“HO, HO, HO!” THERE WAS A CRASH AND A GUST OF WIND, AND THE doorway of the Round Hole Inn framed the imposing figure of David Tolstonadge. He was laughing; an icy wind blew his long hair forward, mingling it with his beard. Gaily wrapped packages filled his arms, and there was a red bow pasted to his forehead.
Sarah, sitting by the hearth, tatting a lace collar for Imogene, threw her work down and ran to him. David dumped the packages on the nearest table and picked up his sister, swinging her feet off the ground and hugging her. “Merry Christmas!” he bellowed, and she cried and clung to his neck and laughed.
“You’ve been so long!” she said over and over.
“I’m a railroad typhoon. Responsibilities. Besides, I had to find you first.” He rolled his eyes and tickled her until she screamed and broke away, out of breath. Then she was back in his arms, kissing him and pulling his beard. David growled an rubbed his bushy beard against her neck, eliciting a wonderful squeal.
“Stop it!” Sarah shrieked.
A heavy hand descended on David’s shoulder and a dark furry form darted at his legs, growling and nipping at his trouser cuffs.
“It’s okay, Karl,” Sarah said quickly. “He’s my brother, David.”
Karl nodded and scooped up Moss Face. The little coyote had grown by leaps and bounds since spring and was a foot and a half high at the shoulder, but he still pounced and fell over himself with the graceless charm of a puppy.
As Karl departed through the kitchen door, David let his breath out in a whoop. “Who was that? He had a coyote! I wish I could see that dog up close.”
Sarah laughed, dancing as if she were a girl again. “That’s Karl, he hired on with us. He lives in the tackroom in the barn. Sometimes he does the dishes.”
“Doesn’t say much, does he?”
“He and I talk. He’s not one for strangers.” Sarah led her brother over by the fire and sat him down. “You’re so good to look at, David.”
He ran his hand over his head. “I’m almost bald,” he groaned. “Too tall-my hair rubs off on the head of the bed.”
Sarah pulled the long, light-colored fringe of hair forward over his shoulders. “What’s gone on the top is made up for below the collar. It’s long as an Indian’s. With your hat on, you look like a storybook cowboy.”
David caught her hand and smoothed his hair back. “Here come the boys.”
“Brrrr.” Noisy hurried in out of the cold, followed by Mac. He blew out through his moustache like a whale surfacing for air. “Close that pneumonia hole!” he bellowed. “You born in a barn?” Mac slammed the door with a satisfying crack.
Mac moved to the fire and stood with his back to it, rubbing his rear end. “The only man fool enough to go out in this cold without being paid’s your brother here. Ross’ll have an empty haul north.”
“The railroad’ll put you two out to pasture before too many years are up,” David said. “Your business is dying off. You’re too slow.”
Mac snorted so hard he had to shake his head to clear his ears. “It’ll be a cold day in hell when those engineers of yours take on the Smoke Creek.”
“Where’s Imogene?” Sarah put in. “She met the coach, didn’t she?”
“Out getting a Christmas tree.” Mac hit Noisy with his hat and laughed uproariously, and the stage driver looked sheepish.
Dragging David by the hand, Sarah grabbed a heavy scarf from the back of the chair and ran outside. Noisy roared, “Close the door! It’s colder’n a well-digger’s hind pockets out there!” and David closed it.
Clouds ran before a biting wind. The desert was colorless under the hard metal sky. The wind had scoured a curtain of dust off the alkali flat and held it against the ragged skirts of the Fox Range. Snow dusted the peaks, coloring them the same gray as the sky. The regular chunk-chunk of Karl chopping wood came to them from behind the house, and the smell of woodsmoke gusted under the porch overhang. The mudwagon, without its team, was parked in the lee of the stable. Sarah pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders. “Where’s the tree?” she asked of no one in particular.
“There’s Imogene, at any rate.” David pointed up the hill behind the stop. Imogene was making her way down through the sage, a spiny branched skeleton of bitterbrush, nearly as tall as she, held over her shoulder. She caught sight of them and waved her arm in a wide arc above her head.
Huddled in the doorway away from the cutting wind, Sarah waited while David, covering the ground quickly with long, loping strides, met Imogene and shouldered her burden for her.
They reached the porch and he swung it down, balancing it on its stump. Blackish limbs thrust out asymmetrically. It gave off a tart, acrid odor that smelled of the outdoors. Sarah hugged herself and waited for Imogene to explain.
“This,” Imogene said, “is a Christmas tree.”
Sarah’s face fell. “Noisy forgot.”
David turned the snarled bush from side to side. “Put an angel on the top, and who will know the difference?”
