Smith's Monthly #5 Page 5

  Jimmy sat in his saddle, stunned and frozen. That man had shot Jimmy’s mother in the back. Jimmy could feel his anger building like a pot ready to boil. He wanted to run at Benson screaming and shouting and just beat the man to death with his fists, but he knew he wasn’t big enough or strong enough to do that to Benson.

  And besides, Benson had a gun and his men were with him.

  “Just follow him until I can join you,” his brother Luke had said. “Then we will take care of him together.”

  Jimmy made himself take a deep breath, then he dismounted and eased around to the other side of his horse so he was hidden from Benson. He had been lucky the killer hadn’t spotted him.

  Jimmy hands were shaking, his breathing shallow and swift. Benson scared him to death, and made him fantastically angry at the same time.

  Benson laughed at something another man coming out of the saloon said. Then Benson and his three men mounted up and started toward the edge of town, heading west. There was no sign of the man Luke had shot.

  Jimmy mounted back up as well. Staying far enough back as to barely still see the four men in the distance, he rode along behind them.

  An hour later, it was clear that Benson and his men were on the wagon trail, moving at a steady walking pace, following a company of wagons that had just pulled out.

  Jimmy turned around. At least he knew where Benson was headed.

  West.

  For a gold mine.

  Now Jimmy had to find his friends. He could afford to wait around Fort Laramie for three or four days and still catch up with Benson. The killer and his men had had a five or six day head start on him out of Independence and Jimmy had caught him this time. He would catch the killer again, he had no doubt.

  Jimmy couldn’t let Luke and his parents down. He had to keep following Benson, even if he had to do it alone.

  The sun was cresting over the hills as Jimmy got back into town and tied up his horses in front of a general store. As he was about to climb up onto the wooden sidewalk and go inside, he glanced down the street.

  Zach!

  Jimmy couldn’t believe it. His best friend was standing against the wall of a saloon with his back to Jimmy. Zach was clearly watching the trail coming in from the east, the trail that Jimmy had come in on three hours earlier.

  Jimmy wanted to shout and jump for joy. He couldn’t believe Zach was still alive. He headed down the sidewalk with a smile on his face that hurt it was so big.

  He walked up behind Zach and then said in his most serious voice, “Is Truitt working wagons again?”

  Zach spun around, then smiling, he grabbed Jimmy by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re alive. I can’t believe it. You’re alive. C.J. said you would be.”

  “And you didn’t believe him?” Jimmy asked, smiling just as hard.

  “We searched that entire area, but we couldn’t get back up the canyon, and by the time we went around to an area on top of the hills to look down into the canyon, there was no sign of you.”

  “We?” Jimmy asked. “Is everyone all right?”

  Zach nodded, smiling. “Banged up a little, and the horses have some cuts and scrapes. That stream just dumped us out onto the bank of the river like so much garbage. Long has been taking care of the horses and they’re going to be good as rain. But we lost some of our provisions and gear. We’ve been living on what’s left of the buffalo meat, camped down near the wagons since yesterday.”

  “Well,” Jimmy said, “Let’s go get everyone. I think I have enough left of my father’s money to get whatever new gear we need. I lost some of mine as well.”

  “You managed to save your father’s money from the flood?” Zach asked.

  “Sure did,” Jimmy said, “and a pack horse.”

  Then Jimmy got serious. “This morning I saw Benson.”

  “Where?” Zach asked, clearly stunned. “What did you do?”

  Jimmy patted his best friend on the shoulder. “Let’s head back to the camp. I’ll tell everything over breakfast. We have plans to make and a gold mine to get back.”

  Zach laughed. “Oh, I can’t tell you how much I love the sound of that.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jimmy said. “Me too.”

  PART FIFTEEN

  A NEW TEAM MEMBER

  WITH LONG tending to the slightly injured horses, the four of them went back into town that afternoon to get supplies for the trip west. It was going to take every dime of the money Jimmy had left to re-supply, especially in Fort Laramie.

  As Jimmy was helping Truitt and C. J. carry gear out of one store, he came out to find Zach, who had been guarding the horses, sitting on the edge of the wooden sidewalk next to a young man who looked to be around Jimmy’s age of twenty. The man was writing in a notebook. He had on a tall black hat and his long dark hair flowed out from under the back of the hat.

  Across the street, two drunks were taking wild swings at each other and then falling into the mud. As Jimmy watched, the guy seemed to be writing down what he was seeing, stumble-by-stumble, blow-by-missed-blow.

  Zach glanced up to see Jimmy watching.

  “Meet Joshua Mark,” Zach said. “Future journalist and storyteller.”

  “Call me Josh,” the man said, glancing up at Jimmy. “You two got separated in the big storm, didn’t you?”

  Jimmy glanced at Zach, who shrugged. “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Saw your meeting this morning,” Josh said, still writing down what was happening with the two drunks across the street. “Figured it out for myself.”

  “Pretty sharp,” Jimmy said, surprised. “You with one of the wagon companies?”

  “Nope,” Josh said. “I’m just trying to head out west. I’m going to be like Mark Twain and write down stories about the west and then sell them.”

