?
Thomas led him back to his ranch and to the water trough. The man bent, gulped with both hands, and came up coughing. His face was blotched with sun and shock, his eyes rimmed red.
“Ambush,” he rasped. “Up north. Stage Road. Coach was taken. Kiowa.”
The words dropped like stones. Thomas felt the first hit of cold, then the hot wash that always followed—the flare of anger that clarified everything.
“How many?” he said.
“Too many. Most of the passengers killed. All of them robbed. One woman taken by the savages. We tried to follow and lost half our company for our trouble.” The soldier’s voice caught. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
Thomas steadied him by the elbow, more to halt the man’s useless swaying than out of kindness. His thoughts ran ahead, quick and exact. Woman taken. His money wasted. He had no tears to offer for strangers and none for a woman who, if she had any sense at all, would have kept to her place on a seat and not invited attention. If she had been taken, then somebody else had put a hand on what he had paid for. That was theft in any language.
“Where?” Thomas asked. “Exactly.”
The soldier shook his head. “North fork of the road. Four long bends past the cottonwood grove. We found the stage burned out and the driver dead. More than half the passengers scalped and massacred. Only two, a man and a woman, escaped into the tall grass and shrubs to tell the tale.” He stopped. “They told us of a bloody massacre and of a dark-haired woman taken by a savage on a brown-and-white horse.”
Thomas nodded once. Not acceptance. He would ride to the place, measure it with his own eyes. Men lied, especially to themselves; ground did not.
“You can rest your horse in the shade,” he said shortly. “Then be gone by sundown.”
He walked back to his bay, uncinched the saddle, and felt the flare of anger settle into the iron he preferred. He was heated to the thought of her being taken. If the woman lived, he would take her back. If not, he would settle accounts with the world that had dared to bill him for goods never delivered.
?
That evening he sat on the porch with a ledger open to a blank page and a cold cup of coffee at his boot. The crickets sang; a thin breeze rolled down from the north carrying the tired smell of blown dust and distant ash. In the lamplight the columns on the page gleamed, ready to be filled: steer branded, calves dropped, salt and oats purchased. There hadn’t been much to fill those columns with lately, half his small herd having been sold off to settle a debt several months ago.
Jim Harkins, a neighbor, appeared out of nowhere on his flea-bitten gray, an unusual visit. When Thomas waved him forward, he took a seat on the bench with a creak of old knees. “Army rider stopped here?” he asked.
“Stopped. Talked too much. Left.”
Jim grunted. “Town says a coach was hit. Maybe two.”
“Town says many things.” Thomas made a mark on the paper. “Sometimes the town is right.”
Jim glanced at him. “You going to look?”
It was not a comment Thomas had expected, but it gave him added resolve. He set his pencil down. “I am.”
“Alone?” Jim asked.
“Two men are slower than one. And I am not hunting bison.” Thomas turned the ledger so the lamplight pooled on the page. “My mail-order bride was on that coach. If she’s dead, then the matter is closed. If she’s not, then she belongs here.” He tapped the paper. “On this side of the house ledger. Not the loss column.”
Jim let out a long breath through his nose, like a horse that had decided not to spook. “You ever think on the human side of it?”
“I just did.” Thomas shut the book. “All people owe their debts same as cattlemen. She owes hers.”
Jim stared out at the dark yard. “You always were a hard man, Tom.”
“Soft men get conned,” Thomas said. “You’d be the first to tell me that when the tally comes due.”
Jim didn’t argue. He took a drink of coffee and made a face. “It’s cold.”
“So is life,” Thomas said, and rose.
?
Badger Crossing boiled like a kicked anthill. Wagons blockaded the street; boys ran with shouts; women pulled children close and glared at any man who looked as if they might touch one of them. A knot of men formed around a soldier outside the general store, their hats pushed back and their mouths hard. Thomas shouldered in.