Noisy had become suddenly busy poking the fire when they came in bearing the Christmas bush. “Noisy’s getting old,” Mac said, his voice heavy with sorrow. “It’s good he’s knocking off come spring. Mind’s going. He’d be forgetting the routes, next thing you know, and dribbling folks all over the desert.”
The bush was enthroned on an overturned washtub in the corner away from the fire. It would be decorated on Christmas Eve.
After supper, David excused himself to “see a man about a horse.” Just after he let himself out, Karl, chuckling to himself, waved Sarah over to the window. Wondering what the excitement was about, Mac, then Noisy, then Imogene joined them. When David closed himself into the privacy of the outhouse, there were six pairs of eyes watching him. He was about to get his wish concerning Karl’s coyote dog.
Moss Face had followed David at a distance, slinking from bush to bush, keeping to the shadows. As soon as the door closed, he crouched down low behind a hump of earth and waited. Sarah laughed excitedly and Karl winked at her. “Oh, you two! You never tire of this,” Imogene reproved, but she was covering a smile with her hand. Soon the half moon swung out and David emerged into the cold blue evening light. Moss Face flattened his ears and wiggled his hindquarters in preparation. With a bound he was upon David, a happy growl deep in his throat, worrying David’s trouser cuff.
To the immense delight of his audience, David reacted to the onslaught of his shadowy attacker with a great leap in the air and a heartfelt bellow of fear. He was halfway to the house before he heard the laughter.
The night stage from Fort Bidwell arrived after dark, carrying six passengers, one complaining loudly of backache and permanent internal damage from the jostling he had received. He was a slender, white-faced man with a neat goatee, dressed in the confining broadcloth and tight clothes of the Eastern cities. The harsh, windswept desert had shaken him, and he hid his fear with bluster. The others were too cold and tired to do anything but push close to the fire, sip Sarah’s strong, hot coffee, and sniff at the savory smells coming from the kitchen.
David sat back from the bar, playing a quiet game of poker-matchsticks were the only stakes Imogene tolerated-with Noisy and Ross, the driver of the Bishop stage. Karl had come in from the tackroom-bedroom he’d fixed up for himself on the leeward side of the barn. He was near the end of the bar on one of the two stools where he could see through the open door into the kitchen. Occasionally he’d lean over the marred wood of the counter and call to Sarah in a stage whisper, “Missus, how you doing? I can wash up in a minute and lend a hand.” Moss Face had curled himself into a neat circle that just fit within the four legs of Karl’s stool.
Lamps burned along the walls and on the white cloths of the tables that the woman had pushed together to form one board for the evening meal; the room hummed with conversation. Imogene emerged from the darkness of the stairwell and stopped a moment to enjoy the scene, so warm against the bleak desert beyond the windows. Just then Sarah came out of the kitchen, her face flushed with cooking, carrying a platter of seaming venison ringed with small potatoes. Karl was quick to take it from her and carry it to the table.
The food was hot and good and the company cheerful with the season. The talk was of home and of times past. Even the man from the East forgot himself and, after being assured the northern Paiutes were not on the warpath, relaxed and joined in the lighthearted talk around the table. Afterwards, the company spread out to checkers, cards, and quiet conversations by the fire.
Around nine o’clock, Ross and his swamper left to bed down in the barn, the female guests retired, and the little Easterner excused himself for the evening. As he let himself out the front door to visit the outhouse, a stealthy four-legged shape slipped out after him. Karl nudged Sarah’s chair with his foot and nodded toward the door. She looked up just in time to see Moss Face’s long feathery tail disappearing into the night. Grinning at each other, they rose as one and went to the window. Imogene rolled her eyes heavenward and groaned. David joined Sarah and Karl, then Mac came, and Noisy. Soon the two remaining guests, unable to resist the sly glances and mysterious chortlings, came to swell the ranks.
Unaware that he had an audience, the man looked over his shoulder and peered into the darkness, starting at every small night sound. A coyote howled from a distant hill and he quickened his pace, trotting through the sage until he reached the safety of the outhouse.
“A coyote’d be more scared of him than he is of it,” Mac snorted.
“He’s got a coyote stalking him now, Mac,” Sarah reminded him. She giggled and pressed her face near the glass, cupping her hands around her eyes to block the reflections.
The outhouse door swung closed and, true to form, Moss Face glided over the mound of dirt to the side and hunkered down. Mac and Noisy nudged each other, and the two strangers, unable to make heads or tails of the spectacle they were witnessing, craned their necks to see out the window.
