Trail Angel (18 page)

“What's that?” Her words measured as carefully as baker's flour.

“I have one too many horses, and I need someone to look after the paint when I'm ranging ahead of the train. I had it tied to Bill Smith's wagon today, but I'm not confident he can care for it properly.”

“No, I would think he's too busy,” she said, with feigned seriousness. “Have you thought of asking Mark? He would be delighted.”

Josey shook his head. “I'm not sure your cousin is old enough for the responsibility.”

“You may be right.” She looked to him, and he met her gaze, an agreement dawning even if neither gave voice to it. “I suppose, since you have no choice . . .”

“I have none.”

“. . . then it will have to be me.”

He smiled broadly, but her look forestalled any break from character as they played out the scene. He cleared his throat. “It's a lot I ask. I shall be in your debt.”

“Perhaps, in compensation, you might instruct me in the proper care and exercise of the animal.”

“Yes, the horse will have to be ridden, to accustom him to a saddle.”

“My father has a saddle in the wagon. He had planned on waiting until we reached Montana before buying a new horse.”

“Then it's a deal.”

Josey extended his hand. She studied it a moment before placing hers in it, shaking his hand as a man would. Warmth spread through his arm, giving rise to color in his face as she looked to him and said, “I believe we have an understanding.”

Flatlands gave way to rolling hills as the wagons continued along the North Platte. A month into their journey, the emigrants passed huge red boulders and rocky formations that resembled sculptures carved by giants. The sights were a welcome change to Annabelle after hundreds of miles of nearly featureless terrain, but the increasing slopes were hard on the oxen and drivers. Furniture lined the trail like the detritus of some shipwreck washed ashore. Oak wardrobes, finely upholstered sofas, even a spinet Annabelle imagined someone playing a final time before abandoning it as too heavy.

They camped early so the oxen would be fresh for the next climb. To Annabelle, that meant more riding time. She had known how to ride, had even considered herself a good rider, but riding with Josey in the evenings after they made camp gave her more confidence. She had named the horse “Paint” after he had told her he called his “Gray.” She teased him on his originality.

“After I had two horses shot out from under me, I stopped naming them,” he said, making her wish she hadn't raised the topic. “The third one I just called Brown, when I called him anything.”

She almost feared asking. “Did Brown get shot, too?”

Josey shook his head. “Sold that one when I got Gray. Brown never would have made it to Montana.”

“What made you want to go all that way?”

“The war was over. Didn't have anything else to do.”

Josey proved a better teacher than a conversationalist, but it didn't take long for Annabelle to realize she would never ride as well or as far as he so long as she did so in a dress. Riding with her legs on the same side of her father's saddle made it more difficult to impart instructions to the horse and left her more vulnerable to a fall, especially at anything more than a walking pace.

Maneuvering Paint just past a boulder formation a good stone's throw from their camp, Annabelle hid from view of the wagons when she dismounted. The clothes she pulled from her saddlebag had belonged to poor Burton Chestnut, whose mother gave them to Annabelle. Her aunt Blanche helped her tailor the shirt and pants so they would fit better, but Annabelle still felt uneasy about anyone seeing her as she quickly changed from her dress.

“Don't you dare laugh at me,” she warned Josey when he arrived a few minutes later to see her astride the horse in a teenage boy's clothes. His silence proved even more unnerving than laughter, so she prodded him. “Well? What do you think?”

She may as well have asked the Sphinx for all Josey's face showed. “I think we can take a long ride today.”

The fresh air and freedom of movement invigorated Annabelle. They rode up the ridge the wagons would cross the next day, their canvas tops standing out like whitecaps on an open sea. Josey pushed on, so far that Annabelle lost track of where they were. The sky stretched forever, and if Josey had asked, she would have ridden with him to its end. They stopped near a creek to let the horses drink.

“When are you going to teach me to shoot?”

“You want to learn?”

“I saw you teaching the boys,” she said of her cousins. “If I'm going to live out here, I ought to know how to handle a gun, too.”

Josey offered her a pistol.

She pointed to the rifle. “Why can't I shoot that?”

He grimaced. “The Henry's not a good weapon for beginners.”

She knew the rifle held special meaning to him. A gift from his father, it had been the finest rifle in the family's store. With its lever-action, his Henry could be fired sixteen times before reloading, an advantage he told her had kept him alive more times than he recalled.

“You don't trust me with it?”

“I don't trust
it.
The Henry's not the safest rifle. See here?” He showed her how the hammer was down, the lever flat against the barrel. “It looks safe. You have to pull the trigger to fire it. Unless you drop it.” He let go of the rifle, stooping and catching it, quick as a cat, before it hit the ground. “The hammer rests against the cartridge that's in the chamber. If something hits the hammer, it can go off.”

He handed the pistol to her. Its weight surprised her. Josey had been wearing four pistols with the rifle slung over his back when she first saw him, and he was not a large man.

“How do you carry so many?” she asked, avoiding any reference to his size. Men were so sensitive about such things.

“Whatever discomfort they cause on my hip is worth the peace they give to my mind,” he said. “You survive one time wishing you'd had another gun, and you'll never mind carrying it again.”

He wore only the one gun belt on this day, and he used his other pistol to show her how to fire. She flinched at the sound of his gun exploding so close even though she'd prepared for it. He motioned to a flower ten yards away. “See if you can hit that prickly pear.”

Annabelle fired, again and again, shaking violently every time. She blinked with each shot no matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes open. Josey showed her how to brace her legs and hold the gun with both hands. By her sixth shot, she made the cactus move, even if she missed the flower.

