Orphan Moon (The Orphan Moon Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

Barleigh and Winnie ate the jar of peaches. Like the nervous goat, they paced. Winnie used a bucket of old wash water to relieve herself. It seemed as if the night might never end, but eventually it stretched into the quiet stillness of morning.
 

“I can’t stand this any longer,” Barleigh said, the silence of the previous few hours becoming too heavy. “I need to know what’s out there. If Papa and Uncle Jack were able, they would’ve come for us by now.”

Winnie nodded agreement. “Yes. Jack—” She let the sentence trail away.
 

They ascended the steps, cracked open the hatch. In contrast to the violent chaos that was the night, dappled sunlight bathed the earth, songbirds sang to one another, and the peaceful world seemed normal. Barleigh’s eyes adjusted to the morning’s light. She looked around . . . and realized her world would never be normal again.

Smoke curled from the ashy heap where once stood the horse barn. The corral’s charcoaled planks sparked in the breeze. What little that remained of the house stood under the protective arms of a singed cottonwood tree. Green pears gathered the previous day from the orchard sat piled in baskets, the shiny red pushcart sitting next to what used to be the kitchen porch. There in its place was now a gaping black hole opening into the gutted, smoldering house.
 

“Oh, dear God,” Winnie cried out, laying the baby in the pushcart next to the pears. She ran to Jack. His body lay sprawled and motionless on the ground. A dozen arrows sprouted from his chest, with a lance securing him from ever moving from that position again. From the waist down, he was stripped of clothes, his most private parts sliced off. Winnie reached to close his eyes, his gruesome death stare frightening to look at, but it was impossible—his eyelids were cut away, too. Stubby, bloody palms were all that remained of his hands, with all of his fingers and thumbs chopped off. And, from ear to ear, his scalp was sawed from his head.

The sight caused Barleigh’s stomach to lurch. She spun away, fisted her hands, and pushed them hard against her eyes. The sound of Winnie’s soft voice drew her back around.
 

Winnie was on her knees, kneeling next to her husband’s body. “There, there, there.” She soothed him, kissed him, and caressed his bloody face. Speaking tender words to him, she eased his trousers up, belting them with gentle hands.
 

They removed the arrows from his body but could not pull the lance from his chest, so deeply the spear was impaled into the ground. Together, leaning with all their weight on it, breaking it off, they managed to lift his body off the jagged shaft embedded in the rocky soil. The lance caught a piece of Jack’s shirt, tearing it, keeping hold of it, and Barleigh started to pull the fragment of his shirt free.

“No!” said Winnie, sharply, emphatically, her eyes glazed and staring at the flapping fabric. “Leave it. Let it be a banner. This marks the place where a good man died.”

*****

They gathered as much of Birdie‘s and Henry’s remains as they could. Their charred bodies were found together in the bed where Birdie had given birth just days before. It appeared as if Henry was bent over her, his body covering, protecting, shielding hers. A Comanche’s piercing lance affixed them to one another for eternity.

With their ashy remains folded together in a blanket, Winnie and Barleigh carried them to the goat shed where they had pulled Jack’s body. The dead Indian was dragged out of the shed and left for the scavenging vultures already hovering over the pierced and impaled cattle carcasses dotting the pastures. They piled straw on top of their dead, snaking a trail outside. Then, splashing kerosene all around, they tossed lit matches onto the soaked straw, watching as fire raced into the shed. The loud crackle-pop of the funeral pyre drowned out their sobs.
 

Wind gusted, stoking the flames into a frenzy. Flakes of ash drifted down, the cremated ashes of their beloved. Barleigh turned into the breeze, tears streaking the grime on her face, the wet, ashy mixture seeping into her pores, melting into her skin. She imagined a part of Papa and Birdie forever becoming a part of her, going with her always.

Some ashes flitted and twirled high in the air, blown into the late September sky by the fire’s hot breath. “You’re free to fly away now, Birdie,” she said as the ashes swirled above the treetops. “You and Papa are now free to be together.”

*****

“Is there anything to save from the house?” asked Winnie. She picked up the black and red woven Navaho blanket Papa had kept on the front porch chair, shaking ashes from it, sniffing it, pounding it hard against the railing before folding it over her arm.
 

