Sweetwater Page 6

  Because they weren’t stealing herds to add to their own. They were stealing in dribs and drabs to sell to men like Dawson, and never getting ahead.

  Grady pushed his way inside the stable.

  “The goddamn weather,” Dale said from behind him.

  “Jesus.” Grady started. “Didn’t even hear you over the rain.”

  Dale shook water out of his hair. “Sure is coming down.”

  Grady grunted and turned his attention to his horse. “We really doing another run before winter?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we ain’t getting nowhere like this.”

  Dale frowned at him in the gloom. “It’s safer this way.”

  He shook his head. “You say it is, but those ranchers will hang a man for stealing twenty head of cattle as soon as they’d hang a man for stealing two hundred.”

  Dale’s frown deepened, and Grady knew he wasn’t imagining the hurt there. Dale didn’t expect dissent from him, though it had been a long time coming.

  He’d had always been the peacemaker between his cousins. He’d always been the one willing to concede a point for the sake of harmony. It came from arriving into the family late, he guessed. Dale and Cody and Matt already had their pecking order figured out by the time Grady turned up on the scene at eleven years old, as skinny as a string bean and certain the stench of gangrene was still sticking to his clothes. Dale, the oldest and the leader, had been generous enough to treat Grady as an equal instead of expecting him to fall into line with Cody and Matt, and Grady had been polite enough to defer to Dale most of the time. Somehow they’d never quite outgrown those roles, despite all the years that had passed. Dale still told Cody and Matt what to do, but he asked Grady. Just lately, Grady was worried the day was getting closer when he’d tell Dale no.

  “I’m just saying we need a new plan, maybe.” Grady sighed as he hung his wet saddle blanket up to dry. His muscles ached.

  “We don’t need shit.” Dale’s voice was low. “We’re tired and wet and got mud up to our necks. You’ll feel different once we’re home.”

  Ham’s Fork was a small town. Nothing more than a trading post, really—the saddlers and livery stables, the general store, and the small saloon that offered a few rooms to rent by the night. It saw few travelers. It mostly served the needs of the nearby ranchers, men that Grady and his cousins had worked for in the past and, more recently, stolen from.

  The less said about that, the better. Grady still had to look those men in the eye and shake their hands if they met. Felt lower than a snake every time he did, even though there was no way around it. You either worked for another man your whole life, or you found a way to get ahead. Well, this was the way they’d found, and Dale kept saying it would be worth it once they had enough money to buy their own ranch and had to stop relying on the narrow-eyed charity of Bertram Bannister.

  “Home?” Grady needled. “You mean Bannister’s home.”

  “That asshole,” Dale grizzled.

  Six feet of pure unadulterated asshole, Dale usually called him, though never to his face. Not while they needed somewhere to spend the winter. And it was unfair, probably. Bannister might not like them sheltering in Ham’s Fork in the winter, but he’d never turned them away. Never turned them into the law, either, when he knew exactly what they did. Made him a better man than Dale gave him credit for. But then, Grady didn’t spend his winters in the house like Dale did—Grady and Matt and Cody slept in a storeroom inside Bannister’s Livery. Grady couldn’t say what living in close quarters with Bannister would do for his opinion of the man.

  Still, the sour welcome they got from Bannister whenever they led their horses into the livery stable didn’t exactly make Grady warm to the man, or leap to his defense whenever Dale said something about him.

  “Yeah,” Grady said now. The peacemaker again, too tired to start an argument he couldn’t be bothered to finish. “That asshole.”

  Another fucking winter looming up on him.

  He closed his eyes briefly and inhaled the smell of the stable: wet horses and leather and mud.

  Another interminable winter.

  When Grady woke, the cabin was empty.

  He headed outside, barefoot, for a piss.

  The morning air was sharp. The ground was wet and cold, but the day was bright. The clouds had cleared.

  He headed around the side of the cabin.

  Thock. Thock. Thock.

  “Put your back into it!” McCord said.

  Matt was chopping wood, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill. He swung the ax again and left it embedded in the stump. “Goddamn, I ain’t even had coffee, and I’m already working like a dog.” He grinned, though, because he didn’t mind.

