To Hell and Beyond Page 25

  A fat raven perched in the shadows of a ponderosa pine directly behind the gunman, hopped to a lower limb, and sent a silent cascade of snow though the dark branches. The bird turned a round eye toward the two men.

  Blake’s Nez Percé mother said the raven was a trickster. She’d often told him the story of how one had saved her life. He began to work out an idea that would have made her proud.

  “Brother Raven,” he said, in his best how-the-white-man-thinks-all-Indians-talk voice. “I am glad you could come visit on this cold day.”

  Cooksey’s eyes narrowed. He raised the derringer higher. “What in the hell are you talkin’ about?”

  Blake pressed on, keeping his voice relaxed. “I need a favor, my brother. Would you fly over here and tell Ed Cooksey he cannot have my horse?” Blake gave a tired shrug for effect. “I already told him, but he doesn’t believe me. It would help me a lot if you would make him understand.”

  “Shut up and clamber down off that horse before I blow you outta the saddle.”

  The raven winged its way over to the tree directly behind Cooksey. Wind whooshed off its great wings, and it began to make a series of loud gurgling noises like water dripping into a full bucket.

  The would-be gunman’s bloodshot eyes went wide. When he snapped his head around to look, Blake put the spurs to his Appaloosa and ran smack over the top of him.

  Cooksey let out a muffled screech and fell back to disappear in the deep snow. The derringer fired once, echoing through the snow-clad evergreens. Blake was off the horse with his hand around the gun in less than a heartbeat.

  O’Shannon was a powerful man, tall and well muscled. Even with his healing leg, he had no trouble with the half-frozen drunk. Three swift kicks to the ribs loosened Cooksey’s grip on the little pistol and diminished his appetite for a fight.

  Blake snatched up the derringer and took a step back, plowing snow as he went. Snapping the pug barrels forward, he tugged the spent casing and the remaining live round into the snow. He flung the empty pistol as far as he could into the tree line. His hat had come off in the fight. A silver line of frost had already formed along his short black hair. He bent to pick the hat up, panting softly.

  “You can come back and look for that in the spring,” the deputy said. Huge clouds of fog erupted into the cold air as he spoke. “Wish I had time to arrest you, but I figure you’ll give me all kinds of opportunity later. You’re too mean-hearted to do everybody a favor and freeze to death.”

  Cooksey moaned and tried to push himself up on an unsteady arm. He held the other hand to his chest. “You broke my ribs. . . .” His breath came in ragged gasps. “You redskin bastard.”

  “Better’n you had planned for me.” O’Shannon caught his Appy and climbed back into the saddle, sweating from the exertion in all his heavy clothes. He winced at the pain in his injured leg. “I gotta move on.” He shook his head and grinned. “I can’t believe you fell for that Indian-who-talks-to-the-raven trick.”

  Wheeling his horse in a complete circle, he looked down at the sullen man who still lay heaving and helpless in a trampled depression in the snow. “My mother’s the only one I know who can talk to ravens.”

  Blake turned into the wind again and urged the horse into a shuffling trot through the deep snow. He wanted to put as much distance as he could between himself and Edward Cooksey. Twenty yards up the trail he passed the raven, who’d taken up a perch in another pine after the shot. The huge bird fluffed black feathers against the chill. Its head turned slowly and an ebony eye followed the horse as they rode by.

  “Many thanks, my brother.” The young deputy winked and tipped his hat. “I owe you one.”

  * * *

  It was a quarter to ten when Blake O’Shannon finally pushed into the outskirts of St. Regis. The wind had let up, but snow fell in huge, popcorn-sized clumps.

  The train, and his parents along with it, was gone, shallow furrows in the snow the only sign it was ever there.

  He slumped in the saddle, the news he bore for his father still heavy on his mind.

  “Pulled out on time for once,” a man with narrow shoulders and mussed gray hair said from a green wooden bench along the depot platform. He’d pushed the snow to one side to give himself room to sit and it formed a white armrest alongside his elbow. A light woolen shirt was all that separated him from the cold. Frost ringed his silver mustache and Van Dyke beard. “All the lines are down so I can’t get word to Coeur d’ Alene or Spokane to stop ’em.” He wrung his hands and shook his head slowly as he spoke. “I assume you’re looking for the train.”