He took the gun from her. “Let me reload it.”

“You've got another.”

“I never leave a gun unloaded if I've got time to load it,” he said, as if the point should be obvious. He pulled a flask from his belt, carefully measured out powder and poured it into the first chamber. “The first thing I do every morning is clean and load my guns. Any man who feeds himself before his guns isn't worth much in my view.”

After he dropped the ball in, he pulled back the loading rod, straining with the effort to force it in. “I'm not sure I could do that,” she said. He had moved to the next cylinder, filling it with powder. It surprised Annabelle how long it took.

Josey seemed to read her mind. “Now you know why I carry four pistols.”

After the shooting lesson, they didn't ride far before he pulled to a stop and studied the horizon with his binoculars. The fear of Indians flashed in her mind before he handed the glasses to her. “What do you see?”

Annabelle never seemed to have any luck focusing the glasses. The distant shapes might have been horses. A thrill ran down her spine as she wondered if they were buffalo, but she wouldn't embarrass herself with a guess. “Tell me.”

Josey looked again. “I'm thinking antelope, though they could be deer.”

“Can we get closer?”

“It's not easy. They're skittish.”

Annabelle couldn't see a tree or bush higher than her horse's haunches anywhere. There was a natural slope to the land but no hill to maneuver behind. She wet a finger and held it out, something she had read in a book. Josey laughed. “Even if we approach downwind, you'd need a rifle more powerful than a Henry to get a good shot.”
So much for antelope steaks.
Her disappointment must have shown. Josey walked his horse forward. “Come on. I know another way.”

Annabelle and Josey were still a fair distance from the antelope when he leaned forward behind his horse's neck.

“They're accustomed to wild horses, but not riders,” he whispered. They walked forward on their horses, their silhouette not much different than a rider-less horse. When they got as close as Josey dared, he slid off, careful to keep Gray between himself and the antelope.

Josey tied his kerchief to the end of his rifle barrel. Then he sat on the ground, patting a spot in the dirt next to him. “Come on.” He lay flat, holding the rifle so it stood on its butt, the kerchief listlessly moving in a light breeze.

“Have you lost your senses?” But she followed his actions. As she lay down, she felt the warmth of his body beside hers. “If this is some kind of joke, I will slap what sense you have left out of your head.”

He shushed her and whispered instructions as he moved the rifle for her to take. “There isn't much wind, so you'll have to move it a little. Not much. Like this.”

Annabelle felt a fool, lying prone while moving the rifle so the kerchief danced in the breeze. She imagined Josey had somehow planned for the others to discover them in this ridiculous position. She would never hear the end of it. But Josey kept so still she matched his silence, measuring her breaths to his until she forgot how foolish she looked. He took the rifle when her arm tired.

The days were longer now, but she sensed the sun's descent as the air grew cooler and the breeze increased so the kerchief flapped steadily even without their aid. Annabelle closed her eyes, willing herself to be as still as the earth beneath her.

She might have fallen asleep, for Josey's voice, light as the breeze, brought her eyes open with a shudder. “Look to your left.”

Annabelle tried to look without turning her head, but the effort strained her eyes. Ever so slowly, she tilted her head by single degrees—and gasped. The antelope looked humungous from her vantage beneath it. Its white-furred chest and belly nearly obscured her view of its dark face and eyes as it studied her as curiously as she gazed at it.

“Is this close enough?”

She had forgotten about the rifle or her hope to provide steaks for supper. Instead of startling the animal, Josey's whisper set off its pointed ears, creating a quizzical expression. Annabelle stifled a laugh. The curious animal's eyes as it studied her struck her as nearly human.

“I can't shoot it. Not now.” Annabelle extended a hand, fingers splayed, and the antelope's snout flickered in response to the smell. It stepped forward on impossibly slender legs, lowering its head so that they nearly touched. Annabelle leaned forward, extending her fingers a few inches more. The antelope skipped away. Annabelle sat up and it bolted, bounding off with the rest of the herd, like birds in formation, first left, then right, their white tails wagging mockingly.

“I'm sorry,” she said, though she didn't feel regret.

Josey rested a hand on her shoulder. “I've never been able to shoot when they're like that, either,” he said. “The only ones I've hit have been at a distance. Pulling a trigger's always easier at a distance.”

They rode back to camp slowly to spare the horses, Josey told Annabelle, though he didn't mind prolonging their time together. Once they were at camp, they would behave almost as strangers in front of the others, their horse-riding lessons nothing more than a matter of mutual convenience.
Maybe that's all it is to Annabelle.
Josey felt safer thinking so.

Looking at her reminded him of the first time he had seen the western mountains: beautiful and formidable. He had spent a morning once watching a mountain slowly emerge from the murk of night, light descending its slopes like a fleet-footed climber. First a fiery glow on snow-capped peaks, then a peeling back of shadow over rocky crevices and piney slopes, the mountain reluctantly relinquishing its secrets.

Josey led their horses up the ridge overlooking the wagons, corralled in a good spot by a stream with clear water. A drop of sweat rolled down Josey's back, giving him a chill despite the lingering heat of the afternoon. Annabelle looked at him curiously but sensed his need for quiet. He liked that about her. Talking with her was never boring, but she didn't mind quiet, either.

Something in this quiet felt wrong. He dismounted and examined swirls of dust in the ground. Plenty of hoof prints. An Indian might make sense of them, but Josey couldn't. He held his hand over a pile of horse dung nearby. No warmth, but it looked moist. In the dry heat of early July that had to mean something.