Beneath a Dakota Cross (23 page)

“Army rules, Daddy. She surely is beautiful, isn't she?”

“I've only known one bride who was more beautiful.”

“Mamma?”

“Yep. You promise you'll send her back with Vince next week?”

“If they give me a few days, we might go down to Cheyenne. But either way, she's coming back here. I'd rather she stayed here with you and li'l sis while we're on the summer campaign,” Robert insisted. “Word came down from Colonel Custer that we'll have the Sioux rounded up by the Fourth of July. He's got some speaking engagements back East he doesn't want to miss. So maybe I'll be back here to help you celebrate the Centennial.”

“I'll look forward to that. But don't underestimate the Sioux,” Brazos cautioned. “And don't take chances.”

“Come on, Dad, we've been though this before. I'll be all right,” Robert assured. “This is my job.”

“Now that you're married, if you'd like a different career, your brother and I could use a partner.”

The grin on Robert's face was identical to his mother's. “You keep saying the Lord is leading you to a special place under a Dakota cross. In a few months, you might not even be here.”

“I guess what I'm sayin' is, no matter where I end up, I'd surely like to have you nearby.”

“Somehow, I can't imagine stayin' away very long. Fortunes seem to like comin' home.”

Brazos hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets and stared down at his now dusty boots. “Except for one.”

Robert threw his arm around his father's shoulder. “Sam will come home someday, Daddy. Mamma always said he would.”

“That she did.” Brazos bit his lip. “Now go on, grab that bride of yours. You're surrounded by several thousand jealous men, some of 'em won't stay sober or sane a whole lot longer.”

Brazos worked his way through the crowd to the punch bowl. He noticed Yapper Jim, Big River Frank, and Quiet Jim leaning against the far wall. Grass Edwards and Louise March Driver were busy serving refreshments. Thelma Speaker flitted between the hotel kitchen and the ballroom.

“Well, Grandpa, how do you feel?” Big River teased.

“Grandpa? I'm not a grandpa yet.”

“That's what comes next, don't it?”

Quiet Jim glanced across the ballroom floor. “They will have handsome children.”

“I don't know why you are in such a hurry to get me to be a grandpa.”

“Grandpa Brazos,” Yapper Jim chided. “Somehow I just can't picture that.”

“I can,” Quiet Jim added. “Don't reckon a man minds being called that. I wouldn't mind being called Daddy, neither.”

“Wheweee,” Yapper exclaimed, “a weddin' sure brings out the worst in a man, don't it?”

“Well, Quiet Jim, you aren't going to have any luck at snaggin' a wife if you don't get out there and visit with the ladies,” Brazos challenged.

Quiet Jim tugged on his black tie and gazed across the room. “There's ten men for every woman out there.”

Big River Frank brushed back his mustache. “Yeah, but there's thirty ladies for ever'one Quiet Jim.”

A soft, easy smile broke across Quiet Jim's leather-tough face. “Yeah, I reckon you're right about that.”

“You got one picked out?” Brazos questioned.

Quiet Jim blushed. “I was thinkin' about that dark-haired one.”

“Miss Columbia Torington? She's twenty years younger than you. Why, shoot, Quiet Jim, with Jamie Sue married off, ever' man in town will be thinkin' about Miss Columbia,” Yapper Jim said.

“It don't hurt to give her a choice.” Quiet Jim plucked up two glasses of punch and scooted through the crowd.

Big River Frank stared up and down at Brazos. “You look about as comfortable in that outfit as a broomtail in a squeeze chute.”

“And you?”

“I feel like a fat hog in a roastin' pan. Fortune, what in the world are we doin' pretendin' we're city folks?”

Brazos cocked his black felt hat to the side of his head. “Big River, I woke up this morning on a soft mattress with clean sheets. There was no rain drippin' through a tent roof, no snow coverin' my bedroll, no sand gnats swarmin' around my mouth, no dust in my eyes, and no varmints lurkin' in my boots. I didn't have a stubborn heifer or a balky calf to catch. I didn't have cold beans and hard biscuits for breakfast. I didn't have to rub down my legs so I could stand up straight. I didn't have to buck the kinks out of a thousand-pound sack of horseflesh. I really didn't care if it were sunny or rainin' . . .”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Big River smiled. “I woke up homesick, too.”

