Borderland

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 1992 S.K. Epperson

All Rights
Reserved. Digitally published by Shevan Productions. This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Without limiting
the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book.

PROLOGUE

Kansas-Colorado Border, 1868

The
traveler from the east left his wife and son in the wagon and told them he
would be only a moment. His wife nodded her dust-caked head and gave him a
weary but hopeful smile. It would be nice to bathe in fresh water and sleep on
clean sheets after the long, hot days on the trail. The price to stay in a
rooming house would eat away precious and already dwindling assets, but a
single night of peace would be worth the cost. Rumored and real attacks along
the border had left her anxious and awake for many nights. The eastern farmer's
wife knew what happened in these attacks for she had survived three of them in
her life: once as a child in
Massachusetts
, once in her teens in
Ohio
and again this week when their group of four wagons, all
families from the east, fell under attack on the moonlit
Kansas
prairie.

Her
brother and his young wife were murdered in their sleep. Of the two other
families, only a small infant escaped the slaughter by white men dressed as
Indians. The farmer's wife saw the faces of the men as they drove away the
horses; she saw their pale eyes and hairy limbs from the specially built hiding
place in the floor of her wagon. Her husband had laughed when she insisted on
his building the false bottom, but he was grateful for her past experiences on
the morning after the attack, when they crawled from their hiding place to
discover the corpses of their loved ones and fellow travelers gone. Their
attackers had returned during the night and taken the bodies. The wife's
insistence that the three of them remain in the wagon's floor until dawn had
once again saved their lives.

The
surviving baby was found in the tall buffalo grass on the camp's perimeter. He
lived only a few hours. After burying the infant, her husband set off on foot
to find the horses. He soon crossed the path of a tiny band of travelers headed
south to
Texas
.
A deal was made, and her mother's ruby brooch and four sacks of flour bought
them two skinny, swaybacked horses with cracked hooves. To make the animals fit
for travel her husband sealed the cracks with mud, but both horses were soon
dangerously lame. It was decided they would stop in the first settlement they
came to and dip into the savings yet again to obtain a decent team. They had no
other choice.

The
rooming house looked so inviting, so cozy with its soft lanterns and gingham
curtains. Delirious with longing, the farmer's wife vowed to part with even her
mother's ruby earrings if they would buy sleep in a real bed for just one
night. Her husband had grudgingly agreed.

He
returned to the wagon with a dirt-creased smile on his tired face. "They
have a room," he told her. "But wait till you hear the best part. I told
the man about our lame horses and he agreed to let me have the room for the
team. I can't imagine what he would want with them, but I didn't argue. He said
there's a stable on the edge of town where we can buy a fresh team
tomorrow."

The wife
sat still. Town? There was a house, a barn and two buildings in the distance.
This was no town. And what kind of man would take two lame horses in lieu of
regular payment?

Her
husband nudged her. "Come on. He said there's some supper left. His wife
is heating it up right now."

Something,
a tingling in her extremities, warned the wife that all was not right, but her
wariness evaporated upon meeting the owner of the rooming house. He was a
round, cheerful man with bushy whiskers and a thick accent she thought to be German.
His wife was just as round, just as pleasant, and the stew, biscuits, and
blackberry preserves she served them tasted like heaven. Their children, a boy
and three girls, played nicely with her son and were quiet as mice around the
adults.

While
they were finishing up their meal with coffee, the owner sat down with them and
asked their destination.

"
California
," said
her husband. "My older brother died and left me property there. He went
west over twenty years ago, before the Sutter's Mill business, and did very
well for himself. His land belongs to me now."

The
farmer's wife listened dubiously to the pride and certainty in her husband's
voice. She had left a solid home, close relatives and good friends behind to
accompany her man to the west. In her heart she knew they were both going to be
disappointed. Farming was all he knew, and she failed to see how he was going
to farm land stripped bare over the years in a continuing search for
nonexistent gold. She herself had an aunt in
California
, rumored to be running an opium den near
San Francisco
. If worse
came to worse, she supposed she could call on her.

After
the supper dishes were cleared she inquired about the other guests and was told
that most were already in bed, but that some had elected to join in a card game
being played in the stables. The farmer's wife frowned at this, but the owner
was quick to assure her that the game was friendly and would in no way disturb
her tired family. She could even have a nice, long bath if she cared for one.

She did
care for a bath, and after a quick inspection of the beautifully clean room
they had been given she asked her husband if he would like to bathe first. He
yawned and shook his head.

"I'll
use the water in the pitcher for the boy and myself. You go on."