  Jimmy stared at the side of Josh’s face as he wrote down how the fight had ended, with one drunk falling against a horse rail and knocking himself out. This guy was clearly very, very smart. Jimmy had had a number of years in school, but he couldn’t write anywhere near as well or as fast as Josh was doing.

  “Who’s this?” C. J. asked as he came out of the store and dropped down on the edge of the wooden sidewalk besides Josh. He noticed what Josh had been doing and said, “Hey, can I read it?”

  “Sure,” Josh said, handing C. J. the pages held together with a strip of leather. Josh pointed to a place on one page and said, “Start there.”

  “You have family?” Jimmy asked, starting to like this guy more and more every second. He was clearly very smart, maybe even smarter than C. J., if that was possible. And they were going to need smart if they were to do anything with Benson when they caught up with him again.

  “Nope,” Josh said. “Just me. Parents died, no one else.”

  “You got a horse?” Zach asked.

  “Nope,” Josh said. “I was just going to walk along with one of the trains, maybe work for some food along the way when I could. That’s how I got this far.”

  Jimmy motioned that Zach should follow him back into the general store. As Zach stood, C. J. said, “This is really good. You have more like it?”

  “I sure do,” Josh said, smiling.

  Inside the store, Jimmy turned to Zach. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “We’re headed into some really rough country,” Zach said. “We’re better off if there’s more of us riding together.”

  “And the mine?” Jimmy asked.

  “I have a hunch,” Zach said, smiling, “that there’s going to be more than enough work and gold for all of us.”

  “I agree,” Jimmy said, thinking about what it would take for Josh to join them. He likely had his own gear, and they had an extra horse. They only needed one packhorse.

  Jimmy looked at Zach. “Let’s ask him if he is interested in joining us.”

  “Who’s going to join us?” Truitt asked, coming up with a handful of spices in cloth bags and a block of salt.

  “The man outside with the tall bla
ck hat,” Zach said. “He’s as sharp as a drapery tack.”

  “The guy doing the writing?” Truitt asked, glancing out the front door.

  Jimmy nodded, looking for any sign that Truitt might not like the idea.

  “Great by me,” Truitt said, turning around to go back to shopping. “I have a hunch that where we are heading, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Jimmy laughed. “That settles it, then. Three votes win.”

  Zach pointed back out the door at how C. J. and Josh were laughing over something. “I’m betting you’ll get a fourth vote real easy.”

  That night, around a warm campfire of buffalo chips, Truitt cooked them a great meal and the six friends talked late into the darkness.

  By the end of the evening, Jimmy was very glad they had met Josh.

  By mid-morning of the next day, they were headed west.

  Four of the eighteen legs to reach California were behind them.

  The easy four.

  SHE LAUGHED

  In the apartment complex through the trees

  a woman laughed,

  high, like a bell ringing,

  calling out to the world to come enjoy with her.

  I imagined a woman with that laugh

  to be beautiful, maybe thin,

  maybe even a model,

  with a perfect body to match the perfect laugh.

  But it is freezing cold outside,

  my windows and doors are closed tight.

  Yet I could hear her through the walls of her apartment,

  through the trees, through the walls of my office.

  If I could hear her, up close her laugh must be loud,

  annoying,

  more like a donkey baying

  after someone kicked it.

  Distance and two walls

  made the laugh pretty and enjoyable.

  Distance and walls made an ass into a beautiful woman.

  I wish I would have learned that when I was dating.

  Keeping with the theme of this issue for the short stories, I wrote this western for an anthology that got no distribution. No one saw it. Plus I wrote it as a partial collaboration with another writer under a pen name.

  With the permission of the other author, who had only added in the sex scenes, I removed the sex scenes, reverting the story back to my original draft which I was pretty proud of, to be honest.

  So now, because of this magazine, I get to give this story, in its original form, a new life.

  Cora and her husband, Harold, fight for their lives in the rough lands of the western wilderness. A story of survival and defending your home and family.

  And as a side note, this story takes place in the same setting as my novels Thunder Mountain and Monumental Summit. In fact, both the reminiscences from Viola Lamb, a real pioneer, and the story opening, takes place on the Roosevelt side of the very real Monumental Summit.

  STAND FOR HOME

  “...it was while going up Elk Summit that Barney McGill died. He sat right down on his toboggan and died from sheer exhaustion, and three men were killed in a snow slide just two days before we went over. I saw their supplies beside the trail.”

  From the reminiscences of Viola Lamb

  Thunder Mountain Gold Rush

  Idaho, June, 1902

  ONE

  THE SOUND OF THE HORSES splashing through the cold, rushing stream echoed off the tall mountain walls and massive pine trees.

  Cora Danials patted the neck of her gray mount and kept the solid old mare following the white packhorse being led by her husband, Harold. Through habit born from weeks of practice, she started to turn to make sure that the packhorse she was leading made it through the stream, then remembered that horse had gone off the edge of the trail just over the summit earlier this morning.

  She shuddered and forced herself to take a deep breath as the scene again flashed through thoughts. It had been like a nightmare happening in slow motion.

