“How far?”
“Maybe twenty miles. Why? Do you know anyone there?”
He shrugged. “It’s where I’m heading. Whether I know anyone there, we’ll see.” Dusty was never comfortable talking about himself, and he especially did not want to go into why he was going to Baker’s Crossing.
“Do you have any other family?” he asked.
She nodded. “Back east.”
As she spoke, she cranked an iron pump handle, filling a kettle so she could begin cleaning the dishes. “I have a grandmother, and a couple uncles and their families. My mother died last year, and Pa thought it best to come west and start fresh. Pa wants to homestead. Maybe go to Oregon, where there’s fresh farmland.”
“You’re a far piece from Oregon.”
“Pa thought maybe to find a job in California for a year or two, first. Maybe save up some money. We got this far, and the job of running the way station was available, so he took it. It can get dull here – there’s a lot of time on your hands between stages, but I never thought of it as dangerous until today."
“Them two are unusual. Some of the worst back-stabbers I’ve ever met will treat a woman like the grandest lady, and woe be to anyone who dares otherwise. Women are rare out here, and women of marrying age, even moreso.”
She gave her name as Mahalia Anderson. From the Bible, she said. But her Pa and pretty much every one else called her Haley.
“Folks just call me Dusty,” he said.
“Oh? Is that short for something?”
He shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. I never knew my Ma or Pa.”
When he was finished eating, he took a shovel from a tool shed and dug two graves behind the house, then rolled a body into each one. Before he dumped the stocky one into the ground, however, he examined the dead man’ pistol, which he had pried from his fingers before dragging him from the house.
The gun was a Colt Peacemaker. It could be loaded with metallic cartridges, inserted through a loading gate at the rear of the cylinder. Unlike the cap and ball pistols Dusty carried, which were loaded through the front of the cylinder manually with powder and a lead ball or bullet, and primed with a percussion cap placed over a nipple behind each chamber. Reloading a cap and ball revolver was a lengthy process. Some men carried one or more extra cylinders and would simply remove the cylinder in their pistol and replace it as a method of speedier reloading. Others, like Dusty, simply carried two pistols.
Dusty had seen a few Peacemakers – Mister Cantrell owned one - but figured it would be a lot of years before he could afford one.
What the hell, he thought. The dead man wouldn’t be needing it anymore. He had probably stolen it, anyhow, and it would be impossible to find the gun’s rightful owner. Dusty could leave it for Haley’s father, who would probably sell it to a stage passenger, or Dusty could simply take it himself.
He unbuckled the dead man’s gunbelt, and slid it out from under him. It was made of finely tooled leather, with twenty cartridge loops sewn into the back, each filled. The pistol was not a .45, as were most Peacemakers, but a .44-40, sized to take the same ammunition as the .44-40 Winchester. As such, if you owned both weapons, you could fill your cartridge belt with ammunition that could be used in either gun.
He unbuckled his own scratched up, worn gunbelt and dropped it along with his second pistol to the ground, and buckled on the dead man’s belt. He adjusted it so the pistol would ride low on his right leg, then drew the gun and slapped it back into the holster, then pulled it free again. He would need to practice until his draw with the new gun flowed smoothly. He noted the pistol’s balance, superior to those of his own.
Dusty finished scooping earth over the two dead men, filling the graves, then returned to the shack.
“I’d best be going,” he said. “I have a lot of miles to cover.”
She gave a sort of half shrug. “You could always sleep in the barn. It’s getting late in the day. You won’t make many more miles before dark.”
“Thanks. But I don’t think that would look proper.”
“No. I don’t suppose it would.”
There was something in her eye, in the tone of her voice. Was Dusty imagining it? Was there just a hint of disappointment? Or was it just that he wanted to see disappointment?
That was a hard thing - trying to read a woman. It was too easy to see what you wanted in a woman’s eyes. Haley was pretty, and she had that sort of frontier strength Dusty found so attractive in a girl. And yet, she was softly feminine, not hard and mannish like some women who had been made so by too many years of hard living. And she had a soft, whispery voice, and green eyes that seemed to reach into his soul without even trying. He didn’t know if he had ever noticed the color of a woman’s eyes before.
“Thanks for the beans and coffee. I’d best be riding on.”
He went to the barn, tightened the cinch and removed the feed bag that had long been emptied, and led his horse out into the yard. He let it drink a bit from the trough, then tethered it to a hitching rail, and went back to the front door. Not that he really needed to. He had said his goodbye. It was just that he wanted to see her one more time. To look into those eyes. To hear that voice one more time. She answered after a quick knock.
“I just wanted to say goodbye, and thanks again,” he said.
“It’s I who should be thanking you,” she said.
“Think nothing of it. Really.”
She shook her head. “I’ll never think nothing of it. And neither will my Pa. There will always be
