in the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Finally, after settling in America, he had worked his way west and served with the Union in the Civil War.

He had lost his best friend in the first conflict, and he had lost his young wife after the second. Understandably, he had not been in the best of emotional health when he arrived in America. By the time the Civil War ended, he had seen so much killing, had amputated so many mangled limbs and pronounced far too many young folk dead, that he felt more than a part of him had died. He had meant to fly as far as possible from civilization, and got as far as the fledgling Kansas town of Wolf Creek—situated in a dogleg-shaped bend of the creek by the same name, a tributary of the Arkansas River. He bought an office there, put up his sign and started doing the only thing he knew how—doctoring. He had intended to bury himself in work, looking after folks from cradle to grave. To his surprise, the town had grown quickly, being the sort of melting pot that people of all creeds and persuasions had gravitated to after the war. Former pro-slavery ‘border ruffians’ mingled with ardent abolitionist ‘Jayhawkers,’ but no-one was any the wiser. There was an acceptance that no-one was clean and blameless in war, and if a man wanted to keep his past to himself, that was his business. Then, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad arrived and caused the town to boom. Cattle drives made for the railhead, and with the influx of cowboys parched from weeks on the trail and with a thirst for copious quantities of drink, an appetite for female company and a desire to gamble their hard-earned money, the fleshpots swelled.

When Logan first put up his shingle and started seeing patients, the southernmost part of town was South Street. As the town expanded southward, though, another street came into being. It was called Grant Street in honor of the President, but amongst the less deferential cowboys, most of whom hailed from Texas, it was known by the sobriquet of “Useless S. Grant Street.” Inevitably, this street marked the boundary between the respectable northern part of the town and the southern, less salubrious part, with its gambling and drinking establishments, its houses of ill repute, and its infamous opium den, owned by an enigmatic Chinese businessman called Tsu Chiao. This newer part of Wolf Creek was known as Dogleg City, being as it nestled into the dogleg of Wolf Creek. And the part that abutted the Creek itself was made up of cribs, hog pens and crude tents where the most haggard of soiled doves plied whatever trade they could. As the town doctor, Logan Munro was often called to minister to them or their clients. At times, he found the downward spiral in some people’s lives profoundly depressing.

Yet today was no day to feel sad. A bright sun had risen against a cobalt sky, a fitting harbinger of hope and new life. He straightened his hat, a reflex gesture from his British Army days, and began whistling a refrain from his old regimental song as he swung his bag in jaunty fashion. In his mind, he was whistling along to the pipes of the Scots Fusiliers.

Already, the respectable part of Wolf Creek was starting to come alive, and most of the small business folk had begun their daily toil. He waved to several passers-by and acknowledged the odd rider.

“Ach! You sound annoyingly cheerful for this time of the day, Doctor Munro,” barked Frank Kloepfer, the bulky, barrel-chested butcher, as he came out of his doorway. He carried a bucket of sawdust that he was spreading across the floor of his shop. He stroked his luxurious mustache, revealing, in the process, the gap where his two front teeth once resided until they had been knocked out by an irate customer complaining that he had been sold rancid meat. That had been before the big German had dislocated the man’s jaw, which it had been Logan’s tricky job to reset.

Frank nodded his head at the blood on Logan’s shirt. “You had trouble today?”

Logan shook his head with a grin and pointed to the butcher’s blood-stained apron. “No trouble, Frank. Just a sign of honest work, the same as yours.” He looked down at his shirt and pulled his jacket collar over to try and make the stain less conspicuous.

“But why wouldn’t I be cheerful on a day like this?” he asked rhetorically, gazing up at the sky and smiling. “There is nothing like bringing a baby into the world to put a smile on one’s face. And that being the case, when you bring two in one go there is twice the reason to be happy.”

“Ach, you don’t say! That has to be Mrs. Blunkett. She was looking as round as a kürbis.” He hesitated as he searched for the word in American, then his eyes widened in delight as it came to him. “As round as a pumpkin, when I last saw her.” He guffawed and winked lewdly. “Who would think Willie Blunkett was man enough to sire twins!” He rubbed his hands together. “I am guessing they will want steak? Or maybe you want them to ruin some of my good meat and make that heathen British beef tea you go on about.”

“Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, sent vast amounts of concentrated beef tea to Florence Nightingale so that she could treat the wounded during the Crimean War. It is a great tonic after illness, and a grand thing for a woman after childbirth,” Logan explained enthusiastically. “That, and bosh water from the blacksmith’s quenching trough. It’s full of iron—just what a woman needs to build new blood. I’ll be going over to Spike Sweeney’s forge later for a bucket of the stuff so I can make up a bottle or two for her.”

He walked on, his mind replaying the birth of the Blunkett twins and the extended episiotomy that he had to cut in order to use the forceps to deliver the head of the second twin, a little boy who had been in a breech, or bottom first, position. The fountain of blood from the spurting vessels severed in his incision had covered him before he had a chance to deflect the spray.

But it was all over now, and Betsy Blunkett and her two babies, one of each sex, were in Martha Pomeroy’s capable hands. Martha was an attractive war widow who lived opposite the photographer’s studio at the junction of Lincoln and Fifth Street. She happened to be the best midwife he had ever worked with, despite the fact that she had no professional training, and only did it because she found she had a talent at helping woman deliver their babies. It was her personal sadness that her husband had been killed at Baxter Springs, and she had a stillbirth shortly after.

A fine woman, Logan mused for a moment before quickly putting further thought of her from his mind. She and he were both widowed, both vulnerable, but he was not sure whether he could ever allow himself to get involved with another woman. Not after his failure to save Helen, his wife, back in Lucknow.

He crossed Washington Street and tapped on the window of Ma’s Café. The aroma of freshly baked bread, bacon and coffee assailed his nostrils and set his gastric juices flowing.

The said “Ma,” matronly Stephanie Adams—another of the many war widows of Wolf Creek—was bustling about serving breakfast to a couple of Joe Nash’s boys on one table, and to various Dogleg City revelers who were making their way home or to employment of some sort after a night of debauchery of one form or another. She smiled at him and raised the coffee pot in her hand with a quizzical expression.

“I’ll be back,” he mouthed through the glass, pointing to the blood stained shirt, then cryptically jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Ma opened her mouth in mock horror at the sight of the blood. Then, with a laugh, she waved and returned to dispensing coffee to her customers.

Logan laughed and quickened his stride. Although Ma’s food was perhaps not as refined as the fare on offer at Isabella’s Restaurant on Washington Street, where Antonio Isabella, his wife, and family served out Italian cuisine to the more discerning palates in Wolf Creek, the merry widow knew how to satisfy a man’s hunger. Logan tended to spread his patronage among the various eateries, but more often than not, he breakfasted at her establishment. She had an uplifting nature and she never tired of imitating his strange accent that three countries, three wars and a whole lot of living had jumbled into a sort of Scottish patois.

He turned right onto South Street and found his way barred by Marshal Sam Gardner and Fred Garvey, one of his deputies. The marshal was a tall, wiry man in his mid-thirties. His hair hung down to his shoulders, and the goatee he sported was coal black and well-groomed, just like the rest of him. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and frock coat, with a fancy vest, ribbon tie and expensive polished boots. The ivory-handled twin revolvers strapped to his sides implied his usefulness with guns. He had been a U.S. Cavalry officer during the war and had fought with distinction. He was typical of the cavalry types that Logan had seen in the Crimea and in India; brave without doubt, yet with an arrogance and self-belief that could stray into recklessness.

Fred Garvey was a complete contrast. He was a short, stocky man in his middle years with a totally different idea about dress. His clothes were starched clean, and strictly functional, almost like a uniform. But, whereas Gardner was obviously one used to leading and being obeyed, Fred was clearly one who knew his place, and who would happily carry out his superior’s orders. His unhurried Georgian drawl was sometimes misconstrued by folk who didn’t know him. More than one errant cowpoke had incorrectly assumed that he was slow in the uptake, only to find himself on the end of a tongue-lashing, for he was both intelligent and witty. A stickler for the letter of the law, his short stature belied his ability to deal with anyone who infringed any of the town’s statutes.

