Crucifixion River

T.J. Murdock

Bad storm making up. And moving in much faster than I’d expected.

You could tell it from the bruised look of the southwestern sky, the black-bellied cloud masses, the raw whip of the November wind. Already the muddy brown water of Twelve-Mile Slough-Crucifixion Slough to the locals-had roughened, creating wavelets that broke high against the muddy banks. The ferry barge, halfway across now, rocked and strained against the bridle looped over the taut guide cable. It took nearly all the strength I possessed to keep the windlass turning. If the storm broke with as much fury as I suspected it would, the crossing would be impassable well before nightfall.

The coming blow was a concern in more ways than one. Annabelle should have returned from River Bend an hour or more past. I hadn’t wanted her to go at all, but she had convinced Sophie to let her take the buckboard in for supplies. Seventeen now, no longer a child but not yet old enough to find her own way in the world. Headstrong, impulsive, chafing at the isolation of our lives here at the ferry and roadhouse. The trouble in Chicago was too many years ago for her to remember it clearly, and to her there was no longer any danger or any need for hiding. Perhaps she was right. But neither Sophie nor I believed it. Patrick Bellright had a long memory, and his hate for me would surely continue to burn hotly until the last breath left his body.

On the barge, the Fosters were having difficulty with the nervous mare hitched to their farm wagon. Harlan Foster waved an arm, asking me to hurry, but it couldn’t be done. The windlass creaked and groaned as it was, and the cable made sounds like a plucked banjo string as the barge inched along. At the rear of the Fosters’ wagon, Sophie stood, spraddle-legged, against the pitch and sway. It was days like this one that I worried most about her assisting with the ferry work. She was as capable as any man, but cables had been known to snap and ferries to capsize, passengers and crew alike to drown. We could not afford to hire a man for the job, and, even if we could, I was loath to take the risk of it. We had been safe here for eight years now, but safety is illusory. People are seldom completely safe no matter where they are. And fugitives from a madman…never.

The barge was nearing the Middle Island shore. Sophie signaled and made her way forward to lower the landing apron and attend to the mooring ropes. At her next signal, I locked the windlass and straightened, flexing the aching muscles across my back and shoulders. As Sophie tied the lines and the Fosters led their skittish mare off the barge, I turned to look up along the levee road. It was still empty, although the Sacramento stage was due from River Bend any time. But the stage was not what I was looking for.

What was keeping Annabelle?

Worry, worry. About the girl, about Sophie, about Patrick Bellright, about strangers, about the weather, about a hundred other things day after day. At times it seemed our lives were nothing but a plague of worry, leavened only occasionally by hopes and pleasures. If it weren’t for Sophie and Annabelle, and my writing, my life would be intolerably barren.

The wind gusted sharply, shushing in the cattails and blackberry vines and rattling the branches of the willows lining the slough. I could hear the clatter of the loose shingle on the roadhouse roof. I had been meaning to fix that, just one of the many chores that needed doing. The roadhouse, built of weathered boards reinforced with slabs of sheet metal, stood on solid ground and was solid enough itself, but the puncheon floor inside was warped in places and in need of new boards; there was painting to be done, and a new wood stove was fast becoming a necessity. Outside, the short wharf that extended into the brown water tested rickety and at least two of the pilings should be replaced. The livery barn was in good repair, except for the badly hung door and gaps in the south wall boarding. And now winter was nigh. Another rainy season like the last would keep repair work down to the minimum necessary for reasonable comfort and survival.

This California delta, fifty miles inland from San Francisco where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers merged, was a vast network of waterways and islands linked by ferries and a few levee roads. Its rugged beauty and fertile soil drew farmers, ranchers, fishermen, shanty boaters, Chinese laborers, loners, eccentric groups of one type and another-and not a few fleeing from justice or injustice. But it was a harsh land, too, prone to bad weather and winter flooding. As many people as it attracted, it drove out in defeat and despair. The Crucifixion River sect, for one instance.

I shifted my gaze to the southwest, back along the levee road to where the peninsula extended into the broad reach of the Sacramento River. Stands of swamp oak, sycamores, and willows hid what was left of Crucifixion River, the settlement that had been built along the tip-more than a dozen board-and-batten shacks and a meeting house, crumbling now after seven years of abandoned neglect. The sect’s dream of a self-contained Utopian community that embraced religion and free love had died quickly, destroyed by the harsh elements and the continual harassment of intolerant locals. I held no brief for the sect’s beliefs, but I understood all too well their desire to be left alone to live their lives in peace, without fear.

I remembered the day they’d arrived from Sacramento, three score men and women and a handful of children in a procession of wagons. Everyone had been singing, their voices raised high and joyous:

We shall gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful ri-i-ver….

I remembered the day they had left, too, less than two years later. That day there had been no singing. As I ferried them across the slough, the faces aboard the wagons were bleak and stoic against a cold gray sky. I wondered again, as I had many times, what had happened to them, if they’d found their Utopia elsewhere. I hoped they had.

The Fosters and their wagon were off-loaded now, and I could see Sophie waving as they clattered up to the Middle Island levee road. She threw off the mooring lines, raised and secured the apron. Even before she signaled, I had bent again to the windlass. The barge would be waiting here on the eastern shore when the stage arrived.

By the time Sophie and I had it moored tightly to the shore, the first drops of rain had begun to fall. The roiling clouds had moved closer, their underbellies black and swollen, and the wind was a howling thing that lashed the slough water to a muddy swirl. The air had an electric quality, sharp with the smell of ozone.

Sophie rubbed a hand across her thin, weathered face. “What’s keeping Annabelle? She should have been home long ago.”

“Some sort of delay in River Bend,” I said. “No cause for concern.”

“The storm is almost here.”

“If she hasn’t left by now, she knows to wait it out in town.”

“She won’t. She hates River Bend more than she does this place.”

“Then she’ll be here before the worst of it.”

“If she isn’t, how will we know she’s safe?”

“The stage is due any time. Pete Dell can tell us if he’s seen her.”

“And if he hasn’t? What then?”

We were both thinking the same. River Bend was more than a dozen miles distant and the levee road would soon enough be a quagmire. If the downpour came fast and heavy and lasted long enough, the levees might give way at some point and render it impassable. More than one traveler had been stranded, more than one conveyance swept away in the turbulent waters.

“Thomas…maybe I should saddle Jenny and ride toward town…”

“No. If she’s not back soon, I’ll go.”

There was more rain now, the drops blown, sharp and stinging, by the wind. I took Sophie’s arm and hurried us both to the shelter of the roadhouse.

Caroline Devane

I heard the rain begin when the coach had traveled only a few miles from River Bend. The threatening storm had been a topic of conversation between the driver and station agent in River Bend, but they had decided to continue on schedule in spite of it. I unbuttoned the side curtain to note that the sky was now dark with heavy, gray clouds. It was cold and damp in the coach. Perhaps we should have remained in town.

When I rebuttoned the curtain, I saw the young man and woman on the seat opposite me looking at each other, their eyes full of concern. “What if the storm prevents us from crossing to Middle Island?” she asked him in a voice barely above a whisper.

“We’ll get across.” His tone wasn’t reassuring, however. He was as tense as the woman, who had clasped her gloved fingers together and held her hands under her chin in an attitude of prayer.

“I wish we could have taken the steamer,” she told him.

“You know why we couldn’t.”

They both lapsed into silence as the wind and rain buffeted the coach, causing it to rock heavily in its thoroughbraces. The storm was now full-born.

I felt some unease myself. Clinging Carrie, my brothers and sisters had called me as a child. But as an adult woman I had sinned, suffered, and lost so much that it would take far more than a storm to unnerve me.

Time passed slowly, it seemed. It was impossible to read or crochet in the jolting coach, so I studied the man and woman on the opposite seat. He was handsome in a raw-boned, strong-featured way; locks of brown hair that matched his mustache crept out from under his hat. She might have been beautiful, with her upswept auburn hair and large blue eyes and full lips, but her face showed lines of strain and dark circles underscored the eyes’ loveliness. She had a prosperous look while her companion, although dressed well enough, had the weathered features and work-roughened hands of a ranch hand.

When they’d boarded the coach at the delta town of Isleton, I’d been disappointed that I was to have companions. I had taken the stage from Sacramento, rather than the river steamer, because I wished to be alone. I was starting a new life, and I needed time to prepare myself.

I had overcome my unhappiness at their presence, however, and introduced myself. After some hesitation the woman had said that her name was Rachel Kraft. “And this is my…cousin, Mister Hoover.”

That hesitation in Rachel Kraft’s voice had told me a great deal: the man was not her cousin. But what affair was that of mine? We were merely fellow passengers.

I closed my eyes, trying to picture the ranch in San Joaquin County where my sister Mary lived with her husband and seven children. Mine would be a Spartan existence there, filled with hard work-very different from the comfortable life I had enjoyed in Sacramento. But that life with my husband John and my two sons was over now; I was being thrust into exile. I knew neither Mary nor her husband Benjamin wanted me. They were only offering me shelter because I had nowhere else to go.

Fallen woman, divorced woman, shunned woman. Woman deprived of her children. Who would want such a creature?

Hugh had, in the beginning. Hugh Branson, the lover I’d taken in my unhappiness, and cherished, and eventually found wanting. After my husband discovered our affair, the fabric of my life was torn asunder. My children were taken from me in the divorce proceedings, my former friends and acquaintances turned their backs to me, and Hugh-I’d lost Hugh as well. I’d tried to find work-I had some medical training-but word of my transgression had spread and no respectable physician or nurses’ service would have me. Life in Sacramento became unbearable. The only solution was to leave…

The coach lurched and slid on the levee road, which by now must have been slicked with mud. Rachel Kraft cried out and clasped Mr. Hoover’s arm. The driver shouted to the horses, a sound barely audible above the voice of the wind, and the stage steadied. Mr. Hoover patted Rachel Kraft’s hand and said: “Don’t fret. We’ll be all right.”

“If there’s an accident…”

“There won’t be an accident.”

“The storm’s getting worse. What if we can’t cross on the ferry…?”

“Hush up.” It was a command, not a soothing phrase.

The coach lurched once more, and Rachel Kraft stifled a cry. Her companion comforted her as he had before, then cast an oddly guilty glance at me. There was something wrong with the pair, I thought. She panicked at the slightest provocation, and he wavered between solicitousness and tense distraction.

I closed my eyes again. My fellow passengers’ troubles were of no concern to me, as mine were of no concern to them. Except for their sake and that of the driver, I would not have cared if we were cast into the slough and drowned.

Fallen woman, divorced woman, shunned woman. Woman deprived of her children.

It would have been a fitting fate.

James Shock

An hour after I was ejected from River Bend, the skies opened wide and it began to rain like billy-be-damned. Well, it had been that type of day. A slip of the hand, an angry citizen crying-“Cheat!”-a hard-hearted sheriff, and here I was, out on the lonely road again in the midst of a storm. Instead of a dry livery and a warm meal in that swamp town’s only eating house, Nell and I were forced to weather the weather, as it were-where and under what precarious conditions we’d yet to find out. Pity the poor traveling merchant!

The rain came busting down in side-slanting sheets, finding its way inside my slicker and chilling me to the marrow. Late afternoon and the sky was black as sin and the daylight all but blotted out by the deluge. The wagon lurched as Nell slogged on. Careful driving from now on, I reminded myself, to forestall an accidental plunge down the embankment to certain death. On both sides of the levee road, slough water boiled and bubbled up over the banks like soup in a witch’s cauldron. If the storm grew much worse, the road would be swamped. It wouldn’t do to be stranded out here at the mercy of the elements.

My luck had been running fine until River Bend and the sharp-eyed citizen and that hard-nosed sheriff. There were store boats plying this delta country, but not so many that a wagon seller couldn’t make a decent living for himself. Farmers and their wives in need of clasp knives and pocket watches, writing paper and bottles of ink, saddle blankets, good maguey rope, bottles of liniment and cough syrup and female complaint medicine, needles and thread, pots and pans, spices and seasonings, yards of calico and gingham. Town citizens, too, eager to buy when their local mercantiles ran out of the goods I carried in this old red and green, slab-sided wagon with the fresh-painted words on each side:

James Shock-Fine Wares, Patent Medicines, Knives Sharpened Free of Charge

And here and there, now and then, a few dollars to be promoted by other means. Yes, and a lonely wife or a comely young miss with a yearning for sachets and perfumes and silver Indian jewlery, and an eye for a bold young banjo-strumming traveling man.

Oh, it was a good life most of the time. Freedom. New places and new sights, and seldom the same ones twice. Even a touch of danger, and not only from the elements. For an itinerant merchant was prey to thieves who sought his money and penniless scoundrels who attempted to pilfer his wares. Not that any of them had ever succeeded in relieving Ben Shock’s son of what belonged to him, no siree. The nickel-plated revolver I carried under my coat, and the Greener loaded with shells of ounce-and-a-half shot beneath the wagon seat, had seen their share of action since I inherited the wagon from my old man six years ago. And would again, I had no doubt.

