New Yorker’s hand. She threw it down and ran to the coyote pup.
Karl lowered the whimpering man as Imogene retrieved the weapon and dropped it down the one-holer. There was a dull smack as the gun hit the sewage.
“My pistol!” gasped the little man. “That’s an expensive piece!”
Slowly, Karl lifted him again. When the Easterner’s face was level with his own, he said, “I’m stuffing you down after it,” and began walking his human bundle back into the outhouse.
“Put him down,” Imogene said sharply.
“Yeah, put him down, you don’t know where he’s been,” Mac added.
Karl hesitated for a moment, the trembling man clutched in his fists, deciding in his unhurried way whether to please Imogene or himself.
“Put him down, Karl.”
He looked at her, as tall and dark as he, her eyes commanding, and gently he sat the man down.
“Karl,” Sarah called from the shadows where she knelt, “come here. He’s licking me. He’s not dead.”
Somewhat recovered from his terror, the Easterner began to splutter in a vain attempt to recover his dignity. “I ought…I ought…” he flustered at David.
“You ought to shut up before I shove you down the hole myself,” David warned.
Mac watched the man stomping back to the house, his sense of injury stiffening his spine. “Can’t say as I blame him entirely,” Mac said. “The girls ought to mark that dog of theirs so’s folks know he’s a pet.”
Moss Face had suffered only a crease along his jaw. His scratch was cleaned and he lay by the fire near Karl. Sarah and Imogene had stayed up later than usual to visit with David. Sarah, perched on a footstool with her back to the fire, read him the latest letter from home.
“ ‘Your Pa’s no better’-Pa’s taken to coughing since the accident at the mine,” Sarah explained. “Where was I…‘and Walter has gone down into the mine-Sam couldn’t afford to keep him on anymore. This fall, Sam got a disease in amongst that dairy herd. Those milk cows come out in blisters all over their underhooves and teats. It got so bad Sam had to put them down and burn the lot. Couldn’t even be saved for beef. He and a few of the men got together a pile of dead trees and such and burnt the poor things. When a wind came up, the fire took part of the house, but that old stone barn stood fine.
“ ‘Matthew’s growing like a weed and Lizbeth’s almost grown up. She’s going to be the prettiest of all my girls. Gracie’s young man’s gone out West.’ Mam wrote that Gracie’d got a beau,” Sarah interjected. “That was the first I’d heard it was more’n a flirtation. I thought Gracie was too sweet on Sam to pay attention to the boys.”
“Sare!” David sounded slightly shocked.
“Well, it’s so.” Sarah ran her finger down the lines and continued, “ ‘Gracie’s young man will send for her as soon as he’s settled. Give David my love.’ ”
She handed David the letter, and the two of them sat quietly for a while, watching the fire and thinking of home.
Karl was asleep in his chair, his head back, his wide mouth agape, snoring gently. Moss Face lay between his feet, resting his chin on his paws.
Imogene had moved away from the circle of light, leaving brother and sister alone, and busied herself at a table near a window that looked out over the alkali flats to the south. By the steady light of a kerosene lamp, she glued the fragments of a china bowl together. She raised her eyes from the painstaking task and rubbed them. Far to the northeast, along the road to Deep Hole, a plume of silver smudged the roadway. There was no wind and the dust hung undisturbed for miles in the cold, dry air, catching the light of the moon.
“Riders coming,” she remarked. “Maybe a freightwagon.”
“It’s late,” David said. “People come in this time of night?”
“Sometimes. A wagon will break down or a horse throw a shoe.”
She watched the cloud creep along the white track. It moved faster than a laden wagon and threw up too much dust for the plodding hooves of draft animals on a windless night.
“It doesn’t appear to be a wagon,” she said after a while.
It was nearly midnight when the night visitors rode into the compound: twelve men in the uniform of the United States Cavalry and, riding handcuffed between the two columns of six, a prisoner. All were death’s-head gray with dust and moonlight. The leader of the troop called a halt, and with a creaking of saddle leather the soldiers reined in. One of the horses reared and turned for the spring. There was a brief flurry of hooves and curses before its rider had whipped it into line.
Imogene, wrapped in a thick woolen shawl, stepped out onto the porch to greet them, Karl and David behind her. The captain barked orders to dismount and the soldiers slid gratefully to the ground, only the man in manacles remaining mounted. Imogene saw his face clearly and stopped breathing. She shrank back into the shadow of the porch and laid her hand on Karl’s arm. “See to them for me, would you? I’ll be inside. That man”- she pointed to the prisoner-“needn’t come inside. He can be put in the icehouse.” Her voice was so low that Karl had to lean close, like a fellow conspirator, to hear. “The icehouse is warmer than the barn this time of year, and he can be locked in. See that he’s given blankets.” With that, she went back into the house.
The soldiers were glad of the warmth and welcome. Imogene and Sarah brought out cold venison, bread, and a pitcher of hot coffee. An enlisted man was dispatched to the icehouse with a plate for the prisoner. After they’d eaten, Imogene sent Sarah to the kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee, and as soon as the door swung shut behind the younger woman, she asked who the prisoner was.
“Man named Fox. Danny Fox,” the captain replied. He was a ruddy-faced man with a ginger mustache waxed into splendid handlebars. His voice was deep and rich. “Deserter. Up near Fort Roop, there in the Honey Lake Valley just west of here. Some years back, before I was stationed there, he and four others were on patrol. Fox deserted during his watch, and the other four were killed in their sleep. Massacred. We think it was some of Chief Winnemucca’s people. We found Fox in New Orleans.”
“Dan Fox?” Imogene said half to herself. “Did somebody recognize him?”
“Indirectly. The widow of one of the men who was killed went back to New Orleans after it happened. Guess she fell on bad times. She was…well, she’d…”
“Go on,” Imogene insisted.
“Well, she’s a widow woman without any means, which don’t excuse it, but she’d taken to the street. She all but admitted her dealings with Fox were of a…
“What will happen to him?”
“Court-martial. It’s been a while, like I say, and there’s nobody at Fort Roop much remembers him; most never even saw him. Fox had been at the post less’n a week when he deserted, and I guess he kept to himself.”
“The aay-ledged Fox,” one of the soldiers interjected and the others laughed.
“Alleged?” Imogene repeated.
“When Fox was brought in, the officer in charge said they’d got his wallet from the whore-the widow,” the captain corrected himself, “and asked was he Dan Fox. He swore to Christ he was, then turned around and swore to Christ he wasn’t as soon as they clapped him in jail for deserting. They kept him there in New Orleans for a while, but nobody came forward to identify him as being anybody else.”
“What will happen to him?” Imogene asked again.
“Firing squad,” another soldier answered.
“That’s enough, Jack,” the captain said quietly. “He’ll be tried, ma’am.”
Long after everyone had bedded down for the night, Imogene lay staring into the darkness. Finally she heaved an exasperated sigh and sat up. Dark hair, shot with gray, tumbled around her shoulders, and she caught it back away from her face and stuffed it down the neck of her nightgown. Beside her, Sarah still slept soundly.
The head of the bed was pushed against the outside wall under the room’s one window; she pulled aside the curtains. The night was perfectly still and cold, and her breath fogged the glass in an instant.
Sliding her feet into slippers, she pulled on her wrapper. Soundlessly she padded through the bar area and let herself out the front door. Across the coach road, beyond the pond, the icehouse stood stolid and dark. Railroad
