Crucifixion River

I’d changed clothes in my bedroom and dried my hair as best I could. Dratted hair-when wet and damp, it curled and tangled and looked like a mare’s nest. Yet another reason I hated this backcountry. At least my dress was pretty; I’d put on the blue gingham with the lace collar for our company.

I looked around at the stranded travelers. The women by the fire had their heads together in earnest conversation-stage passengers, surely. The man drinking whiskey at the table looked to be a farm or ranch worker dressed up in his Sunday best. The other man at the buffet, the one with the banjo, had his back to me, but I’d gotten a close look at him when I came in. My, he was handsome in his brown butternut suit. And much nearer to my age than Mr. Nesbitt. Mother came out and placed a basket of fresh-baked bread beside him, and he smiled and nodded his thanks before she returned to the kitchen.

The door opened and Dad came in. His face was tightened up like it got when he’d fought with me or Mother, and he moved in an odd, jerky way. He didn’t even look at me as he shucked out of his oilskins and then walked through the room toward the kitchen. It made me cross. I hate to be ignored, and it was particularly annoying after the soaking I’d gotten and the wheel almost coming off the buckboard. Then Mr. Nesbitt came in, and he nodded to me as he took off his wet slicker.

I went to the buffet for coffee, and greeted the man with the banjo. Oh, yes, he truly was good-looking-slender, with chestnut brown hair and a nice smile and a rakish gleam in his eyes. And tall-I had to tilt my head to look up at him. I like tall men, probably because I’m short and a man half a head taller makes me feel protected.

He said, smiling: “You must be Miss Murdock.”

“Yes. My name is Annabelle.”

“James Shock, traveling merchant, at your service.”

“Oh, is that right? Where’s your wagon?”

“Safe in the barn. It contains all manner of fine merchandise, for ladies as well as men.” He raised one eyebrow questioningly.

“Are you trying to sell me something, Mister Shock?”

“An attractive young woman like yourself can always use a new hat, a hair ribbon, sachets, perfume, a bolt of good cloth.”

“I’ve no money for such things…not that I wouldn’t love to have them.”

“My prices are more reasonable than any in town stores.”

“They could cost a penny each and I couldn’t buy them.”

“That’s a shame. It truly is.”

“I think so, too. May I ask how long you’ve been a peddler?”

“Traveling merchant, if you please. All my life. My father was in the trade before me and I learned it at his side.”

“You must have seen a lot of different places.”

“I have, indeed. Traveled far and wide throughout the West.”

“Is that so? Have you been to San Francisco?”

“Ah, yes. Many times. I expect I’ll be paying another visit before long.”

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it? A wonderful, exciting city.”

“That it is, if you know it well. And I do. You’ve never been there yourself?”

“No, never. The only city I’ve ever been to is Sacramento, with my folks.” I heard myself sigh. “I’d give anything to live in San Francisco. And to visit all the other places you’ve seen.”

He smiled more widely, showing even white teeth. “Why don’t you, then?”

“I’m too young. My folks say I am anyway.”

“Young, mayhap, but a woman nonetheless. A beautiful young woman.”

Well, I couldn’t help smiling and preening a little at such flattery. Lovely woman. Beautiful young woman. Mr. James Shock was a charmer, he truly was. And so easy to talk to, and to look at. The more I looked into those eyes of his, the more tingly I felt. Why, he all but gave me goose bumps.

“Tell me about your travels,” I said. “Tell me about San Francisco.”

“With pleasure, Annabelle. I may call you Annabelle?”

“Please do.”

“And you’ll call me by my given name, if you please. James…never Jim.”

I laughed. “Will you play a song for me on your banjo, Mister James Never Jim Shock?”

He laughed, too. “That I will,” he said. “As many as you like.”

“Do you know ‘Little Brown Jug’?”

“One of my favorite tunes.” He caressed me with his eyes and I felt the goose bumps rise again. “I can see that we’re going to be good friends, Annabelle. Yes, indeed. Very good friends.”

T.J. Murdock

Supper was later than usual because of all the extra mouths to feed. After I finished eating, I donned my slicker and went outside to check on the ferry lashings and the cable. The driving rain had let up some, but the wind remained strong. I had to push my way through it, bent forward at the waist, as if it were something semisolid.

I thought Boone Nesbitt might follow me, but he didn’t. All through the meal I’d felt his eyes on me, dark and implacable in a poker face. He hadn’t said a word to me since the barn, and none to any of the others except for a brief response when someone addressed him directly. I had also remained silent. As had the other stranded travelers, except for the banjo-strumming peddler, Shock, who had kept up a running sales pitch for his various wares and told stories that Annabelle, if no one else, seemed to find entertaining. There was a lost quality to Caroline Devane, a strained tension in Joe Hoover and his companion that seemed more a product of private troubles than the pounding storm. But no one was as tautly wound as I, nor as troubled.

Nesbitt knew my real identity, there was little doubt of that from his questions and comments in the barn. A stranger from San Francisco by way of Sacramento, alone on horseback…come upon me so suddenly that I could scarcely think straight. Who was he? What was his game, with his sly talk and watchful eyes? Waiting for the storm to abate, likely, to make his intentions known to me. We both knew there was no escape while the storm raged, and none afterward because of Sophie and Annabelle.

How had he found me, after eight long years? My sketches in the Argonaut, The Overland Monthly, and other San Francisco publications? He had made a deliberate point of mentioning them and my distinctive writing style. I’d been a fool to submit my writings for publication, even under the Murdock name and in a city far from Chicago. But a writer such as I was and had been for the Chicago Sentinel is one who yearns not for fame or money, but to have his words, ideas, insights read by others. And the pittances I was paid augmented the pittance I earned as a ferrymaster, allowing us what few small luxuries we could afford.

I didn’t know what to do about Nesbitt. What could I do? Even if it weren’t for my family, I would not have run again. The flight from Chicago in 1887, the years of hardship since, were all of a fugitive’s life I could bear. If Nesbitt was bent on taking me back to face Patrick Bellright, there seemed little choice but to submit. If he was an assassin hired to finish me here, I would try to defend myself, but I would not take action against him first. I could not premeditate the destruction of a human life, even to save my own. It simply was not in me.

The ferry barge was secure, the cable whipped taut and singing in the wind but showing no indication that it might snap. Crucifixion Slough was a cauldron, frothing near to the tops of the embankments on both shores, inundating the cattails and blackberry shrubs that grew on this side. The levee road, as far as I could tell in the darkness, had not been breached close by, but if the storm’s fury continued long enough, there were bound to be breaks between here and River Bend and over on the Middle Island roads. In any case, it would be long hours through the night and perhaps into the morning before the ferry could be operated-long, difficult hours of waiting for Nesbitt to reveal himself.

I started back to the house, the wind’s might behind me now and forcing me into a lope. Before I got there, however, a pair of shapes materialized, suddenly and astonishingly, on the levee road above. Horse and rider, coming as fast as could be managed through the downpour. I stopped and rubbed wet out of my eyes, blinking. It