The wagon bucked and skidded again, and I drew hard on the reins and braced myself on the rain-slick seat. “Steady, Nell!” I called out to the old dappled gray. She’d been a fine horse in her day, but that day was nearly past. I would have to replace her soon, before she fell over dead in the trace-as the old man had fallen over dead while mixing up a batch of worm medicine that afternoon in Carson City. It was a sad thing to watch animals and folks grow old. I was glad to be young and hale. Yes, and, if I had my druthers, that was how I would die.

But not today, and not from the fury of a gullywasher.

I seemed to recall a roadhouse and a ferry crossing somewhere along this road. But how much distance away escaped my memory. Not too far, else the Sacramento stage would have remained in River Bend instead of pulling out shortly before my own departure. Even now, it couldn’t be more than half an hour ahead.

The wind blew up stronger, lashed my face with stinging wet. I ducked my head and wiped my cheeks. Smooth, hairless cheeks they were-I’d yet to need to shave them more than once a week. Baby face. More times than I could count I’d been referred to by that name, and pleased to hear it. A baby face was an asset in both business and romance. Many a customer and many a lass had succumbed to my looks and the shy manner I had learned to adopt.

Thought of lasses past and lasses to come brought a smile and a brightening of my mood. Naturally optimistic fellow, that’s me, always looking on the bright side. Survival was a given in any troublesome situation, after all, and this one no different than any other. A minor setback in River Bend, a minor setback on the open road. Never fear! Providence had served me well and would continue to do so.

And it did, not more than twenty minutes later.

By then the downpour was torrential. I could scarcely see more than a few rods past the mare’s nose and the road was nearly awash. The wagon slewed around a bend in the road, and there, by grab, was salvation dead ahead.

Roadhouse, livery barn, ferry barge. And beyond the wide slough, all but hidden now by rain and misty cloud, a continuation of the road that would lead, eventually, to Stockton and points south. Ah, but not this night. Not for Nell and me, and not for the driver and passengers in the Concord coach drawn up before the roadhouse. There would be no crossings until the frenzy of the storm abated and the slough waters calmed. I had been on enough delta ferries to determine that from the look of the wind-lashed slough waters and the cable strung above them.

Well, no matter. Sanctuary from the storm was the important thing-a dry stall and hay for Nell, a warm fire and hot food for Ben Shock’s son. Heigh-ho! There might even be a dollar or three to be made from the ferryman’s family and the stage passengers.

Annabelle Murdock

I leaned against the buckboard, blinking away angry tears and saying words no young lady should utter.

Lady? I thought bitterly. When had I had an opportunity to learn and polish ladylike skills in this godforsaken delta? Now it might even be the death of me. At seventeen, before I’d ever have the chance to experience all the good things life had to offer in such places as San Francisco.

I’d tarried late at the River Bend general store, lingering over fancy dress fabrics that I couldn’t buy and might never wear, reluctant as always to return to Crucifixion Crossing. The storm had come more quickly than anybody’d expected, and by the time I left town, the rain had started. Now it was pouring down something fierce. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, a few minutes ago the front wheel hub had loosened and then jammed and the wheel had nearly come off. The spindle nut was jammed so tightly I couldn’t loosen it with the wrench from the toolbox. If no one came along soon, I’d have no choice but to walk home-more than five miles, with the storm worsening by the minute.

I raised my arms to the sky and shouted: “I hate it here! I hate my life!” Maudie, our tired old bay mare, turned her wet head and gave me a sorrowful look. “I hate you, too!” I yelled at her. And then I burst out crying.

I was still sobbing, beating on the nut with the wrench like a demented person, when the man on horseback appeared around the bend behind me. Rescued! I was never so glad to see anybody in my life, even if he was a complete stranger.

He reined up and called out: “Miss? Are you all right?”

“Yes. It’s the wheel.” I banged on the hub again. “I can’t get the spindle nut free to tighten it.”

“Let me see what I can do.” Quickly he dismounted and came up next to me to have a look. “If you’ll let me have that wrench, I think I can do the job.”

And he did. In less than ten minutes he had the nut tight again so the wheel no longer wobbled. I smiled at him, my best smile. He was a good-looking man with a bushy mustache and bright blue eyes. And he had nice manners, almost courtly. Old, though. Older than Dad. He must have been at least forty. His name, he said, was Boone Nesbitt.

I told him mine and said: “I can’t thank you enough for your help, Mister Nesbitt.”

“My pleasure. We’re both heading in the same direction, Miss Murdock. Would you mind if I rode along with you? That wheel should hold, but in this weather…”

“I’d be grateful if you would.”

He tied his piebald horse to the buckboard and climbed up next to me on the seat. I let him take the reins. Usually I can do anything a man can, even work the ferry winch, but I was wet and miserable, and, if he wanted to drive, I was more than willing to let him.

“You live at Twelve-Mile Slough, is that right?” he asked after we were under way.

“How’d you know?”

“The storekeeper in River Bend. He’s a talkative gent.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“That your father is ferrymaster there. T.J. Murdock.”

“That’s right.”

“The same T.J. Murdock who writes sketches and articles for San Francisco newspapers and magazines?”

“You mean you’ve read some of them?” I was surprised. My father’s little pieces didn’t pay very much or bring much attention, but he enjoyed writing them. More than I enjoyed reading them, although I pretended to him that I thought they were wonderful.

“Several,” Mr. Nesbitt said. “I remember one in particular, about the religious community that once established itself nearby. Crucifixion River, it was called.”

“Yes. People around here call our crossing Crucifixion instead of Twelve-Mile, and I wish they didn’t.”

“Why is that?”

“We never had anything to do with those people. And now that they’re long gone…it’s really a hateful place.”

“Their settlement, you mean?”

“Ghost camp. No one goes there anymore.”

“How long have you and your family operated the ferry?”

“Oh…a long time. I was a little girl when we came to the delta.”

“Came from where?”

I remembered Dad’s warning about saying too much to anyone about our past. “Um…Kansas.”

“Do you like it here, Miss Murdock?”

“No, I hate it.”

“Why is that?”

“I have no friends and there’s nothing to do except help with the ferry and read and sew and do chores.”

“No school chums?”

“The nearest good school is in Isleton. My mother schooled me at home, but that’s done now. I’m grown up. And before long I’m going away to where there are people, gaiety, excitement.”

“And where would that be?”

“San Francisco, to begin with.”

“I live in San Francisco,” he said.

“Do you? Truly? What’s it like there?”

“Not as wonderful as you might think.”

Well, I didn’t believe that. He was old, so his view of the city was bound to be different from mine. “I’ll find out for myself one day soon,” I said. “Where are you bound, Mister Nesbitt? Stockton?”

“No. Not that far.”

“Are you a drummer?”

He laughed, guiding Maudie through a potholed section of the levee road. The rain was really coming down now and I was soaked to the skin. I wondered if I’d ever be warm again.

“No. I have business in the area.”

“What kind of business, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’d rather not say. It’s of a personal nature.”

“Well, I’m glad you came along when you did. I was just about to start walking and that can be more dangerous than riding. If there’s a break in one of the levees…but there won’t be, not unless the storm gets really bad. The only thing is, I don’t think Dad will be able to operate the ferry…probably not until morning. You’ll have to spend the night with us, Mister Nesbitt. I hope you won’t mind.”

“No, I won’t mind,” he said, solemn now for some reason. “I won’t mind at all.”

Joe Hoover

When Rachel found it was storming too hard for the ferry to run, I had a hell of a time keeping her calmed down. The ferryman, Murdock, and the stage driver were huddled up under the front overhang of the roadhouse and the Devane woman had gone inside with Mrs. Murdock. Rachel wanted to get out of the coach, but I wouldn’t let her do it yet. I was afraid she’d do something wild, maybe go running off like a spooked horse, if I didn’t keep her close.

“We can’t stay here tonight, Joe. We can’t…we can’t!”

“Nothing else we can do. Keep your head, for God’s sake.”

“He’ll find us. He’s out looking by now, you know he is…”

“He won’t find us.”

“He will. You don’t know Luke like I do. It’s bad enough for his woman to run off, but the money…”

“Keep still about the money.” I could feel the weight of it in the buckskin pouch at my belt-more than $3,000 in greenbacks and gold specie. More money than I’d ever seen or was likely to see in my life. It scared me to have it, but what scared me more was wanting to keep it.

“I shouldn’t have taken it,” Rachel said.

“No, you shouldn’t. If I’d known what you were going to do…”

“I didn’t plan it, I just…did it, that’s all. We wouldn’t get far without money and you don’t have any of your own.”

“Don’t throw that in my face. Can I help it if I’m nothing more than a cowhand?”

“I didn’t mean it that way, I just meant…oh, God, I don’t know what I meant. I’m scared, Joe.”

“Hold onto your nerve. We’ll be all right.”

“If he finds us, he’ll kill us.”

I didn’t say anything.

“We shouldn’t have left the horses in Isleton, taken the stage. If we’d kept riding, we’d be on Middle Island by now, we’d be on the steamer to San Francisco…”

She broke off, gasping, as the stage door popped open. It was only Murdock. Rachel twisted away from me, but if Murdock noticed how closely we’d been sitting, he didn’t let on. All he said was: “Better come inside, folks.”

Rachel said with the scare plain in her voice: “Isn’t there any way we can cross? If there’s a lull…?”

“I’m afraid not. If it keeps storming this hard, you’ll likely have to spend the night here.”

To stop her from saying anything more, I crowded her off the seat. Murdock helped her down. She let out a little cry when he took her arm-he must’ve grabbed hold in one of the places she was bruised.

The stage driver called out: “Somebody coming, Murdock!”

He wheeled around. I was out of the coach by then and I peered up at the levee road. It was like trying to look through a thick silver curtain, but I could make out the shape of a big slab-sided wagon with a single horse in the trace.

“That’s not Annabelle,” Murdock said. He sounded worried.

“Peddler’s wagon, looks like,” the stage driver said.

I quit paying attention. If Luke Kraft showed, it’d be on horseback, not in a wagon. And if he did come, what then? I guessed I’d find out how much I cared for Rachel and how much I wanted that $3,000-and what kind of man I was when push came to shove.

I took Rachel’s arm and we ran across to the roadhouse. It was only a few yards but we were both wet when we got inside. Worst storm I’d seen since I drifted up to the delta from Stockton three years ago. And it couldn’t’ve come at a worse time.

I kept thinking we should’ve waited, made a plan, instead of running off the way we had. But Rachel couldn’t stand any more of Kraft’s abuse, and, truth was, I hadn’t been so sure I’d go through with it if we didn’t do it right away. I loved her, right enough, but Luke Kraft was the man I worked for, an important man in this country-big ranch, plenty of influence-and he had a mean streak in him wide as a mother lode. He’d come after us surely, or hire men to do it. Crazy to get myself jammed up this way over a woman. Only I couldn’t help it. Once I saw those bruises, once she let me do more than look at them on her body, I was a goner. And now I was in too deep to back out even if I was of a mind to.

We stood just inside the door, dripping. The common room was big and warm, storm shutters up across its front windows. There was a food and liquor buffet on one side, a long trestle table and chairs on the other, and some pieces of horsehide furniture grouped in front of the blaze in a big stone fireplace. There wouldn’t be more than a couple of guest bedrooms in back, and those for the women, so this was likely where we’d ride out the storm. Well, I’d spent nights in worse places in my twenty-four years.

The room’s heat felt good after the long, cold stage ride. Mrs. Murdock fetched us towels and mugs of hot coffee. The Devane woman was sitting in one of the chairs, drying herself. I got Rachel down in the chair next to her, close to the fire. She still moved stiffly, sore from Kraft’s last beating, and the other two women noticed it. I could see them wondering. The Devane woman had figured out Rachel and me were more than cousins-I’d seen it in her face on the stage. The look she gave me now was sharp enough to cut a fence post in two. I tried to tell her with my eyes and face that she was slicing up the wrong man, but she looked the other way. Troubles of her own, that one, I thought.

She wasn’t the only one. Mrs. Murdock came in, crossed to the window next to the door, pulled the muslin aside, and looked out. The tight set of her face said she was fretting about something, but it wasn’t the same kind of scare that was in Rachel.

Nobody had much to say until the door opened a few minutes later and the wind blew Murdock in. With him was a tall, smiley bird in a black slicker. When he unbuttoned it, I saw that he had a banjo slung underneath. That didn’t make me like him any better. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s banjo playing.

Mrs. Murdock had come hurrying over. “Thomas…”

“It’s all right,” he said. “She’s coming. I just spied the wagon.”

“Oh, thank God!”

