XxXxX

11

Adam had been following a false trail. He chided himself for not realizing it sooner, for being so careless. A mistake like that could get his brother killed…if Little Joe wasn’t dead already.

But, no: That couldn’t be true. If Frank Carver’s imposter–whoever he was–had wanted Joe dead, he wouldn’t have bungled his first two attempts. No one could be as crafty as this man had been and so careless at the same time.

He’d been crafty, all right, moving through the house like the ghost Joe believed him to be. He wasn’t just any stranger; and he certainly wasn’t a drifter. He was skilled enough to shoot Joe without coming close to killing him, and to pour just enough laudanum down Joe’s throat to avoid stopping the boy’s heart. He knew what he was doing. But…why? Why was he going through so much trouble to scare Little Joe half out of his mind?

Adam couldn’t begin to guess what the stranger intended for his brother. All he knew was that Joe was in serious trouble. The boy needed help; and Adam had wasted time getting to him by following a trail he should have known had been too clear, too distinct. He’d been played a fool. Concern for his young brother had made him easy prey for that deception. When Adam had seen Little Joe’s footprints come to an abrupt end, and had found the boy’s crutch abandoned….

God. Even thinking about it now gripped his heart. When he’d found that crutch it was as though he’d been lassoed by emotions he simply had neither the strength nor the gumption to push aside. Fear and anger cocooned him until he couldn’t breathe, like a rope pulling tighter and tighter and forcing the air from his lungs…leaving room in his head for only one thought: He had to find his brother. He had to reach Joe.

So he’d found a trail and he’d followed it without question.

Now…. Now Adam was as angry at himself as he was at Joe’s ghost.

Kicking his horse hard, Adam raced back home, desperate to return to the point from which Joe had vanished, his crutch tossed aside like useless junk…like something unneeded or…like something that would never be needed again. Adam had to find the real trail, and then….

Thank God! Around that last copse of trees Adam saw two familiar figures. Pa was there. Pa was home. And Sheriff Coffee was with him.

His chest filling with air, Adam discovered he could breathe again. And perhaps even think again. Joe’s life was no longer in his hands, alone.

Rushing to close the final distance between them, Adam watched his father and the sheriff examining the ground he, himself, had spent too little time inspecting.

“Hang on, Little Joe,” he said in his thoughts. “Roy Coffee is a whole lot better at tracking than I’ll ever be. He won’t let you down.”

And then he prayed to God that finding the trail would be enough to make that promise true.

XxXxX

Frank Carver’s ghost stepped closer. Little Joe shimmied back to the wall, pushing himself up to sit against it. His bound hands and the reopened wound in his leg hindered his efforts; and Joe had to fight his way past waves of pain. But his thoughts were focused exclusively on the ghost.

“You’ve had luck on your side, boy.” Carver squatted down in front of him, close enough that Joe could smell tobacco on his breath and the animal scent still embedded in his soft, fringed leather trousers. “I don’t know why, and I promise you I don’t like it. But you’ve been lucky so far. Clyde, here, says it’s the will of the spirits.” The ghost indicated toward the Indian with a nod of his head, and Joe felt his brow curl in confusion.

An Indian named Clyde seemed as peculiar as a ghost with a puzzled look to his eyes…and as odd as Frank Carver wearing Indian trousers. Joe had heard men saying Frank Carver was about the biggest Indian hater in the territory; yet here he was playing cards with one and wearing Indian clothes.

Had he been wearing those trousers when he’d shot at Joe on the stairs?

“Me…,” the ghost went on, “I’m not so sure, anymore. Those spirits…well…they let me down is what they did.” His puzzled look turned sad. “All these years, I thought my baby brother was as dead as the older ones. When those Comanches took me, I thought sure they’d killed him.”

With everything the ghost was saying, none of it was telling Joe what he needed to know. “Why?” he asked, disappointed to hear himself sounding like his fifteenth birthday was a long way to come, rather than a few months behind him.

“He was too young,” Frank Carver’s ghost answered. “And the others were too old; had too much fight in them. But me….” He shook his head. “I was young enough to learn how to follow their rules and old enough to do a day’s work.”

Frustration edging out his fear, Joe sat up straighter against the wall. He didn’t much care what had happened during some long ago Comanche raid, not when he had more important things to worry about. “Why’d you take me?” he asked with a show of defiance roused by the not-very-ghostlike emotions he’d watched brewing in Carver’s eyes.

But fear took root again, sprouting quickly into terror when the ghost re-emerged. Carver’s eyes flared with every bit of that hatred Joe had seen at the top of those gallows back in Virginia City. “To give Clyde’s spirits one more chance to get it right!” Carver hollered out.

He grabbed Joe by the shoulder and hauled him forward. Joe tried to struggle, but he was too small, too weak…too frightened, especially when he saw Frank Carver’s free hand taking hold of the noose.

“It’s not my fault!” Joe cried out, squirming in a useless effort to keep Carver from pulling the noose over his head. He felt the heavy rope brush his shoulders and then draw tighter around his throat–not quite tight enough to choke him, just enough to let him feel the chafing edges of the coarse fibers.

Wide eyed and suddenly too afraid to struggle, Joe saw Carver nod to the Indian, Clyde. And then…then that Indian started pulling the other end of the rope, taking up all the slack that had left the noose dangling near the floor before.

“I told that judge I didn’t see the killing!” Joe shouted. The rope above him was beginning to move upward. “All I saw was the knife! Ask him! I didn’t want them to hang you! I told him that! Ask him! You–” The rope at his neck pulled Joe’s chin upward until it was clear he couldn’t sit on the floor like he had been any longer. He had to reposition his legs to get his knees under him, and there was nothing he could do to protect his wound in the process.

“It’s too late, boy,” Carver’s ghost said in a low, raspy voice. “The judge is already dead. Same as that Hatcher woman. At least the spirits gave me two good turns.”

Talking wasn’t worth the effort as that noose moved higher, lifting Joe agonizingly to his feet. The wound in his right calf screamed out at him even when he didn’t dare pull a scream from the thinning tunnel of air still open in his throat.

Hearing that the judge and Missus Hatcher were dead struck Joe hard in his belly–but not for the reasons it should. The news didn’t awaken any sense of sorrow or grief. All it did was tell Joe he was bound to be next.

 

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