“Have you been in the wars, Doc?” Fred asked, looking at Logan’s bloody clothing with a smile.

“In a manner of speaking. Betsy Blunkett had twins this morning. I’m on my way to Li Wong’s Laundry.”

Sam Gardner smiled sarcastically. “I thought you didn’t cotton to our Chinese friends, Doctor Munro?”

“Then you thought wrong, Marshal,” replied Logan, deliberately using the lawman’s title, just as he had. “I have no problem with any man, as long as he’s honest and doesn’t make his living by preying on the weaknesses of others. I believe that the Li family is an absolute asset to Wolf Creek. They are honest and industrious, a good example to many of the residents of the town. I take it you are referring to my views on Tsu Chiao’s activities?”

The marshal gave a curt nod.

“Well, there again, I have no personal feelings one way or the other about him as a human being. Who, of any of us, have the right to judge a man’s worth? What I dislike is the fact that he purveys opium and vice down in The Red Chamber. I often spend my time treating the effects they have on his customers. Opium fuddles the mind and brain, and venereal disease rots the nether regions.”

He straightened his hat and added: “And that goes for both sexes.”

Fred Garvey chuckled. “Sounds funny when you say it like that, Doc.” He shrugged. “But you know what Dogleg City is like. Every town has a part of it that caters to the baser instincts. I don’t know if our Wolf Creek is better or worse than any other cattle or railroad town.” He sucked air between his teeth. “All I know is that the law has to keep a close eye on things. We saw Sheriff Satterlee and Deputy Pennycuff head down there half an hour ago. The marshal and me are just heading down there as well. He’s going to call in on Soo Chow hisself.”

He beamed, then quickly added, “Professionally, you understand. We have to nip any trouble in the bud.” He sighed. “And while he does, I have the pleasure of doing the rounds of Tent City.”

Sam Gardner smoothed his goatee with the edge of an elegantly manicured forefinger. “Law-keeping is a serious business, Doctor. Just the same as your own occupation.”

Logan had previously wondered about Sam Gardner’s ethics as a law officer, and his eyes narrowed a little. He suspected that his purpose in visiting Tsu Chiao may have more to do with collecting a percentage of the profits for ensuring that the opium den was left alone by the law, than to check for any misdemeanors. However, if the marshal detected any such suspicion in Logan’s eyes he did not show it. He returned his gaze unblinkingly.

“Of course,” Logan said. “I understand how important the law is, and how seriously you law enforcers take your jobs. Good morning, gentlemen.”

He tipped his hat to them, then set off across the street. He made for a plain fronted building with steamed-up windows. A large sign above the door proclaimed it to be LI’S LAUNDRY.

Beneath it—in red calligraphic painting—the same thing was more mysteriously, and more impressively, written in Chinese:

中国洗衣店

A bell jangled as Logan pushed open the door and found himself in the steamy atmosphere. Through the steam, he could see Jing Jing, the Li family’s pretty daughter, standing behind a counter talking to a young woman with corn yellow hair wearing a blue bonnet.

“Why, Doctor Munro, what a pleasant—” began the young woman before spotting his blood stained shirt.

“Miss Haselton, this is an unexpected pleasure, meeting you again so soon. Did you enjoy your supper with Bill Torrance at Isabella’s Restaurant last night?”

Ann Haselton was the local schoolteacher. Her cheeks suffused with color, and Logan immediately felt he had spoken out of turn. He could see that she was embarrassed, which was rather endearing. Most folk had sensed that she had set her sights on Bill Torrance, the enigmatic owner of the Wolf Creek Livery Stable. He decided that an immediate change of conversation was called for.

“But shouldn’t you be getting to the schoolhouse for the start of lessons?” he asked as he put his bag down on the floor and took off his hat.