“Our daughter,” Murdock said to the rest of us. “Late getting back from River Bend.”

His wife threw on oilskins and the two of them hurried out into the storm. The smiley bird moved over by the fire. He had a rake’s eye for a pretty face and a well-turned ankle-I could see that in the bold way he sized up Rachel and the Devane woman. I didn’t like the way he looked at Rachel. Hell, I hadn’t liked the look of him the second I laid eyes on him.

He introduced himself in an oily voice. “James Shock. Fine wares, patent medicines, knives sharpened free of charge.”

“Peddler,” I said.

“Traveling merchant, brother, if you please. At your service, Mister…?”

“Hoover. Save your pitch. I’m not buying.”

“Perhaps one of the ladies…?”

Neither Rachel nor the Devane woman paid him any mind.

He shrugged, still smiley. I could feel the weight of that money as I sat down next to Rachel. She laid her hand on my arm and I let her keep it there; the hell with what any of the others thought.

Outside, the wind yammered and rattled boards and metal and whistled in the chimney flue. The rain on the roof made a continuous thundering sound, like a train in a tunnel. I didn’t mind it so much now. I figured the longer it kept up like that, the safer we were. Not even that son-of-a-bitch, Luke Kraft, was going anywhere far in a storm like this one.

Rachel Kraft

There was a hot fire in the fireplace, but I couldn’t get warm. My teeth chattered and I shivered and clutched Joe’s arm tighter. Mrs. Murdock had brought a mug of coffee, but there was a roiling in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t permit me to drink it.

The common room was well lighted by oil lamps and candles in wall sconces, but it still seemed full of shadows. Puffs of ash drifted out of the fireplace whenever the wind blew down its chimney. After my outburst to Joe when we arrived, I could barely speak; my throat felt as if it were rusted. I looked around, wishing we were somewhere else far away and wondered what I had gotten myself into. Then I fingered the bruise on my collar bone, another on my arm, and reminded myself of what I was getting out of.

I didn’t like the way that peddler, Shock, was looking at me, a bold stare that made me feel as though he were picturing what I looked like without my clothing. But then, he was looking at Caroline Devane in the same way. I dismissed him as the type of conceited man who viewed women-all women-as potential conquests.

Outside the wind howled, and from somewhere close by I heard a dripping sound. Probably the roof of this ramshackle old building leaked. Now that we were inside I didn’t mind the storm so much, because I hoped-prayed to God-that, if Luke was already looking for us, the weather would force him to take shelter, keep him away from here until we could cross to Middle Island. But by now Luke would have discovered that the $3,000 was gone, and, if there was anything that angered him and made him determined to exact revenge, it was having his possessions taken from him. His money and his wife-in that order.

I shifted a little on the chair, and the pain in my ribs made me wince. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Caroline Devane had noticed. She had a keen eye, had seen that I moved stiffly, and guessed the truth. She’d been giving Joe hard looks, and I wanted to cry out that it wasn’t him, it was cold, hard, unyielding Luke Kraft, and, if he found us, he would kill us.

Luke. My husband. A monster. Sweet before and after our marriage until two years had passed and I’d produced no son for him. No daughter, either, but that didn’t matter. Big Luke Kraft, lord of 2,000 acres of prime delta ranch land, had an infertile wife and no son to inherit his empire. And in his anger he beat me, once broke my arm, another time tore out a patch of my hair and laughed about it, saying that it was just like scalping a damned Indian.

Thinking of him made me shiver again. Joe didn’t notice. He kept his eyes on the fire, thinking Lord knew what. I knew he was angry with me for stealing Luke’s money, but I also sensed that he wanted those $3,000. More than he wanted me? Oh, God, not more than me! Remain calm, Rachel. That’s what Joe’s always telling you. Remain calm.

I glanced at him. In profile, he looked strong, his jaw set, his eyes focused. A man who had battled the elements working cattle ranches in Montana before he came to California. A man who was everything Luke was not-strong, gentle, kind. And unafraid of the storm raging outside.

But was he unafraid of the man whose wife he’d run off with? Would he stand up to Luke if he found us?

Of course he would. He loved me. Or kept telling me he did.

But did I love him? Or was I with him only because he was my way out of an intolerable situation?

Well, I hadn’t had any choice, had I? In time Luke would have killed me, I was sure of that. I couldn’t leave by myself, a woman alone with nothing and no one to rely on for protection. I’d been so sheltered as a child in Isleton, and then so isolated on Luke’s big ranch, that I knew very little of the world beyond its borders.

The wind gusted, rattling what were probably loose shingles on the roof. With it came another battering downpour and a clap of thunder.

Joe gently removed my hand from his arm, favored me with one of his reassuring smiles, and stood. He moved to the buffet, poured himself a small glass of whiskey, and went to sit alone at the long trestle table.

Dear God, what if he was tiring of me? He’d been so angry with my nervous babbling when we’d first arrived here. “Keep still about the money,” he’d told me. Keep still. He’d never spoken to me that harshly before.

The door opened, and Mrs. Murdock and a young girl of perhaps seventeen wearing mud-spattered oilskins came inside. This must be the daughter she’d been so worried about. Mrs. Murdock clucked over her like a mother hen, helped her out of the sodden rain gear, and then bustled her through the common room to the rear. I felt the dampness on the hem of my traveling skirt, and again I shivered in spite of the stove’s heat.

Caroline Devane touched my arm. “There’s nothing to be concerned about,” she said. “By tomorrow morning we’ll be on our way.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“What on earth would stop us?”

“That there’s nothing to be concerned about, I meant.”

After a pause the Devane woman said: “Please don’t mind my saying this, but I have the feeling you’re fleeing from something. You and your…cousin. If you’d care to confide in me…”

“…I can’t.”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t be so frightened if you did.”

I’ve been afraid for years. Sometimes I think I’ll always be afraid.

Caroline Devane put her hand on mine. Normally I don’t like to be touched by strangers, but this time I didn’t pull away. “We share a common bond,” she said softly. “I’m running away, too, you see.”

Her words surprised me. There was a quiet strength about her; she didn’t seem the type to run from anything.

“Sometimes, Miss Kraft, sharing one’s troubles can be a comfort to both parties.”

“It’s Missus Kraft,” I said, and watched knowledge mixed with sorrow come into her eyes. Perhaps her troubles and mine were not so different. Perhaps we did have a common bond, that of sisters who had been badly used by the men they thought they could trust.

Boone Nesbitt

After Murdock’s wife took young Annabelle inside the roadhouse, he thanked me again for helping her. I said the pleasure was all mine, and it was true in more than one sense. What she’d told me on the way confirmed my suspicions. Now it was time to prod Murdock and gauge his reaction.

When he offered to put my horse up in the barn, I said: “I’ll come along and give you a hand.”

“Lot drier and warmer inside, Mister Nesbitt.”

“I don’t mind helping out.”

“Suit yourself.”

He climbed up on the buckboard seat and I followed along on foot, leading the piebald I’d hired in Sacramento. Stage or steamer passage would have been more comfortable, but I prefer my own company in situations such as this. There’d be plenty of time for comfort and pleasure later on.

Thunder rumbled, loud, and jagged forks of lightning seemed to split the black sky in two. The time was not much past 4:00 p.m., but daylight was already gone and the wind-whipped rain seemed thick as gumbo. If it weren’t for the lightning flares, I wouldn’t have been able to see the barn until we were right up to it.

Murdock jumped down, and I helped him get the doors propped open. A pair of hurricane lanterns flickered inside, throwing light and shadow across the Concord coach and the slab-sided peddler’s wagon that took up much of the runway between the stalls. There was just enough room for the buckboard. Once he’d drawn it inside, it took both of us to drive the doors shut against the force of the storm.

Cold and damp inside, the combined smells of manure, hay, harness leather, wet animals were strong enough to make a man breathe through his mouth. A bearded oldster was busy unharnessing the stage team, putting the horses into the stalls. He paused long enough to say: “Pete Dell. Wells Fargo driver.”

“Boone Nesbitt,” I said.

Dell eyed my horse. “Foul weather to be out on horseback.”

“That it is.”

He shrugged and went on about his business. Murdock began unharnessing the wagon horse. I took my saddlebags off the piebald first, then I removed bridle and bit, uncinched the saddle, and rubbed down the horse with a burlap sack.

Murdock said conversationally: “Don’t recall seeing you before, Mister Nesbitt.”

“That’s because I’ve never been in the delta before.”

“You’re seeing it at its worst. It’s a good place to live and work most of the year.”

“I prefer cities. San Francisco.”

“Is that where you’re from?”

“No. It’s my home at present, but I’m a native of Chicago.”

Murdock stiffened. His hand froze on the bay mare’s halter.

“Fine city, Chicago. You ever been there, Mister Murdock?”

“No,” he said. He finished unharnessing the bay without looking at me, led it into one of the remaining stalls. I ambled over next to Murdock as he measured out a portion of oats. Pete Dell was out of earshot, with the rain beating hard against the roof and walls, but I kept my voice low anyhow.

“Your daughter told me you’re the T.J. Murdock who writes sketches for the San Francisco periodicals.”

The look he gave me had a mask on it. “Now and then. A hobby.”

“I’ve read some of them. Reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce, but with a distinctive style all your own. Very distinctive, as a matter of fact.”

“If you think so, I’m flattered.”

“The one in the Argonaut about the Crucifixion River sect was particularly good.”

“That was several years ago,” Murdock said warily.

“Yes, I know. I looked it up after I’d read some of your more recent sketches. You wrote it from firsthand knowledge, I understand.”

“That’s right. The sect established itself on the peninsula southwest of here.”

“Buildings still standing?”

“Mostly.”

“Ghosts. The past is full of them.”

He had nothing to say to that.

“Funny thing,” I said, “how the past can haunt the present. I wonder if the sect members are haunted by their failure here.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I’ll wager some of them are. Some folks just can’t escape their past failures. Or their past sins.”

A muscle jumped along his jaw. He seemed about to say something, changed his mind. The mask was back in place, tight as ever. He finished rubbing down the roan, slung a blanket over the animal, and called to Pete Dell: “Going inside now, Pete! Come on in for some hot grub when you’re finished.”

“I’ll be there. Pour me a whiskey to go with it.”

“Done. You planning to spend the night in the common room or out here?”

“Out here. Prefer my own company at night, you know that.”

“It’ll be pretty cold and damp. This barn’s drafty.”

“Warm enough for me inside the coach.”

“Suit yourself.” Murdock started toward the doors, glanced back at me long enough to say: “You coming, Mister Nesbitt?”

“Right behind you.”

He went on with his shoulders squared, slipped out through one door half, closed it after I followed, and set off in hard strides to the roadhouse. Walking, not running. He was through running, one way or another-we both knew that now.

T.J. Murdock? Not by a damned sight. His true name was Harold P. Baxter and he was a native of Chicago, same as I was. And after eight years, purely by chance, I was the man who’d found him, I was the man who stood to collect the private reward of $10,000 on his head.

Annabelle Murdock

The common room had never seemed so alive! Two women sitting by the fire, a good-looking man with a banjo slung over his shoulder helping himself at the buffet, another fellow drinking whiskey at the table, and Mr. Nesbitt and my father and Pete Dell yet to join us. Everyone was subdued by the storm, but as glad to be out of it as I was. This much company was a rare treat; we seldom had more than two or three guests. There were only two guest bedrooms, for ladies only if the company was mixed, and it was seldom that both were occupied for a night.

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 was no trick of night vision. When the rider reached the muddy embankment lane, he swung in and slid his mount down and across the yard.

He drew rein when he spied me, veered over to where I stood, and dismounted. He wore a heavy poncho and a scarf-tied hat that rendered his face all but invisible. All I could tell about him was that he was big and that his voice was rough-toned, thickened by liquor and an emotion I took to be anger.

“My Lord, what are you doing out on such a night?”

He ignored the question. “Who’re you?” he demanded.

“T.J. Murdock, ferrymaster here.”

“My name’s Kraft. Afternoon stage comes this way, bound for Stockton. You ferry it across before the storm broke?”

“No, it arrived too late for safe passage.”

He made a hard, grunting sound. “Passengers still here, then?”

“Yes. Until morning likely.”

“Rachel Kraft one of them? Woman, twenty-eight, roan-color hair braided and rolled, pretty face?”

“Yes.”

“And a man with short, curly hair and a thick mustache?”

“He’s here, too, yes. Is Rachel Kraft related to you?”

“Damn right she is…my wife. Where are they?”

“Inside with the others. Mister Kraft, why…?”

He wheeled the horse, spurred it hard toward the house. I hurried after him through the muddy puddles. He jumped down, left the animal where it stood with no thought to its care, and literally ripped at the door latch. I was only a few paces behind him when he bulled his way inside the common room.