  McCord, sitting on another stump with his pipe in one hand and a stick in the other, squinted at him. “The woman’s got more muscle than you!”

  Matt puffed out his chest. “I’ll bet she don’t put up with your yelling neither!”

  Grady laughed and headed away from the cabin.

  McCord had built the place back when he’d been working with other company men, in the days of the great rendezvous. Those days were gone now, already sinking from living memory into some deeper place. Legend, maybe.

  McCord had cleared a lot of trees when he’d built the place, but that was a lot of years ago. The woods were encroaching on the cabin again, chewing away at the edges of the clearing. There was a path worn through the trees, if Grady remembered right. Down to the nearby creek.

  He followed the path for a moment, then veered off it to piss.

  On his way back, he ran into Matt, who was lugging pails down toward the creek. The woman walked a little ways behind him, her face set in an unreadable mask. Grady took a pail off Matt and fell in beside him.

  “Where are Cody and Dale anyhow?”

  “Cody’s seeing to the horses,” Matt said, swinging his pail. “Guess Dale’s with him.” He struck a branch, and the woman glowered at him. “Sorry.”

  She snorted.

  Grady suspected she had more English than she let on.

  When they reached the creek, the woman hiked her skirt up to her knees and waded in, heedless of the cold. She dropped a pail, catching it by the rope handle and dragging it back against the gentle flow of the water to fill it.

  Matt stood on the bank, his boots sinking into the mud. He took the full pail from the woman, the muscles in his arm cording, and set it on the grass. In a few minutes, they’d filled four pails and were walking back to the cabin. The woman carried two, the water sloshing down the sides as she trudged ahead of them.

  “Why do you think McCord lives all the way out in the woods on his own?” Matt asked. “Been years since he’s trapped.”

  “Dunno.” Grady swapped hands, the rope digging into his palm.

  “I think it’s for her,” Matt said. His dark eyes were serious.

  “The woman?”

  Matt nodded. “Can’t bring a Sioux woman to live with you in town like she’s your wife. She gonna sing in church on a Sunday with all the other women? Hell no. I reckon, you have a woman like that and you want to keep her, then you gotta stay living in the woods.”

  “You think McCord’s so sentimental?”

  They entered the clearing around the cabin. McCord was still perched on his stump like a crotchety old bird, shoulders hunched, eyes sharp.

  “I think there’s something keeping him here,” Matt said. “Her too.”

  “Maybe.” Grady wondered what sort of existence it was, living between two worlds. Wondered if he had the courage to live that way.

  “If I loved a woman like that,” Matt said, “I’d never step into town again.” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s something, huh?”

  “What is?”

  “You and me,” Matt grinned. “Nothing in God’s law against McCord and his woman, but somehow they ain’t fit to live in town. You and me, though, with all our sins, we could.”

  “How do you
mean?”

  “I mean if Kate came with me somewhere nobody knew us, nobody’d ever ask to see a marriage certificate, just like nobody would pay any mind to brothers living together. Hardly seems fair, does it?”

  Grady threw him a worried look. “That something you’ve thought about?”

  “Thought about it,” Matt said. “Don’t mean it’d ever happen.” He grinned. “It’s nothing.”

  “You’re talking about running away with another man’s wife. Don’t seem like nothing.”

  “Jus’ my mouth working before my brain. It’s nothing.” Matt stepped inside the cabin, lugging the pail in.

  “You serious about it, Matt?”

  Matt set the pail down and wiped his hands on his pants. “Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “I think I am, yeah.”

  “Is she?”

  “I haven’t asked.” Matt’s gaze faltered. “Mostly this is all in my head, and I would never run my mouth off about it to anyone except you. I guess I think she’s sweet on me too, but I don’t know for sure. You know?”

  “Yeah.” Grady thought of Elijah.

  He knew.

  On Tuesday, Dr. Carter and Elijah set out to visit Adavale. They went to the livery stables first, to hire horses for the trip. Elijah liked Bowman’s Livery. He liked the shade, the smell of the hay and the leather, and the soft silence broken only occasionally by the whickering or stamping of a horse. The sounds the horses made hit Elijah’s narrow scope of hearing, pitched low and broad, and Elijah rubbed their noses to repay them for it.