  Blake grunted and slid down from his horse to work the kinks out of his sore leg. The snow came well over his boot tops. “Yessir, I was hopin’ to get here before it left.” He gazed down the deserted track and added under his breath: “Pa, I guess your news will have to keep.”

  “You have loved ones aboard?” The way the man said it caused Blake to go hollow inside.

  “Both my parents. Why do you ask?”

  “I tried to get here myself, you know,” the man moaned in a brittle voice. “I’d have made it if that Bjornstead woman hadn’t decided to have her baby at dawn. I have so many patients, you see. Especially since the fires.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “I am. Dr. Holier.” The man suddenly stiffened and looked straight at Blake. “It’s a providence you happened along when you did, son.”

  Blake shook his head. “And just why is that?” He realized he was squeezing the reins tight enough to cut off the circulation in his hand.

  “Four cases this morning—miners at a camp east of town.” The doctor groaned. “I’m ashamed at being so late . . . afraid one has made it on board . . .” He looked wide-eyed at Blake, as if struck by a sudden revelation. “It’s imperative that you stop that train.”

  “Cases? Stop the train?” Blake dropped the Appaloosa’s reins. All this talking in circles made his head ache. “Get to the point, man. What are you talking about?”

  The doctor bit the silver whiskers on a trembling bottom lip.

  “Pox,” he said.

  CHAPTER 2

  Birdie Baker had a nose for things that were out of place. It was a hooked nose, perched on a wedgelike face, perfectly suited to horn in on other people’s business. Born with a keen sense of order, she took it upon herself to set things right when she observed them to be otherwise—liquor where there should be temperance, wanton women where there should be fidelity, and most of all, Indians where there should be only God-fearing white people.

  No one, least of all Birdie, knew the exact reason she hated Indians with such a passion. But hate them she did, and she made it one of her many missions in life to be certain the hotels, restaurants, and trains in western Montana were properly segregated.

  Her husband, Leo, shared her feelings if not her zeal and generally backed her up—in a sullen, simmering sort of way. Birdie swung her husband’s title like an ax, as if he was a general or Japanese warlord instead of the postmaster of Dillon, Montana.

  Where she was tall with big hands and sharp, accusing eyes, Leo was more of a thick-necked stump. His wire-rimmed spectacles looked absurdly small on his wide face. Deep furrows creased his forehead and frown lines decorated the corners of his nose and down-turned mouth. People often wondered if it was the constant squint through the tiny glasses or the day-to-day burden of living with Birdie that gave Leo his permanent scowl. Those who were familiar with the family knew his eyesight wasn’t all that bad.

  Birdie stood on the wide train platform and sniffed the cold air around her, testing it for nearby improprieties. She stomped snow from her highly polished boots and stared down at the balding top of her husband’s head.

  “Leo,” she barked. “What have you done with your hat?” He was taking her to a postmasters’ convention in Phoenix. The last thing she needed was for him to take ill and muck up all her vacation plans.

  He tugged at a cart piled high with her luggage and his si
ngle leather valise. A chilly wind blew back his wool topcoat and revealed a short-barreled pistol with pearl bird’s-head grips in a leather shoulder holster. He looked up at his wife and shrugged off her comment with a scowl.

  Birdie was not one to be ignored. “Leo Baker! Your hat?”

  “The damned thing blew off while I had my hands full with your blasted steamer trunks,” he grunted. “You know, woman, this is a three-week trip, not an expedition to the Fertile Crescent. I see no reason to bring along your entire wardrobe.”

  “Get the bags on board and meet me in the dining car,” Birdie said in her usual imperious manner. The porter standing beside Leo blinked his eyes at every word as if he were facing into a strong wind.

  “I, for one, am hungry,” Birdie blew on. “I want to make certain the railroad carries the things I eat before we pull out of the station.”

  Leo grunted around his scowl and passed the luggage up to the waiting attendant. “Wyoming has ruined it for us all,” Leo muttered. “We’ll be damned fools if the rest of us give women the vote.”