The guests were all still at table, lingering over coffee and dried apple pie, Shock picking on his banjo. Rachel Kraft’s reaction to sight of her husband was to let loose a keening wail. Joe Hoover stood up fast, nearly upsetting his chair on the near side of the table. Everyone else froze. I shut the door against the rain and wind as Luke Kraft swept his hat back off his head. When I stepped around him, I had a clear look at his face and what I saw stood me dead still. It was blotched dark red from drink, cold, and the clear mix of fury and hate that brewed inside him.

Rachel Kraft’s expression was one of bloodless terror. “Oh, my God…Luke!”

“Didn’t think I’d find you this fast, did you? You and that son of a bitch you run off with.”

Hoover said: “Leave her be, Kraft.”

“Like hell I will. You ain’t getting away with what you done. She’s coming back with me, her and the money both. Right now, storm or no storm.”

“You can have the money and welcome, but not Rachel.”

“Shut up, Hoover. No damn’ thieving wife stealer’s gonna stand in my way.”

“Listen to me…”

Kraft swept the tail of his poncho back, snaked a hand underneath. It came out filled with a long-barreled Colt sidearm. Rachel Kraft cried out again. Nesbitt stood up, doing it slowly, with his hands in plain sight. None of the rest of us moved an inch.

“There’s no call for that, Mister Kraft,” I said, with as much calm as I could muster. “There are women in here.”

“Only woman I’m interested in is my wife. Rachel, get on over here.”

“No, Luke, please…”

“I said get over here. Now!”

“She’s not going back with you,” Hoover said.

“You gonna stop me from taking her? Go ahead and try. I’d just as lief put a bullet in you.”

“She’s had all the beatings she can stand. I’ve seen the marks you put on her.”

“Yeah, and I know what the two of you was doing when you seen ’em. Rachel! Do what you been told!”

She obeyed this time. Her legs were unsteady as she rose to her feet and started toward him.

Hoover stepped in front her, pushed her behind him, and held her there with one arm. His jaw was set hard. He’d struck me as mild-mannered, but there was plenty of sand and iron in him. The thought crossed my mind that he was more in love with Rachel Kraft than her husband ever could be.

“You can’t have her, Kraft.”

“I’m taking what’s mine, all of it.”

She said through her fright: “Luke, Joe didn’t steal the money. I did. He didn’t know anything about it until after we left…”

“Shut up. I won’t tell you again…get on over here!”

Hoover took a step forward, still holding the woman behind him. “Suppose we keep this between you and me…”

Kraft shot him. Just that quickly.

The sound of the gunshot was nearly deafening in the low-ceilinged room. The bullet struck Hoover in the chest, threw him around, grunting, and down to the floor. Shocked gasps and cries rode the dying echoes of the shot. Rachel Kraft screamed, took one look at the blood streaming from Hoover’s chest, and fainted.

The sudden violence, the acrid fog of powder smoke in the air, seemed to have no effect on Nesbitt. He said to Kraft: “You shot an unarmed man, mister. If he dies, that’s murder.”

“Bastard stole my wife and three thousand dollars out of my safe.”

“That’s no cause for gunplay.”

“You saw him start for me. Self-defense, by Christ.”

“Everyone here will testify otherwise.”

Kraft pointed his weapon at Nesbitt. What he’d done seemed to have had no effect on the rage and hatred that controlled him. “That’s enough out of you. You and Murdock pick up my wife and carry her outside and put her on my horse. Tie her down if needs be.”

I said: “Be reasonable, man. You can’t take her out in this storm…”

“Don’t you start in on me, mister, unless you want a bullet, too. We’re leaving here as soon as I…”

The rest of what he’d been about to say was lost in another report, not as loud but just as sudden and shocking. A bloody hole appeared in Kraft’s forehead; he had time for one amazed gasp before his knees buckled and he fell headlong, his weapon coming free of his grasp. I tore my gaze away from his settling body, put it on the shaken, gabbling group around the table.

The peddler, James Shock, said: “That was self-defense, brothers and sisters. I trust you’ll all testify to the fact.”

In his hand, smoke adrift from the muzzle, was a small, nickel-plated revolver.

Caroline Devane

Mr. Nesbitt and I were the first to move after James Shock’s pronouncement. He went to kneel beside the man named Kraft while I hurried to Joe Hoover’s side. Young Hoover was alive, barely conscious and moaning, blood pumping from the wound in his chest. As I knelt quickly beside him, I heard Nesbitt say that the drunken rancher was dead. Others were moving about, too, by then, Mrs. Murdock attending to Rachel Kraft.

Hoover’s wound, fortunately, was high on the left side of his chest, below the collar bone-a location where there were no vital organs. There was considerable blood, but it was not arterial blood. Serious, then, but perhaps not life-threatening if the bullet could be removed, the wound cleaned and properly treated to reduce the threat of infection.

Mr. Murdock said: “How badly hurt he is?”

I told him my prognosis.

“Sounds like you’ve had nurse’s training.”

“I have,” I said. I looked past him at his wife. “We’ll need hot water, clean towels, a sharp, clean knife. Have you any disinfectant?”

“Only rubbing alcohol.”

“That’ll do. Also sulphur powder, if you have that.”

She nodded and hurried away.

Rachel Kraft had recovered from her faint and was sitting up, staring at us with horrified eyes. “Joe,” she said. “Oh, God, don’t let him die.”

“He’s not going to die,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

She moaned, made an effort to stand, failed, and began to crawl toward us. Nesbitt grasped her arms and drew her to her feet. She cried out in protest, struggled for a moment, and suddenly went limp again. Not the sort of woman one could rely upon in a crisis such as this.

Murdock asked me: “Can he be moved?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“We’ll take him into one of the guest rooms.”

I stood and moved aside as he and Mr. Nesbitt lifted the injured man. Nesbitt had helped Rachel Kraft to a chair by the fire; she was conscious again, but inert, and she wore the glazed look of deep shock. James Shock still stood by the table, and, as I followed the men carrying Hoover, I glanced at the peddler. He was smiling faintly, his gaze fixed and thoughtful. He didn’t seem particularly affected by the fact that he had just killed a man, and it made me wonder if he had killed before. Whether he had or not, the man’s coldness, his unctuousness, his conviction that all women would fall prey to his superficial charm, repelled me.

The men laid young Hoover on the guest room bed. With Mr. Murdock’s help, I removed the wounded man’s coat and shirt. Sophie Murdock came with towels, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a package of sulfur powder. Laudanum, too, for pain relief afterward. “The water’s heating,” she said. “It won’t be long.”

“The knife will have to be sterilized.”

“Yes. I have it in another pan on the stove.”

I used a towel to sponge blood from the wound. It was as I’d surmised from my cursory examination in the common room-serious but not necessarily life-threatening. Hoover moaned and his eyelids fluttered, then popped open. Pain clouded his eyes, but he managed to focus on me.

“Rachel,” he whispered.

“Lie still, Mister Hoover.”

“I have to know…she all right?”

“Yes. Unharmed.”

“Kraft?”

“He’s dead,” Murdock said. “The peddler, Shock, shot him.”

Hoover muttered something, a sound of satisfaction, and his body relaxed and his eyes closed again.

I drew the Murdocks aside. “We’ll need a bottle of whiskey,” I said. “For anaesthesia. I can’t probe into him unless he’s partially sedated and held still.”

“I’ll get it,” Murdock said.

“Another lamp, too. More light.”

The three of them hurried out, leaving me alone with Hoover. He looked so young and vulnerable, lying there-like one of my own sons. He may have been a thief, as that man Kraft had said, but he was personable and he seemed genuinely to care for Rachel Kraft.

The Murdocks returned with the rest of the items I had requested. I positioned them, one on either side of the bed. Murdock lifted Hoover’s head and administered a large dose of whiskey. I sponged more blood from the wound, cleaned it with alcohol-he groaned again but lay still-and then stood staring at the sterilized kitchen knife gleaming on a cloth beside the pan of boiled water. My hand was not steady and perspiration beaded my forehead.

Sophie Murdock looked keenly at me, her tired eyes searching mine. “You’ve never had cause to do this before, have you?”

“No.” My voice was as unsteady as my hand.

“But you have assisted with similar procedures.”

“Yes…once.”

“Then you’ll manage. Won’t she, Thomas?”

“I have no doubt of it,” he said.

I drew several deep breaths. Mrs. Murdock was right-I would manage to do what was necessary to save this young man’s life. I would because I must.

My hand no longer trembled when I reached out for the knife.

James Shock

After the wounded wife stealer was carried out, I ambled over for a look at the gent I’d shot. Drilled dead center above the bridge of the nose, by grab. Never knew what hit him. Never expected a banjo-strumming peddler to have a hideout gun, or in the blink of an eye to draw and fire with perfect aim. He wasn’t the first to suffer the consequences of underestimating James Shock, and like as not he wouldn’t be the last.

As I turned away, the Murdock girl, Annabelle, came near and caught hold of my arm. Her face was bloodless, but nonetheless attractive for her fright. She wouldn’t look at the dead man; her eyes were all for me. “That was a brave thing you did, Mister Shock,” she said, all breathless. “Truly it was.”

I smiled down at her. Her body was pressed so tightly against my arm I could feel the swell of her breasts. What a sweet little piece she was, all tender and dewy-eyed and ripe for the picking. But not by me, alas. Not in these surroundings and under these circumstances. Underage she was, too. Jailbait. Pity.

“I couldn’t let him fire his weapon a second time,” I said. “He might’ve shot someone else…even you, my dear.”

I felt her shiver and squeeze tighter, tight enough to bring a stir to my loins. Seventeen and surely a virgin. I sighed, licking my lips, and reluctantly eased her away from me. No sense in allowing such warm flesh to torment me, eh? Besides, I had more important matters on my mind. Percolating there, you might say.

Murdock and the sharp-eyed gent named Nesbitt returned from wherever they’d carried Hoover. Annabelle stepped farther away from me as Nesbitt approached. Murdock went to the buffet for a bottle of whiskey, then picked up one of the coal-oil lamps. Annabelle said to him, dipping her chin in the direction of the dead man: “Dad, will you please take…that outside. He…it’s making me ill.”

“I can’t right now. Nesbitt?”

“Shock and I will do it.”

I shrugged. “For the lady’s sake, yes.”

“We’ll put him in the barn.”

“All that distance in this weather? Why not just lay him out front?”

“Cold, aren’t you, Shock?”

“Not at all, brother. Practical is the word. After the way he busted in here, a raging threat to all of us, his remains don’t deserve consideration.”

“The barn. Come on, let’s get it done.”

Well, I might have argued with him, but I held my tongue. Peace and harmony, now the crisis was ended-that was the ticket. I shrugged and winked at Annabelle and went to put on my rain gear.

And out we went into the storm, my hands full of the dead rancher’s scuffed boots, and across a mud field to the barn. The stage driver had gone back out there earlier to sleep in his coach and the storm had prevented him from hearing the gunfire. He woke up quickly when we came staggering in and laid the corpse in one of the empty stalls. Nesbitt gave him a terse explanation of the events inside. Dell said he’d fetch Kraft’s horse and went out to do that.

On one knee, Nesbitt ran his hands over Kraft’s clothing. Searching for a wallet or purse, mayhap, but he found nothing of the sort. When he stood up again, he said: “You’re quite a marksman, aren’t you, Shock? For an itinerant peddler.”

“A man’s profession has little to do with his ability with firearms.”

“True enough. Still, it was pretty risky, firing as you did in there. Suppose you’d missed?”

“But I didn’t miss.”

“But you could have.”

“Not at that range, with the element of surprise in my favor,” I said. “No, brother, the only danger was that Kraft might have had a notion to fire his weapon again, as drunk and raging as he was. I did what I had to do for all our sakes. You’d have done the same, given the opportunity.”

“Would I? Why do you say that?”

“You wear a sidearm. Before I drew and fired, I saw you ease the tail of your coat back.”

“Very observant. But I wouldn’t have drawn unless Kraft turned his gun in the direction of the table.”

“Might’ve been too late by then. I chose to act immediately. The right choice, eh, brother?”

“As it turned out.”

He gave me a long, searching look. As if he were trying to take my measure. It was the scrutiny of a lawman, one I’d seen too many times in my life to mistake. Well, if a lawman was what he was, no matter to me or my plans. I was not wanted anywhere for any sort of crime. A few close calls here and there, that was all. And no one could dispute the fact that I’d plugged the rancher in self-defense; half a dozen witnesses could attest to that. I had nothing to fear from the law. And wouldn’t after I left here, if I were careful.

On the walk back to the roadhouse, I thought again of what Luke Kraft had said after shooting down the wife stealer. Bastard stole my wife and three thousand dollars out of my safe. $3,000! No one other than the ever-vigilant James Shock seemed to have paid attention to those words. And where were the $3,000 to be found? In the wife’s or the cowhand’s luggage, possibly, but more likely it was on the cowhand himself. As he’d lain there on the floor, with the Devane woman ministering to him, I’d spied a cowhide pouch fastened to his belt. What better place to keep greenbacks or gold specie or both?

