The Loner: The Blood of Renegades (23 page)
Fighting back the urge to laugh, he helped Ward close and latch the door. Ward leaned his back against it, his head drooping.
Jason grinned. “You look like you been rode hard and put up wet, man.”
“Feel worse,” Ward replied after a moment. He looked Jason up and down. “You don’t much look like a go-to-town slicker, yourself, boss.”
Jason smiled, then led him into the main part of the office. “There’s clean water in the bucket. You want coffee, you’re gonna hafta make it yourself.”
Ward went to the bucket and had himself two dippers of water, then splashed another on the back of his neck. “You ever seen a storm like this?”
Jason said, “I never even heard o’ one!”
“Well, I heard about ’em, but this one’s sure a rip-snorter. Don’t believe I ever heard tell o’ one lastin’ so long or goin’ so hard. Oh—what I come to tell you. One o’ the Milcher kids is missin’. Found the Reverend out lookin’ for him, but you know him—he’s like buttered beef in a crisis. Made him go on home.”
Jason nodded. “When’d he go missing?”
“Sometime between seven and nine-thirty. The Reverend thinks he’s out lookin’ for the cat. She’s missin’, too.” During the passing years, the Milcher’s original cat, Chuckles, had been replaced several times. The latest one was . . . well, he couldn’t remember at the moment. But it was either a grand or a great-grand kitten of Chuckles.
“Shit.” Jason put his hands flat on the desk, then pushed himself up. “I reckon now’s as good a time as any.” He shook out his bandanna and tied it over his nose and mouth. “You rest up. Come out when you’re ready.”
Ward was on his feet, his clothes dribbling sand on the floor. “Naw. I’ll go with you. Four eyes are better than two. Or so they tell me.”
Jason nodded. “Appreciate it. Pull your hat brim low.” He opened the front door holding firmly on to the latch.
The sudden influx of wind shoved Ward off his feet and into the filing cabinets. “You wanna warn a fella afore you do that?” he groused.
Jason didn’t blame him. “Sorry, Ward.”
Muttering something Jason was glad he couldn’t hear, Ward slowly got back to his feet, using his feet, hands, and back for traction. He made it to the desk, and finally to the door.
Jason shouted, “We’re gonna hafta get outside, then pull like crazy, okay?”
Ward nodded, and they each braced a boot on either side of the doorframe, pulling hard until eventually it was closed and latched.
“Which kid was it?” Jason asked Ward over the howling wind.
“Milcher!”
“Which Milcher kid?” There were a bunch of them.
“Peter. The five-year-old!”
Great, just great. A five-year-old kid lost in this storm! One a grown man could barely keep his footing in, and that seemed intent on staying around until the end of time. Maybe it
was
the end of time.
was
the end of time.
But Peter was a tough little kid. If he had survived the trip out West in his mother’s belly, he could survive anything. At least, that’s what Jason hoped.
He tried to think like a five-year-old following a cat . . .
“Follow me!” he said to Ward, and set off, staggering against the buffeting wind, toward the stables.
They found several cattle and a couple saddle horses standing in the corral, all with their heads down and their butts into the wind. Jason wondered if they could get them inside once they found the Milcher boy.
They pulled the barn door closed after them and called out his name a couple times. Ward was the first to hear soft sobbing coming from the rear of the barn. It would have been loud wailing, if not for the roar of the storm. Jason followed him to a rear stall, where he uncovered the boy, hiding beneath a saddle blanket.
“Peter?” he asked.
“My Daddy’s gonna kill me!” came the answer. When the boy looked up, his face was streaked by the trails of tears through the crust of dust and grit on his face. “But I had to find Louise! She’s gonna have kittens, and she’s having them right now!” He pointed next to him in the straw, and there was the Milcher’s cat, with a kitten just emerging.
“Get a crate, Ward,” Jason said, putting an arm around the boy. “Don’t worry, Peter. Your daddy’s not gonna kill you. In fact, he was out looking for you, he was so worried.”
“H-he was?” Peter asked.
“He was indeed. Now let’s see . . .”
Ward handed Jason an apple crate, in which he’d already placed a fresh saddle blanket. Jason gently lifted the mother cat while Ward stooped over him, carefully bringing the still-attached kitten along, and they placed them in the apple crate. “Good,” Jason said. “Now let’s see who else is here.”
He found not three, but four other kittens. Three were tabby and white, and one was all white. By the time the men got them all back with their mother, she had finished giving birth to the fifth kitten, had cut the cord, and was busy licking it clean. “Good kitty,” Jason murmured. “Good Mama.” The kitten was tabby and white, too, although with more white than the others.
Jason and Ward stood up, and Jason held his hand down to the boy. “Guess we’d best get the lot of you back home!” Ward shifted through the stack of saddle blankets and dug out a relatively fresh one, covering the box snugly.
“The baby cats can’t go back!” Peter said as he grabbed Jason’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Daddy doesn’t like them. He says he doesn’t like the smell of birth.”
“Reckon he’s just gonna have to get over it.” Jason tried to hide a scowl. He didn’t much like the smell of Milcher. If Milcher objected to those kittens in his damned house, then Milcher was going to find himself in jail. For something or other.
Jason lifted Peter up into his arms, then threw a blanket over him. “You all snugged up in there?”
A muffled, “Yessir,” came from beneath the blanket. With Ward carrying the box of kittens and their mama, the men pushed their way into the storm again.
The wind hit Jason like a slap in the face, but behind him, he heard Ward say, “Believe it’s lettin’ up some!”
