North of Forsaken Read online

  “Ah,” I said, stretching my shoulders. “But there is nothing like a leisurely horse ride through mountain passes in autumn. Gets your blood up, it does.” I was laying it on thick, trying to sound like Maple Jack. But that is a fool’s errand, as no one can do that save for Jack himself.

  “Where are we headed?” said the girl.

  “Why, that’s what I was fixing to ask you, ma’am. You see, I can’t get you to your father’s ranch if I don’t know where it’s located, now can I?”

  But she didn’t rise to the bait I cast out there. Instead she turned to soothe the blithering of Thomas. I may or may not have whistled a little tune while I tended to Tiny Boy. “If you think you’re up to it, Thomas, you might want to gather firewood. We’ll all appreciate your efforts once the cool of the forest settles on us.”

  To my surprise, he nodded. “Yes, you’re right, Scorfano. I’ll see to it.”

  “And me?” said the girl.

  “Well, let’s see,” I said. “If it’s not too much trouble, you could tend to your horse, then Thomas’s. You’ll find nose bags in that canvas pannier, along with oats. We’ll hobble them yonder.” I nodded toward a grassed patch to our right, silver in the moonlight. I was not sure if she saw where I’d indicated, or even if she cared.

  Later, as we enjoyed coffee, eggs, and salty ham steaks around the fire, I almost allowed myself to feel, if not happy about the situation, at least more comfortable with it. Almost.

  I sipped my cup of coffee, suppressed a belch, and said, “It is time, Thomas, for you to share details of this journey with me.”

  You would have thought I had asked him for all his money, and his hair, too. But something happened that I should have predicted, but hadn’t. The girl spoke up.

  “Do let’s hear the particulars, Tommy.” Carla blinked big doe eyes at him, a smile raising high the corners of her pretty mouth.

  To my knowledge, she was the only soul who had ever called him Tommy. Smitten as he was by her it didn’t bother him.

  “Oh.” His own smile appeared and as if he were offering some great indulgence to poor folk everywhere. Thomas sat straighter and cleared his throat with great ceremony.

  I almost rolled my eyes.

  “My father”—he turned to the girl—“was a well-known raconteur and master of high finance.” He winked at the girl. I wondered what the significance of that wink was. Could it be that Thomas knew what a seedy rogue the old man was? That he had squandered not one but two family fortunes in whoring and gambling and in making anything but clever decisions where finance was concerned? That he had convinced his equally shifty wife to shun his oldest child?

  I concede on one point: He had enough of the milk of human kindness in his black heart to allow me to be raised as a stable boy by the old family retainer, Miss Mimsy. How thoughtful of him, this paragon of virtue Thomas was so busily genuflecting before in conversation.

  Bah, but I am allowing bitterness I had thought well tamped and all but dried up to bubble once more to the surface. It appears the sores of my youth are nothing more than old wounds that scab over but remain in a state of fester beneath. Will this be a lifelong affliction? I hope not, but time is a slow and confounding healer.

  “I have on my person the deed to a sizable property, a ranch, or so I have been told, purchased with the last of my family’s fortune. It was my father’s dying wish that I assume the mantle of patriarch of my family, only fitting as I am the oldest male and sole heir. He wished me to make something of myself in the wilds of this vast Western place.”

  Thomas paused to sip his coffee, allowing this scant information to settle on us like a scrim of gauzy fog. As for myself, the news of my father’s death announced once more bothered me little. The man meant nothing to me, even if his mistreatments carry long weight.

  “What of your mother?” said Carla.

  “Ah, yes, she is gone as well, and I am an orphan in this world.”

  The girl uttered a forced sob and clutched at his arm. He patted her hand, nodding his head in sorrow.

  “I am . . . sorry for you,” I said.

  Thomas eyed me with curiosity. He suspected I was torn up somehow by the news, that I was hiding it. In truth, I felt as little at the news then as I had when he’d told me the day before in the bar.

  “This ranch property,” I said, clearing my throat. “Do you know any more about it than the vague details you’ve shared with us?”