  Birdie watched for a moment before she stepped onto the train. The porter was a young black man, a bit on the scrawny side for handling such heavy bags, to Birdie’s way of thinking. She supposed riding on a train with a Negro was acceptable, so long as he was one of the servants.

  * * *

  Looking after a body—even the body of a friend—was enough to give Trap O’Shannon a case of the jumps. Though he’d sent a fair number of people to meet their Maker in the course of his forty-eight years, he’d never been one to hover too long near the dead. But Hezekiah Roman had been not only his commander; he’d been his friend—and Trap had never had more friends than he had fingers on his gun hand. If Captain Roman wished to be buried in Arizona, then that’s the way it would be. Even if it did mean days on board the same train as a corpse.

  O’Shannon pulled the collar of his mackinaw up close around his neck and blew a cloud of white vapor out in front of him. Ice crystals formed on the brim of his black felt hat. His ears burned from the cold and he could hardly feel his feet. He kept both hands thrust inside the folds of the heavy wool coat. Leaning toward gaunt, he had very little fat to keep him warm.

  A dull blue light spilled across the muted landscape. Up and down the tracks the snow was peppered with a wide swath of black cinders belched from the coal-fired steam engine.

  O’Shannon’s Nez Percé wife, Maggie, stood beside him on the cramped walkway that linked the dining car and the passenger compartments of the train. She wore only a thin pair of doeskin gloves and a light suede jacket with beadwork on the breast and sleeves she’d done herself. Her long hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, kept together with a colorful, porcupine-quill comb her cousin from Lapwai had given her. The cold air pinked her full cheeks. Moisture glistened in dark brown eyes. She was virtually unaffected by the chill, and even appeared to thrive in it.

  “Thought Blake might come see us off back in St. Regis.” Her voice was husky-despondent.

  Trap crossed his arms over his chest and stomped his feet to get some feeling back. “You know how it is in the lawman business. He was likely busy with some outlaw or another.”

  Maggie looked up at her husband and touched his cheek with a gloved hand. She never had been the brooding type. When she got sad, she got over it quickly, wasting no time fretting over things out of her control. “You about ready to go inside?” she said. “You got an icicle hangin’ off your chin.”

  “Don’t know why.” O’Shannon’s teeth chattered. “It’s only fifteen degrees. Hardly what a body c-could call c-cold.”

  The smiling Indian woman let her finger slide to the tip of her husband’s nose. “Let’s go in.” She winked. Her black coffee eyes held more than a hint of mischief. “I’ll scoot up real close. That’ll warm your bones.”

  Trap let her herd him through the narrow accordion entryway. The pink flesh on his hands and arms was still tender and tight from the devastating fires only months before. Maggie hadn’t fared much better. She’d singed almost a foot off the waist-length hair she was so proud of, and the right side of her face still looked like it had a bad sunburn.

  She’d stayed so close to him in the weeks after his return from the fires that for a time, Trap thought their healing bodies might grow together and become one person.

  He didn’t complain.

  The warm air of the dining car hit Trap full in the face. The aroma of hot coffee and bread tugged him toward a table just inside the door. Maggie chuckled behind him, low in her belly, and leaned against his shoulder blades with her head, pushing him to the chairs. He helped her with her coat, and then took off his own before he sat across from her.

  “You don’t want to sit beside me?” Maggie raised an eyebrow and pretended to pout.

  “I want to look at you for a while when my eyeballs thaw out.” He also wanted to keep his eyes on the far door.

  A big-boned woman two tables away was the only other occupant in the car. Given a bronze breast plate and a horned helmet, she could have passed for an opera singer. Trap attempted a smile, but she eyed him malignantly over a hooked nose. He reckoned her to be in her fifties—a few years older than him maybe—but she had so many frown lines around her deep-set eyes, it was difficult to tell for certain.

  Maggie peeled off her gloves and laid them on the table, taking Trap’s hands in hers. Her face was passive. “She’s looking at me, isn’t she?”