Heigh-ho! And who better to lay claim to those $3,000 than the resourceful Mr. James Shock?

Annabelle Murdock

After James Never Jim Shock and Mr. Nesbitt took the dead man away, I went over to where Mrs. Kraft slumped in a chair in front of the fireplace. Even though the room was warm, she was shaking as if she had the ague and her eyes were unfocused. Well, of course she was in bad way. She’d just seen her husband shoot her lover-that had been a surprise, Joe Hoover being her lover, even though the two of them hadn’t really acted like cousins-and then her husband shot dead right afterward.

I was still upset myself. All that sudden violence-right here in my home! Oh, we’d had incidents before, drummers imbibing too much whiskey, men cheating at cards and getting into fights. But they’d never been anything that Dad couldn’t resolve without any shooting being done. What had happened tonight had been terrible to see. I’d probably have nightmares about it for the rest of my life. If it hadn’t been for James Never Jim Shock, that man Kraft might have shot his wife, too, and maybe Dad, or Mother, or even me. It made me shudder again just thinking about it.

“Missus Kraft?” I said.

She didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at me.

Shaking the way she was, even with the fire, she ought to have a blanket. I hurried to my room, where I stripped away the good heavy woolen one that Mother had ordered for me from a Sears Roebuck catalog last summer. When I came back into the common room, Rachel Kraft hadn’t moved. I wrapped the blanket around her and sat down on the chair to her right. And this time when I spoke her name, she turned her head and looked at me with dull eyes.

“Joe,” she said, “Mister Hoover. He’ll live, won’t he?”

I didn’t know, but I said: “I think so. Missus Devane and my folks…they’re doing all they can.”

“And my husband? He’s dead?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

She looked back at the fire. “Don’t be. He deserved to die. You saw and heard what kind of man he was.” After a moment, she added: “A harsh man created by a harsh land. This is no place to make a decent life, especially for a woman.”

I nodded. That was exactly how I felt.

“Mister Hoover and I were going away together,” she said. “I don’t know where, just…away. If he dies…”

“He won’t die.”

“You don’t know that he won’t.”

“I don’t know it, but I believe it. You should, too.”

“You’re so young, so full of optimism. And I’m…”

“Not old,” I said quickly. “Not much older than me.”

“But I’ve lived a much harder life. You don’t have any idea how hard.”

No, I didn’t. But I could imagine. From all the things that man Kraft had said before he shot Mr. Hoover, her life with him must have been awful.

“Regardless of what happens to Joe, I’m going far away from here. I hate the delta. I’ve always hated it.”

“So have I.”

“Then don’t make the mistake I did,” Mrs. Kraft said. “Don’t stay here, don’t linger a moment longer than you have to. Leave before it’s too late.”

As soon as she said that, I thought of James Never Jim Shock. Truth to tell, I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since I’d first set eyes on him. Such a handsome man. And he wasn’t a mere peddler. He was…well, a sort of happy banjo-playing troubadour who’d traveled far and wide, seen wonderful places, and done all manner of exciting things. A free spirit. And a hero, too, the way he’d saved us all from harm tonight.

Did I dare let him be my way out of here?

He seemed as taken with me as I was with him. He’d called me a beautiful woman, and the touch of his hand on mine, the hard muscles I’d felt when I hugged his arm-the memory made me all tingly again, my face feel warm. He was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a man, wasn’t he? And he’d be good to me, I was sure of it.

Dad. Mother. The idea of stealing away-they wouldn’t let me go voluntarily, not alone and never with a man I’d only just met-and perhaps never seeing them again made me feel sad. I loved them both and their lives had been difficult since that accident in Chicago when I was a child. Mother was so tired, worn down by years of hard work, and lonely except for my company. Dad worked hard, too, his writing his only escape. It put a hollow feeling in my chest, thinking of what would become of them when I left. But I had to think of myself first, didn’t I? Don’t you always have to think of yourself first when you’re young and trapped?

I glanced over at Mrs. Kraft. She was staring into the flames, her mouth bent down, eyes blank again. No, I wasn’t going to turn out like her-beaten, broken, and, despite what she claimed, probably trapped here in the delta for the rest of her life. She wasn’t a strong woman, not like my mother, not like me. If Joe Hoover didn’t live, she’d be completely alone, with nowhere to go.

I went back to my room, where I lay down on my bed in the dark, pulling the quilt around me. Mrs. Kraft was right. This was no place to make a decent life. I couldn’t linger here; I had to leave before it was too late. The only question was whether I should wait and make my way alone or leave right away with James Never Jim Shock.

Boone Nesbitt

I spent most of the long night sprawled in one of the overstuffed chairs near the hearth. Now and then I dozed, but I was too keyed up to sleep. Mostly I tended to the fire, listened to the wind and rain, and let my thoughts wander.

The shootings had put me on edge. Sudden violence always has that effect on me, whether I’m directly involved or not. I’d shot two men in my time, been fired upon by them and by two others, drawn sidearm and rifle on half a dozen more, and I was weary of gunplay. Weary, too, of drunken fools like Luke Kraft and cold-blooded types like James Shock. No simple peddler, Shock. I’d seen his breed before: sly, deadly connivers hiding behind bright smiles and drummers’ casual patter. Kraft wasn’t the first man he’d killed with that hideout weapon of his; the swift draw, the dead-aim bullet placed squarely between the rancher’s eyes at forty paces, proved that. He was a dangerous man, capable of any act to feather his nest, and he knew that I knew it. Knew what I was, just as I knew what he was. He’d been as watchful of me as I’d been of him since we’d had our conversation out in the barn.

Be more to my liking if I was here after Shock instead of Harold P. Baxter, alias T.J. Murdock. Shock was the sort I’d always enjoyed tracking down and yaffling-a proper match for my skills and my dislike of criminals. Murdock, on the other hand, seemed to be a decent family man. Likable. Intelligent. Nonviolent. His only sin was an incident eight years ago in Chicago, unavoidable and accidental by all accounts except one. If any man other than Patrick Bellright had been affected, Murdock and and his wife and daughter wouldn’t have had to flee for their lives, or to spend eight years hiding in a California backwater like this one.

Yes, and if any man other than Patrick Bellright had been affected, I wouldn’t be here ready and willing to tear their patchwork lives to shreds for a $10,000 reward.

Pure luck that I’d found him. Murdock might’ve lived the rest of his life at Twelve-Mile Crossing if Bellright hadn’t employed the Pinkerton agency; if I hadn’t been transferred from the Chicago to the San Francisco office; if I hadn’t had a penchant for back-checking old, unsolved cases; if Murdock hadn’t risked publishing sketches in San Francisco newspapers and magazines and I hadn’t spotted the similarities to Harold P. Baxter’s writings for the Chicago Sentinel. Circumstances had conspired against him, and in my favor. Bellright’s favor, too. Patrick Bellright-financier and philanthropist, with a deserved reputation as a hater and seeker of vengeance and brass-balled son of a bitch.

There wasn’t much doubt what he’d do when I brought Harold P. Baxter back to Chicago to face him. He’d pay me my blood money and dismiss me, and a short time later Baxter would either turn up dead in a trumped-up accident or disappear never to be heard from again. An eye for an eye, that was Bellright’s philosophy. Hell, he was capable of killing Baxter himself and laughing while he did it.

But that wasn’t my look-out now, was it? I’d made my living for twenty years as a manhunter, and I’d been responsible for the deaths of several fugitives, by my own hand and by state execution. One more didn’t matter. That was what I’d told myself when I set out from San Francisco two days ago. A stroke of good fortune like no other I could ever expect in my life. $10,000. An end to twenty years of hard, violent detective work and hand-to-mouth living, a piece of land in the Valley of the Moon, maybe a woman to share it with one day. I was entitled, wasn’t I?

Sure I was. Sure.

The only trouble was, now that I was here, now that I’d met Harold P. Baxter and his family, doubts had begun to creep in. He was a fugitive, yes, but not from the law and likely not in the eyes of God. All the men I’d tracked and sent to their deaths before had been guilty of serious crimes, but Baxter was an innocent victim of fate and one man’s lust for revenge. Send him to a certain death and I would no longer be on the side of the righteous; I’d be a paid conspirator in a man’s murder.

$10,000. Thirty pieces of silver.

In San Francisco I’d convinced myself I’d have no trouble going through with it. Now I wasn’t so certain.

I dozed for a time, woke to add another log to the fire, dozed again. When I awakened that time, I saw that James Shock was no longer asleep on the nearby sofa. A visit to the privy out back? Or was he up to something? The way he’d been making up to Annabelle hadn’t set well with me; she seemed smitten with him. I wouldn’t put it past him to sneak into her room…

No, it was all right. Just as I was about to get up for a look around, Shock came gliding back into the common room, paused to glance my way, and then laid down again on the sofa. Wherever he’d gone, it hadn’t been to answer a call of Nature. He hadn’t put on his rain gear and he was still in his stocking feet.

I sat watching the fire, listening to the rain slacken until it was only a soft patter on the roof. The storm seemed finally to be blowing itself out. I flipped open the cover on my stem-winder, and leaned over close to the fire to read the time. Some past 5:00 a.m. Be dawn soon.

And before another nightfall I’d have to make up my mind about Harold P. Baxter, one way or the other.

Rachel Kraft

I was still sitting in front of the fireplace, my mind mostly blank as it always used to be after one of Luke’s beatings, when Sophie Murdock came through the door from the bedrooms. At sight of her, I sat up straight, an icy fear spreading through me.

“Joe? He’s not…?”

“No. Resting peaceably,” she said. “Missus Devane removed the bullet and dressed his wound. You can see him now.”

I stood haltingly, a sharp ache in my ribs where two days ago Luke had twice kicked me after knocking me to the floor, and followed the ferryman’s wife to a small guest room. Joe lay on a narrow bed, his eyes closed; Caroline Devane was pulling a quilt over him. She straightened, putting a hand to the small of her back as if it ached, and turned toward me.

While Mrs. Murdock gathered up some bloody towels and a basin of pink-tinged water, Caroline said: “He’ll sleep for some time, and I think he’ll be all right when he wakes.”

“I’m grateful for you helping him.”

“I’m glad I was able to.”

“Would it be all right if I sat with him?”

“Of course. I’ll be in the next room. Rouse me if he wakes.”

“Yes, I will.”

The women left the room, and I moved toward the bed. Joe’s brow was damp, his hair disheveled. In sleep, he looked more like a little boy than a grown man who had thrust himself between me and Luke’s long-barreled Colt. I took my handkerchief from my skirt pocket, wiped his brow, and then drew over a rocker from the other side of the room and sat close to the bed, studying his face.

It was a good face, strong if not particularly handsome, weathered by his work on the range. He’d taken me away from the ranch, forgiven me for stealing Luke’s money, and given me hope for a new and better life.

But did I love him? I’d wondered before if he were merely a way out for me. Now that I no longer needed him to defend me from Luke…

With a sense of shock, I realized what I hadn’t allowed myself to think before. I was now a wealthy widow. I didn’t have to remain in the delta; all that rich ranch land would bring a handsome price, and I’d be able to go anywhere, do anything.

Of course Joe would go with me. He’d want to, wouldn’t he? Surely he would. And after all he’d done for me, I couldn’t abandon him.

But Joe had ranching in his blood. It was all he knew, all he cared about. He’d spoken often enough of owning a place of his own, perhaps in the cattle country of eastern Montana. Was that what I wanted for myself, life with another rancher and in another hard and lonely place?

When I’d married Luke, all I wanted was love, a family to nurture, an untroubled life. Joe could offer me all of that. I’d told Annabelle Murdock that the delta was a harsh place that had bred a harsh man, but not everyone here was like Luke. His father had been a hard man who frequently beat him. Maybe it wasn’t the delta but the lack of love that had turned him cruel and bitter and led him to take out his frustrations on me.

Seeing Joe lying there so helpless, having put his life on the line for me-not for the money, for me-I thought that perhaps I had enough love to make a new life with him no matter where it was. And it would be a good life, an untroubled life, with a good and gentle man.

I moved the rocker closer to the bed, slipped my hand under the quilt, and entwined my fingers with his rough, calloused ones. And soon dozed…

“Missus Kraft?”

The man’s voice seemed to come from far away. I moved my head from side to side against the rocker’s high back, slowly opened my eyes. The first person I saw was Joe, still resting easily. Then, when I twisted around, I found myself looking at the peddler, James Shock.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, sister,” he said softly. His expression was grave, with no hint of the lustful gleam that had been in his bold stare earlier. “How is he?”

“He’ll recover. Missus Devane saved his life.”

