The Book of Lost Friends(96)

“The Germans formed themselves a vigilante gang, call it the Hoodoos. Busted down the jail door in Mason a while back to get their hands on some fellas that’d been locked up for stealing loose cattle. Nearly killed the sheriff and a Texas Ranger. Shot one man in the leg, who had not a thing to do with the cattle, but was jailed for riding a stolen army horse. Poor sap was lucky they didn’t hang him that night, too. The Hoodoos had strung up three of their prisoners before the sheriff and the Texas Ranger got it stopped. Now, the Hoodoos have shot another one, and his people have gathered a gang and gone warfaring over it. Troubles here lately with these Marston Men, too. Their leader calls himself ‘the General.’ Been stirring up another wave of Honduras Fever, telling diehard secessionist folk there’s a new South to be built down in British Honduras, and maybe on the island of Cuba, too. Has won quite a few over to his cause. You can’t tell who’s who just by looking, either. You folks watch out. Ain’t but a hare’s hair between the law and the outlaws around here. This is dangerous country.”

“I heared of them Marston Men,” Gus says. “They was holding secret meetin’s in a warehouse up to Fort Worth town, recruitin’ more folks. Fools on a fool’s errand, you ask me. World don’t turn backward. Turns forward. Future belongs to the man that faces hisself straight on.”

Penberthy strokes his gray beard and nods. The wagon boss has put young Gus McKlatchy under wing, like a papa or a grandpapa would do. “That kind of thinking will take you far,” he agrees, and to the mail wagoner, he says, “Thanks for the warning, friend. We’ll be watchful over it.”

“What was the name of the man who got his leg shot?” I pipe up, and everyone looks my way, surprised. I been purposeful to not call attention on this trip, but right now I’m thinking of the Irishman’s story. “The one who’s in jail for the stole army horse?”

“Don’t rightly know. He survived the bullet to the leg, though. Strange sort for a horse thief, a gentlemanly type fellow. Reckon the army will hang him, if they haven’t already. Yes, there’s all sorts of bedevilment these days. World’s not what it used to be, and…”

He goes on with his tales, but I tuck his news in my mind, think on it late into the night. Maybe the Irishman in Fort Worth wasn’t fibbing about trading a stole army horse to a Mr. William Gossett, after all? If that was true, was the tale about the little white girl with the three blue beads real, too? I talk of it with Gus and Juneau Jane as we put in for the night, and we make a pact that once we get the freight to Menardville, we’ll go over to Mason and see about the man who was shot in the leg, just in case there’s a chance that man could be Old Mister or somebody who knows of him.

I close my eyes and drift and wake and drift again. In my dreams, I drive a freighter with a team of four black horses. It’s Mr. William Gossett I’m looking for. But I don’t find him. Moses comes instead. He steals into my dream like a panther you don’t see, but you know it’s stalking behind, or left, right, overhead, perched against the sky. You hear it stir and then it’s on you, its body heavy against yours, breath coming fast.

You’re stopped still, scared to look in its eye. Scared not to.

Overcome by the power of the thing.

That’s how Moses sneaks into my mind, never letting me know for sure, is he my friend or my enemy? I feel every inch of him against every inch of me. See his eyes, smell his scent.

I want him gone…but I don’t.

Don’t turn back, he says.



* * *



—

I wake with my heart gone wild like the barrel drum. It crowds my ears, and then I realize it’s thunder. The sound turns me itchy and fretful, unsettled as the weather. We break camp without breakfast and move out. We got two days yet to Menardville, long as there’s no trouble.

Rain don’t fall often in this dry country, but the next days, it comes like a kettle’s getting tipped side to side over our heads. Thunder troubles the horses and lightning cuts the sky like a hawk’s gold claws ready to scoop up the world and fly off with it.

The animals dance and worry the bits till the land gets soggy and the white caliche mud turns slick and soaks up over the horses’ fetlocks. It sucks down the wagon wheels, and white-tinged water sprays out like milk as they turn, turn, turn.

I tip my head against the misery and think of Mr. William Gossett and try to work out if he could’ve come so far out into this bare land, and found hisself riding a stole horse, and then sitting trapped in a jail while men broke down the door and rushed in with hanging ropes and guns.

I can’t even fancy him in such a place. What could bring him here into the wild?

But deep down, I know. I answer my own question. Love. That’s the thing that would do it. The love of a father who can’t give up on his only son. Who’d wander the entire wide world if need be to bring his boy home. Lyle didn’t deserve that kind of love. He didn’t return it, except with bad deeds and fast living and trouble. Likely, Lyle’s already met his rightful end. Dead, shot, or hanged in some unplatted place like this one, his bones picked clean by wolves and left to fall to dust. Likely, Old Mister come down here chasing after a ghost. But he couldn’t make hisself give up hope till he knew for sure.

The rain stops on the second day, quick as it hit. That’s the way of it in this country.