“Maybe we're too old for that kind of life,” Brazos said.

“We? Speak for yourself, Fortune. I'm still a young man.”

“You won't see forty again . . .”

Big River Frank sighed. “You know, Brazos, I probably should have married that Carter girl down in Brownsville right after the war. We'd be livin' on some big old ranch down on the Rio Grande.”

“What? And miss all this fun?”

Big River took a sip from a near empty, cut-glass punch cup. “There's probably a lot of truth in that. We've had some good times, partner. And we've seen a whole lot of God's creation. Reckon we've had more than most.”

“You gettin' sentimental on me, Big River?”

“Must be the weddin'. When's Jamie Sue comin' back?”

“Next week.”

“Did Todd move to his new house up on Forrest Hill?”

“Yep. But he's just kind of campin' up there. He's got a lot of buildin' to do yet.”

“That's really somethin'. I ain't never heard of a single man buildin' himself such a fancy house.”

“I don't think he plans on being single forever.”

“Well, Quiet Jim's right about one thing. The choices aren't great around here. Maybe Todd ought to go back to Texas to find a wife.”

“He's thought about it,” Brazos said.

“Robert's still ridin' out with Custer, ain't he?”

“Yep. He wants to be wherever the action is.”

“If they don't move the Sioux east, the action could be right here in Deadwood,” Big River warned. “Several hundred warriors come ridin' up this gulch and most of these bummers would get so excited they'd shoot each other.”

“The government seems to have conceded these hills to us. We just need the Sioux to do the same.”

The first gunshot in the middle of the night caused Brazos to sit up in bed.

The second drew him to the window, wearing only his long johns.

From the lower end of town, no doubt. It's named correctly . . . the Badlands.

Lord, I've talked to you about that element before. But you keep sayin' those are the ones you came to save.

The flannel sheets felt stiff as Brazos slipped back into bed. His mind jumped from Dacee June . . . to Todd . . . to Samuel . . . to Robert and Jamie Sue . . . to Sarah Ruth.

It ain't fair, darlin', you interruptin' my night like this. Here I am worryin' all about the kids. When you were by my side, I could turn over and go to sleep knowin' that you would worry about them enough for both of us.

The banging noise sounded like a loose shutter during a windstorm.

But the wind wasn't blowing.

And they didn't have any shutters.

The squeaking of the bedroom door jolted him to swing to the side of the bed.

“Daddy?” The word floated across the dark room.

“Darlin', can't you sleep?”

“Not with someone beatin' on the front door.”

“Someone's downstairs? The front door of the store?”

“Can't you hear them?” she said.

I can hear a shot fired from the other side of town, but I can't hear someone at my door?
“Probably a drunk trying to find his way home.”

“Are you going to check it out?”

“I'm goin'. Light a lantern for me, Dacee June.” Brazos yanked on his old denim trousers, then fumbled for his spectacles on the nightstand. But his fingers only found dust.

“Do you need your carbine?” she asked.

“To open the front door?” He crossed the room barefoot. She handed him the lit lantern . . . and the Sharps carbine.

The floor of the hardware and mining supply store was well polished by boot soles, and well swept by the clerks. The merchandise, under Todd's leadership, was now placed in neatly stacked aisles and shelves, stretched like shadowy hedgerows across the room. Brazos followed the sound of the banging on the ten-foot-tall oak front doors.

He set the lantern on a barrel of miner's candleholders, then ­lifted the iron bar with his left hand. His right hand cradled the carbine. Two men stood in the shadows of the open door.

“Big River? What on earth is goin' on?”

A tall, barrel-chested, dark-skinned man next to him sported a thick, black beard about a foot long. He had the smell, and the caked grime, of a prospector. His left arm was wrapped with a bloody flour sack. He toted a brown, burlap bag over his right shoulder.

“You carryin' a bullet there, amigo?” Brazos quizzed.

“I carry the wound,” the man asserted. “The bullet passed through.”

“We better go wake Louise Driver. She's a mighty good nurse and the closest thing we have to a doctor.”

“I was shot last night, and I am not dead yet. It will wait,” the man stoically replied.