  He would have been happier working for Mr. Bowman than for Dawson, happier dealing with life than death, but Mr. Bowman had hired some redheaded kid from Cheyenne instead.

  The kid helped him saddle his hired horse while Dr. Carter talked with Bowman, even though Elijah didn’t need the help. He bent down to check the girth, to put the horse between him and the kid’s relentless stare. He tightened the girth slowly, carefully, like Mr. Bowman had shown him years ago. He’d ridden Dulcie before. She was as sweet and docile as her name implied, but any horse was apt to get girthy, especially one hired out to strangers.

  He waited until the mare exhaled, then tightened the girth again and slid his fingers underneath to check that it wasn’t too tight. He clicked his tongue at her, and her ears twitched.

  It was a little over ten miles to Adavale. The trip there and back would take at least half the day, since Dr. Carter liked to travel at a relaxed pace when he got the chance. Most times, he rode out of South Pass City like he had the devil at his back, rushing to get to where he was needed. Today, they would probably make a few stops on the way, to stretch their legs and take in the scenery. Which would be dirt and scrub mostly and nothing that caught Elijah’s interest much, but Dr. Carter was always sketching plants and insects in the pages of his journal. Elijah had poked around in the ruins of Burnt Ranch before, where the Sweetwater crossed the plain for the ninth time, and found a green bottle turned half-black from fire. He’d wanted to bring it home, but it had shattered when he’d tried to lever it out of the hard-packed dirt.

  He patted Dulcie’s neck, ignoring the redheaded kid, and waited for Dr. Carter to saddle up.

  It was hardly past dawn when they left the livery, and the day promised to be hot and hazy. Elijah pulled his hat forward to keep the sun out of his eyes and held Dulcie’s reins loosely. A Tuesday morning free from work made up for most of his misgivings about heading out to Adavale.

  Dr. Carter had laughed off all of Elijah’s concerns, but Elijah could only think of Francis McCreedy, his face twisted with rage: “Harry’s dead! Harry’s dead because of this goddamn quack! I’ll kill him! I’ll fucking kill him!”

  Dr. Carter said that you couldn’t hold what was said in grief against a man, but Elijah didn’t know if rage like that could simply fade away. He was afraid it was impossible.

  He didn’t want Dr. Carter to go inspect Adavale alone.

  They followed the road south as it dipped and rose, twisting around rocky promontories and following the rough contours of the land. They met few other travelers. Once they passed a miner leading a mule and once a family in a cart. Dr. Carter stopped and introduced himself each time, and Elijah hung back and watched. He was wary of strangers, and not just because of the way they reacted to how he spoke. Only last month, a man had been shot on the road, by bandits or by rival miners nobody knew, and it wasn’t that long ago that the Shoshone had set fire to Burnt Ranch.

  Despite all that, the day was bright, and with each passing mile, Elijah found himself relaxing more.

  The Sweetwater River and its tributaries cut through the rocky landscape like arteries. Elijah and Dr. Carter forded two streams when they turned off the road by Burnt Ranch, the waters running slow and shallow. They stopped at the second and let the horses drink, and Elijah picked up a stone worn smooth by the stream. He dried it on his coat and slipped it into his pocket, while Dr. Carter wet his handkerchief and wiped his red face.

  “Seems like forever since we spent time together,” Dr. Carter said, wringing out his handkerchief.

  There was no reproach in his tone, but Elijah felt a flush of guilt all the same. Dr. Carter had only ever been kind to him, better than he deserved. What would he say if he knew the truth?

  Last night, I was butchering stolen cattle.

  If he told Dr. Carter that, what would happen? He’d tell Thaddeus Sherlock probably, and then everyone would be in the shit. Jail, or maybe worse. Just last year, a pair of rustlers were caught outside Rock Springs and hanged before they could be tried. It would break Dr. Carter’s heart to find out Elijah was mixed up in something like that, and it wasn’t even the worst of his sins.

  Last night, I was being fucked by Harlan Crane.