What could be salvaged? Memories? “There’s not much left.” Barleigh walked out to the front porch, clutching two tintype photographs.

“I remember seeing your papa with this blanket around his shoulders the night Birdie gave birth, him pacing out here on the porch. The moon spotlighted him like an actor on a stage performing for cactus and cattle.” Winnie’s dark eyes appeared hollow and sunken, pulled inward from the terror. Her gaze drifted, unblinking, to the Brazos River ridge.
 

Barleigh followed her stare. It was more than cactus and cattle watching, they both knew. They’d overheard Henry and Jack speak of the growing number of warriors on the ridge each night. Henry had spotted the first hint of a raiding party on Wednesday, the beginning of the time of the Comanche moon, the night Henry and Birdie’s baby chose to enter the world.
 

“I found these,” Barleigh said, showing Winnie the tintypes. “Birdie looks almost white in this one, don’t you think?”

Winnie nodded, taking the photograph from Barleigh’s hands. “She was beautiful. It’s no wonder your papa fell in love with her, despite the circumstances. I know you loved her, too.”

“Yes. I loved her. She was like a mother to me.”
 

Looking at Birdie’s photograph, her silky black curls to her waist, her fine features, her almond eyes, was like looking at the negative image of herself. Barleigh had learned at a young age, though, not to ask foolish questions as to why a half-Negro, half-French Cajun slave of her grandfather and she, whose blood was Irish and French, shared a likeness.

The few salvaged items—two tintypes, Henry’s black church hat, Birdie’s Bible, and the Navajo blanket—were placed into the pushcart along with the pears. A small load. Barleigh marveled at how little she now possessed. She thought about things taken for granted yesterday. The day before the attack. The day before her world turned dark. The day before her heart was inflicted with a wound so severe she expected it would never heal.
 

The canopied road that led east to Winnie’s house was a narrow, rolling, and dusty lane. It was a two-hour ride on horseback, an hour in an emergency. Barleigh had whittled it down to less than that the day she’d galloped for help when Winnie’s midwifery skills had been needed. They walked in silence.

From behind, a noise startled them from their private thoughts. Jumping like frightened rabbits into the woods, pulling the cart, the dog, and the goat in with them, they hid behind a thicket of cedar. Shaking. Waiting. Peering through branches. Each holding their breath.

It was Barleigh’s horse, Deal, with his unmistakable whinny. His was not a high-pitched whinny but a deep, throaty rumble—a rat-a-tat grunting more like the sound of a person clearing their throat. Lame, limping badly, his left foreleg bore a zigzagged gash that tore deep into the muscle. Most of the hair on his right hip was burned away, leaving angry black blisters on his skin. But he was alive.
 

“I can poultice those wounds,” said Winnie. “The injuries are severe. They’ll take a long time to heal. The scars will be ugly, but they’re not fatal wounds.” She gave Barleigh’s hands a gentle squeeze.
 

Dark, cloudy thoughts gathered in Barleigh’s mind. Was Winnie trying to convey that the same was true for her? That her heart’s wounds would heal but would leave ugly scars? She doubted that any heart could survive what hers had suffered, fearing instead that her heart would turn to vapor.

*****

Everyone from Palo Pinto to Fort Worth called Winifred and Jack Justin “Aunt Winnie” and “Uncle Jack.” Barleigh pretended she was her real life aunt. Sometimes, she pretended Winnie was more. Sometimes, Barleigh called her “Momma” when she knew Winnie wouldn’t hear, just to see how the words felt falling from her mouth.
 

She never knew her real mother, and each birthday Barleigh celebrated was a guilty reminder of the loss. But she had Birdie. Though she was
like
a mother, it was forbidden that Barleigh consider her
as
a mother, or even as
family.
A
simile
was all Grandfather allowed. However, Henry changed all that after Grandfather died.

“I’ve made you breakfast.” Winnie put the coffee kettle on the stove, then sat down.

Barleigh stared at the food on the table, her stomach unsettled. “I’m not hungry. But . . .
 
thank you.”

“At least drink some milk.” Winnie got up and poured a glass without waiting for Barleigh to answer. “You need to put something in there besides coffee.”
 