“Oh, Mister Sublette the headmaster is going to look after both classes this morning—at least until I get back. He will be happy to talk to them for hours about his fossils and old bones,” the teacher explained with a smile. “You see, I arranged to walk the four Li boys to school today. Mrs. Li has made some banners with Chinese writing on them for our school concert. The children in my class are making puppets. After we leave here with the banners, the boys and I are going to Mrs. Miller’s dress shop to pick up some remnants so we can make costumes, then we’ll drop in to see if Joe Nash has finished making the puppet theatre for us. Our next stop will be the Wolf Creek Expositor. David Appleford said he would help us print some handbills. These strong Li boys will be able to carry everything between them.”

“I will get them, Miss Haselton,” said Jing Jing with a little curtsy. “I apologize for their lateness. My father would scold them if he saw how they have kept you waiting.”

Once she had gone, Logan and Ann Haselton passed some further pleasantries without any further mention of Bill Torrance. Without going into details about the birth of the Blunkett twins, Logan explained how his shirt had gotten so covered in blood.

The door behind the counter opened, and Jing Jing returned, followed by three progressively smaller boys all dressed in neatly-pressed blue tunics, just like hers.

“And here is your laundry order, Doctor Munro,” she said, handing him a basket with the Li’s Chinese Laundry sign neatly attached.

“Thank you, Jing Jing. But what do you think about this?” Logan asked, taking off his jacket. “Will your father be able to clean the blood off this shirt?”

Before she could reply, there came the sound of a youngster singing cheerfully, then a fourth Chinese boy appeared, a full head shorter than the next smallest. It was Chang, the Li family’s youngest child. He took one look at Logan’s gory chest, then screamed in wide-eyed horror.

“Aiyee! Murder!” he cried. “Somebody hurt the doctor!”

His face went pale and his eyes rolled upward as his legs seemed to crumple beneath him. He was only stopped from falling and bumping his head by Ann Haselton’s quick movement.

Logan immediately helped her to lay the boy down, much to his older brothers’ glee.

“Chang is a baby!” said one of his brothers, and the others began to giggle.

“Hush! Hush!” came a sharp voice from behind the counter, and Mrs. Li appeared. She was dressed in a tunic with a large apron. In her gloved hand she held a heavy flatiron. Her eyes widened in alarm as she saw her son on the floor, with the teacher and the blood-splattered town doctor leaning over him. She lay the flatiron down and quickly knelt beside them, her face concerned. “So sorry, Doctor Munro and Miss Haselton. My little Chang very sensitive.”

Logan cursed himself for being the cause of the child’s faint. He knew Chang well, having delivered the boy himself not long after he first settled in Wolf Creek. Chang had always been a frail, nervous child, but his smile was infectious and everyone liked the little fellow.

Suddenly, a small white mouse popped its head out of the top pocket of Chang’s tunic. It wrinkled its nose and looked from side to side, then made a dash for freedom. It was followed by another from a pocket in his pants.

Ann Haselton saw them and immediately jumped up and backed into a corner, tugging on her skirts as she did so. She gasped in horror.

“We will get them, Miss!” cried one of the brothers, and together, the boys scuttled about, giving chase to the mice.

Logan ignored them. Her opened his bag and pulled out a bottle of smelling salts, then wafted it under the boy’s nose. Almost immediately, Chang’s eyes flickered and his nose wrinkled as the salts did their job. Logan prudently pulled on his coat to cover his shirt.

As Chang started to come round, Logan chided himself. Poor child! What a fool he had been to show the blood-soaked shirt when youngsters were around. No little kid should have to see a mess of blood like that. And certainly, not a sensitive boy like Li Chang. Especially not on a beautiful morning like this.

Yet, although the sight of blood had caused Chang to faint, the experience did not bother him. He sat up and grinned at the sight of his brothers pursuing his mice. “Give them to me!” he cried as two of his brothers presented them to him by their tails. “Not like that. They don’t like it.”

“Chang likes his animals. I think he likes them better than his brothers sometimes,” Mrs. Li said with a shy smile. “Sorry if the mice upset you, Miss Haselton.”

The teacher recovered herself and shrugged her shoulders with embarrassment. She turned to Logan.

“You—you won’t say anything to Bill Torrance about me being frightened of mice, will you, Doctor Munro? He loves animals and he might think I was just a silly woman. I can’t help it, but mice just make me squirm.”

