“The bastard made some threats that I had to check on before going through the proper chain of command.”
“He say something against Catherine?” Stilson asked.
“Not specifically, but he threatened my wife and family.”
“Why would he do something like that?”
“Because I recognized his face from a gang of thieves in the Dakotas and let him know he should think twice before starting any trouble around here,” Nick said.
“You think he was planning a robbery?”
Nick shrugged. “I don’t know if he was planning anything, Sheriff. I do know I put him on a friendly notice, he didn’t like it too much, and then he decided to threaten my family.”
“When did the shooting start?”
Without flinching, Nick replied, “The second he went for his gun.”
Stilson kept his eyes on Nick for a few more seconds. His eyes were intense and calculating as he mulled over what he’d heard. Finally, he nodded and said, “Apart from the words that passed between you, I guess that matches up with what Don and the rest of them told me. I wish you would have come to me with this first, though. At the very least, you could have said something to the folks who saw you gun that fellow down. They was all plenty scared.”
“I bet they were. Sorry about that.”
As the sheriff kept his eyes on him, Nick could feel the lawman sizing him up. He’d felt it plenty of times before whenever he, Barrett and the rest of his old gang had ridden into a town, whether they were there to get something to eat or burn the whole place to the ground. In the old days, Nick might have had a few choice words to say under all that scrutiny. Now he stood there and let the other man come to whatever assumption he saw fit.
“Take a walk down there and clean up the mess,” Stilson finally said. “You are the undertaker, after all. While you’re at it, make it known who that asshole was. It’ll do folks good to know he only got what was comin’ to him. As for the rest of it, I suppose you did what needed to be done. Every lawman gets shit tossed his way, but that don’t mean he needs to stand by and take it. If you say he went for his gun, then I believe you.”
Hearing the pause in Stilson’s voice, Nick replied, “He went for his gun, all right.”
There was no lie to be seen upon Nick’s face, so the sheriff nodded. “Then that’s that. I’ll expect you at my office to let me know when the street’s cleaned up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stilson put his hat back on and walked to his horse. After climbing into the saddle, he tossed a wave over his shoulder and rode back to town.
After making sure the lawman was gone, Nick closed the door and turned around to find Catherine standing in the same spot where he’d left her.
“Sounds like that went pretty well,” she said from the bedroom’s doorway.
“I think it did.”
“It also sounds like you’ve got some work to do. Or were you planning on heading out before following that through?”
Nick shook his head. “I ain’t about to shirk my duties, but I’ll be leaving town after that.”
“You’re headed for the Dakotas?”
Nick nodded. “Yep. Barrett’s grave is in the Badlands.”
“What do you intend on doing once you get there?”
“I guess that depends on what I find. I’m hoping to just take down any marker I might’ve left and see to it that nobody’s able to find that grave even if they know where to look. If I find something different…then I’ll just have to play whatever cards I’m dealt.”
“How long will you be gone?”
Nick felt his stomach clench as the answer jumped into his head. “I can’t say for certain, but it’ll be a while. It’s a long way to the Dakotas and I may have to make some odd turns to avoid cutting through too much Indian territory.”
To Nick’s surprise, Catherine smiled. She began tugging at the ribbons and strings that kept her dress cinched in tightly against the ample curves of her body. “Then maybe you should see to some of your other duties before you go. A husband can’t just leave his wife for that long without giving her something to remember him by.”
“No,” Nick said as he walked to her. “He sure can’t.”
Catherine turned within his arms and pulled him into the bedroom.
Switchback Gil was still in the street when Nick finally got around to cleaning up. Someone had draped a blanket over the body, and the bit of street traffic, walking or riding, curved around it as if Gil were a rock in the middle of the road. Nick felt a little bad, simply because his duties as an undertaker were to make certain the departed weren’t put through such indignities.
Then again, considering the kind of man Gil had been and what Nick had been doing in the meantime, the slip in professionalism was easily overlooked. Nick came along with his wagon, boxed Gil up into one of the coffins he’d made, and hauled it to his cemetery.
After spending a lifetime digging man-sized holes in the ground, Nick put Gil under a few feet of soil in no time at all. Since he knew it would be difficult to leave if he saw Catherine again, he decided against taking his wagon back and simply left it next to his workshop at the edge of the cemetery.
Nick saddled up Kazys, the younger of his two horses, and unhitched Rasa from the wagon. After scratching the older girl behind the ears, he led the horse in the direction of his house and gave her a smack on the rump. She would be able to find her way home.
As he watched, Nick couldn’t help but be a little jealous.
NINE
Nick hated being on a train.
It wasn’t a fear that some folks had of being hitched to a steam engine rolling over two iron bars. It wasn’t a fear of Indians derailing the whole locomotive and sending him to a fiery death. It wasn’t any sort of fear at all. It was more like a vicious annoyance at the entire process.
Sitting upon a bench that rattled beneath him for hours on end, Nick clenched his eyes shut as tightly as he clenched his fists. He knew there was no other way to get from California to the Dakotas with enough time to have a prayer of finding Barrett’s grave ahead of the treasure hunters. If he’d ridden Kazys any farther than the train station, he would be in for the journey that had tested the resolve of so many wagon trains back in the great westward rush.
As much as Nick loved his new homeland, he sometimes cursed it for being so damn big. With that thought, Nick caught himself slipping into the mind-set he’d had when he’d looked at this country for the first time. The tight confines of the passenger car and the constant motion of everything around him were all too similar to the cramped quarters of the leaky ship that had deposited Nick and his father at Boston Harbor.
As a child, Nick and his parents had taken a boat from the country where he’d been born. So much had happened since then and so much had changed that those days seemed more like a story that someone had once told to him than a memory.
To Nick’s childish eyes, the ship had seemed as big as a town even though he was forced to spend most of his time in a space as big as a box. It was stuffed to bursting with so many bodies that the stench of them still lingered in the back of his nose. Most of those bodies had been alive, but that changed once a sickness swept through the passengers stuffed below the decks. To this day, Nick didn’t know if those passengers were supposed to be on that boat or if they’d been allowed to board thanks to a corrupt captain who’d taken their money and given them rotten rations in return.
In the end, none of that truly mattered. The passengers had gotten sicker as the boat drew closer to the