A few minutes passed, the outhouse door opened, a widening ribbon of black cracking the weathered wood, and the New Yorker emerged from the darkness, still buttoning the fly of his trousers.
“You avert your eyes, Sare,” David whispered.
Sarah blushed but kept her face pressed against the glass, her eyes on the tuft of fur, spiky and inky black in the moonlight, where Moss Face crouched.
The coyote waited until his victim was several yards from the outhouse. Then, low to the ground, as quick and silent as the cloud shadows, he darted from his hiding place. Growling at the last instant, he threw himself on the man’s feet with a puppy’s delight, sniffing and snapping at the hem of the trouser leg.
The result was spectacular. First the little New Yorker screamed and threw both arms straight in the air like a man held at gunpoint. In a moment he recovered himself and attempted to run. Doggedly, Moss Face hung on, wagging his rear end and pulling in the opposite direction. Tripped up more by his own fear than by the ministrations of the coyote puppy, the man fell to his hands and knees. Encouraged by the success of his game, Moss Face let go of the trouser leg and ran around in front of his chosen playmate to jump at him and bark.
Inside, the six onlookers howled. David laughed so hard his eyes were wet, and Sarah bounced and murmured “Shh, shh,” between fits of the giggles.
Terrified by the eye-level view of his assailant, the New Yorker screamed again and scrambled to his feet. Moss Face danced back and raised one paw, his all-purpose and only trick. Fumbling in his coat pocket, the Easterner pulled out a lady’s handgun and fired. Moss Face scampered several feet away, turned, lay on the ground and rolled belly upward to prove his innocent intentions.
Sarah pounded on the glass, crying, “Mister, no!”
Karl shoved Mac and David aside to get to the door.
The frightened man fired again and the little coyote was still.
Karl threw open the door so hard that one of the wooden panels broke as it struck the wall. He was upon the little man before the fellow had recovered from the fright his own gunshots had given him. Karl snatched him up as though he were a toy, one fist knotted in his shirtfront, the other twisted through his belt, and held him off the ground. Sarah, her face as white as the face of the moon, pushed past her brother and grabbed the gun from the New Yorker’s hand. She threw it down and ran to the coyote pup.
Karl lowered the whimpering man as Imogene retrieved the weapon and dropped it down the one-holer. There was a dull smack as the gun hit the sewage.
“My pistol!” gasped the little man. “That’s an expensive piece!”
Slowly, Karl lifted him again. When the Easterner’s face was level with his own, he said, “I’m stuffing you down after it,” and began walking his human bundle back into the outhouse.
“Put him down,” Imogene said sharply.
“Yeah, put him down, you don’t know where he’s been,” Mac added.
Karl hesitated for a moment, the trembling man clutched in his fists, deciding in his unhurried way whether to please Imogene or himself.
“Put him down, Karl.”
He looked at her, as tall and dark as he, her eyes commanding, and gently he sat the man down.
“Karl,” Sarah called from the shadows where she knelt, “come here. He’s licking me. He’s not dead.”
Somewhat recovered from his terror, the Easterner began to splutter in a vain attempt to recover his dignity. “I ought…I ought…” he flustered at David.
“You ought to shut up before I shove you down the hole myself,” David warned.
Mac watched the man stomping back to the house, his sense of injury stiffening his spine. “Can’t say as I blame him entirely,” Mac said. “The girls ought to mark that dog of theirs so’s folks know he’s a pet.”
Moss Face had suffered only a crease along his jaw. His scratch was cleaned and he lay by the fire near Karl. Sarah and Imogene had stayed up later than usual to visit with David. Sarah, perched on a footstool with her back to the fire, read him the latest letter from home.
“ ‘Your Pa’s no better’-Pa’s taken to coughing since the accident at the mine,” Sarah explained. “Where was I…‘and Walter has gone down into the mine-Sam couldn’t afford to keep him on anymore. This fall, Sam got a disease in amongst that dairy herd. Those milk cows come out in blisters all over their underhooves and teats. It got so bad Sam had to put them down and burn the lot. Couldn’t even be saved for beef. He and a few of the men got together a pile of dead trees and such and burnt the poor things. When a wind came up, the fire took part of the house, but that old stone barn stood fine.
“ ‘Matthew’s growing like a weed and Lizbeth’s almost grown up. She’s going to be the prettiest of all my girls. Gracie’s young man’s gone out West.’ Mam wrote that Gracie’d got a beau,” Sarah interjected. “That was the first I’d heard it was more’n a flirtation. I thought Gracie was too sweet on Sam to pay attention to the boys.”
“Sare!” David sounded slightly shocked.
