Hard Ride to Wichita (7 page)

“She doesn't want anything anymore,” Luke cut in. “She's gone. I'm all that's left and I don't intend to stay in this town to let the rest of my years slip away.”

“Before you do anything, just give yourself some time to think it through.”

Luke let out a tired laugh. “Something's definitely not right if you're the one telling me to be patient. You're the most hotheaded person I ever met.”

“Exactly! So if I'm saying this to you, it must be true.”

Although Luke wasn't completely appeased by that, he did seem to cool off a bit.

“Give it a little time,” Red pleaded. “All this is still fresh. My head is still spinning from hearing about everything, so I can barely imagine what's going on inside yours. Just rest up and come at it once the smoke has cleared.” Seeing that he was making some ground with his friend, Red added, “It's not like you can take off to Wichita in the middle of the night anyway.”

“I could use some sleep,” Luke admitted.

“That's right.”

“But I don't want to sleep in that house.”

“Nobody would expect you to. Come on home with me. We'll scrounge up something to eat and you can come up with something to say to my daddy when he smells the whiskey on our breath.”

Luke's tired grin returned. “I'm the one that's been through hell, so I've got a good excuse. You're the one that'll be in trouble for drinking liquor.”

“You got that right.”

“I can sit and stew all I want, but that won't change a thing. Fact is, I've got the rest of my life to miss my ma and I'm sure I'll be doing plenty of that throughout the years. I can tell you right now I won't ever come around to thinking I want to stay here and let the rest of my days trickle away.”

“You could at least give it some time,” Red told him. “You've at least got to be here to see your mother put to rest.”

Shaking his head, Luke replied, “It don't matter if I'm here or not for that. I said everything I could to her when she was here. From now on, it don't matter what I say because she won't hear it. And if she does, she'll be able to hear me no matter where I'm at. All that business about putting her in a box and watching as she's . . .” His eyes clenched shut as if to fight away the images that his imagination was conjuring up. When he opened them again, he was even more somber than he'd been before. “What I have to do . . . it'll take time. I can't waste any of it.”

“What is it you intend to do?”

“I'm going to Wichita and I'll find whoever that Granger person is.”

“Do you have any notion on how to do that?”

Luke nodded. “Yeah.”

“When do you mean to leave town?”

“First light tomorrow morning.”

“And there's nothing that'll change your mind,” Red asked in a tone that said he already knew the answer.

“No.”

“How long do you think it'll take?”

“A few days to ride to Wichita. If I can't find who this Granger is within a few more days after I get there, I doubt I'll ever find him. After that . . . I don't know yet.”

“All right, then,” Red said decisively. “We head out tomorrow morning for Wichita.”

“We?”

“That's right. A ride that long, you shouldn't go it alone. Anything happens out there and you could die without a soul knowing about it. Well, your ma would know, but I doubt she'd be too happy about you going off and doing such a foolish thing as that. Also, wherever she is, she'd find a way to haunt me for the rest of my days if I let such a thing happen.”

Luke started to laugh. “I reckon she would. She always did believe in ghosts.”

“Remember when she wanted to visit that traveling spiritualist? Kyle threw a fit.”

“And she went anyway,” Luke recalled. “She said that spiritualist wasn't nothing but a huckster. But that fellow who came along to hold séances last year, the one who got the spirits to rattle them bells and such on that wall he had, she said he was the genuine article.”

“Your ma was funny.”

Luke nodded. He then looked over to his friend and said, “She wouldn't be happy if she knew I was getting you into trouble. She always told me you got into enough of it on your own.”

“She never knew the half of it.”

“She knew about you robbing that first spiritualist blind.”

Red's eyes grew so wide that they were clearly visible in the faint moonlight. “What did you just say?”

“All right,” Luke admitted. “I think she knew about both of us robbing that spiritualist.”

“How could she know about that? We snuck into his tent, stole his lockbox, and was out again before anyone was the wiser.”

