Chapter 6

I had done some swappin’ with Mel, giving her more cash for her business and taking more jewelry. She kept a lot of the cheaper pieces to sell in her new shop but left me with the high end stuff.

I surprised the Sheriff by stoppin’ by, asking him to ride with me for a bit. We rode out of town and followed the river trail for a while before swinging inland in a loop back. He was really surprised when I asked him what his intentions were towards my sister. Then he grinned.

“I really like her. She’s got character and thanks to your little adventure with the bandits I know she’s a woman that will stand by you when trouble comes. I know where I’d like it to go but that will be up to her.”

I smiled at his sincerity. “Good enough. I don’t have to tell you she’s startin’ to develop feelin’s towards you.” I reached into my vest and pulled out three sets of rings and told him to pick one. “If it works out this is a weddin’ present. If it doesn’t, give them to her for her shop.”

He picked out a set of bands, and I added a small diamond. Then the talk turned to what I was goin’ to do. “I think I’m gonna get some land and start a ranch, but it will be a horse ranch. I’ll run some cattle on general principles, but horses are in my blood and it’s all I know how to do. That bein’ said I’m looking for ways to improve my financial situation and I got to thinkin’ about your advice.”

I told him about the crates of brand new guns at the store and how I aimed to buy as many as I could, if I could find a way to haul them. He approved and a couple of days later Mel had him over to supper. He sat back after his second piece of apple pie and grinned.

“Me and Mel been talkin’, Josh. She didn’t say exactly how much but she’s let on you got some money. She’s got some left and I got some savin’s, so we’d like to throw in with you. We figure we can buy at least three cases of pistols and one of rifles and we want you to haul them out West and sell them. You take 25% for your trouble and send the rest back to us. How does that sound?”

It sounded good, and the next day we met with the store owner. He gave them to us for just a little over what was owed for them, his profits comin’ from the downpayment the dead guy had given him. There was less than half left when we got done and after talking it over, he decided to send the rest with me on consignment with Clay and Mel standin’ for me.

That led to me needin’ a wagon and after three days of lookin’ I was about to give up, thinking I’d have to go farther east to get one, but God must have decided I needed to be a trader because Clay came to me grinning. A couple were goin’ West but found a telegram waiting for them at the ferry. His aunt had died and left them her farm in Kentucky, and they were taking the steamboat back to become horse breeders. I got the wagon and all the contents for half what It would normally cost. Mel immediately took all the furniture for her house.

We loaded the weapons at night to avoid the curious and there was still a good bit of room, so I hit the whole town for things I could get cheap. One of the milliner shops sold me some cloth, ribbons, thimbles, and needles. They were out of fashion but I didn’t figure that would be much of an issue on the frontier. Mel’s shop gave me a few jars of buttons and a few bolts of cloth, and one of the merchants sold me a bunch of cookware he’d gotten by mistake. I piled all that on top of the weapons, figurin’ no one would go digging through cloth and ribbons.

Clay found me a man a couple years older than me who wanted to go West, so I hired him to drive the wagon. Clay gave me a little warnin’. “He ain’t never been out of this town so he has no idea what he’s gettin’ in to. Might want to watch him to keep him on a straight path.”

John didn’t have any weapons so I gave him an old Henry as a signin’ bonus. He was grinnin’ ear to ear when we pulled on to the ferry.

Mel and Clay were there to send us off, even though we had spent the night together before Clay had to do his rounds. I walked him outside. “Take care of her Clay. She needs a good man and you’re it. Besides, who in their right mind would mess with a Sheriff’s wife?”

He grinned but his eyes were firm. “You been on the road long enough to know there are those out there who don’t care about such things. All I can say is they better be sure and kill me first.”

My string was a little light when I left. Mel kept the chestnut, and Clay had taken a shine to a gray gelding, so I left them as a wedding gift.

Clay shook my hand and Mel cried all over me just before I got on the ferry. When a person went West, they almost never came back, so this would probably be the last time I’d see Mel. She did make me promise to write as often as I could. Clay was holding her as the gangplank went up.

When I left Georgia I’d gone north to throw anyone lookin’ for me off the trail, so it took us two days to get to Independence once we crossed the river. It was the biggest town I’d ever seen, crawling with people, each one trying to outshout the other. My ears hurt by the time we’d gotten far enough out of town to find a place to camp. There were wagons everywhere, trains about to start out, others that were trying to hook on to an existing one or start their own.

I spent a day talkin’ to anyone who would give me the time of day and decided to hook on with a train that would be taking the Sante Fe Trail, cutting into the edge of Wyoming before swinging south through Colorado. There was supposed to be a lot of good land there for the taking, the mines were booming, and it seemed like a good spot to find a place and settle down. I intended to sell what I had in the wagon for a nice profit as we traveled.