“Well, it’s so.” Sarah ran her finger down the lines and continued, “ ‘Gracie’s young man will send for her as soon as he’s settled. Give David my love.’ ”
She handed David the letter, and the two of them sat quietly for a while, watching the fire and thinking of home.
Karl was asleep in his chair, his head back, his wide mouth agape, snoring gently. Moss Face lay between his feet, resting his chin on his paws.
Imogene had moved away from the circle of light, leaving brother and sister alone, and busied herself at a table near a window that looked out over the alkali flats to the south. By the steady light of a kerosene lamp, she glued the fragments of a china bowl together. She raised her eyes from the painstaking task and rubbed them. Far to the northeast, along the road to Deep Hole, a plume of silver smudged the roadway. There was no wind and the dust hung undisturbed for miles in the cold, dry air, catching the light of the moon.
“Riders coming,” she remarked. “Maybe a freightwagon.”
“It’s late,” David said. “People come in this time of night?”
“Sometimes. A wagon will break down or a horse throw a shoe.”
She watched the cloud creep along the white track. It moved faster than a laden wagon and threw up too much dust for the plodding hooves of draft animals on a windless night.
“It doesn’t appear to be a wagon,” she said after a while.
It was nearly midnight when the night visitors rode into the compound: twelve men in the uniform of the United States Cavalry and, riding handcuffed between the two columns of six, a prisoner. All were death’s-head gray with dust and moonlight. The leader of the troop called a halt, and with a creaking of saddle leather the soldiers reined in. One of the horses reared and turned for the spring. There was a brief flurry of hooves and curses before its rider had whipped it into line.
Imogene, wrapped in a thick woolen shawl, stepped out onto the porch to greet them, Karl and David behind her. The captain barked orders to dismount and the soldiers slid gratefully to the ground, only the man in manacles remaining mounted. Imogene saw his face clearly and stopped breathing. She shrank back into the shadow of the porch and laid her hand on Karl’s arm. “See to them for me, would you? I’ll be inside. That man”-she pointed to the prisoner-“needn’t come inside. He can be put in the icehouse.” Her voice was so low that Karl had to lean close, like a fellow conspirator, to hear. “The icehouse is warmer than the barn this time of year, and he can be locked in. See that he’s given blankets.” With that, she went back into the house.
The soldiers were glad of the warmth and welcome. Imogene and Sarah brought out cold venison, bread, and a pitcher of hot coffee. An enlisted man was dispatched to the icehouse with a plate for the prisoner. After they’d eaten, Imogene sent Sarah to the kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee, and as soon as the door swung shut behind the younger woman, she asked who the prisoner was.
“Man named Fox. Danny Fox,” the captain replied. He was a ruddy-faced man with a ginger mustache waxed into splendid handlebars. His voice was deep and rich. “Deserter. Up near Fort Roop, there in the Honey Lake Valley just west of here. Some years back, before I was stationed there, he and four others were on patrol. Fox deserted during his watch, and the other four were killed in their sleep. Massacred. We think it was some of Chief Winnemucca’s people. We found Fox in New Orleans.”
“Dan Fox?” Imogene said half to herself. “Did somebody recognize him?”
“Indirectly. The widow of one of the men who was killed went back to New Orleans after it happened. Guess she fell on bad times. She was…well, she’d…”
“Go on,” Imogene insisted.
“Well, she’s a widow woman without any means, which don’t excuse it, but she’d taken to the street. She all but admitted her dealings with Fox were of a…professional nature. Ferguson. That was it-Cora Ferguson.” He snapped his fingers. “She was going through his pockets-he was out drunk-and took his wallet. There was papers in it saying he was this Danny Fox. She’d remembered the name and the description Fort Roop had put out after her husband was killed-said it was burned into her brain, was how she put it. Darned if she didn’t tie him up with a black stocking and go to the police. They turned Fox over to us.”
“What will happen to him?”
“Court-martial. It’s been a while, like I say, and there’s nobody at Fort Roop much remembers him; most never even saw him. Fox had been at the post less’n a week when he deserted, and I guess he kept to himself.”
“The aay-ledged Fox,” one of the soldiers interjected and the others laughed.
“Alleged?” Imogene repeated.
“When Fox was brought in, the officer in charge said they’d got his wallet from the whore-the widow,” the captain corrected himself, “and asked was he Dan Fox. He swore to Christ he was, then turned around and swore to Christ he wasn’t as soon as they clapped him in jail for deserting. They kept him there in New Orleans for a while, but nobody came forward to identify him as being anybody else.”
“What will happen to him?” Imogene asked again.