Luke shrugged. “I don't know how, but she knew. She just couldn't prove it, so she lectured me for hours about how wrong it was that anyone should steal or otherwise break the law.”

“I never heard about that before!”

“Because I wasn't about to give you up.”

“It was your idea to rob that fella,” Red pointed out.

“Exactly. And when I didn't admit to any of it or cave in while she was raking me over the coals, Ma let it be known that she would never lift a finger to help anyone who got caught stealing.”

Letting out a breath as if he'd just escaped from a posse, Red said, “I'm surprised she still didn't tan your hide and then come after me.”

“She . . . she said that . . .” Luke had to pause to take a breath. Keeping his head down, he said, “She told me that if that fella was any sort of spiritualist at all, he would have known in advance that he was gonna be robbed. For bilking good folks out of their money, he got what was coming to him.”

“She once told me something along those lines,” Red said. “After I got caught trying to steal one of the Johanssens' cows.”

Luke turned just enough to look at him and see Red smirk. “The sheriff did his part to scare me. He even put me in his jail cell, but I was only . . . what . . . ten years old?”

“Thereabouts.”

“He scared me good. I'll give him that much. My mother and yours came down to bring me home. While the sheriff was talking to my mother, your ma took me aside and told me how what I did was wrong. But, more than fearing the law, she told me I should fear divine retribution.”

Luke's brow furrowed. It wasn't the first time he'd heard those words, but they struck a chord at that moment.

“She told me,” Red continued, “that folks always get what's coming to them. Good or bad. It might take a while and it might come in strange ways, but what they do always comes back to them. I never forgot that.”

“Then how come you kept stealing?”

“'Cause I figured it was already too late for me.”

“We're a bit young to be thinking such grim things.”

Red nodded. “And we're also too young to be giving up on our lives. It's time we started them. That's what I've had in mind for a while now.”

“That so?”

“Yep. Thought I'd join the army. Soldiering is a good career and it gets me out of Maconville.”

“Puts you on a battlefield,” Luke told him. “Most men that see those fields either don't live to tell about it or leave a piece of them there. From what I've seen in the newspapers, they're usually mighty big pieces that get left behind.”

“Like what you're proposing is so much less dangerous?” Red scoffed.

“At least I'd be fighting and dying for my own cause and not someone else's.” He reached out to put a hand on his friend's shoulder. “Don't pay attention to what I just said. I think that's real honorable of you, Red. You'll make a fine soldier.”

“I sure will. After I get back from Wichita.”

“That's my job to do,” Luke said. “You've got yours.”

“We're brothers. We fight together. We ride the same trails.”

“And what if I'm making a mistake?”

“Then we make it together.” Red placed his hand on the side of Luke's face. What seemed like a tender gesture quickly took a more familiar turn when he pushed Luke's face to one side as if he'd slowly slapped him. “Besides, you don't think it's a mistake. Otherwise, you'd never do it. You're too smart for anything less.”

“This isn't your fight.”

“If you believe that, then maybe you're not so smart after all.”

“I don't want you getting killed on my account.”

“You don't have any say in the matter,” Red said. “I'm coming along with you whether I'm riding beside you or following you all the way to Wichita.”

“All right, then. I'm too tired to argue anymore.”

“Come along home with me. If folks know where we're at, they won't watch us so hard and we can skin out of town that much easier come the morning.”

Luke nodded and followed his friend back to the Connover place. Once there, he received some heartfelt condolences from Red's kin, a hot meal, and a warm bed for the night. It was the last taste of a real home he would feel for quite some time.

When morning came, Red woke with a start. The house was quiet and the sun's rays were only starting to warm the old curtains hanging in the window beside him. He sat bolt upright, pulled those curtains back, and found only one horse tethered to the post outside. Before he could mutter the curse that sprang to his mind, he recalled Luke's horse had been tied to the post on the other side of the house because the troughs on either side needed to be filled and there was just enough water in each of them to keep one horse happy. Red looked toward the door to his cramped room and found Luke curled in a ball on the floor between two blankets and a little square pillow.