  “Oh, please, sir,” said the girl, stiffening as if I had slapped her. “Can’t you see Tommy is distraught?”

  “It’s all right, Carla. Scorfano is correct to assume I should be more forthcoming with details of this venture. Suffice to say all will be revealed as time rolls on. For now, Scorfano, I wish to remind you that you are in my employ and will guide me northwestward. Soon I shall share more of the details with you. For now, please be patient.”

  “Employ?” I wanted to drive a fist into the middle of his smug face. “I don’t recall any talk about pay for my services.”

  His eyebrows rose and the girl smiled. She was enjoying herself.

  Before he could stammer another annoying word, I satisfied myself with a grunt and left the fire to tend to the horses. I suspected they had botched the hobbling and feeding. Why did I have the feeling, with each word he uttered, that I ought to leave him now while he could still find his way back to Forsaken?

  CHAPTER SIX

  We closed in on Maple Jack’s wilderness kingdom late the next afternoon as the day’s light once again commenced its vanishing act. We all three were tired and I know at least two of us were sore from the saddle, and I wasn’t one of them. That at least provided small comfort.

  It pained me to bring them there, to share anything of my life with Thomas, let alone the conniving girl. But I had a few items Jack was looking forward to, not the least of which were cornmeal and whiskey, two items the codger did not like to survive without. He was quite capable of doing so, but he was not a pleasant fellow to be around at such times when one of his fritters hadn’t clogged his gullet or the fiery liquid he so enjoys hadn’t passed his whiskered lips.

  I also wanted his read on the peculiar situation. I pride myself on being an insular sort, living for months at a time alone, away from the hubbub and clamor and annoyance of other humans. I have much to learn and only someone as grizzled and traveled as Maple Jack can teach me, as coarse and cobby as he appears to most folks.

  We rode single file winding upward, picking out the trail that is no trail, as Jack prefers it, between boulders and thick Ponderosa pines. We topped out along a ridge in a glade overlooking a broad natural meadow that rippled gold in the autumn afternoon’s light.

  I was about to say, “Well, we’re here,” when a voice boomed at us from a half dozen yards to my right.

  “Where’d you conjure this motley assemblage from?” The voice was soon matched with a face.

  “Forsaken,” I said, offering a smile. “Howdy, Jack. Good to see you.”

  “And you, Roamer. And you.”

  His squinty stare eyeballed the two stunned whelps in my wake. He would know, of course, that I would not have violated his privacy by bringing strangers here had I a reasonable alternative.

  “Forsaken?” he said, snapping the silence like brittle kindling. “What a rat hole of a town. Only worthwhile beast ever crawled out of there was a cur with hydrophoby. And that had the good sense to die when it got itself shot—though it took two bullets. Critter was deranged beyond compare!”

  He let his proclamation of the fetid town, an estimation I could not argue with, settle on us like cold drizzle. Then he smiled. “Present company excluded, of course.” He strode down the slope, colored beads and metal trinkets dangling from his buckskin garment’s fringes, clinking and tinkling as he walked. “Do let me help you down, ma’am.” He held up a calloused hand more accustomed to brain-tanning hides than assisting damsels.

  Carla, who despite her hard edge had moments before been po
ised on the verge of tears, now blushed and placed a tentative kid-gloved hand in his paw.

  That was Maple Jack, all over. Speechifying, as he calls it, one moment, and the next doling out big helpings of his sunbeam smile. I’ve rarely seen anyone who can stay angry with or confused by the man for long.

  He made us welcome, bustling about the place, cooking and muttering and smiling and whistling and sampling the jug throughout it all. I helped work up an impressive feed, contributing as much of Thomas’s purchased victuals as Jack would allow—never an easy feat when he played host.

  As for Jack himself, he ate nothing, drank coffee laced with jug juice, and said he’d fire up his skillet later. “Still full-up from a sizable midday feed. If I’d known to expect visitors I would have held off.” He cut me a quick look and guilt winced my face.