Logan smiled and shook his head. “Not a word from me. A breach of confidence would be against the Hippocratic Oath.”

****

After a change of shirt and a breakfast of bacon and eggs washed down by several cups of coffee at Ma’s Café, Logan had opened up his office and settled down at his big roll-top desk to await his first patients of the day. Ordinarily, he would see about twenty or so in the morning before setting off on a walking round of Wolf Creek and Dogleg City. Later on, he would head out of town to visit the ranches or homesteads as needed.

While he waited, he looked over his notes for the monograph he was writing, The Use of Tincture of Love Vine (Clematis virginiana) in the Treatment of Gonorrhea, Gleet and Chancre in a Kansas Cowtown.

He glanced over at his medicine mixing table with its myriad of bottles of colored liquids, jars of powders, pestle and mortar and the small vat which he used to prepare the tincture that, so far, had proven to be at least as efficacious in treating venereal disease as the standard treatment with mercurial ointment.

“I wonder how many ladies of the night or their clients I’ll be treating today?” he mused.

His mind strayed back through time, to other offices and past patients of other races. And inevitably, as his gaze wandered over the walls to his framed degree and his citation for the Crimean and Turkish Medals from the Crimean War, and to the picture of Helen and himself on their wedding day in Lucknow, surrounded by his comrades from the British East India Company Army and Helen’s lady friends, he felt the old pangs of loneliness and desolation. He relived the attack as he and Helen had returned to Lucknow one evening during the early days of the Indian Mutiny. Helen screaming and clutching her young charges to her while he emptied his Beaumont-Adams revolver into three turbaned, charging rebels. He had saved her from that, but not from the malaria that followed the cholera outbreak among the surviving garrison.

He reached for his meerschaum pipe and stuffed tobacco into its bowl from his battered, old oilskin pouch. A smoke would calm his nerves.

****

Emory Charleston mopped his brow with a kerchief, stuffed it into the back pocket of his canvas trousers, then put the last hard heft on the axle wrench to the left rear axle nut, and that job was done. He pulled the kerchief from his back pocket and again mopped the sweat off his wide forehead and the back of his thick neck.

All the iron tires had been retightened and axel stubs replaced on farmer Derrick McCain’s dray, but now it would be good for at least another year’s bouncing along rutted roads with a two thousand-pound load of corn or other produce aboard. As was his custom, Emory meandered completely around the wagon, carefully checking all the fittings, secretly admiring his work. It had only been ten years that he’d been out of the fields, doing the work of a free man.

Thanks to Mr. Lincoln, it was no longer necessary for him to worry about not having manumission papers—which he’d never had, as he’d earned his freedom ten years ago by applying the hard hickory handle of a hoe to the back of overseer Augustus St. Germain’s almost equally hard head, then outrunning a dozen Louisiana redbone hounds for two days and a night until he could launch himself into a roiling over-the-bank Mississippi. The river’s condition had saved him, as it made him a very hard follow—all riverside roads were awash belly deep, impassable even to a horsebacker. By the time St. Germain’s kinfolk could launch boats, Emory was miles downriver—munching fruit, coasting along in the high water astride an uprooted apple tree, as comfortable as baby Moses had been in that reed basket.

His woman and knee-high girl child both dead of the yellow fever, there was nothing but fear to hold him to his masters, and he’d managed to quell that emotion long ago. And hearing that slaves were being freed, or hot-footing it for freedom all over the south, he decided to take his leave of the slave life.

He’d been three months finding his way back upriver, all the way up the Mississippi to the Missouri, then up it to Kansas, where he strode west, thinking California a fine destination. But he settled into Kansas, where there seemed to be lots of work for one willing. He made friends with other folks of color and even a few not, and soon learned whom to befriend and whom to fight shy of. And after years there doing odd jobs, dodging Redlegs up to and even after the great war of rebellion was over, he’d heard of work to the south in a booming railroad town. Work there came to him by way of a blacksmith who only seemed to judge a man by the amount of work he could do—even though the smith had worn General Lee’s colors. Emory could work like two men, and stayed on with Angus “Spike” Sweeney.