“Firing squad,” another soldier answered.
“That’s enough, Jack,” the captain said quietly. “He’ll be tried, ma’am.”
Long after everyone had bedded down for the night, Imogene lay staring into the darkness. Finally she heaved an exasperated sigh and sat up. Dark hair, shot with gray, tumbled around her shoulders, and she caught it back away from her face and stuffed it down the neck of her nightgown. Beside her, Sarah still slept soundly.
The head of the bed was pushed against the outside wall under the room’s one window; she pulled aside the curtains. The night was perfectly still and cold, and her breath fogged the glass in an instant.
Sliding her feet into slippers, she pulled on her wrapper. Soundlessly she padded through the bar area and let herself out the front door. Across the coach road, beyond the pond, the icehouse stood stolid and dark. Railroad ties mortared together with sod and iron spikes formed a blunt, rectangular building. Tufts of grass grew out of the roof like the eyebrows of an old man. Half of the building was below ground; ice was stored there in summer, and goods that couldn’t endure freezing were kept safe below the frost in winter.
Imogene crossed the packed dirt of the yard and skirted the spring. Shrunken to a silver disk the size of a dime, the moon was sinking toward the horizon. Its light fell on Imogene, picking out the white streaks at her temples and leaching the color from her face and robe. Immobile as a statue, she stood in the cold, staring at the black, square window of the icehouse. There was a stirring inside; the prisoner was awake. A face appeared in the window, a pale mask in the darkness of the icehouse. Shadows marked the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes of a haggard, frightened man. He gasped and let out a little groan of fear as his eyes lit on the apparition, and he shrank back into the shadow.
Unmoving, Imogene watched.
“You real?” he called at last, in a high voice.
She said nothing.
“Oh God, oh God,” he moaned. Too frightened not to look, he returned to the window. “Get away from me!” he whispered, thrusting his face forward as far as the small opening would permit. “Get away, banshee.”
“I’m not a ghost, Mr. Aiken.”
Openmouthed, he stared at her, recognition dawning slowly. “Imogene Grelznik.”
“Imogene Grelznik.”
“Oh, thank God!” he laughed a little hysterically. “Imogene Grelznik.” He laughed again and put an arm out through the window. There wasn’t enough space for his arm and his face, and he quickly withdrew it. “Christ, am I glad to see you. Imogene Grelznik. It’s me, Darrel Aiken, you know me. They were going to have me killed. I ain’t no Dan Fox or anybody else. Jesus Christ, they’d’ve had me shot. Them boys let me know pretty clear what kind of trial I’d be getting. Everybody what knew Fox is dead or mustered out. Jesus Christ!” he said again. “Im-o-gene Grelznik.”
There was a long pause and the laughter drained from his face. “You’re going to tell them who I am, ain’t you?”
“How did you come to have Dan Fox’s wallet?”
“I found it. Swear to Christ.”
Imogene turned and started to walk away.
“Wait! We were playing poker, I was losing bad. I put a knockout in his drink, and when he went under, I took his wallet.”
Imogene stopped and looked back.
“You’re going to tell them who I am, ain’t you?” he pleaded, his breath clouding the frosty air. “They’re set on killing me.”
She turned from him and hurried back to the house.
“You gotta tell them!” The cry followed her.
From high in the foothills behind the house, screened from sight by the twisted arms of the bitterbrush, Imogene watched Round Hole come to life. Men and horses looked like toy figures below. Trails of smoke from the chimneys streaked the sky a shade just darker than the dawn. Tiny figures, erect in military blue, poured out of the house, and horses, spouting steam like teakettles, were brought from the stable and saddled. Two men broke away from the group and went to the icehouse at a trot.
Imogene tensed, her shoulders hunched and her hands clasped tight in front of her. The soldiers emerged from behind the blocklike building in a few minutes, marching their prisoner between them. He was agitated, talking and moving his hands animatedly. One of the men in blue called out, and a third soldier, the captain, came to join them. There was a long exchange, then the captain reentered the house. Moments later, Sarah Mary emerged, and the two of them began calling Imogene’s name. All that carried up the hill was sound without definition. At length they gave up and the captain shouted an order to his men.
There was a brief struggle as the prisoner refused to mount. Pulling free, he tried to run. The soldiers subdued him with blows and forced him into the saddle. Again, the captain issued a command. The horsemen formed two columns, one on either side of the chained man, and, like pall bearers escorting a coffin, they rode out toward Standish, Susanville, and Fort Roop.
A wild wracking sob tore from Imogene and she pounded her fists against the frozen ground. “God, forgive me!” she cried.