  Trap nodded. “Giving us both the once-over like we might have the plague. People like her have a way of getting my blood up.”

  “Don’t let her bother you, husband. I’m fine, no matter what she does. The important thing is for us to get Hezekiah back to Irene. It’s only right he should be buried where she can visit him from time to time. I would want to visit you.”

  O’Shannon sighed. It was just like his wife to think about others when someone was about to impugn her heritage. They traveled little and this was the reason.

  Maggie rubbed his hands gently between her palms to warm them. “I’m a tough, old bird, husband. She can’t say anything I haven’t heard before.”

  Trap grunted. The fact Maggie had touched him in public seemed to send the woman into a purple rage. “She’s about to bust her brain trying to get a handle on me,” he said. “Probably sniff out an Indian from a mile away. Wonder if she’ll be able to figure out I’m half of that wild breed of Apache who would have had her guts for garters just a decade or two ago.”

  Maggie gave the relaxed belly laugh that made him love her so much. “Garters?”

  Trap rolled his eyes. “It’s something Madsen always says.”

  “Where did he run off to?” Maggie toyed with the leather medicine bag around her neck. “I saw him talking to a handsome woman before we boarded. Surprising to see him flirt with someone his own age.”

  The train began to speed up, slowly at first, the car rocking enough to sway the draping edges on the white table-cloths.

  “I’m sure he’s back getting her settled in her compartment,” Trap said. “Her name’s Hanna something or another—a schoolteacher, I think he said. He’s been seein’ her for a few weeks now. Says they’re really hitting it off.”

  “Every female I ever met hits it off with Clay Madsen,” Maggie said, winking.

  A waiter wearing a white waistcoat with a red rag sticking out of the front pocket of his black trousers came through the door nearest Trap and started for the O’Shannons’ table. He was a young man with a wispy blond mustache and a matching attempt at side-whiskers.

  The frowning woman cleared her throat and glared. “I believe I was here first,” she hissed.

  The young man shot a caged glance at the woman, then looked sheepishly at the O’Shannons. “I’ll be right with you folks,” he said, smiling. “Won’t be a moment, I’m . . .”

  “Did I mention I was seated before that little man and his squaw?”

  Trap flinched at the cutting tone in the woman�
�s voice. Calling his sweet wife a squaw would have earned another man a sound thrashing. Maggie released a quiet sigh, but held him in his seat with her eyes.

  He wouldn’t be able to put up with this sort of behavior all the way to Arizona.

  “Can I help you then, ma’am?” The waiter stood back from the table a few feet as if the woman might strike if he got too close. “Would you like some coffee—or maybe some spice cake? Gerta, that’s our cook—she makes excellent spice cake.”

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t want any spice cake. My name is Birdie Baker. My husband is Leo Baker, the postmaster of Dillon, Montana.” She waited as if the waiter might bow or otherwise yield to the influential status of her name.

  “What can I do for you then, Mrs. Baker?”

  Birdie lowered her husky voice, but kept it loud enough that the O’Shannons could hear every word. “Tell me your name, young man.”

  “Sidney, Mrs. B-Baker.” He began to stammer. “If you’d like to order, then I’d be g-glad to . . .”

  “Well, Sidney,” she said, cutting him off and folding her hands as if she were passing sentence. “Here’s what you may do for me. You may make certain that I have a decent place in which to eat my breakfast.”

  Sidney looked up and down the dining car and then at the table where Birdie sat. “I swear, ma’am, this is the most decent dining car we have on the train.”

  “The car is just fine, young man,” she said with an acid tone. “I’m speaking of the company.” Birdie jerked her big head toward the O’Shannons. “You run along and fetch the conductor for me. There are laws of common decency, you know. Honestly, does the railroad expect me to have an appetite while practically sitting at the same table with this Indian slut?”

  Trap crashed his hand flat against the table. The slap was loud enough to make poor Sidney jerk. The boy swayed on his feet in fright.

  Maggie might be tough, but that wasn’t the point. Trap was her husband, and though she was capable enough on her own, no one was going to get by with this sort of behavior—not even the postmaster’s wife from Dillon, Montana.