Big River Frank and the man marched into the room. “Stir up the fire and put on a cup of coffee, Brazos. We got some visitin' to do.”

“What happened?”

“Got a wild story you should hear,” Big River reported.

Brazos lit several lanterns near the stove at the back of the room.

“Brazos, this here is Tiny Martinez.”

Brazos nodded at the man, with dark, expressionless eyes. He stirred up the coals in the stove with a small piece of pine kindling.

Big River Frank and Tiny Martinez plopped down on a bench. The burlap bag hit the floor with a loud bang.

“I was standin' guard at the hotel when . . .” Big River began.

“Standin' guard?” Brazos challenged.

“The boys down in the Badlands was gettin' stewed and plannin' a little shivaree for your Robert and Jamie Sue. Me and Grass ­decided to take shifts with the nightguard to make sure the couple weren't disturbed on their weddin' night.”

“Why didn't you tell me? I would have spelled you.”

“That's why we didn't ask. You never get any sleep as it is. Besides, it ain't your hotel. It's ours. We didn't want no windows broke or guests disturbed. Anyway, that ain't the point. I was sittin' on the porch a few minutes ago when Tiny comes gallopin' a mule right down Main Street in the dark of night. I could tell he was wounded.”

“I rode all night,” Martinez reported.

“Why?” Brazos quizzed, while scooping coffee into the pot and slapping it down on the cast-iron stove.

“Just wait . . .” Big River cautioned. “Tiny has been prospectin' with Juan Tejunga over in Spearfish Canyon.”

Brazos realized his hair was wild and uncombed and tried to brush it down with his hand. “How is our friend Juan?”

“Dead.”

“What?” Brazos found himself glancing back where he propped his carbine.

“Some claim jumpers bushwhacked them. Juan got killed,” Big River announced.

“He got shot in the back,” Tiny reported. “But I don't think they wanted our claim.”

“Who did it?” Brazos pressed.

“That's the thing. Tiny said he hadn't seen them before. There were four of them led by a narrow-eyed man with one leg.”

“One leg?” Brazos rubbed his eyes and wondered where he had left his spectacles. “I don't know any one-legged man in the Black Hills. Did you catch any of their names?”

Martinez nodded. “The man with the brown hat and narrow eyes was called Doc.”

The hair on Brazos neck bristled. He stared into Big Frank's eyes. “Doc? Doc Kabyo?”

Big River nodded. “That's what I was thinkin'. I reckon the gangrene could have took Kabyo's leg last Christmas when they tried to ambush the freight wagons.”

The aroma of burning pine filled the room. The heat warmed Brazos's bare feet. He stared across the shadowy storeroom. “Mr. Martinez, did they steal your pokes?”

“Our pokes? We didn't have ten dollars of gold dust between us. I think this is what they wanted,” Martinez pointed to the sack. “But I don't know why.”

“What's in there?”

“Juan called it our good luck charm, but it has only brought tragedy.” Tiny Martinez reached into the burlap sack and pulled out an eighteen-by-thirty-inch thick, plain, tarnished silver cross.

Brazos stepped towards the man. “A cross? Where did you get that?” Brazos quizzed.

“It fell out of the sky,” Martinez announced.

“It did what?”

There was a slight smile on the big man's brown, leathery face. “Juan liked to say it fell out of the sky. When we decided to open a horizontal shaft into the cliff, we set off several loads of dynamite, and this cross tumbled right into camp, barely missing Juan by a foot or two.”

“You figure it was lodged somewhere in the rocks up the side of the cliff?” Brazos quizzed.

“That's what we supposed. The explosion must have loosed some rocks and it plunged down.”

“Did you ever climb up the cliff to see if you could spot where it was lodged?” Brazos asked.

“It's straight up from there. No one would want to climb that wall.”

Brazos stared at the cross. “Someone did.”

“Who?”

“The ones who put it there.”

“Perhaps it was many years ago.” Martinez fingered the worn cross. “I think it is very old. Perhaps it was Coronado. Or Juan de Onate and his men.”

“I don't think any of them came this far north. But who knows?” Brazos plucked the cross from Martinez's hand. “Must weigh eight or nine pounds.”