Brings the Lightning (The Ames Archives Book 1) (31 page)

“Samson! Elijah!” he called, suddenly alert. “There’s a hidden hollow about fifty yards that way.” He pointed. “Take a look—but be careful!”

“Yassuh!” both men answered in unison, and turned their horses in the direction he’d indicated. Elijah, closest to the hollow, didn’t wait for his partner to join him from the other side of the ambulance, but started towards it at once.

“Wait for me, ’Lijah!” Samson called as he spurred his horse—but he was too late. With a sudden explosion of war-whoops, half a dozen Indians sprang to their feet, tugging at their horses’ hackamores to pull them up from where they’d been lying concealed in the hollow, no more than twenty yards ahead of Elijah.

As the Indians started to mount their horses, Elijah raised his rifle and fired at one who was drawing his bow. His bullet struck the brave in the head, spinning him around and tumbling him to the ground—but not before he’d released his arrow. It streaked across the grass and drove deep into Elijah’s chest. He cried out, dropping his Henry and the reins as he clutched the arrow’s shaft. He bent forward in a spasm of agony, bounced off his horse’s shoulder and fell to the ground.

“
Elijah!
” Samson screamed, even as his rifle cracked and another Indian staggered under the impact of his bullet. Walt took a split-second longer to make sure of his aim at such a relatively long range for a revolver; then he began firing, shooting at the attacker’s horses, the largest target available. Behind him he heard the crack of Rose’s Henry as she opened fire. A third Indian fell, accompanied by first one, then two horses. With half their number already down, the three surviving Indians whirled their mounts and galloped away.

Samson reined in his horse, jumping from the saddle even before it stopped. He took three running steps, then dropped to his knees beside Elijah and cradled him in his arms. Slowly, tenderly, he turned him over to lie face-up across his knees. As Walt and Rose ran towards him, they heard him say, “We gonna get you to de wagon, ’Lijah. You gonna be all right.”

Walt came up in time to see Elijah shake his head. Blood bubbled and frothed on his lips, its quantity proving that the arrow had punctured a major blood vessel as well as his lungs. He coughed. “Too late… Samson, ma fr’en’… I c’n… taste blood…”

“No!
No!
I ain’t gonna let you go, ’Lijah! You cain’t leave me!”

Elijah looked up at Walt, just as Rose dropped to her knees on his other side. “Ask Mistah Walt… He know… He seen dis afore…” His breath was coming in rasping gasps, heavier and heavier, more blood trickling from his lips down his chin and onto his neck.
He’s sinking fast,
Walt thought to himself in despair.
The arrow must have hit his
heart, or one of the big arteries near it. He’ll be dead in a minute.

“Suh?” Samson looked up at him with desperate appeal in his eyes and voice.

Walt sank to one knee beside Rose. “I… yes, Elijah, I’ve seen it before. The arrow went through your lungs, and you’re bleeding inside.” Beside him he could hear Rose murmuring the Our Father.

“No!
No!
” Samson’s voice was anguished.

Elijah said haltingly, “Mistah Walt… bury me proper… don’ leave me out here… on de prairie…”

“We will, Elijah. I promise you.”

“T’ank… you…” He tried to raise his arm, but didn’t have the strength any longer. “Miss Rose… t’ank you… fo’ everyt’ing… an’ you, Samson… you stay strong… you hear me?”

“I’ll try, ’Lijah.” Samson wept openly as he hugged his friend.

“See Miss Rose… safe to Denver City.”

“We’ll get there safely, Elijah,” Rose said softly. “Samson will look after us, and Walter and I will look after him.”

Elijah’s eyes held Rose’s for a long moment. He turned his head slightly to look up at Samson, and opened his mouth: then a spasm ran through his body, a gout of blood erupted from his lips, and his eyes rolled up as he took a last, gasping breath. There was another tremor, a sigh, and he lay still.

To Walt, it seemed as if they knelt there together, frozen, for an eternity.

He came out of his reverie to hear hoof beats approaching. Five soldiers from the advance guard and two of the train’s scouts came tearing across the grass, reining to a halt beside them. “What happened?” a trooper demanded.

“Six Indians were lying in wait in that hollow.” Walt gestured towards it as he rose. “We got three, and two horses—you’ll find them lying there. The other three rode off.”