  The big, black beast slipped, tried to catch its footing on the snow-covered trail, then slipped again, dropping to its knees. The heavy packs seemed to pull it over the edge as it struggled to climb to its feet.

  Finally, it just toppled over the edge, the look of panic and terror filling its round eyes.

  She had only been five steps away, leading her own horse, but Harold said she could have done nothing to save the creature. The sound of the massive beast rolling and crashing through the brush for a thousand feet below them had been more than she could take. She had simply dropped to the snow and sobbed.

  There was no getting to the supplies that had been on that horse. Somehow after a few minutes she had managed to go on, one step at a time, the fear of falling off the side of the mountain squeezing her chest every foot of the way.

  Now, finally, they had reached the wide, safe valley floor. More than anything she wanted to stop, rest her back, wash her face in the snow-melt water, but she said nothing. Before crossing the stream Harold had said they had two more miles yet to go before stopping for the night. And since Harold was leading the four of them to the gold mining town of Roosevelt, no on argued.

  Besides, the other two worked for Harold. He had hired them and their packhorses to get all the extra supplies into the Roosevelt area. He was to be the area’s first postmaster. And, of course, he hoped to do a little prospecting on the side as well.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what she was expected to do when they got there. All Harold had told her was that the area was rugged and that he would need her help.

  They crossed into a clearing, and the sun directly overhead warmed her back. She could have never imagined that a land could be so down-right inhospitable and beautiful as this Thunder Mountain area. The snow-covered ridges and peaks towered so far over her head on both sides that she sometimes imagined that any moment the mountainside might simply fall and cover them all. Growing up on the rolling hills of the Midwest, she had never thought about real mountains. And now actually being in them terrified her more than she wanted Harold to know.

  The meadow they were crossing for the moment felt safe and inviting, pushing back the memory of coming over the summit. How they had managed she had no idea. That had been the worst part of the trip so far. Much more frightening than swimming the horses across the angry Payette River, or wading through the mud that was called a trail above Warren. Now this valley floor and beautiful meadow was much better. And if Harold was right, the boomtown of Roosevelt was only ten miles farther on.

  “Yo!” The shout came from behind her. “Hold up!”

  She glanced around to see Danny, the youngest member of their four-person party, jump down off his horse and move into the brush. He was followed a moment later by Al. She hadn’t trusted Danny and Al from the moment Harold had told her he had hired them. Danny seemed to always have a smirk on his boyish face, and Al had mean, dark eyes that seemed to spend far more time staring at her then was proper.

  “Now what are they up to?” Harold asked. He dropped off his horse and headed back past her. Harold seemed at home in these mountains, which surprised her. He wasn’t a big man, at only five-six, but he was strong and had a level nature and a wonderful smile. She had wished a number of times over the last few weeks that Danny and Al hadn’t been along, so she and Harold could have enjoyed a naked swim in one of the lakes they had passed, or made love under the stars. But with two men she didn’t trust so close, that hadn’t happened, and she was frustrated more than she wanted to admit.

  “Stay in the saddle and I’ll find out what’s going on,” Harold said as moved past her.

  She nodded, even though she had no intention of staying on this mount one moment longer then necessary. As he disappeared into the brush near the creek to follow the others, her stomach suddenly twisted into a tight knot.

  Something was wrong, she could feel it.

  Very wrong.

  She slipped down off the horse, feeling the tight muscles in her shoulders and strain in her back. S
tretching those aches was a welcome feeling after the hours of riding. She pulled her saddle rifle out of its holster and quickly checked it to make sure it was loaded.

  Then moving as silently as she could while making sure her skirt didn’t catch on anything, she crossed the fifty paces through the grass and brush in the meadow toward the shade of the trees. If something was going wrong, she was going to be ready. And if not, standing in the shade would be much better than sitting on the horse in the sun.

  There was still no sign of the three men when she reached the dark area under a massive pine tree. Even the trees in these mountains seemed to tower into the air higher than she could have ever imagined. Nothing was small about this country.

  She watched and waited, staring at the spot across the open area where Harold had disappeared, trying to calm the little voice in her head that said something was wrong. But with each passing second, the voice just got louder and louder.

  Then finally she saw movement in the brush. Harold appeared first, followed closely by Danny and then Al.

  She was about to let out the breath she’d been holding when she realized Danny was too close behind Harold. And Harold’s sidearm was missing out of his holster on his hip.

  She stepped back behind the tree and deeper into the dark shadows so they couldn’t see her.

  “Damn,” Al said, his voice carrying over the open meadow, “where’d she go?”

  “Call her,” Danny said to Harold, his voice mean and nasty-sounding.

  “So you can kill us both?” Harold said.

  “You’ll die this instant if you don’t call her,” Danny said.

  She could hear Harold grunt in pain as Danny jabbed him with the gun.

  She felt as if someone had slammed a fist into her stomach and knocked every bit of the wind out of her. She had never trusted those two, and now she knew why. They were going to kill her and Harold and take their supplies, more than likely to stake their own mining claim.