Two Brothers (2 page)

It came today, the rain that has been burdening the dark and rumbling sky, and we are up to our axles in mud. The torrent pounds at the canvas top of our wagon as I write this, by the light of a kerosene lantern, and there is a heavy ache, low in my belly. Patrick is frantic, as are the other men, for the summit is still some distance ahead, a seemingly unattainable goal that must, nonetheless, be reached. I take an uncharitable measure of cheer in the knowledge that we cannot be left behind in this terrifying place, for the other wagons are stuck fast, too. Patrick has not upbraided me again, and last night before we slept, I let him know I had put aside my grievance with him. He is very fetching and very persuasive, my Patrick, and his kisses move me in a way that would not be seemly to record.

Still more rain. We remain stalled just short of the mountaintop, and this morning several Indians rode right into our camp, bold as brass, demanding horses and sugar and
tobacco. I peeked out through the flap and saw their feathers and painted faces.

They were given everything but the horses, these savages, and it was plain that they were not satisfied when they left. The wagon master said they were renegades.

Later, I overheard Patrick telling Mr. Swannell that we, the company of travelers, are as vulnerable as ants in a puddle of honey. At the time I didn’t give that remark much weight, thinking it was a fine and merciful thing that we’d been made to stop, for it gave those woeful mules a chance to rest.

Mrs. Chambers has been to see me twice. She said my babes are uncommon big, and shook her head once or twice, in response to some private thought. I am small; perhaps too small, and only eighteen. That seemed an advanced age, before we left Ohio, but now I feel very young.

They came back, the Indians, at first light. The rain had ceased, and our men were busy digging out the wagons, railing and cursing and pushing at the poor animals. I did not care a whit for any of it, as my pains were upon me.

I called for Patrick, but he did not come to me. That troubled me greatly.

The babes were born amidst savage shrieks and gunfire; even then I could think of naught but how they were tearing me asunder, these fierce, strong children, as though I were not flesh and blood, but merely some brittle shell to be broken open and left behind.

I have seen them, held them, all too briefly, for I am weak. Mrs. Chambers agrees that they are fine boys indeed, with their fair hair. Surely they will resemble Patrick when they are grown.

Something is wrong, for all that my travail is ended at last and the babes are here, safe and strong. Mrs. Chambers has tears on her face, and enjoins me now to put aside my pen and sleep. She has never seen anyone write at such a time, she says. The Indians are gone, she tells me, and I may rest in the assurance of safety.

I must not stop until my strength fails, however, for if I do, if I lie idle, then I cannot but credit the fact that Patrick has not come to the wagon, not even to look upon our sons. Perhaps I have shamed him before the company of travelers, with my screaming.

I hope that is it. Dear God, surely he did not die in the fighting.

Patrick is dead, felled by an arrow in the chest. I believe I knew he was no more when night fell and there was still no sign of him. And I shall perish soon as well; I have seen that bitter truth in Mrs. Chambers’ kindly face. I have lost too much blood.

I have begged them to let me see Patrick, but they will not.

I am not afraid to die; no, without my beloved, it is life I fear. I know that he waits for me, somewhere just beyond the shadows.

Arrangements have been made. Margaret Saint-Laurent came to call, just a little while ago. She is a kindly lady, and educated, and she held my hand and spoke in a soft voice, and took down these final words for me when I asked it of her. She and her husband, John, will take one of my sons on to Oregon and raise him as their own. They mean to call him Tristan.

Shamus and Rebecca McQuillan have agreed to bring up the second babe, for they have only daughters, and are glad to get a son. They mean to christen our little boy Shamus, and California will be their home.

I am sorry that I was not stronger, for the sake of my children. I would surely have loved them as deeply as any mother could, had there been time. If there is a way, then let them know that I am buried in my rightful place, beside their brave, good and generous father, alongside the trail that led to our dreams.

Shay

The Lawman

1883

Chapter 1

P
ROMINENCE
, C
ALIFORNIA
, J
UNE OF
1883

H
E DIDN’T EVEN ATTEMPT
to draw on the intruder; it was far too late for that. The cold weight of a pistol barrel rested in the hollow of his throat, and he heard the click of the hammer as it snapped back.

“Don’t move.” The voice unnerved him almost as much as the situation in which he found himself, for it might have come from his own throat. The tone, the timbre, were his.

“I didn’t plan on it,” he answered. It was still dark in the jail cell, where he had made his bed after a night passed in the card room behind the Yellow Garter Saloon, and all he could make out, looking up through his eyelashes, besides the blue-black barrel of the gun, was a glint of light hair and an impression of wolf-white teeth.

Delicately, the stranger relieved him of the .45 in his holster, still strapped to his hip, spun it fancy-like on one finger, and laid it aside with a clatter. A match was struck, and Shay caught the sharp, familiar scents of sulphur and kerosene, mingled. Thin light spilled over the jailhouse cot and dazzled him for a moment, but he knew he was still square in the other man’s sights.

The visitor whistled low through his teeth. “So,” he said. “It’s true.”

Shay blinked a couple of times and then squinted. Except for a few minor differences, mostly matters of grooming and deportment, he could have been looking at himself. The other man’s hair was a shade or two darker than his own; the stranger wore a full beard, too, and a cheroot jutted from between his teeth, but virtually everything else was the same—the lean build, the blue eyes, even the lopsided grin, tending toward insolence. “What the—?”