He’d never looked back after putting that hickory to good work alongside the overseer’s head-bone, except for many times during the war while watching for border ruffians and slave catchers.

As fate would have it, his new overseer soon came to be his partner—although they didn’t advertise it about town. Work and pay had gotten short, so Emory worked on for a share. There were many who’d take great umbrage with a man of color being partner to a white man, particularly to one who’d worn the butternut and fought with the Davis Guards. Emory and Angus had long ago agreed not to discuss the relative merits of gray and blue, nor their financial association. It was an easy chore as Angus Sweeney, known as Spike to his friends, hardly said a word to anyone about anything. He was silent as an iceberg, and some thought as cold, but Emory knew better. He knew Spike well enough, after years of bending hot iron elbow to elbow and shoeing knot-headed horses shoulder to shoulder, horses who’d as soon kick you into next week. He knew a better friend couldn’t be found—white, black, yellow or brown. Spike Sweeney had something engraved into a timber over the door to the shop, something that came from the South—in fact, it was reputed to have been engraved on General Lee’s sword. Strangely enough, it was something Em believed with heart and soul…Help Yourself and God Will Help You.

Em had few friends in Wolf Creek. Many of the newer town folk were southern sympathizers and thought little of any man of color, whereas most of the citizens who had lived there longer had been the sort of Unionists who had opposed the enslavement of black people on principle, but didn’t necessarily want to be seen speaking to one on the street. At least Emory knew where he stood with the Texan cowboys and assorted ex-Rebs. Most of the blacks in town at any given time, on the other hand, were migrant cowboys or railroad workers. Sometimes Em shared a drink with George Alberts, who’d also escaped slavery and now owned the leather shop, at Asa’s saloon down in Dogleg City—but that was a very rough place. Asa’s patrons, generally, were not the sort of company Emory preferred to keep. Em’s best friend, Charley Blackfeather, was half-black, and half-Seminole, and Charley didn’t spend a lot of time in town. But he, like Angus ‘Spike’ Sweeney, was a friend to have, and Em would hate to have either of them as enemy. They’d both proven many times they could be fearsome to their foes.

Satisfied with his work, Emory moved across the shop to a scuttlebutt and scooped up a ladle full of cool water, drank it dry, then ladled up another and poured it down the back of his neck. Felt damn good, as his thick neck was knotted from throwing around five foot high rear wagon wheels. He looked to where his partner worked, thinking he’d take him a ladle of the cool drink, but Angus was concentrating on the fine work at hand, and Emory knew he wouldn’t want to be interrupted.

Emory smiled to himself. Angus was equally his tall, but only half his weight. Where Emory’s arms were the size of many a man’s thigh, Angus was long and lean for a smithy—but those arms were strong as oak hogshead barrel staves. Where Emory was a mite slow to move, a plow horse, Angus was a racehorse; where Emory was slow to anger, Angus had a short fuse. They made good partners in many ways, even if Angus was a bloody Rebel, a Texican, and an Anglican converted to Lutheran.

Emory had only worked under Angus’s tutelage for a short while before he figured that Angus had fought, in what many Southerners called the “recent unpleasantness,” for family, honor, and home, and not for the sham-honor of one man owning another. Even Angus’s father had not condoned the owning of slaves—if Angus could be believed, and Emory had yet to find him to exaggerate, much less lie—and had given many a Negra his manumission. Most of those men had stayed on the Sweeney farm, working harder than they’d ever worked as slaves. Some even saved enough to buy relatives from slave owners, with Nigel Sweeney, Angus’ father, acting in their stead as purchaser. The father had come from the old country, and Scotland and England had outlawed slavery decades ago. It had taken a while to worm that out of the quiet-spoken Angus, but after a year or two of working together, with Emory as an employee, Emory came to understand him and even admire him. And when Angus fell on hard times, Emory worked for beans and bacon, shared with Angus out of the same pot. They both used the same privy and washbasin, and both slept in the shop. Em worked until he had enough back wages coming to buy into the place in lieu of receiving the cash, luckily just before the business turned. It gave Emory a flush of pride when he thought of it; he had taken the chains off his own feet, and was now part owner of a forge, not only a free man but a blacksmith and a farrier (Angus was forever reminding customers that the two are not the same—blacksmiths work iron, farriers shoe horses.)

