Page 6 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
The sun had barely peeped over the bare eastern plain when Saul Hansen tied his horse to the cemetery fence and began his search for O’Rourke’s grave. He checked his back trail by habit, but the land lay empty all the way to the mountains where he’d spent the night. Maybe he should leave the gold. He hadn’t known about it until yesterday. He’d sold his furs at good prices and had no need for more money. His cabin was drafty and could stand to be reshingled, but that wasn’t anything he needed money for. A fresh round of mud in its chinks would stop the drafts, and he could split his own shingles. Even if it wasn’t the life he’d dreamed of as a youngster, fur trapping was honest and useful work.
But the unfairness of the situation galled him. Carter had no right to keep O’Rourke’s gold. He had no right to keep the townsfolk’s money, either. Not if they wanted it back. Carter’s refusal to give Hansen the gold tallied so closely with Julia Masterson’s prediction that it had demolished Hansen’s doubts about the other things she’d told him.
Finding O’Rourke’s grave didn’t take long. Every grave had a simple wooden cross with initials painted on the crosspiece and a date on the staff. “S O’R” must mean Seamus O’Rourke. The date matched Julia’s story.
Hansen stared down at the oblong mound in front of the marker. Hard to imagine O’Rourke on the other side of that dirt. O’Rourke would never laugh over an age-worn joke again, never challenge Hansen to a marksmanship contest, never lose at poker all night long with a laugh and a shrug after every hand. Never. Not ever.
Hansen squinted at the horizon, waiting for the tears to subside. You couldn’t be friends with a man since you were both shirttail young’uns and then have him drop out of the world this way, could you? O’Rourke had died months ago, and Hansen hadn’t known. Shouldn’t he have known, somehow?
A sound behind him startled Hansen, and he whipped around, curling his fists and crouching reflexively.
Mrs. Masterson stood just inside the fence, her arms full of flowers. “I see you found him.” She came closer. “I brought some of these for him. For you.”
Hansen’s sight blurred again. He accepted a handful of the flowers. Pinks, reds, whites. He had no notion what sort of flowers they might be. “Thank you.” His sorrow choked him too much to say more. He dropped to one knee and laid the blossoms at the foot of the simple cross.
Julia Masterson walked a few yards away and bent over to lay half of her remaining flowers on a small grave, replacing a faded bunch. She rested a hand on the grave marker for a moment, then straightened and took the rest of her bouquet to the far end of the cemetery.
Hansen had his sight and his speaking back under control by the time she returned. “Where’s the nearest lawman?” he asked.
She pointed. “We had a sheriff. His grave’s over there.”
“Why didn’t the town elect a new sheriff?”
“With all our money in Carter’s safe? Who’d pay him for his time? If Mr. Carter did, then we wouldn’t trust him.”
Hansen folded his arms. “Has anyone tried making Carter give that money back?”
“Can’t force him with threats—he’s the only one who knows the combination, and if you killed him, you’d never get it open. Short of dynamite, I suppose, but you could destroy everything inside in the process. And he’s too tough to scare with anything short of death.” She shook her head. “And before you suggesthoney instead of vinegar, I promise you, our menfolk have tried everything. Not one had better luck than you did last night.”
“How’d you hear about it so quick?”
“This is a very small town.”
“What if everyone got together? Threatened to boycott his businesses?”
“We’d have to leave. He owns the livery stable and the sawmill, and his daughter and her husband run the mercantile.”
“How about arguing, making him see reason?”
“The men tried that. Every man left, including Pop. Mr. Carter kept saying their money was safe, and he had an accurate account of what everyone had, and everyone could pay for food and such on account against the money in his safe, same as if they had their money in a bank.”
“What about the womenfolk?”
Mrs. Masterson tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“A man on his own is half as strong as a man with his woman alongside him.”
“Most of the women are too angry with their husbands and fathers for trusting Carter in the first place to want anything to do with the problem anymore.”
“Hmm.” Hansen looked the town over. Morning sunlight from behind him made the buildings soft and inviting, glowing with promise. “I always figured a man and a woman getting married meant they were a team. We even say they got hitched. If a man pulls one way and his woman pulls the other, they won’t ever get far. But if they can agree to work together, there’s no telling how much they can get done.” When he looked at Julia Masterson again, he was surprised to see her cheeks had flushed. “At least, that’s how my folks behaved. How the Good Book puts it, I think.”
She laughed suddenly. Laughter transformed her from pinched and careworn to almost girlish.
Hansen smiled a little, feeling foolish. “Not ever having been married myself, I don’t know…”
Julia put a hand on his arm. “No, I think you’re exactly right. I was just imagining Carter facing down all our women, particularly Widow Albright in her new yellow bonnet, and… and I think you might be the smartest man I’ve met in a long time.”
Hansen’s smile brightened. “Why, thank you, Mrs. Masterson.”