“He’ll have a doctor to look at him tomorrow. I’ll see to that.” He paused. “I’m sorry about your husband. But he left me no choice.”

“I know that, Mister Shock.”

He peered keenly at my face. “You look tired. How long have you been sitting here?”

I truly didn’t know and I told him so.

“How would it be if I sat with him while you rest?”

I didn’t want to leave Joe, but my body, bruised as it was, ached from sitting in the hard chair. Perhaps I should lie down for a while. It seemed days since I’d last slept. “Thank you, Mister Shock. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“You’ll call me if he wakes? I’ll be in the next room.”

“Immediately, sister. Immediately.”

I stood and, after brushing my hand across Joe’s forehead-which was cool and dry now-I left the room.

The roadhouse was quiet, everyone in bed or asleep in the common room. Sometime while I’d dozed, the storm had slackened; the sound of the rain was a light pattering now. I opened the door to the second guest room. The lamp was still lit and I saw that Caroline Devane was still awake, sitting up on one of the two beds, crocheting an antimacassar of intricate design.

“Mister Hoover?” she asked.

“Still asleep. Mister Shock offered to sit with him so I can rest a bit.”

“The accomodating Mister Shock.”

“You don’t care for him, do you?”

“Not very much, no.”

“He saved our lives.”

“It was his life he was interested in saving, not anyone else’s.”

“Perhaps. Does it really matter?” I lay down on the second bed and drew the counterpane over me. “Can’t you sleep, Missus Devane?”

“No. As tired as I am, I have decisions to rethink. What has happened here tonight is sufficient to make one reconsider the wisdom of the course she’s undertaken.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

She hesitated before speaking, the crochet needles clicking in the silence. Then, as if needing to unburden herself, she said: “Two years ago I had an affair with a friend of my husband. My marriage wasn’t a brutal one like yours, it was simply…empty. I seldom saw John. He was in state government and constantly traveling from Sacramento to San Francisco. When he was at home, he ignored the children and me. I needed someone, and Hugh…well, he was everything John wasn’t…kind, attentive, ardent. And so we became lovers. Our affair lasted six months.”

“What happened then?”

“John found out about us.”

“What did he do?”

“Immediately began divorce proceedings. The court awarded him custody of David and William, with virtually no visitation rights allowed me. Life in Sacramento soon became intolerable for me. You must be aware how society treats a divorcee, particularly one of an important man.”

“Caroline, I’m so sorry. Did Hugh stand by you?”

“For a time. But he’s a successful lawyer and the scandal was damaging to him, too. I no longer blame him for ending our relationship. He really had no choice.”

“What will you do now?”

“The only member of my family who hasn’t turned on me is my sister Mary. She and her husband have invited me to live with them on their farm in San Joaquin County. But I suspect they only want me as extra help with the chores and their seven children. It would be a hard life for me.”

“Then why go there?” I said. “With your nurse’s training…”

“That’s what I’ve been considering. No one in Sacramento would allow me to practice. But this is a large country, and John’s influence and the web of rumor only extend so far. If I could establish myself in a new city, rebuild my respectability, then perhaps once my children are old enough…” She sighed. “But it takes time and means to accomplish that. I have a great deal of the former, but none of the latter.”

I was silent.

“Well, I’ve burdened you enough with my troubles,” Caroline said. “You have far too many of your own, and you must be very tired. I’ll let you sleep now. Perhaps I can, too.”

But I didn’t sleep right away. Joe was alive because of Caroline’s ministrations; I owed her a debt of gratitude for that. I found myself thinking of the $3,000 I’d taken from Luke’s safe. I no longer needed it now that Luke was dead and I was a wealthy widow. The money meant little to me, but it would mean a great deal to Caroline Devane. She was so desperately unhappy, just as I had been before Joe came into my life. My fortunes had changed, and it was in my power to change hers, too.

She wouldn’t take the full amount if I tried to give it to her; she was too proud to accept money as a gift. But she might be persuaded if I offered part of it as a loan. I determined to speak to her about it in the morning, and not to take no for an answer.

T.J. Murdock

Traces of light began to seep in around the shutters on the bedroom window. Almost dawn. Sophie stirred beside me; I knew she’d also been awake for some time, even though she’d lain still and silent.

“Stopped raining,” she said now.

“About an hour ago. Wind’s died down, too.”

“I heard you get up earlier.”

“Checking on Joe Hoover. Missus Devane was there with him.”

“How is he?”

“Alive and resting easy. No fever.”

“She’s a good nurse and a strong woman, troubled or not.”

“Yes, but he still needs a doctor’s attention. He can’t travel…we’ll have to keep him here until the peddler can send Doc Kiley out from River Bend.”

“That’s right. Shock offered to return there this morning.”

“Not for any selfless reasons, I suspect. He knows he has to report shooting Kraft to the sheriff, even with witnesses to back him up, before he can move on.”

“Do you think the slough’s passable yet?”

“Water seemed to be settling when I looked out earlier, but it’s still running high and there’s a lot of debris. I’ll know better when it’s light. We’ll ferry the stage across as soon as it’s safe.”

She lay quietly again for a time. Then: “Nesbitt?”

“Too many people here now for him to do much except bide his time.”

“If he doesn’t speak to you right away, bring it out into the open yourself. We have to know what his intentions are.”

“I will.”

Blackbirds cried noisily somewhere outside-a sure sign that the weather had improved. When it was quiet again, Sophie said: “I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“You have to. If Nesbitt’s bent on using that sidearm of his…”

“No. We’ll put Annabelle on the stage in Pete’s care, but I’m staying here. No matter what happens. I won’t run again, Thomas, any more than you will.”

I made no reply. I had told her about Boone Nesbitt last night, when we were alone in bed, and she’d said the same thing then-no more running and hiding, for either of us. There was no point in trying to argue with her when her mind was made up. Whatever happened with Nesbitt, we would face it together.

Eight years. Eight long, difficult years. We’d sought to convince ourselves that after so much time, this day might never come. And yet we’d never quite believed it. Patrick Bellright was a relentless, bitter, vengeful man with unlimited funds; he would never stop hunting me until his dying day. There would be a reward on my head, a large one, and it would carry no stipulations or caveats. Wanted-dead or alive.

It was a monstrous miscarriage of justice, the result of an accident that was not my fault, that I could not have avoided. A Sunday afternoon drive through Jackson Park in a rented carriage, a small child chasing a ball out of a line of shrubs and yelling loudly enough to frighten the horse. Thrashing hoofs, a scream, a crushed form sprawled in the roadway. We had rushed the child to the nearest doctor, even though Sophie and I were sure there was no life left in her. Marissa Bellright. Seven years old, and Patrick Bellright’s only child.

The rest was nightmare. Dire threats, a murderous assault by one of his hirelings that I’d barely escaped. And then flight, again by bare escape, and arduous travel across country to this isolated backwater and a new, hardscrabble life as ferrymaster and innkeeper-labors as far removed from my former position as newspaper reporter and columnist as Chicago was from Twelve-Mile Crossing.

I had been a fool to submit my sketches for publication in San Francisco. Yet of all the possible ways I might be found by Bellright’s hirelings, my pseudonymous writings had seemed the most remote. There was no way I could have anticipated a man like Nesbitt, whoever he was, making the connection between Harold P. Baxter and T.J. Murdock. But it had happened, and now it was too late. For me, but not, I vowed, for Annabelle or Sophie.

The dawn light was brightening. Sophie and I both rose, washed up, and dressed. She went to the kitchen to make coffee and get breakfast started, and I went to check on Hoover again. Mrs. Devane and Rachel Kraft were both with him now; the two women seemed to have developed a comradeship. There was no change in Hoover’s condition.

Nesbitt was alone in the common room, stoking up the fire as he must have done throughout the night because the room was still warm. There was no sign of the peddler, Shock. As I crossed to the front door, Nesbitt stood up.

“We need to have a talk, Murdock,” he said.

“Yes, but not right this second. I have work to attend to.”

“Soon, though.”

“I’ll be around,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I didn’t suppose you were.”

Outside, the yard was rain-puddled and littered with leaves and branches. The levee roads on both sides of the slough seemed to have survived intact, so far as I could see, although down toward where the slough bent to the south, the water level was only a couple of feet below the surface of the Middle Island road. Both embankments appeared to have held without crumbling. The slough waters were chocolate brown, frothy, still running fast and bobbing with tree limbs and other detritus from the storm.

I slogged through the mud to the landing. The barge was as I’d left it, moored fast, and the strung cable and windlass had come through undamaged. As I finished my examination, Pete Dell appeared from the direction of the barn. I went to meet him.

“How’s she look out there, Murdock?”

“It should be safe enough for the stage to cross in another couple of hours.”

“Good enough. I’m so far behind schedule now, couple more hours won’t make any difference. Some wild night, eh?”

“In more ways than one.”

“That peddler, Shock, is over in the barn hitching up his wagon.”

“Already? He must be eager for an early start to River Bend.”

“So he says. I don’t much like that fella, tell you the truth.”

“I would have said the same before he put an end to Luke Kraft’s terrorism last night.”

“Even so. But then, I never much liked Kraft, neither. His death’s likely to cause a stir up Isleton way, even if he did deserve what he got.” Pete stretched and blew on his hands. “Coffee ready?”

“Should be. Breakfast, too, just about.”

We went on into the house. Two hours, I was thinking bleakly, and part of another for the stage to cross. And then Nesbitt. And then, one way or another, an end to my freedom.

James Shock

I finished harnessing Nell to my wagon, hauled the Murdocks’ buckboard to one side of the runway, opened the doors, and led Nell out of the barn. Bitter cold this morning, but I scarcely felt the bite. The $3,000, nestled inside my coat, provided warmth aplenty.

As I drove across the muddy yard, the ferrymaster stepped out of the roadhouse and hailed me. I drew to a stop, arranging my face in an expression of gravity. “I was about to stop in,” I lied, “to ask after Mister Hoover.”

“He’s awake and taking nourishment. He passed a comfortable night.”

“Well, he’ll soon enough have the attention of a doctor.”

“Good of you to make the trip to River Bend, Mister Shock.”

“Not at all. I know my duty.”

“Will you have breakfast before you go? Or at least a cup of hot coffee?”

“Thank you, no. I’ve no real appetite this morning, and I’d just as lief make tracks while the weather is dry. How much do I owe for the night’s lodging?”

“Not a cent, under the circumstances.”

“Christian of you, brother, but I insist on paying for your hospitality.”

“As you please. Two dollars, then.”

I leaned down to pay him. He thanked me and wished me Godspeed, and I touched my hat and gigged Nell up the muddy embankment. The wagon’s wheels slipped a bit, but the old plug held her footing and soon enough we were on the levee road, headed in the direction of River Bend. I cast no backward glance.

Even if the money were missed, no one at the ferry crossing could be sure that I’d taken it; not even Nesbitt, if he was a lawman, would have cause or impetus to chase after me. I had only to pass through River Bend and I was safe. Sheriff, doctor? Hah! I wouldn’t tarry in the town long enough to wave at a passer-by. Straight on through and back to Sacramento as quickly as I could get there.

I felt a song welling up in me and began to hum and then to sing softly. Later, when the day warmed a bit, I would bring out my banjo to celebrate properly my good fortune. $3,000, more than I’d ever had at one time. What a man could do with that much money! Why, I might just board Nell in a livery, put the wagon in storage, and take passage on one of the river packets to San Francisco. Yes, that was just what I’d do. A room in the city’s best hotel, fine food, champagne, a pretty lass for company and bed. Heigh-ho! Life’s bounties in abundance.

After a mile or so I passed a weed-infested side road that meandered off onto a long peninsula. Ahead was a sharp bend, both sides of the levee road shaded by sycamores. The road’s surface was less slick here and we were clomping along at a right pert pace when we reached the bend and started through.

I didn’t spy the downed tree until we were almost upon it. It lay blocking the road from one side to the other, its root-torn bole jutting high and its upper branches drooping down into the slough. I yanked back hard on the reins. Nell shied and the wagon slewed sideways, and, when that happened, just before we slid to a halt a few feet from the sycamore, something shifted and clattered inside. I could scarcely believe what I heard then-the startled, pained cry of a woman.

I set the brake, jumped down, ran to the rear of the wagon, and pulled open the doors. And lo, there she was, asprawl on the floor among a small litter of items dislodged from their hooks and cubbies, the hem of her traveling dress twisted up to reveal her drawers.

Annabelle Murdock.

“What the devil are you doing in my wagon?”

“Please don’t be mad at me, James Never Jim Shock. Please!”

“Answer me, girl.”

“I had to get away. I couldn’t stay any longer. You’ll let me come with you, won’t you? I’ll do anything you say…”

“How did you get in there? The doors were locked.”