Jason didn’t reply, forging ahead, toward the Milchers’ place. Thankfully, it wasn’t far, and when he rapped on the church door Mrs. Milcher threw it wide, then burst into tears. “Is he all right?” she cried, pulling at the boy in Jason’s arms. “Is he—“
“I’m fine, Mama,” Peter said after he wiggled out of the blanket. He broke into a grit encrusted grin. “Louise had her babies!”
Ward set the box down and lifted the cover. A purring Louise looked up with loving green eyes, and mewed softly.
Mrs. Milcher cupped her boy’s face in her hands. “Is that why you went out, honey? To find Louise?”
“Yes’m. And I did, too! She was in the stables.”
Mrs. Milcher looked up at Jason. “She always wants to hide when she feels her time is here. What a night to pick!”
“Mrs. Milcher, ma’am? I know you’ve given away kittens before, and I was wonderin’ if—”
“Certainly, Marshal! Any one you want!”
Jason smiled. “I kind of fancy the little white one. Got a name for him already and everything.”
She cocked her head. “But you don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl! Do you?”
“No, ma’am. Wasn’t time to check. But I figured to call it Dusty. Name works either way, I reckon, and I’ll never forget when it was born.”
Mrs. Milcher smiled back at him. “No, I don’t suppose you will! Thank you Marshal, thank you for everything. My husband would thank you as well, I’m sure, but he has retired for the night.”
Jason lifted a brow but said, “I see. Well, take care of young Peter here, and watch over my kitten until it’s ready to leave its mama.” He and Ward tipped their hats, and stepped through the doors at once. Instead of the whip of wind Jason was expecting, they stepped into cool, clear, still air.
“What happened?” Ward said, looking around him.
“I guess it quit.”
“Guess so. You wanna go up and get a drink?”
“Nope. Wanna go home and wash up.”
Ward nodded. “Reckon that sounds good, too. Well, you go on ahead, Jason. I’ll have a drink for both of us.”
Jason laughed. “Just one, Ward. You’re on duty, y’know.”
Jason turned around and started the walk back to his house. The air felt humid, as if rain was coming. He hoped it was. Nothing would feel better than to strip off his clothes and stand in his front yard, naked. He chuckled to himself. Yeah, there’d be hell to pay if Mrs. Clancy saw him. On the other hand, she wasn’t likely to be awake at eleven at night, was she?
Jenny’d skin him, though. It was a terrible thing, he thought, to be ruled by women. He pictured Megan MacDonald. Well, there were exceptions to every rule, he thought, and grinned.
It rained, while Jason was outside, beaming and standing naked in his front yard with a bar of soap in his hand. Miles away the wagon train was getting the worst of the dust storm. The wagons had been tightly circled and the livestock unhitched and taken to the center, but the wind screeched through the wagons like a banshee intent on revenge. Young Bill Crachit thought maybe God was mad at them for giving up on the dream of California, and he huddled inside his wagon, praying.
The Saulk family, two wagons down, held their children close, hoping it would just stop. Well, Eliza Saulk did. Her husband Frank was outside. He had the thankless job of trying to hold the wagon’s canopy in place: the train had already lost three to the torrent of grit and dirt and cactus thorns. Out of nowhere, an arm of saguaro hit him in the back like a bag of nail-filled bricks. He went down with a thud. A moment later he was helped to his feet by Riley Havens, who yanked free the cactus stuck to Frank by its two-inch spines.
Blood ran down Frank’s back in a hundred little drizzles, soaking his shirt as Riley helped him back inside the wagon. “Saguaro!” he shouted to Eliza. “Get those thorns out!”
Never letting go of the children, she moved to her husband, gasped, “Oh, Frank!” and immediately began to ease him out of his shirt.
Riley left her to take care of her man and struggled to the Grimm’s wagon next. Their canopy had blown off earlier, before the wind came up so damned hard. It had taken four men to chase it down and get it tied back in place. He doubted they could repeat their performance.
All was well with the Grimms, except their dog wouldn’t shut up. A cross between a redbone hound and a Louisiana black-mouthed cur, the wind had brought out the hound side of him, in spades. While he yodeled uncontrollably, the Grimms had covered their heads with blankets and quilts, trying to hold off the noise of him and the storm. Riley hollered, “Shut up!” at him a few times, but it made no difference, so he moved on to the next wagon and left the howling beast behind.
The raw wind raked at his ears, even though he’d tied his hat down with one scarf, then covered his nose and mouth with a second one. But the crud still got through somehow, working its insidious way into his mouth, and up his nose. His eyes were crusted with it, and his ears were stuffed. I must look like hell, he thought, then surprised himself by smiling beneath the layers. The whole world looked like hell. He wasn’t the only one.
The wind picked up—although how it managed, he had no idea—and he felt one of the horses rear. They were circled twenty feet away, in the center of the ring of wagons, but he knew what had happened. Somebody’s gelding or mare had fallen prey to another of those thorny chunks of cactus the wind seemed intent on throwing at them.
He made his way through the roar, falling twice in the process, but at last reached the distressed animal. Lodged on its croup was a fist-sized chunk of jumping cholla, which might have jumped all the way from Tucson as far as Riley knew.
He pulled it free, then pulled out what spines he could see. It was all he could do, but the horse seemed grateful.
Staggering slowly, he made his way to a new wagon to check in and give what reassurances he could—which weren’t many. He swore this was the last train he was going to ferry out or back.
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