When they were smaller, the two of them had fit much better inside that room. Now they seemed less like two peas in a pod and more like a pair of boulders stuffed into a marble bag. Red swung his feet over the side of his bed, which wasn't much more than a sturdy cot, and rubbed both hands over the top of his head. By the time he'd pulled his fingers from the tangle of red hair, Luke had thrown off the blanket covering him.

“You ready to go?” Luke asked.

“Can't we at least have breakfast first?”

“I said first light. It's already past that. I thought this town would be miles behind me by now.”

“And I thought I would have gotten Becky Walsh alone in the loft of her barn by now, but we don't always get what we want. I smell griddle cakes. If you can walk past those without stopping for a bite, then you don't have a soul.”

Scratching his haunches as he shuffled from his room, Red pulled open his door and stepped into the short hallway leading to the front of the house. The floorboards were cool beneath his feet, and it wasn't until he was a few steps away from the kitchen that he heard the sizzle of a frying pan.

Red's father always looked as if he'd just tumbled out of bed. He looked over at his son and said, “About time you decided to wake up. Where's Luke?”

“Right here,” Luke said as he entered the kitchen.

“Glad to have you, boy. Fix yourself a plate. You know where to find what you need.”

After having spent almost as many nights in that house as he did his own, Luke did know where everything was. He found a plate and fork and then helped himself to some hotcakes and butter. By the time Red was digging in to his own stack, his mother had arrived to fix them all coffee. From then on, Red's parents engaged in a whole lot of small talk with Luke that flowed like so much rainwater through a gutter.

Yes, he felt better than he had the day before.

Yes, he missed his ma and Kyle.

Yes, he knew things would be better.

No, he didn't think he was alone.

Actually Red thought that last answer was earnest enough. When Luke gave it, he'd looked over to him for silent confirmation that he truly wouldn't be alone as the day wore on. Red nodded and piled some more griddle cakes onto his plate. Even his mother's coffee, which usually smelled like hot glue and had the consistency of mud, was something to be savored that morning.

“Well, now,” Red's father said as he slapped the table and stood up. “There's work to be done. You'll come along to lend a hand as soon as this mess is cleaned up, you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” Red replied.

“And you,” Mr. Connover said while turning toward Luke, “rest up and feel free to come and go as you please. You're welcome to stay here as long as you like, but you'll do your part just like everyone else. Ain't no grief in the world couldn't be cured by rollin' up your sleeves and keeping yourself too occupied to fret about it.”

Luke nodded. “Thanks for your hospitality, sir. Ma'am.”

Accepting his gratitude with a warm smile, Red's mother busied herself by collecting dirty dishes and scooping up knives and forks. She'd used to have a lot more to say, but that was before Red's brother, Matt, went off to join the Union army last year. Since then, she'd become quiet as a sheep and twice as complacent.

After all he and Luke had been through together, Red never wanted him to know what a mean drunk his father was or how it made him sick to his stomach that his mother had given up on stepping in when things between him and the old man had gotten rough. Even before Matt had gone off to war, things had been strained in the Connover household. When Luke was around, everyone was on their best behavior. Red was often grateful for that. Other times, he resented the fact that an outsider was needed to buy him some peace inside his own home.

Red stepped outside to find his father pulling on the gloves he wore when chopping wood. A spot in the fence near the back of the property needed to be mended, and today was the day when that job would be finished. Like a cat responding to the slightest scrape of a mouse's foot against a floor, the old man wheeled around to find his son.

“Git your lazy hide over here and help me carry these rails!”

Red nodded at his father's words but didn't take another step in his direction. “Luke needs help with some things,” he said. “We gotta ride over to his place and—”

“Do whatever you like,” his father said with an exasperated wave. “I stopped thinking you'd serve any purpose years ago. If your brother was here, this fence would've been done by now.”