“No, they weren’t. I slipped out of the house and into the barn while it was still dark and the doors weren’t locked, and I found a place to hide…”

Damnation! I must have neglected to lock them when I brought out my banjo last night. Fury rose, hot and thick, in my chest and throat. Everything proceeding so well, and then the downed tree across the road and now this stupid priss of a girl. I wheeled away and stomped ahead to look at the sycamore. Blocking the road for fair, and a thick-trunked bugger it was. It would take a crew of men with axes and saws to cut it up and clear away the debris. The fury rose higher; my head commenced to throb with it, my hands to palsy some.

Annabelle had come out of the wagon and was standing, small and fearful, next to Nell. And fearful she should be, the little bitch. As if the blocked road wasn’t enough of a trial, now I had this rattlebrain to contend with.

“You won’t send me back?” she said. “Please say you won’t send me back.”

Send her back? Hell, no, I wouldn’t. It was only a mile or so to the roadhouse, a short and easy walk, but once she arrived, there was no telling what she might say or the Murdocks might think. She may already have been missed. They might believe I’d enticed her away or, worse, kidnapped her. It was a risk I couldn’t afford to take.

“James Never Jim Shock? Say you…”

“Don’t call me that, you little bitch. Shut your damn’ mouth and let me think.”

A stifled gasp, and she was still.

Take her with me? I couldn’t do that, either, even if the road were free for passage. She was a tender morsel, right enough, but under the age of legal consent. If I were caught with her, it would mean prison.

Turn the wagon around, drive it back to the crossing, take the ferry to Middle Island and points south? That was the logical choice, except for the $3,000. The money might already have been discovered missing, or the discovery made before I could make the crossing. Murdock, Dell, Nesbitt-a damned lawman, I was sure of it-and all of them armed. No, returning to the roadhouse was a fool’s choice.

Nell. Unhitch her, ride her bareback over the obstruction, and into River Bend where I could secure better transportation. But she was old, slow, and anything but sure-footed, and the sycamore would have to be jumped rather than stepped across. And abandoning the wagon with all my wares and possessions was a galling prospect.

In my mouth was a foul taste, as if I’d been force-fed a plate of cowshit soup. What the bloody hell was I going to do?

“Mister Shock?” Timid now. I’d almost forgotten she was there.

“Didn’t I tell you to keep your lip buttoned?”

“Are you going to send me back?”

No, I thought, I’m going to put a bullet in your silly head and dump your body in the slough. Be rid of one problem, at the least. I’d never killed a woman before, but there’s a first time for everything, and she was a burden I couldn’t bear. I eased back the tail of my coat.

“If you take me with you,” she said, “I’ll tell you how we can go on.”

“Go on? With this blasted tree blocking the road?”

“There’s a way around, another road that intersects with this one about a mile farther south.”

“What road? You mean the one we passed a ways back?”

“Yes. It leads out to Crucifixion River.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s…a kind of ghost camp.”

“Nobody lives there?”

“Nobody.”

“And the side road continues through it and back to the south of here?”

“No. There’s another road in the camp, a track the people who lived there used.”

“Easy to spot, this track?”

“It’s overgrown. But I know where it is…I can show you.”

“You’re not lying to me?”

“No! I swear it.”

I stared at her, long and hard. Her blue eyes were guileless. Some of my rage began to ease and I let the coattail fall closed. Her death sentence had been reprieved-for however long it took us to reach Crucifixion River.

Caroline Devane

Rachel was standing at Mr. Hoover’s bedside when I went in to check on him. From her expression it was plain that she was upset and trying to hide it, but the reason was not her lover’s condition. He was conscious, although not fully alert, and his color was good and his eyes clear. And his pulse, when I checked it, was strong.

The dressing on his wound needed changing. I removed the old one and was relieved to find no sign of infection. He would be all right until the doctor came from River Bend, and eventually, I thought, he would mend good as new. I put on more sulphur powder and a fresh bandage. His grimace prompted me to ask if he was in pain.

“Some,” he said weakly, “but it’s tolerable.”

I gave him a spoonful of laudanum anyway, to help him sleep. He needed to rebuild his strength, and rest was the best remedy.

When I was done, Rachel squeezed his hand and whispered something to him that I deliberately did not listen to. Then she plucked at my sleeve and gestured toward the door. Whatever was upsetting her, she didn’t wish to discuss it in front of Hoover. As soon as we were in the hallway, with the door closed, she said: “It’s gone, Caroline.”

“What is?”

“The money. The three thousand dollars I took from my husband’s safe. Joe had it in his belt pouch and now the pouch is empty.”

I vaguely remembered seeing the pouch when Mr. Murdock and I had taken off Joe Hoover’s jacket and shirt, but in my urgent need to extract the bullet and clean and dress the wound, I’d thought no more about it. “When did you learn this?”

“A few minutes ago, just before he woke up.”

“Perhaps the Murdocks removed it for safekeeping.”

“I don’t think so. They’d have said something to me.”

Yes, they would have. In the chaotic aftermath of Luke Kraft’s sudden intrusion, I had forgotten his mention of the $3,000 and I suspected the Murdocks and the others had as well. All except one… and there was only one person among us that could be.

Rachel realized it at the same time. “James Shock,” she said. “He took it last night.”

Of course. Shock had slipped into the room, late, and talked her into leaving him there alone. Out of the goodness of his heart? Hardly. He was a cold-blooded opportunist, perfectly capable of taking note of the rancher’s words and Hoover’s belt pouch, and conniving to steal the money.

“Yes,” I said, “but it’s too late to confront him. Mister Murdock told me he drove off early to summon the doctor from River Bend.”

“The money’s gone for good, then. He won’t stop in River Bend.”

“Mister Murdock and Mister Nesbitt might be able to catch him on horseback…”

“Why should they bother? It’s not their place.”

Footsteps, coming quickly from the family’s quarters. Sophie Murdock appeared, her mouth set in grim lines.

“Have either of you seen my daughter?”

“Not at all this morning,” I said, and Rachel shook her head. “She’s not in her room?”

“No, and some of her things are missing. Clothing and her carpetbag.”

“Oh, Lord. You think she may have run off?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. She’s young and restless, she dislikes her life here, and after what happened last night…”

I recalled the adoring looks Annabelle had lavished on James Shock. Was it possible that he’d sweet-talked her into leaving with him? Or that she’d decided to join him on her own?

My face must have betrayed what I was thinking. “What is it, Missus Devane?”

Sophie Murdock asked. “Do you have an idea where Annabelle’s gone?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m afraid I do.”

Boone Nesbitt

I was out in the livery barn, watching Murdock help Pete Dell harness the stage team, when Mrs. Murdock came rushing in. The look of her was both frantic and frightened. “Thomas,” she said to her husband, “Annabelle’s gone.”

“What do you mean…gone?”

“She’s nowhere on the property, and some of her clothes and her carpetbag are missing. But that’s not all. Missus Kraft just told me Joe Hoover was carrying three thousand dollars in a belt pouch, the money her husband was shouting about last night, and that’s missing, too.”

“My God, you don’t believe Annabelle stole it?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“She’d never do such a thing. She’s not a thief.”

Mrs. Murdock was looking at the stalls. “The saddle horses…they’re all here.”

“Yes, and she’s not foolish enough to go traipsing off on foot.”

“Missus Devane thinks she may be with the peddler, Shock.”

“What!”

“Missus Devane may be right,” I said. “Shock was in a hurry to pull out this morning. Stolen money in his pocket and maybe the girl hidden in his wagon could be the real reason.”

“What’re you saying, Nesbitt? That he kidnapped my daughter?”

“More likely she went of her own free will, with or without his knowledge.”

Murdock said grimly: “Well, I’ll find out. It’s been less than two hours since Shock drove out and he can’t make fast time in that wagon of his. With luck I can catch him on horseback before he reaches River Bend.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said. “Shock’s fast with that revolver of his, and a crack shot. Two makes better odds.”

“Three makes better still,” Pete Dell said.

“Murdock and I can do the job. Best if you stay here with the women.”

“You hand out orders real easy, mister. Who put you in charge?”

“Don’t argue with him, Pete,” Murdock said. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

He sent his wife into the house for his sidearm and shell belt; I was already wearing mine. I saddled the rented piebald. Murdock didn’t own a decent saddle horse, but Luke Kraft’s roan gelding was broke enough to let a stranger throw Kraft’s old McClellan saddle on his back and climb aboard. We were out of the barn and on the levee road inside of five minutes.

The road was in reasonably good shape after the storm. Rain-puddled and muddy, so we couldn’t run the animals even though it chafed Murdock not to. I set the pace at a steady lope that was still some faster than Shock could drive that peddler’s wagon of his, and we had no trouble maintaining it.

Mostly we rode in silence, except for one brief exchange. Murdock twisted his head my way and said: “Just who are you, Nesbitt?”

“Does it matter?”

“You talk and act like a lawman. Are you one?”

“In a way. I work for the Pinkertons.”

“So that’s it. That’s how you knew about me.”

“We’ll talk about that later.”

“Does Bellright know yet?”

“Not yet.”

“All for yourself, eh? How much are you getting for me, dead or alive? Five thousand? Ten? More?”

“Later, Murdock. Keep your mind on Shock and your daughter for now.”

The morning was cold and gray, the debris-choked slough waters on both sides receding and mist rising here and there from the half-drowned cattails along the banks. Birds screeched and chattered, frogs croaked long and loud-the only sounds that reached my ears. We had the road to ourselves, but there were fresh wheel and hoof tracks to mark the passage of Shock’s wagon.

I slowed as we passed a side road that cut away through a swampy peninsula to the north. There were no tracks at the entrance to the road, but the grass and pig weed farther on seemed to be mashed down in places. I kept us riding ahead because I couldn’t think of a reason for Shock to have detoured onto a side road-not until we rounded a bend and came on the fallen sycamore.

“That tree’s been down a while,” Murdock said. “There’s no way Shock could have gotten his wagon around it.”

“He didn’t,” I said. “He doubled back to that side road we passed. Where does it lead?”

“Crucifixion River. What’s left of it.”

“Any other way out of there?”

“An overgrown track the sect members used. But Shock wouldn’t know about that.”

“Your daughter does, though, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said, tight-lipped. “Annabelle knows.”

We rode back to the intersection. As we turned onto the Crucifixion River road, I leaned down for a better look at the ground. Up close you could see where Shock had tried to rub out and hide the wagon tracks at the turning. A short ways beyond I spied a pile of horse manure that still steamed in the cold air. We couldn’t be far behind them now, I judged.

I said as much to Murdock, and, riding as fast as we dared, we followed the wagon tracks through the wet grass and swampy earth.

Annabelle Murdock

I sat forward as Crucifixion River came into view ahead. It was an awful, bleak place in the best of weather, and on a dark gray day like this one the look of it made me shiver and hunch up even more inside my black dog coat. Except for marsh birds, the quiet was eerie. You could almost hear the people singing “We Shall Gather at the River,” the way they had been the day they arrived and Dad and Mother ferried them across the slough. I was just a little girl then, but I still remembered the singing and it still gave me chills.

There was a big weedy meadow where the road ended, stretching out along the banks of the mud brown river. At one end were the remnants of the potato and corn and vegetable patches the sect people had started, and at the other was a church or meeting house and about a dozen cabins built back among willows and swamp oaks. There wasn’t much left of the buildings now. After the people moved away, shanty boaters had come in and carted off everything that was left behind. Even doors, window coverings, floorboards. They were all just hollow shells now, some of them with collapsed walls and roofs. Dead things waiting for the swampland and the river to swallow them up.

“Now isn’t this a pretty spot,” James Shock said.

Pretty? It was like visiting a cemetery.

But I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t looked at him since we left the levee road and I didn’t look at him now. I sat away over on the wagon seat, as far away from him as I could get, and hunched and hugged myself and tried not to think what was going to happen.

He wasn’t James Never Jim Shock to me any more. He wasn’t a handsome, romantic, banjo-playing traveling man; he was just a peddler and a cold-souled, foul-mouthed killer, and I didn’t know how I ever could have believed he was a man to run away with and give my favors to. Shame made my face and neck flush hot. I wasn’t ready to leave the delta yet, on my own or with anybody. I knew that now. What an addle-pated fool I’d been!

I kept remembering the way he’d talked and the look on his face when he found me in the wagon, as if I were a bratty child instead of a woman-as if he’d like nothing better than to paddle my backside, or do something even worse to me. His eyes-Lord, that cold, ugly stare! It wasn’t anything at all like the way his eyes had been in the common room last night. That James Shock had been a sham, a sweet-talking wolf in sheep’s clothing. This was the real James Shock, sitting next to me right now. And I was as purely scared of him as I’d been of anything in my whole life.

“This road just ended,” he said. “And I don’t see any other.”

I gestured without looking at him. “It runs through that motte of swamp oak down along the river, on the far side of the meeting house.”