  In such a manner the evening aged, and full dark found us all relaxed around the fire and dozy. Jack insisted “the lady,” as he referred to Carla, spend the evening in his cabin. He and I would sleep by the campfire out front, the spot he spent much of his time in all seasons but high winter storms. As for Thomas, he trailed into the cabin after Carla, red in the face and muttering something about making sure she would be comfortable and had everything she needed.

  From my spot at the fire, I made out Jack’s back as he exited the cabin. He leaned back in. “And no hijinks nor patty fingers! You keep to your sides of the cabin or you’ll feel the almighty wrath of me. You ask Roamer, I ain’t one to be trifled with.” He clunked the door shut and made barely a sound in his moccasins as he padded his way down the worn path to the fire ring.

  He winked as he sat down with a sigh. “I think they’re too tuckered out for horseplay. That boy ain’t like me, I’ll tell you. Was a time I would sidle on up to a pretty little girl like that, grouchy old man nearby or no!” A low rumble of a laugh boiled out of him and he nodded toward the skillet. “How’s my pan heating up?”

  “Just fine—nearly there.”

  “Good, got to be hot for beaver and onion.”

  I stretched my legs out toward the fire and ran a hand gingerly along the side of my face. Earlier, while fetching water from the creek, I had seen in my reflection swelling and purpling along my cheek and on up the side of my head. Whoever clouted me, likely that nasty little marshal, hadn’t taken any chances. Can’t say as I blame them. There isn’t a person I’ve come upon who isn’t convinced my homely visage rides ramrod on every Wanted dodger from the mighty Mississippi to the Cali coast.

  Okay, maybe I’m feeling a little simpery, as Jack would say, but a man gets weary of false accusations. And the bruises to my bean don’t tend to help the matter any.

  “Roamer.”

  Jack always does that, says my name, then waits, eyeballing me, whenever he wants my attention. I left off rubbing my tender head and looked at him.

  “I am too polite a man to have asked you when you wandered on in here earlier, but . . . how in blue blazes did you get conked on that big shaggy bean of yours again?”

  “Two guesses, first doesn’t count,” I said. I sounded surly. Didn’t mean to with him, the man to whom I owe so much, beginning with my life.

  Maple Jack sighed. “You got a right to be in a grouch, I reckon, what with being mistaken for a outlaw at every turn in the road. But confound it, boy.” Jack swigged from his jug, dragged a grimy cuff across what I assume was his mouth, buried as it was somewhere in that bushy tangle of beard. “Why don’t you up and let them have it for once?”

  It was my turn to fix him with a steely stare. “And how do you expect me to do that when I’m unconscious in a jail cell?”

  He grunted, swigged again, which was his way of saying that he didn’t have a ready answer, but would soon enough. I didn’t have long to wait. “Oh, sweet sufferin’ hogwallows!” He chucked more onion slices into his fry pan. The man likes his onions. He waited until they were skittering and popping in the bubbling ooze of bear fat lining the bottom of the cast-iron pan before he spoke again. “I expect asking you to give up on your wandering ways is like . . .”

  “Like me asking you to set fire to this place and take to the trail.”

  He grinned, squinting through the smoking mess that was his onion-and-beaver fry-up. Beaver, in case you were wondering, is pound for pound the most healthful of all meats you are likely to come across. Has a whole lot more to offer than a cut of thick elk flank. Or so Maple Jack says.

  Me, I’d rather have the elk steak. I’ve tried beaver on several occasions, each time to humor Jack, and each time I come away feeling as though I’ve tangled with a snake-oil cure-all for everything that has ever or will ever ail me. Except the rampant galloping gut-runs that fried beaver seems to bring with it.

  I’m not convinced Jack comes away any less afflicted, though he would never admit it. He’ll take his firm beliefs to the grave. Dedication to conviction, in my estimation, is an admirable trait in a man. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with him, though.

  Jack all but licked his plate—not that he would do so. The man is coarse but couth, if that makes any sense—belched, and patted his puffed-up belly. “I’d say the kiddies are retired for the night.” He nodded toward his cabin, from which we’d heard neither peep nor shriek. I believe I rode them too hard, and being green as a pair of summer apples, it wore them out, or at least their backsides.