That was normally the time when Red would fire back with a spiteful remark about how Matt would have been appreciated for his labor because he was the only one who was treated better than a stray dog in that family. He held his tongue, however. Knowing he was leaving town in a matter of minutes made such things easier to bear.

“Good-bye, Daddy,” Red said.

The old man grunted to himself without bothering to look over his shoulder.

Red went back inside, where his mother was fussing over Luke, headed to his room, and threw some clothes into his brother's old saddlebags. No longer caring about leaving things the way they should be, he stripped his bed of sheets and pulled up the old, paper-thin mattress to find a gun belt wrapped in a dirty pillowcase. The holster had belonged to his father's brother and had been a gift to Matt on his thirteenth birthday. It had been left behind so Red could learn to shoot and protect the house if trouble rode in when their father was passed out drunk in a saloon somewhere.

The pistol was a Smith & Wesson revolver with a polished barrel and cylinder. The wooden grip was smooth as silk and stained to a rich black. Red opened the cylinder and turned it to confirm that three of the seven chambers were filled with.22-caliber rounds. Compared to the old Colt Luke had been working on, Matt's pistol felt more like a cork gun. It would get the job done well enough as long as it was used properly, and the holster fit comfortably around his waist. Before buckling it there, he reminded himself that he still had to walk past his parents and didn't want to explain why he was doing so while heeled. After bundling the gun belt, pistol, and the spare ammunition he had inside an old shirt, Red held the package under his arm and left the room that had been wrapped around him for most of his childhood.

“You still want to tend to them matters you told me about?” Red asked as he turned toward the kitchen.

Luke was eager to get moving, but not so eager to leave the company of Red's mother. He looked at her with a genuine smile and said, “Thanks for everything, ma'am. It really means a lot.”

She patted his cheek. “You're part of this family, Luke. Don't ever forget that.”

“I won't.”

With that, Luke and Red walked out of the house, where they split up to saddle their horses. Before long, they were riding through town, heading in the general direction of Luke's house.

“You sure you want to do this?” Red asked.

Without a pause or a lick of emotion in his voice, Luke replied, “Yes.”

Luke kept riding without casting an eye toward his old house. Red tugged back on his reins just enough to slow his horse a bit to see what his friend was missing. The front door of the Croft home was wide open and a fat man in a long black coat waddled from a long black wagon to step inside the house. Recognizing the fat man as the town's undertaker, Red was glad Luke had the sense to keep his head turned away. He shuddered to think what was inside the home and, a few seconds later, wished he'd followed Luke's example by not glancing over there at all.

Several neighbors and other familiar people waved at the young men as they rode by. None of them seemed surprised or offended when they barely got a response in kind. They simply looked to Red, gave him a sympathetic nod, and went about their business.

Plenty of things flowed through Red's mind as Maconville thinned out into empty prairie and a wide trail leading south to Wichita. Foremost among them was a pang of regret that he hadn't given proper farewells to anyone before leaving. For all he knew, he and Luke could be returning in no time at all and they would resume where they'd left off. Red couldn't be absolutely certain about anything, but he felt the odds of that coming to pass were particularly slim.

He wondered if they should have taken more time to plan before saddling up their horses and riding away from most everything they knew. Of course, he'd heard plenty of stories of miners and homesteaders who set out to go a lot farther without being truly prepared for what they would find. Stocking up on provisions might serve its purpose, but they couldn't prepare someone for the things that would truly put them to the test. Try as he might, Red couldn't think of anything he might have done that would have genuinely prepared him for the ride he'd agreed to take with his friend.

When Red shifted to get comfortable in his saddle, he couldn't really find a comfortable spot until he was seated with his back straight, his chin high, and his eyes pointed directly ahead.

Maconville was behind him.

Wichita lay a few days' ride ahead.

Everything else would be decided when it came. There was a good amount of comfort to be taken from all of that.