“We’ll take a look.” The soldiers clattered off towards the hollow. The scouts slowly dismounted.

“I’m sorry about Elijah,” one said. “We’ll miss havin’ his help. He was a good man.”

Samson looked up at him, nodding slowly through his tears. “I reckon dem be fine words for his grave. He was a good man.”

“We’ll carve it on his headstone,” Walt promised. “We’ll take his body to Kit Carson and bury him there for now. As soon as we can make the arrangements, we’ll bring his body to Denver City and give him a proper funeral, with a preacher and a headstone and everything.”

Shots sounded from the hollow as the soldiers put down the wounded ponies and made sure that the fallen Indians were truly dead. Ignoring them, Rose asked, tears shimmering in her eyes, “Samson, what was his family name? I only knew him as Elijah.”

“He didden’ have one,” Samson said softly. “He was jus’ Elijah. Lots of slaves didden’ have no las’ name.”

“Do you have a last name?”

“Dey christened me Samson Moses, Ma’am.”

The soldiers returned. “Found these,” one said, holding up a bow and a quiver of arrows. Two more carried muzzle-loading rifles, knives and a tomahawk, to prevent the Indians retrieving the weapons of those who’d died.

Walt held out his hand. “I’ll take the bow and arrows.” He couldn’t say why he wanted them, except that they were the weapons that had killed Elijah. The soldier handed them over without a word.

One of the scouts took an arrow from the quiver and looked at it. “They was Cheyenne,” he said without hesitation. “See the fletching an’ colors on the shaft?”

Walt nodded. “They paid for Elijah, three for one. He killed the man who shot him, and we got two more.” He sighed. “That won’t bring him back, though. Will you help us carry his body to our wagon, please?” He glanced at the ox-wagons ahead of them, most of which had by now crossed the stream and watered their teams. “We’ll wrap him in a blanket and lay him inside. We’ve got to get moving.”

“Yessir!” the scout agreed. He returned the arrow to the quiver, handed it to Walt and bent to grasp Elijah’s feet. Samson drew his belt knife and cut off the arrow shaft still protruding from his friend’s chest. He tossed it to one side, sheathed the knife, then took Elijah’s shoulders. Walt picked up Elijah’s rifle and Rose collected his hat, which had been dislodged from his head during his fall. The second scout went after Samson’s and Elijah’s horses, which were standing some distance away.

They formed a melancholy procession across the grass as they returned to the wagon.

―――――

After supper that night, Walt and Samson dug a grave for Elijah in the roughly-fenced plot that served as the cemetery for the small town of Kit Carson. They worked by lantern light, piling the earth to one side, making sure the hole was deep enough to keep out varmints and scavengers. On the other side of the graveyard, a squad of soldiers dug two graves for their dead comrades.

Samson was silent, morose. As they began digging, he asked, “Suh, will de people here make a fuss about buryin’ a black man in dere cemetery?”

“Not while I’m around!” Walt said flatly. “He died fighting for all of us, so as far as I’m concerned, he earned the right to share this graveyard. Besides, how will they know he was black? We got here after dark, and he was already wrapped in a blanket.”

“He only got de one name, suh. All de white people got two or t’ree.”

“Then we’ll put ‘Elijah Ames’ on his headboard. That should take care of it until we take him to Denver City. We’ll worry about what to put on his headstone there when the time comes.”

Samson smiled for the first time since his friend’s death, his white teeth glistening in the lantern light. “I t’ink he’d like dat, suh.”

They dug in companionable silence for a while, until Samson said softly, “I keep t’inkin’, suh… it be my fault ’Lijah’s dead.”

Walt straightened, frowning. “Why would you say that?”

“But, suh, if I hadden’ said nothin’ ’bout him in St. Louee, you’d nebbuh have hired him, an’ he’d still be safe workin’ on de
Queen
.”

“If you’re going to look at it like that, you may as well say it’s my fault, too, because I hired him, I taught him to shoot, I gave him his first guns, I taught him to ride and drive a wagon, I gave him a horse, and I helped him get work as a teamster. Thing is, it ain’t my fault. If you want to blame someone, blame the Cheyenne.”