“The horses that weren’t burned alive in the barn they stole, except for Deal, who they left for dead. But, why did they have to kill the cattle?” She pushed the heels of her palms against her eyes, trying to rub away the horrific memory.
 

The barn had been full of mares with foals. Barren mares, stallions, and geldings had been separated and turned out to pastures and paddocks. All in the barn died. A few fleeing horses had been killed in the melee. Hundreds of cattle carcasses were left scattered across the pastures, arrows embedded in their silvery gray hides, their brown-eyed vacant stares going on forever.
 

“They can gallop away with horses. Cows are too difficult to control. They turn into a dangerous stampede. They may keep one or two for food. But what they can’t take, they kill or burn. Or both.” Winnie stared into her coffee, slipping away to her silent place.

A silent place—Barleigh longed for one. Day or night her mind screamed over the horror—waking, sleeping. She’d open her eyes and see it all again. She’d close her eyes, and the images would remain. If it would’ve made the terrible visions stop, the memories fade, she’d have clawed out her eyes and fed them to the dogs.
 

Barleigh wandered upstairs to her room, leaving Winnie to her thoughts. Wrapping the Navajo blanket around her shoulders, she sat in the rocking chair next to the window, the photographs of her papa and Birdie displayed on the sill. Outside in the paddock, she watched her horse as he limped feebly toward the water trough, stopping short, the pain from his wounds too much for his effort. The sight was her undoing. It shattered her, broke her apart, and she buried her face in the blanket and wept.

*****

Winnie had taken to wringing her hands when she talked. “It’s been two weeks since I sent word to my sons’ regiment commander. Surely he’ll approve their leave. Jackson and Jonah will bear the news on strong shoulders. I fear it’ll be hardest on little Jeddy.”
 

 
“While you’re inquiring at the militia headquarters,” said Barleigh, watching as Winnie fretted with her hands, “I want to pay a visit to Mr. Goldthwaite at the bank.”
 

“Yes. I understand. That’s another reason to leave your baby sister here. We have too much to do in Fort Worth.”

“But I’m worried—”

“Esperanza is capable. She helped raise my three boys. Now don’t go looking at me like I’m suggesting you leave her for a year. It’ll be one day. She’s better off here with Esperanza.”

“I’m all she has in this world. What if something happens?”
 

“There’s no need to worry. She’ll be fine,” said Winnie, winding and unwinding her hands.

“It’s no good luck, a baby going this long with no name,” Esperanza said. “To no call her by her own name can no be good.” She bent and lifted the baby from the cradle.
 

Barleigh looked at Winnie, panicked. She had dreaded the thought of her having been born under a Comanche moon, had feared what bad omen that may have foretold. What kind of misfortune had she added to that, by not naming her? “Have I brought her bad luck?”

“No,” said Winnie emphatically. “But she does need a name, no matter the reason. What have you considered?”

“I haven’t considered anything. You’re a mother. You’re good at these kind of things.”

“I named three boys. She’s your sister. You should have the honor.”

Barleigh tried out a few combinations in her head as she watched Esperanza tease a smile from the baby’s mouth with a warm bottle. She wanted something that would remind her of Birdie and of her Papa.
 

“Starling, for Birdie, and Henrietta, for Papa. What do you think?”

“Starling Henrietta Flanders. That’s perfect.” Winnie took the baby from Esperanza. “Starling, you now have a beautiful name.”

*****

When they arrived in Fort Worth, the town was an axis of excitement, folks joined in animated conversations about the upcoming presidential election three weeks and one day away. Barleigh once entertained opinions about such matters as politics. They’d seemed important when her papa had engaged her in spirited debates. She’d have argued that the Republican Abraham Lincoln would make the best leader, even though many in Texas favored the Northern Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas. However, her focus on this day was what she had to do to rebuild her ranch.

Barleigh hurried toward the bank, a hand keeping her hat from blowing away while the gusty wind fluttered her skirts. She reached down to straighten them, and as she did, she noticed a piece of paper being carried aloft on the breeze. It settled at her feet as the wind blew itself out. She saw that it was an advertisement. Picking up the paper, she read:

WANTED. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over eighteen. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 Per Week.