The weapons were the key. I could get four times what I paid for them and the ammunition. The rest of what I had was just gravy.

Towards evenin’ I noticed a pretty good sized group of wagons and ambled over to see if they were going my way and if I could hook on with them. I was surprised to find they were all Finnish, handsome fair haired men and very attractive women for the most part. As I talked they told me a tale of woe. No wagonmaster wanted to lead a bunch of foreigners and the ones that were willing wanted four times the going rate.

When I got back to the wagon John was just itchin’ to go to town. I gave him a ten dollar advance on his wages and told him to have a good time but if I had found a train we’d be rollin’ out regardless of how much he’d slept or what shape he was in. I gave him the least desirable horse I had in case something happened to it and sent him on his way.

I went to sleep still thinkin’ about a train. John came in just after daylight, eyes bleary and tail draggin’. I grinned and told him to hitch up the team, we were moving out in thirty minutes. He groaned and I laughed, telling him to get some sleep. He was snoring to beat the band as I walked off.

I’d taken Luc, and if Luc moved, Lillith was right behind. They were both groomed to the point of shining and caused a few comments. I kept an eye on Luc because he still didn’t like people. Lillith had gotten a lot more friendly but was still skittish, except around children. Maybe their small size reduced the threat level. I almost never put a halter or bridle on her because there was no need.

I was looking things over when the smell hit me, bringing back memories of home. My mother sprang to mind and it saddened me and made me smile at the same time. I followed my nose to five wagons sitting a ways out from everyone else. The smell was coming from a dutch oven a woman was tending over a small fire.

I stopped a small distance away and called out. “Hello the camp!” It was common curtesy, walking into someone’s camp unannounced was not only rude but dangerous. You could get shot on genreal principles. The woman looked up with a worried face but one of the men walked forward and invited me to the fire, handing me a cup of coffee, surprised I took it.

They were Negroes and Missouri was still a Southern state with a long memory. My mother never believed in slavery and when my father inherited the farm the first thing he did was free all five slaves, allowing them to live in their little log cabins if they worked for him. He paid them wages, a little less than anyone else but he was providing free housing and most of the food they ate was raised on the farm and shared freely, so they were better off in the long run than a lot of their white counterparts. Most of the neighbors though it was a bad decision but liked the quality of our horses too much to make much of a fuss. I tried to be disarming as possible, thanking them for the coffee. I noticed one flinch a little when he heard my accent.

“Where ya’ll headed?”

“Colorado, if we can hook up with a train. Ain’t had a lot of luck yet. We’re thinkin’ we might have to strike out on our own.”

I frowned. Despite the lurid tales of the penny dreadfuls in the East, there was very little conflict with the Indians, but as they started losing more and more land they were becoming less and less friendly. Five wagons alone would be a mighty tempting target.

“Ya’ll need a guide. It might be hard to find one with so few wagons.”

For the first time they grinned. “Already got one. He’s been out here since the war and knows the territory where we’re headed.”

“I’m surprised another group hasn’t snatched him up.”

Suddenly there was a deep rumbling voice behind me. I jumped a little because I didn’t hear him come up and I thought I was getting better at that sort of thing. I turned to see a tall man dressed in buckskins, with a short beard and piercing eyes. A scar ran along his right cheek. “I ain’t the right color. Nobody will trust a black man to lead them into the wilderness.”

He was pretty well heeled for a black man in these times. He had two Navy Colts, one in a holster and another shoved into his waistband, and was holding a new looking Henry in the crook of his arm. Just by his look you could tell he knew how to use them. I found out later he was ex-military, a buffalo soldier who had mustered out and decided to stay in the West. An idea was starting to percolate in my head.

“How many wagons do you think you’d need to feel safe?”

“The average is fifty but a few less would do just as well.”

How about thirty-six?”

I had their attention and the whole camp was listening. Their future had been looking pretty bleak until now and I saw the man nod. “It would be doable, I reckon, if we maintain trail discipline and everybody worked together. Do you know anyone foolish enough to follow the directions of a black man?”

I was thinking about the Finns. They hadn’t found a scout or wagonmaster and were getting kind of desperate. “I might. And if their lives depended on following your directions they wouldn’t think them foolish. One drawback.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t think many of them speak American. If you want I can introduce you. It’ll cost you though.”

The friendliness left their faces. “What’s the price?”

“A chunk of that cornbread. I haven’t smelled anything that good since my mother passed.”

That brought a grin to their faces and the woman cut me off a healthy chunk, slathering it with butter. I ate it on the spot as they smiled. I thanked them kindly, especially the woman, and struck a deal with her on the spot. “Ma’am, if we do go West together, I’d like to take my meals with your group. I’ll furnish the food and pay you. I ain’t much of a cook past basics and I don’t think John knows what a frying pan is. It would be a kindness I’d appreciate.”