  “What say we get down to it.”

  I set aside my plate. It seems I had managed to work on a slice of beaver after all. “You mean about Thomas?”

  “And that young lady, Carla. Though that’s the kindest remark I can think of to say about her. I’ll warrant she has rascality on her mind.” He set fire to a wad of tobacco in his apple-bowl pipe.

  “She claims to have a ranching father somewhere north of Forsaken.”

  “Bah, she’s out for the boy’s money.”

  After a few quiet moments, I said, “That young man”—I watched the orange-black pulse of the coals—“is my . . .”

  I let the word hang, could not seem to drag the rest of the sentence up out of my tight throat. Up until that moment I believed my thoughts on the matter were little more than a scarred-over nub of hard flesh without feeling. But I could not say “brother.”

  Once more Jack rescued me. Big old me.

  “You’ve shared your past with me,” he said quietly. “I can guess who the lad is.” He worked the stem of his pipe in a circle about his face. “More of a resemblance than you might think. It’s in the eyes.” He winked.

  Neither of us spoke for a few moments. A dry branch cracked in the fire, surrendered to flame, sending bright sparks pluming.

  “He know?”

  I shook my head. “Still treats me as an old acquaintance, a hired hand, nothing more.”

  “That set with you?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s he looking for out here then, if not for you?”

  I sipped my coffee, steaming from its spot on the rock at the fire’s edge. “He claims to hold the deed to ranch land, also north of Forsaken.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Mmm,” I said. “Needs someone to guide him to it.”

  “Well now that could be over Pascal Valley way. Nice open country with a fair number of ranches.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Ranch land that way could be worth a heap.” Jack wasn’t looking at me, but I knew what he was thinking.

  “I’m not interested,” I said.

  He leaned forward. “But you’re the rightful heir, not that pup.”

  “Keep your voice down, will you?”

  He let it drop. For a few seconds. “You want a hand wrangling them two youngsters?”

  “It’s not just them.” I sighed and told him about the three strangers in town, the woman and two men who had caused me grief. That perked his ears.

  “So that’s why you agreed to escort them on this jaunt to the great unknown.”

  I nodded. “As near as I can f
igure those people got wind of the property and would like to own it themselves. Of course, I’m guessing. I’ll squeeze Thomas when the time is right. The whole notion felt hinky enough that I wanted to get him out of town as soon as possible. Then the girl stepped in and complicated the proceedings.”

  “Womenfolk will do that. So you think that girly in there is in cahoots with them?”

  Again I nodded. I’m nothing if not consistent. “I’m not sure how yet, but it’s a safe bet.”

  “You’d best let me come along. You’ll need the help.”

  I said nothing, knowing Jack had plans to travel eastward over the Bitterroots to visit friends north along Salish Lake. He’d visited that country more than a few times in recent years and I had a feeling it was something other than the fertile shores of the lake that led him there. He’d told me a few months before when I’d passed through this way that he’d be venturing there this autumn. I hadn’t wanted to bring Thomas or the girl here, but if I had passed by I would not have seen Jack before he left.

  “No, I’ll be fine. They’re harmless, the others, too. Likely little more than coyotes sniffing at something they thought would be easy pickings.”

  Jack and I both knew I was full of hot air and little else. Thomas was a gullible fool, and the girl a bugbear at best. If she was more than that, it would be revealed sooner rather than later on the trail. I hoped it didn’t involve those others from town. But I’d be damned if I was going to let this silly little escapade interfere with Maple Jack’s life.

  “Tell you what,” said Jack, smacking his hands on his knees. “We’ll sleep on it, have another quick palaver in the morning, once we get ourselves on the safe side of a stack of flapjacks.”

  Just like Jack to put off until tomorrow what could be decided right then and there. He sat down with a grunt and groan on his blankets and laid back. “And don’t burn ’em,” he said.

  I smiled, laid down on my side of the fire and wedged an arm under my neck. “Night, Jack.”