Wide Clear Sky

Bernard Veale

Description

Nathan Dale is a cavalry sergeant demobilized after the Civil War.He and his army buddies sign on as Indian fighters for a wagon train from Independence, Missouri to San Francisco. He has spent four years of his life in the army and knows nothing about women. The wagon master is killed and young Nathan finds himself in charge of a thirty-wagon train, Indians he can handle but women baffle him completely.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 10 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783337910
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Title Page
THE WIDE CLEAR SKY
Bernard Veale



Publisher Information
Published in 2014 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of William Stafford to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2014 William Stafford
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.



Chapter 1
Nathan Dale came out of the paymaster’s tent with more money than he had ever received in his young life. The Civil War was over and he was free of the army for the first time in four years.
It had not been easy in the Fighting Sixth and he had made sergeant mainly due to the decimation of their ranks. They had done their best to persuade him to stay on particularly as the Sixth was scheduled to police the plains and he was one of the few that could speak the Shoshone language but he was tired of bloodshed and discipline. He wanted to get as far away from the army as possible.
He walked out into the dusty road carrying his battered backpack and strode into the town to look for work. There was no point in heading home as most of his comrades had done. He did not have a home to go to. His family had been wiped out in a Confederate raid three years back when a cannon ball demolished the shack.
He went into the saloon and paid for a beer. He watched quietly while a rowdy group of ex-soldiers threw dice in a drunken attempt to get rid of their pay in the mistaken belief that they were going to win a lot of money.
“Excuse me sir,” he turned to the bartender and said. “Where am I most likely to find a job in these here parts?”
“You ain’t gonna find nothin’ around here, sarge. There’s thousands of you men passing through and every one’s looking for anything to earn a buck. The job market done collapsed in on itself. Men are accepting twenty cents a day digging latrines. You’d best get out west. I hear tell that there’s some prime land out there iffen you ain’t scared of no injuns.”
“Yeah? You happen to know of any wagon trains headed out from hereabouts?”
“Had one last week but you gonna haveta run to catch up with ‘em.”
“I’m gonna need a hoss. You gotta livery stable in town?”
“Now there you might jes’ be in luck, sarge. There’s a dude sittin’ right there in that corner. He done brought in a coupla hunnerd remounts which the army ain’t fixing to buy no more. He’s gonna sell them off to anyone as is willin’ to pay genuine coin for ‘em. You go make him an offer. Tell him I done sent you.”
“That’s right neighbourly of you, sir, my thanks.” Nate drained his beer and walked over to the man.
He was a big man with large horny hands but he was dressed like a drummer from the East with a fancy embroidered vest and black broadcloth tailcoat.
“G’day to you, sir, the barkeep sent me over to speak to you. He tells me that you are trying to offload a bunch o’ mustangs and I’m kinda interested.”
The drummer looked up at Nate with a bitter smile. “Waal you come to the right place, Sarge. My handle is Ben Lassiter. Sit yerself down. How many do you want?”
“Heck, I jes’ want something to carry me westward, sir.” Nate said as he eased into a chair.
“Okay, so you gonna need two: one to ride and one to pack yer vittles. I’ll give you the pick of the bunch for twenty bucks each.”
“Sorry, sir, I ain’t got that kind of cash to throw away on unbroken hosses.” Nate stood up and turned to go.
“Hold on there, sarge. I see you done been fighting for yer country so I’m prepared to let you make me an offer.”
“I’ll give you five dollars each, sir. That’s the best I kin do seeing as how my pay is gonna have to last me until I kin find work.”
“Waal mebbe I kin help you there, Sarge. I’m gonna have to git these critters over to Independence in Missouri where most o’ the wagon trains set up. You round up a few of yer men, say four, and I pay twenty cents a day and all found. When we get there, you keep the hoss and saddle for making like my foreman. That suit you?”
It took Nate all of three seconds to accept the offer. He was bound for Independence anyway.
“You make sure that those men are good and reliable. I ain’t paying no-account bums to run my hosses ragged.”
“Yessir, Mister Lassiter, all my men are hoss-wranglers. We kin break ‘em in fer you too. Y’know: add value to ‘em. What happened to yer men as brought the hosses here?”