“It better had. And it better lead where you say, back to the levee road.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“Well, that’s right, now, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have any reason to lie.”

“None at all. What…what are you going to do with me?”

He didn’t answer, just snapped the reins and clattered us across the meadow toward the meeting house. We were almost there, angling past the big empty shell, when he shifted around in a way that made me cast a quick glance in his direction. He was holding the reins in his left hand and he’d moved his right down and was pulling the tail of his coat back, reaching inside to his belt.

I don’t know how I knew he was about to draw his revolver, and what he intended to do with it, but I did know, all at once, and never mind that I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason for him to want to harm me. I just knew, with a certainty that made the hair on my scalp stand straight up, that he was planning to kill me as soon as he was sure of where that other road was.

I’d been scared before. Now I was terrified.

“Annabelle? You sure, now, the road starts in that motte of trees?”

I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried. And I didn’t dare sit there next to him a second longer. My only hope was to jump off the wagon and try to get away from him, and that was what I did, quick as a cat.

I landed all right on both feet, but then I lost my balance and sprawled headlong in the wet grass. Shock yelled something, but I didn’t listen to it. I rolled over and pulled my legs under me and lifted my skirts and ran as fast as I’d ever run, away from the wagon toward the meeting house.

The open doorway yawned ahead. I was almost there, almost safe…

And then-oh, God!-he started shooting at me.

T.J. Murdock

The first two shots sounded, faint and echoing in the morning stillness, when we were a few hundred rods from the camp. I pulled back hard on the reins; so did Nesbitt. The ghost buildings weren’t within sight yet, hidden behind a screen of trees ahead.

“Small caliber,” he said. “Handgun, not a rifle.”

“Christ!”

“Can’t be Shock. What would he be firing at?”

“Nobody else out here.”

“Hunters, shanty boaters?”

“Not this soon after a big storm.”

Another shot cracked.

My heart slammed and my mouth turned dry as dust. I kicked Kraft’s roan into a run, no longer mindful of the boggy ground. Nesbitt was right behind me. I had stopped caring what happened to me, but Annabelle…if anything happened to Annabelle…

James Shock

The little bitch had caught me by surprise, jumping off the wagon that way. I yanked Nell to a halt, dragged on the brake with my left hand, and drew the revolver with my right. I had it out quickly enough, while she was still running, but haste threw off my aim. The round missed wide, tearing splinters from the building wall. I steadied my arm and fired again just as she ducked through the doorway inside. I couldn’t tell if I’d hit her or not.

Cursing, I hauled the Greener out from under the seat and jumped down and ran over to the tumbledown building. By grab, I’d blow her damned head off when I caught her.

Annabelle Murdock

Hide!

But there was nowhere to hide in the meeting house. It was just one big room, with no partitions or cubbyholes and a section of the roof gone and a hole in the back wall where the fireplace had collapsed.

I couldn’t stay here. I had to get out quick and find some place else. The woods, one of the other cabins, any place where Shock wouldn’t find me. I wasn’t hurt, but I’d felt the heat of the second bullet on my cheek as it whizzed by. I was so scared I thought I might wet myself.

Enough daylight came in through the holes so that I could see well enough. There wasn’t anything on the uneven floor but weeds and animal droppings and pools of rain water. I stumbled across it to the jumble of fireplace stones, clambered and clawed my way over and through them to the opening in the wall. My foot slipped before I reached it and my knee knocked hard on one of the rocks.

And just as that happened, I heard a thwack above my head and then the bark of Shock’s revolver behind me.

Gasping, sobbing, I crawled over the rest of the stones and flung myself through the hole, tearing a long rip in the sleeve of my coat. My knee burned like fire, but I didn’t care as I scrambled to my feet. All I could think was-run!

Run, run, run!

Boone Nesbitt

Kraft’s roan was a better horse than the piebald and Murdock was ten rods ahead when we cleared the trees and Crucifixion River came into view. But I had only a peripheral look at the crumbling ghost camp and Shock’s wagon stopped in the open meadow. What caught and held my attention was the girl staggering across open ground between the shell of a large building and a cluster of decaying shacks squatting among the trees.

“Annabelle!”

It was Murdock who yelled her name. We both veered sharply in her direction, guns already filling our hands. She heard us coming, twisted her head in our direction, but she had the sense not to slow up any. Shock was chasing her; in the next second, he came busting through a hole in the sagging back wall of the large building, brandishing a shotgun.

He spied us before he’d taken half a dozen steps. He swung around, crouching, as Murdock bore down on him. I pulled up hard just as Murdock fired-a wild shot, like most from the back of a running horse. Shock didn’t even flinch. He let go with one barrel of the Greener, and the spray of buckshot knocked Murdock off the roan’s back and sent him rolling through the grass.

I swung out of leather. If the ground hadn’t been wet and slick, I would’ve been able to set myself for a quick, clear shot at Shock. As it was, my boots slid out from under me and I went down hard enough on my backside to jar the Colt loose from my grip. It landed a few feet away, and by the time I located it and started to scrabble toward it, Shock was up and moving my way with that Greener leveled.

I heard him say-“All right, you son of a bitch.”-as I got my hand on the Colt, and I was cold sure it was too late, I was a dead man.

Only it didn’t happen that way.

It was Shock who died in that next second.

Murdock was hurt, but the buckshot hadn’t done him enough damage to keep him out of the play. He’d struggled up onto one knee and he put a slug clean through Shock’s head at thirty paces. The Greener’s second barrel emptied with a roar, but the buckshot went straight down as he was falling. Dead and on his way to hell before he hit the ground.

I got up slowly, went over to him for a quick look to make sure, then holstered my weapon, and went to Murdock’s side. He squinted up at me, his jaw clenched tightly. There was blood and buckshot holes on his left arm and shoulder and the side of his neck, but he wasn’t torn up as badly as he might’ve been.

“Dad! Dad!”

Annabelle. She’d seen it happen, and, now that it was finished, she’d come running. She dropped down beside him, weeping, and he hugged her and crooned a little the way a relieved father does when he sees his child is unharmed.

There were some things I wanted to say to Murdock, but this wasn’t the time or place. I turned away from them and went to where the peddler’s wagon stood in the meadow, to see what I could find to treat Murdock’s wounds.

Annabelle Murdock

I huddled in my bed, the quilt drawn tightly around me. My scrapes and bruises hurt, but not nearly as much as my conscience. For a while after we got back from Crucifixion River in the peddler’s wagon, I’d cried and felt sorry for myself, but I wasn’t feeling sorry for me any more…

A tap on the door and Mother came in. I asked her how Dad was, and she said she and Mrs. Devane had gotten all the buckshot out of his arm and shoulder and she’d given him some laudanum for the pain.

“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”

“Of course he is. He and Mister Hoover both.”

I said: “It’s all my fault.” And then-fool that I am-I started crying again. “If I hadn’t fallen for James Shock and hidden in his wagon, Dad wouldn’t’ve been shot. I did an awful thing, and he could have died and so could I.”

Mother sat beside me and patted my back, just as she’d done when I was a little girl and had hurt myself. It only made me sob harder. I felt like a child right now. A bad one.

She said: “That’s true enough. But we’ve made you live such a sheltered, isolated life, you couldn’t possibly know what a wicked man that peddler was. And you’ve never made a secret of how much you want to leave the delta.”

“Maybe it’s not so bad here, after all.” But I didn’t really believe that. Did Mother? I didn’t think so, but she’d made the best of the past eight years in this place. So had Dad. The least I could do was the same while I was still living here.

I wasn’t crying any more. I wiped my eyes with a corner of the sheet and said: “Someday I may still want to go to San Francisco, have a different kind of life. You’d understand, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course we would. But you’ll tell us when the time comes, let us help you? You won’t try to run away again?”

“No, Mother, I’ve learned my lesson,” I said, and I meant it. “I’ll never run away again, not ever.”

Rachel Kraft

I walked out of the roadhouse as the driver was bringing the stage around from the livery barn. Caroline Devane, wearing a gray serge traveling dress, stood still as a statue looking out over Twelve-Mile Slough, her crocheting bag and reticule beside her; the wind blew wisps of her hair, and her gaze was remote, as if she’d already traveled many miles from here.

I said her name, and she turned and gave me a wan smile. “Have you made a decision about your future?”

“Yes. I’m going on to my sister and her family, because they’re expecting me, but I won’t stay long. There’s a shortage of trained nurses in this state. I ought to be able to find employment in Los Angeles or San Diego.”

“Do you have enough money to live until you do?”

“Enough, if I’m fortunate. Before I left Sacramento, I sold my jewelry.”

Mr. Nesbitt had returned the $3,000 to me when he and Annabelle and poor Mr. Murdock came back with word of the peddler’s death, and, after talking to Joe, I’d put the money into his belt pouch. Now I pressed the pouch into Caroline’s hands.

“Perhaps this will help.”

She stared down at it, then opened it. Her eyes widened with astonishment when she saw the bills and specie inside.

“It’s half the money I took from my husband’s safe,” I said. “Fifteen hundred dollars.”

“I can’t accept it.” She closed the pouch and thrust it back at me. “Why would you want to give me so much money?”

“You saved Joe’s life.”

“I only did what I was trained to do.”

“Please take it. Joe and I want you to have it.”

“No, I wouldn’t feel right…”

“Please.”

Our eyes locked-two stubborn, proud women.

“You’re going away,” she said, “you’ll need it…”

“I’m not going away and I don’t need it. Joe and I decided to return to the ranch when he’s able to travel. My late husband’s affairs have to be put in order and there are other things that need attending to. After that…well, we’ll see.”

“Still, I can’t take money from you…”

“It’s not a gift, it’s a loan. I can have a paper drawn up to that effect if you like.”

“But you hardly know me…”

“I know enough. You’re good and honest and caring and you’ve already paid a high price for your sins. You shouldn’t have to pay any more.”

“I…I don’t know what to say…”

“Say yes. It will make starting your new life so much easier.”

She was silent for several seconds. Then, slowly: “Well, if it’s to be a loan…”

“From one new friend to another.”

I pressed the pouch into her hands again. This time she kept it, her eyes bright with tears.

Two stubborn, proud women, one strong, the other learning how to be.

T.J. Murdock

In the darkened bedroom I lay waiting for the pain in my bandaged shoulder to ease. It had been a long, rough ride in Shock’s wagon with Nesbitt driving and Annabelle making me as comfortable as she could inside, and the removal of the buckshot and treatment of my wounds had been another ordeal. But all I cared about, then and now, was that Annabelle was safe and unhurt.

“How’re you feeling, Murdock?”

Nesbitt. I hadn’t even heard him come in. If I’d been more alert, I might have been surprised to see that he wore one of my old, grease-stained dusters, unbuttoned, over a black broadcloth suit.

“Drowsy,” I said. “Sophie gave me laudanum.”

“You’ll have a doctor soon enough. You and Hoover both.”

“I won’t be in any shape to travel for a few days. You figure on staying here until then?”

Instead of answering, he said: “Pete Dell’s ready to travel right now. I told your wife I’d help her and Annabelle winch the stage across to Middle Island.”

“That why you’re wearing my duster?”

“That’s why.” There was a little silence and I could feel the pain dulling, my eyelids growing heavy. Then he said: “I owe you thanks for saving my life in Crucifixion River. Another second and Shock would’ve blown my head off with that Greener.”

“I know it.”

“You could’ve waited and let that happen before you shot him. Some men in your position would have, to save their own hides.”

“I’m not one of them.”

“No,” he said, “you’re not. Not the kind of man Patrick Bellright thinks you are at all.”

“Won’t make any difference to him when you hand me over.”

“I won’t be handing you over.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “Say that again.”

“I’m not giving you to Bellright,” Nesbitt said. “Seems I made a mistake…you’re not Harold P. Baxter, you’re T.J. Murdock. Soon as the stage is ferried across, I’ll be heading to River Bend to talk to the sheriff and send you a doctor, then on back to San Francisco.”

“But…the reward…?”

“To hell with the reward. I’ve gotten along well enough on a Pinkerton salary and I’ll keep right on getting along. I don’t need a piece of land in the Valley of the Moon.”

I was too numb to ask what that meant. All I could manage was: “Why?”

“You saved my life, now I’m returning the favor. Simple as that. And you can quit worrying about somebody else like me finding you. It’s not likely to happen, and, even if it did, it’d have to be before next summer. After that it won’t matter.”

“Won’t matter? What do you mean?”

“I checked up on Bellright before I came out here. The old bugger’s dying of cancer. He’ll be gone in six months and his vendetta with him.” Nesbitt went to the door, then stopped again long enough to say: “I hope you keep on writing for the Argonaut and The Overland Monthly, Murdock. I really do enjoy those sketches of yours.”

Then he went out and left me to the first real peace I’d known in eight long years.