The specter chuckled. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? You always sleep in your own jail cell, Marshal?”

Shay ventured to sit up, and the other fellow didn’t shoot him. Taking that for a good sign, he swung his legs over the side of the cot and made to stand, only to find himself looking straight up the barrel of the pistol.

“Not so fast.”

With a sigh. Shay sat down again. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded. Now that he was sure he wasn’t dreaming, he was beginning to feel fractious.

His antagonist grabbed the rickety chair in the corner of the cell, turned it around, and sat astraddle of the seat, all in virtually one motion. His left arm rested across the back, the .45 dangling idly from one gloved hand. An odd sensation prickled Shay’s nape, but he forbore from rubbing it. “Maybe I’m you,” the man said. It was downright irritating, the way he took his sweet time answering.

“I gotta quit drinkin’,” Shay observed philosophically.

His reflection grinned. “The situation isn’t
that
drastic, though I will admit you look as if you’ve been overindulging of late. How old are you?”

“I’m the one asking questions here,” Shay snapped.

“I’m the one with the gun,” came the easy reply.

“Hell.” Out of habit. Shay polished the star-shaped badge on his vest with his right shirt cuff. “I turned thirty last September.”

“So did I.”

“Well, write-home and hallelujah. I hope somebody baked you a cake.”

The response was a slanted grin that gave Shay a whole new insight into why his pa had felt called upon to box his ears now and again. “Somebody did. I believe her name was Sue-Ellen. How long have you had this job, Marshal?”

Shay put his foot down, figuratively, at least. “Oh, no,” he said. “I asked for your name, and I’m not saying anything else until I get it.”

“Saint-Laurent,” was the crisp reply. “Tristan.” Still holding the gun, Saint-Laurent used the thumb of that same hand to scratch his chin.

Shay pondered the revelation, mentally leafing through the piles of wanted posters on his desk for a match, and was relieved when he came up dry. “It’s plain that you’ve got me at a disadvantage,” he said. “So why don’t you just go ahead and tell me how the hell it happens that a man comes awake in the middle of the night to find a gun at his throat and his own face looking back at him?”

Saint-Laurent watched him narrowly for a few moments, as though making some kind of calculation, then threw down the cheroot and ground it out on the wood floor with the heel of one scuffed and mud-caked boot. “Your folks never told you what happened? How you were orphaned and all?”

Shay shook his head. He had two older sisters, Dorrie and Cornelia, and they’d wasted no time in letting him know he was a foundling, but they’d been nearly grown when he came along, and secretive about the details, probably because it gave them power over him. Neither his mother nor his father could be persuaded to part with the story; in fact, they’d taken it to their graves, dying within a year of each other, and he’d left off wondering a long time ago. Mostly.

Saint-Laurent sighed. “You must have reasoned it through by now,” he said. “We started out from the same place, you and me. We were born in the Rockies, to a couple named Killigrew—they were headed west with a wagon train, and both of them were real young. Our pa
never even got a look at us—he was killed by Indians while our mama was in labor. She died of grief and blood loss before the day was out.”

The tale was briefly and bluntly told, and it bludgeoned Shay in a way he wouldn’t have expected. He was grateful he was already sitting down, since he reckoned his knees might have given out, and for the first time in eighteen months, he was sober clear through to the middle of his brain. He thrust a hand through his hair but said nothing, not trusting himself to speak.

“I didn’t know about it either, until last year, when I learned my mother was failing and went home to the ranch to see her. She told me the story then, and gave me a little remembrance book our mama kept.”

“And you set out to find me?” The question came out as a rasp.

Saint-Laurent chuckled, fished another cheroot out of the inside pocket of his long, dusty gray coat and leaned over to light it from the flame in the kerosene lamp. He replaced the glass chimney before troubling himself to reply. “I didn’t give a damn about you,” he said. “After all, if I wanted to know what you looked like, all I had to do was look in a mirror. I meant to go my own way. But then, as they say in the melodramas, fate took a hand.”

“How’s that?” Shay asked, mildly insulted that his own brother hadn’t taken more of an interest. Folks either loved him or hated him, but they generally committed themselves wholeheartedly to one view or the other.

Tristan looked him over, drew on the cheroot, and expelled the smoke, all without speaking. When he did open his mouth, he left Shay’s question hanging in midair. “That stagecoach robbery, over near Cherokee Bluff,” he said. “Were you wearing that badge when it happened?”

Shay wished mightily that he were drunk again. A year and a half before, the driver, the guard and three passengers had been killed when a bridge blew up beneath the stage and sent the horses, the coach itself and everyone
aboard crashing into a deep ravine. One of the victims, Miss Grace Warfield, had been his bride-to-be.

“Yeah,” he ground out, after a long moment. “I was the marshal.”

Tristan was mercifully silent.

Shay assembled words in his head and, with considerable difficulty, herded them over his tongue. “I rode out to meet them, when the coach didn’t come in on time,” he said. “Me and old Dutch Cooper, from over at the livery stable. We figured they’d broken an axle or one of the horses had thrown a shoe. We were maybe a mile off when we heard the explosion.” He stopped, unable to go on, stricken to silence by visions of the terrible things he’d seen that day. Two of the horses were still alive when he and Dutch got there, and the dust had yet to settle. Bodies were scattered over both sides of the ravine, and the coach was in pieces, one wheel spinning slowly in the breeze. The splintered timbers of the bridge made a gruesome framework for it all.