  To confess that was unthinkable.

  He looked warily at Dr. Carter instead, unsure what to say. The distance between them, that unbridgeable gap that Elijah felt acutely and Dr. Carter was beginning to notice, was his fault. His deception had created the space between them. It had chipped away at the foundations of their relationship and undermined it until it collapsed. Elijah had done caused the damage knowingly when he’d gone back to Crane after that first night, hating it and hating himself. But not enough to stop.

  The sin was his to wrestle with, but how had he forgotten that Dr. Carter was the most important thing in his life? He shouldn’t have been able to forget that. He had always tried to be good, to be the son that Dr. Carter deserved, but a part of him had always known it wasn’t enough. Simple deaf cunt, he’d thought, but it was worse than that.

  And even now, even watching the man’s kind, gentle smile, Elijah was thinking of Crane. Thinking of going back, and knowing he would.

  The heat, Elijah hoped, could explain his flush away.

  “I’ve missed it,” Dr. Carter said. He gave a crooked smile.

  The rush of affection that flooded Elijah was soured with guilt. “Me too, sir.”

  Dr. Carter’s smile grew.

  They stopped beside the stream, in the shade of a thicket of trees. Insects buzzed in the air around them. They ate the corned beef and mustard sandwiches that Elijah had made that morning, washing them down with cool water from the stream.

  On a day like this, in comfortable silence like this, Elijah desperately wanted to forget what he had become. Before Dawson, before Crane. Back when he was still a child, back when his uneasy suspicions that he wasn’t good enough for Dr. Carter were still unproven. Back when he had told himself he could still be worthy of the love that Dr. Carter gave him.

  You saved my life. You’re my whole world, and still I turn away.

  Dr. Carter didn’t seem to notice his guilt. He rose to his feet and brushed the seat of his trousers clean. “Ah, my old bones don’t like this sort of treatment anymore.”

  Elijah fetched the horses. “You’re not that old, sir.”

  Dr. Carter blinked at him through his glasses. “Says the spring chicken!”

  Elijah laugh
ed, an ugly sound he had never shared with anyone else.

  Dr. Carter laughed as well, and they continued on to Adavale.

  Adavale was nothing more than a ramshackle miners’ camp beside a narrow, sluggish stream. The McCreedy boys didn’t even have a cabin, just a rickety lean-to and a canvas tent. Most of their belongings were strewn out in the open. Two horses and a mule were tethered to the bushes nearby.

  Dr. Carter walked straight into the middle of the camp and stuck his hand out for the McCreedys to shake. Two of them did. One hung back glowering: Francis McCreedy. Elijah watched him closely, worried that he still blamed Dr. Carter for Harry’s death.

  A bullet in the lung. Nothing anyone could do for such a wound, but what if Francis McCreedy didn’t know that?

  Elijah stood back a ways and watched Dr. Carter talk to the McCreedys. He couldn’t hear what was said, but Dr. Carter smiled and nodded and seemed interested in the workings of the place. Elijah saw where a rocky ledge near the camp had been blasted away and the beginnings of a shaft dug out, but not much evidence of a professional setup. There was certainly no stamp mill in Adavale, just a rock-and-concrete arrastra with a trench dug out so that the tailings were carried away in the stream.

  Francis McCreedy stalked toward the muddy bank, and Elijah watched him go. Dr. Carter was still speaking to the other men, and his posture was relaxed.

  Elijah kicked at the ground, sending a shower of dirt over the toe of his boot. He walked back to the horses and lifted his canteen from Dulcie’s saddle horn. He drank, then slung the canteen around his neck. It was a little under half-full, more than enough to get him back to the stream near Burnt Ranch. This one was probably safe enough upstream from the tailing trench, but Elijah wasn’t going to follow Francis McCreedy anywhere.

  He went in the other direction instead, bypassing the camp and heading for the ridge. Thorny weeds snagged around his ankles as he climbed the slope. The top of the rocky height was bare of trees. Only a few stunted bushes, battered into strange shapes by the wind, grew here. Bushes, and a crudely fashioned cross. It took Elijah a moment to realize he had found Harry McCreedy’s grave.