what had happened. Somebody’s gelding or mare had fallen prey to another of those thorny chunks of cactus that the wind seemed intent on throwing at them.
He made his way through the roar, falling twice in the process, but at last reached the distressed animal. Lodged on its croup was a fist-size chunk of jumping cholla, which, in this case, might have jumped all the way from Tucson as far as Riley knew.
He pulled it free, then pulled out what spines he could see. It was all he could do, but the horse seemed grateful.
Slowly staggering, he made his way to a new wagon to check in and give what reassurances he could. Which weren’t many. He swore, this was the last train he was going to ferry out or back.
He was done.
CHAPTER 2
Back in Fury, it was still raining come the morning, although it had settled into a slow but steady drizzle. And it didn’t take much water for an Arizona inhabitant to forget the dust, Jason discovered. When he walked up the street to the office, he didn’t pass a single water trough that wasn’t filled to the brim. And grimy from gritty, dusty cowhands helping themselves to a free bath. Jason pitied the horses that had to drink from those troughs.
Surprisingly, there hadn’t been that much wind damage. To the town, anyway. Ward Wanamaker told him, before he went home for the day, that the east side of the surrounding stockade wall looked like God had been using it for target practice.
Jason didn’t feel like walking around the outside of the town, so he walked past the office and all the way down the central street, to the steps that would take him to the top of the wall. Every wall, his father had taught him, had to have places from which men could defend the interior, and this one did, around all four sides. When he reached the top, he stood on the rails that also ran around the perimeter and looked down.
Ward had been right.
Cactus—clumps, arms, and pieces—covered the outside of the wall, and at the base was enough vegetation to start a small forest. If anybody in their right mind would want a forest of cactus, that was. And then he got to thinking that a forest of cactus just might be a good thing for the outside of that wall. He knew cactus would just send down roots and take off, if you threw a hunk of it down on the ground. And they sure had a good rain last night, that was for sure. The stuff was probably rooted already.
He decided to leave it. It’d be just one more deterrent for Apache, and he was all for that.
He figured the stuff stuck to the wall would eventually fall off, leaving spines and stickers behind to discourage anyone who might try to climb in, too. If they made it past the cactus forest, that was.
“Oh, get a grip on yourself,” he muttered to himself. “Stuff only blew in last night, and here you’ve got it six feet tall in your head!”
Shaking his head, he went back down the steps and started up toward his office. But he paused before going inside. He wondered if he should have a word with Rafe Lynch. He decided he should, but he put it off. Frankly, he didn’t want it to turn into a confrontation, and he was afraid that Lynch could do that pretty damn fast.
Actually, he was afraid that Lynch could rope, tie, and brand him before he even knew he was in the ketch pen.
So he turned and walked into the office, expecting one hell of a mess that’d need cleaning up. But to his surprise, Ward had spent a busy night with the push broom and the cleaning cloths.
Hell, Jason thought, this place ain’t been this clean since we built it! When he stepped out back, he found that even the bedding from the cells had been hung out in the rain!
“Wash and dry in one move,” Jason said with a chuckle. “That’s Ward.”
Southeast of town, Wash Keogh was looking like mad for his gold vein, the one he was certain was going to make him rich, and the one of which he carried a goose egg–size chunk in his pants pocket.
He’d been searching all morning, but nothing, absolutely nothing showed up. It wasn’t raining now, but it had drizzled long enough after sunrise that the desert was still wet, washed free of its usual cover of dust. He had expected to find himself confronted with a shimmering wall of gold, the kind they wrote about in those strike-it-rich dime novels.
But no. Nothing.
Had somebody been in here before him and cleaned it all out? It sure looked that way. Maybe the chunk he’d found had simply been tossed away like so much trash. He growled under his breath. Life just wasn’t fair!
“What did those other boys do right that I done wrong?” he asked the skies. “I lived me a good life, moved settlers back and forth, protected ’em from the heathen Indians! I worked with or for the best—Jedediah Fury, Whiskey Hank Ruskin, and Herbert Bower, to name just three. All good, godly men! I brung nuns to Santa Fe and a rabbi to San Diego, for criminy’s sake, and I guarded that preacher an’ his family to Fury. All right, I do my share of cussin’, some say more. And I like my who-hit-John, but so do them priests a’ yours. What more do you want from me?”
There was no answer, only the endless, clear-blue sky.
Another hour, he thought. Another hour, and then I’ll have me some lunch.
He set off again, his eyes to the ground, keenly watching for any little hint of glittering gold.
Jason had let his sister, Jenny, sleep in. She was probably tuckered out from the storm—he knew he was.
The girls—Megan MacDonald was with her—woke at nine, yawning and stretching, and both ran to the window at the sound of softly pattering rain.
“Thank God!” Jenny said, loudly enough that Megan jumped. Jenny didn’t notice. “Rain!” she said in wonder, and rested her hand, palm out, on the windowpane. “And it’s cool,” she added in a whisper. “Megan, feel!”
She took Megan’s hand and pressed its palm against the pane, and Megan’s reaction was to hiss at the chill. “My gosh!” she said, and put her other hand up next to it. “It’s cold!”
Ever down-to-earth, Jenny said, “Oh, it’s not cold, Meg, just cool. I wonder if Jason’s up?”
She set off down the hall to wake him, but found his room empty except for an absolutely filthy pile of clothes