“I paid ‘em off. I figgered the army w’d take the hosses offen my hands.”
Nate saluted Lassiter from force of habit and turned away smartly. He went outside to find some men from his squadron.
There were a lot of men from the Sixth lounging about. They were probably waiting for someone like him to tell them what to do after years of doing nothing except under orders. Nate did not want any of them. He had some men from his own section that he knew and trusted, all he had to do was find them.
The first man that he found was Billy Perkins. Billy was a farm-boy but he was also the best shot that Nate had ever seen.
“Hey Billy, I gotta job for you twenty cents a day and all found.”
“Twenty cents? Hell, cavalry’s offering fifty cents a day to stay on.”
“You want to stay on?”
“Hell no, but there’s gotta be something better out there, Sarge.”
“Mebbe there is but you ain’t gonna find it in this here town. There’s too many men looking for too little work.”
“So what’s the job?”
“We ride herd on a bunch of hosses over to Independence, Missouri where the wagon trains set out. We gotta have a good chance to sign on as Indian fighters for a wagon train and that’ll get us out West, what do you say?”
“I’m in Sarge. I like hosses and I hear tell that there’s plenty of farmland out West for those as know how to work it.”
“Good man! You know where I kin find Jed Hawkins and Aaron Simpson?”
“I done seen Aaron heading for the saloon, Sarge.”
“I jes’ come from there but I ain’t seen Aaron.”
“Yeah, that was a while back. I’ll go look for them. Where do I find you when I do?”
“The boss is a dude called Lassiter, sits in the saloon dressed in tailcoat and fancy vest. Tell him that I sent you iffen you don’t see me there.”
Nate walked down the main road to the saloon at the other end and stepped in to see if he could spot his men. The place was packed and most of the crowd was centered around a table in the corner where a high-stake poker game was in progress. Nate could not make out his men from the crowd of identically dressed men viewed from the back so he circled the crowd trying to pick out faces.
To his surprise one of the players seated at the table turned out to be Jed Hawkins. He had a nice stack of chips in front of him and most of the onlookers appeared to be rooting for him seeing as he was the only uniformed man at the table.
Nate knew that Jed would not relish an interruption in the course of the game so he held back and watched the play. The entertainment did not last all that long, Jed had great confidence in the cards he held. He increased the ante and was raised by the frock-coated man with the slender white hands, clearly a professional gambler.
The crowd stirred as the other players threw in one after the other when Jed went ‘all-in’. The corner hushed as Jed saw his opponent’s cards: a straight flush to Jed’s four kings. Jed kicked back his chair in a fury just as Nate pushed his way to Jed’s side. Jed opened his mouth to spit out an accusation at the gambler and that is when Nate hit him hard in the solar plexus.
Jed doubled over and Nate guided him through the crowd and out of the saloon while Jed gasped for breath. Nate sat him down on the boardwalk at the front of the saloon.
“What the hell you do that for, sarge?” Jed said with tears streaming down his face.
“That cardsharp had the drop on you, Jed. You so much as make a move for your pistol he’da shot you dead.”
“Yeah but he took me for everything I got.”
“Iffen you’da said what you was gonna, you’d have nothing at all, not even life.”
“Sarge, it ain’t that I’m not grateful for being bust in the gut by you but we’re outta the cavalry now and I ain’t your responsibility no more.”
“Yeah? So what are you gonna do now? Go back and sign on again?”
“Hell no! I’ll find some work and forget all about the army.”
“Have you asked around about work, Jed?”
“Sure I have. There ain’t any. That’s why I was trying to build up my stake.”
“You picked a bad way to do that. Poker in barracks is fine but outside it’s deadly serious and you gotta be better with a gun than you are with the cards.”
“So what in all tarnation am I gonna do now? I’m dead broke. I’ll have to sign on again.”
“No, I got one other option for you. I come looking for you ‘cos I gotta herd of hosses to take to Independence in Missouri. It only pays twenty cents a day and all found but it gets us to where the wagon trains gather to head west and I’m planning to sign us on as Indian fighters for a trip out to California. What do you say?”
“What the hell else kin I say? I got no choice, Sarge, it’s you or back into the cavalry. Let’s go.”
“I’m also looking for Aaron Simpson, you seen him?”
“I walked out of the pay office with him but I ain’t se