Walt leaned his spade against the side of the grave and took Samson’s shoulders in his hands, shaking him gently. “Samson, understand this real clear. When our time comes, it comes. None of us know the day or the hour, just like the Good Book says. You, or me, or Rose, or Elijah for that matter, could have been killed by those outlaws in Missouri, or the Cheyenne raiders at Fort Ellsworth, or Hunting Wolf’s war party, or even the bloody flux back at Pond Creek if we’d eaten with the garrison. Whose fault would it have been if we’d died any of those times?”

“I… I dunno, suh.”

“You don’t know because no one knows. I sure don’t. Life happens, whether we like it or not. Death comes in many forms, and from many directions. All we can do is face it. Some run away from it, but none of us are like that. Elijah sure wasn’t. He died like a man.”

“He sure did, suh!”

“In the funeral service there’s a line that reads, ‘In the midst of life we are in death’. I heard that a whole lot during the war. It’s true. Elijah lived each day like a man, and he died like a man, fighting to the end. We’ll remember his courage, and we’ll tell our children about him so that his example will live on. If Miss Rose and I have a son someday, I’ll ask her to include Elijah as one of his names, in his memory.”

“Yassuh,” Samson said slowly. “She be a good lady. I reckon she will, too. I t’ink ’Lijah wouldn’ want me mopin’ an’ weepin’ an’ wailin’ ovah him like an ol’ woman.”

“No, I think he’d want you to go on with your life and make him proud by the way you live it. If what the preachers tell us is right, you’ll see him again one day, and I’m sure he’ll want to know all about it. Make sure you have good things to tell him.”

Samson was silent for a long moment. “T’ank you, suh,” he said at last. “I guess I needed to hear dat. I’ll be all right now.”

Walt gave him his hand. Samson took it and gripped it strongly. They stood there for a moment together, united in their sorrow.

It was ten o’clock before they got back to the wagon. Rose had hot coffee waiting for them.

“We’ll bury Elijah at dawn,” Walt told her as they drank.

“But the soldiers are burying their dead by lantern-light tonight. Will we have time in the morning before the wagons pull out?”

“They’ll start while we’re doing that, but it takes at least an hour to get all the wagons moving. We’ll be finished in time to join the last of them. We can move up the train from there.”

“Be you gwine t’ read from de Bible for him, Miz Rose?” Samson asked.

“I’ll planning to.”

“T’ank you. He’d like dat.”

The scouts came around the circle of wagons well before dawn to wake everybody and give them time to harness their teams. Walt walked over to Matt Harkness and explained what they were about to do. “We’ll tag onto the end of the train, then move up the line,” he concluded.

“All right. Sorry about your man.”

Walt felt like shouting at Harkness that no one would have died if he’d kept the train together, but he bit his tongue. The man was doing the best he could. He’d made a mistake yesterday, and Elijah had paid the price for it: but during the war, Walt had seen mistakes kill hundreds of men on both sides, and never seen anyone held accountable for it. That was life.

They drove the ambulance to the cemetery in the half-light of dawn. The scouts joined them, uninvited but welcome, and helped Samson lower Elijah’s blanket-wrapped body into his grave. They stood beside it in respectful silence.

As soon as it was light enough, Rose read the Twenty-Third Psalm from her bible. When she’d finished, Samson handed her his Bible, the only book he owned, finger indicating a passage. “I cain’t read as nice as you, Miz Rose. Would you read dis for him too, please?”

“Yes, of course.” She cleared her throat, and read the account of the prophet Elijah being taken up into heaven. There was a catch in her voice as she read Elisha’s request to be given a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. When she’d finished, she closed the Bible and returned it to Samson. They all stood in silence for a moment.

At last Samson said, “Elijah had a kind heart. I hope he gibs me some of his spirit, too, if de good Lawd allow dat. Mr. Walt, do you t’ink it’d be all right for me to take his guns, an’ use dem instead o’ mine, in his mem’ry?”

“I think he’d like that,” Walt said quietly, and Rose nodded. “We have no way to trace his heirs, if there are any, so I guess all he brought with him is yours now. I reckon he’d want it that way.”

Walt and Samson shoveled the dirt back into the grave, then Walt planted a wooden board at its head. On it he’d painted simply, ‘Elijah Ames. He was a good man,’ and underneath it, the date of his death.

They left Elijah to his eternal rest in the bright sunrise, and turned their horses’ heads toward Denver City and the Rocky Mountains.