It did niggle at him that Angus always wore that damn Confederate kepi, with some fancy medal attached above its eyeshade. One of these days, Emory was going to slip it into the forge, and it would no longer be a bone of contention. Of course, he’d remove the medal first, as Angus seemed to put great stock in the piece of brass.

Emory turned his attention to a wagon tongue that needed its fittings re-welded.

****

Angus looked over and smiled to himself. He knew it would have taken him another two hours to finish the dray wagon had it been him rather than Em doing the work; damned if Em wasn’t getting to the point he could outwork the senior partner. That was a hell of a note, but then he could have worse trouble. In fact, it was music to his eyes and ears.

To Angus Sweeney, the generally perceived lone proprietor of Sweeney’s, the ring of a four-pound hammer on anvil, swage block, or mandrel was as beautiful as the melody he once heard emanating from the stage door of the Opera House in St. Louis. Of course, he’d just finished off a bottle of Black Widow hooch and was face-down in the alley at the time, but the strains from the violins and cellos, and the voice of a Jenny Lind imitator who was a Nightingale in her own right, stuck in his mind to this day. But, to be truthful, it was his own music he preferred even over that heard through the back door—his was the music of good honest work, and resultant tires, barrel hoops, shovels, hoes, axes, and rigging that would outlast any who didn’t mistreat them. Iron on iron, ringing in regular four-four time, was the echoing melody of a man’s sinew, muscle, and bone—making hard metal bend to his will.

At the moment, he was busy on the mandrel. He’d formed a half-dozen cinch keepers and was now forming the circular side as the iron was cooling after being welded into the rough shape that would serve to bind latigo to saddle after George Alberts, the saddle maker, stitched them in place on one of the fine saddles he made. Before he’d started on McCain’s dray, Em had just completed rebuilding some hinges on Albert’s draw-down table, and Albert was eager to get back on the saddles and get them shipped off. This was fine work, as fine as that of a tinsmith, not the bone-jarring pounding necessary for forming wagon tires or ax heads or railroad spikes, which he often had done for miners who wanted ore car rails snaking into the holes they cut into the mountainside. In fact, that was how he got his nickname, Spike. He’d worked sixteen hours a day for a good long while, fulfilling a contract for a thousand such rail spikes, much to the chagrin of others who wanted some work out of him. They thought it a derogatory name, but he kind of liked it.

The mines were a place he hoped he’d never have to work. He hated the thought of living his life in a rat hole as much as many hated the thought of working hammer and tongs next to white iron while a forge at your back hiked the temperature in the shop well above the hundred-degree mark, even when the horse troughs outside got a shimmer of ice on their surface from a Kansas norther. But he should never have to become a mine rat, as his business was doing just fine, enough to support both himself and his partner. And he liked fire and iron.

And they did fine, he and Emory. One always trying to outwork the other was a good basis for a business, and a partnership.

At first glance, the shop might fool many as, if not for the forge, it looked as much like a ship’s chandlery as an ironsmith’s abode. It had rigging that recalled the block and tackle of many a ship, rigging used to move heavy iron and wheel-less wagons around the space. This was because Angus had spent many an early year aboard ship, both on the river and in the Gulf of Mexico, learning the trade of a smithy while pounding out chains, anchors, rigging, connections, repairing boilers, and even doing fine decorative work—fancy hatch hinges, latches, and running lights—of both sailing and steam vessels. He had also become a master with rope rigging and could tie a blight, crown knot, or barrel hitch with the best of them, but Wolf Creek had little use for decorative knots, and the hangman’s noose was about as fancy as he’d been called upon to preform since he’d settled here.

Angus and Emory alike were happy to fill their days with simple work. They had each had more than enough excitement in their lives, in one way or another, to last them. Wolf Creek was just the town for both of them, they told each other more than once. On a summer day like this—peaceful and quiet, so long as one stayed north of Dogleg City—that seemed truer than ever.