She
thanked him and went downstairs to find the owner's wife waiting for her. The
woman showed her to a small room off the pantry and pointed to a large
claw-foot bathtub in the center of the floor.

"My
father brought it on the boat," she said in the same accent as her
husband. 'It's lovely, isn't it?"

The
farmer's wife assured her that it was. When the tub was half full she told the
round smiling woman the water was sufficient and that she preferred privacy while
bathing. Still smiling, the woman pointed to a clean towel and excused herself.

The
water was cold, but after living on the hot, dusty trail the farmer's wife
welcomed the chill. She soaked and scrubbed until the water turned brown and
her flesh began to wrinkle. As she was toweling off she heard sounds beyond the
window in the pantry: male voices, loud and boisterous. Quickly she slipped her
dress over head and picked up her shoes. Her wet hair dampened the back of her
dress as she tiptoed into the pantry and peered out the window.

The
males were young, in their teens, and they were gathered around a wagon… hers.
They were pulling out her bundles of linen and tossing pieces of furniture to
the ground in a drunken frenzy. Enraged, the wife gathered up her skirt and
nearly collided with the owner's wife.

"How
was your bath?" the woman asked.

"Do
you see what they're doing?" the farmer's wife cried. "Those boys are
looting our wagon!"

The
round woman smiled and clucked her tongue. "That's against the rules. I'll
speak to my husband about this."

"And
I'll speak to mine!" The farmer's wife pushed past the still clucking and
smiling woman and headed for the stairs.

Her bare
feet suffered splinters as she rushed up the steps. Flustered, she momentarily
forgot which room they had been given. The first door she opened revealed a bed
crowded with people, all of them motionless and appearing to be asleep. An
entire family, she decided, and she briefly wondered what kind of people would
sleep in their clothes on a decent bed. The next door she opened was the
correct one. Her husband lay prone on the bed. She rushed in and shouted his
name. When he didn't stir she went forward to shake him awake. As she rolled
him over she saw that the sheet beneath him was soaked in blood. Her horrified
gaze traveled from the crimson stain on the linen to his face. His brown eyes
were round with surprise. His throat had been slit from ear to ear.

She
couldn't scream. Nothing would come out of her gaping mouth. A swift, panicked
search showed no sign of her son. She bolted into the hall and went to the
darkened room next door to rouse the sleeping family. The first arm she touched
told her of her mistake, the limb beneath her fingers was stiff and as cool as
the water in the claw-foot tub downstairs. The smell in the room was horrible.
She snatched her hand back and sucked in air as her eyes adjusted. She knew
these people. The man on the edge of the bed was her brother. Beside him was
his wife.

On the
landing she found her voice long enough to scream her son's name. A shrill cry
from somewhere downstairs answered her. She crashed down the stairs and rushed
through the dining room into the kitchen, following the sound of her son's
distress. The owner's wife looked up as she entered, still smiling benignly as
she held the red-faced, struggling boy on her lap.

The
child screamed when he saw his mother. The round woman promptly placed a large
hand over his mouth.

"Hush
now. This is useless, you know. It’s useless to fight. It'll all be over soon."

The
mother of the child wasted no time in finding a knife in the large kitchen. She
pointed the long, gleaming blade at the smiling woman and told her to release
the boy. The owner's wife shook her head and chuckled.

"So
messy tonight. So messy. It'll take me a week to clean up the place. I
shouldn't let them drink, you know. They forget themselves."

The
farmer's widow shrieked in rage and charged the woman. After three steps her
feet kept moving forward but her head was caught in two terribly strong hands
from behind. There was a slight pressure at her throat, and then she saw the
front of her dress change color and become as crimson as the sheet beneath her
husband upstairs. The knife in her hand clattered to the floor. The pleasant,
bushy-whiskered owner of the rooming house stepped from behind her and gently
lowered her to the floor. The last thing she saw was his beaming,
sweat-dampened face. The last thing she heard was the hoarse screaming of her
son.

CHAPTER 1

What Nolan
Wulf knew about little girls would fit into the ashtray of his pristine '68
Buick Wildcat convertible—the same ashtray two dark-haired, dark-eyed little
girls were now filling up with wrappers and wads of chewing gum.

"Hey,"
he said in a loud voice, but they didn't hear him. The radio was cranked up to
bass-in-the-bones level. Nolan stalked back to the house and caught one of his
bandaged hands on a nail in the rickety frame of the screen door. The gauze
tore and left white threads on the nail as he threw open the door.

"Vic,
would you come on? We haven't even left yet and they're already tearing up my
car."

Vic put
his hand over the phone and stood up to look out the bare picture window. He
handed the phone to Nolan. "They put me on hold. Be back in a
second."