By Joanna Phillips
Prologue
Ghost Riders
She stood as still as a statue, her eyes riveted to the crowded cemetery down below. The whole town had turned out, she noted with some satisfaction. Of course, they’d come more to say they’d been than anything else, but at least they were there. No one saw her there. They never did. No one wanted to see her.
She stood alone on the hill. She wore her only dress, a faded gray frock that she’d outgrown a few years ago. It was all she had though, and her only way to pay her respects properly.
Tears threatened her eyes as the words of the preacher drifted to her. She fiercely bit her lip and forced them down. She didn’t cry. Anger twisted her heart at the scene. She’d always been angry, but never so much as today.
A breeze finally stirred on the hot summer air. She twisted her neck so that the wind might caress her cheek. The breeze grew stronger, and strands of straight, coppery red hair drifted across her neck and forehead.
But still, her strange, silvery gray eyes remained dry and clear.
She had loved him dearly, and he’d never known why.
August 20, 1876
All her life she’d loved the land of the West. She’d built her life around it, dreamed, lived, loved, and grieved there. Perhaps that was why she took such comfort from the tiny bluff that overlooked the windswept grass rolling all the way up to the majestic silver mountains.
A blink of her eyes instantly transported her back fifteen years. God, she thought as she watched the shadows of the clouds roll over the mountain, I was so young then…we all were.
She could feel the earth tremble long before she could hear the hoof beats in her mind of horses long gone. She could hear youthful voices brimming with excitement, could almost see them all as they’d been then, fresh faced and happy, as they thundered into the station. She could feel the energy and heat radiating from them as she reached up to take the reins, to greet them with a smile.
“Rider Coming…” Unconsciously the words formed on her lips and escaped them. The heavy, still air of summer did little to carry the words away, seeming to warn her that her voice was never to reach the ears of those riders again.
There were no more riders coming in, she knew. It was an era long gone.
A pain unlike any she’d ever known seemed to squeeze her chest, an emptiness and hollowness that she doubted would ever leave her settled deep into the pit of her stomach and spread throughout every corner of her.
A man with unparalleled greatness and heart, who had given such shades of meaning to her life, was dead.
“Mama?”
She turned around slowly from her perch on the bluff and felt a wave of tenderness wash over her as the tall boy nervously dropped the reins of his loud colored paint mare and walked up the hill to her side. He was the picture of his father. Light, thick brown hair was tousled from his gallop to find her. His blue eyes had a million facets, a million depths, all of them loving and gentle when he gazed upon her. He was thin and lanky, not having quite grown into his large feet and hands yet, but he still moved with an easy grace and confidence.
Words were too hard, she realized as she stood up and turned to face him, her throat was far too tight to speak. She couldn’t possibly say anything when she stood here and looked at the young man in front of her. Not when the memory of his namesake washed over her in waves of dizzying agony.
“I came out here as soon as I heard. Rachel said you didn’t want to be bothered, but I couldn’t let you sit out here alone all day,” his eyes were apologetic and sheepish for intruding.
Just like his father, she thought, and a smile crept onto her mouth, although her lips trembled with restraint of holding back tears, He has to protect me too. But there is no protecting me from this. There is nothing anyone can ever do.
When his mother still didn’t speak, James felt tears start in his own eyes. James Hickok had been a legend in his own mind since before he could remember, and a loving uncle as well. News of his murder had shaken James to the core, and looking into his mother’s tortured eyes made matters much worse.
“Mama, I’m sorry.”
Lou finally could hold back her tears no longer as she stepped forward to wrap her arms around her son. Could this be the same boy that she’d once rocked in her arms, the same tiny child that had come to her in the midst of the blood bath of the War? The same child that would never have known his father if it hadn’t been for Jimmy’s great love of them both?
“Mama, I’ll miss Uncle Jimmy so much!”
He forgot his young man’s pride as he sobbed onto her tiny shoulder as he had not allowed himself to do since he was a child.
Lou finally found her voice in light of her son’s grief, “I’m going to miss him too, James. I don’t think we’ll ever stop missing him. Time helps though,” she added the last part to console her son. As for herself, she knew better. Jimmy had been a big part of her life and family for too many years.
As she held her son, there in the sweltering late afternoon heat, Lou’s mind again drifted to Jimmy Hickok in life. A firebrand at first, but slowly, and ever so surely, a man of great dignity. He’d never found the peace he desired so desperately, although he’d had bouts of love and rest, often while visiting her and Kid at the old Sweetwater station.
Her emotions had always been a maelstrom with Jimmy. Although she would never change the choices she made or the life she lived, she and Jimmy had always had a special bond. She’d guiltily denied it for a long time. She loved him as her brother, as her friend, as someone more dear to her than she could say. And, at one time, she’d even loved him as more than those things. There had always been an attraction between them that was more than physical. They understood each other perfectly. Always had, right till the end.
“Why don’t you come back to the station?” James suddenly asked her, stepping back and wiping his eyes, “Teaspoon’s there, and word has been sent to everyone else, just in case they didn’t know. I’m sure Papa will rush home as soon as he hears.”
Lou’s heart twisted again as she thought of her husband, out moving some horses to auction in Kansas. She prayed he wouldn’t find out until he returned, although she longed for his arms now sorely. She wouldn’t be able to let the brunt of her grief out until her husband looked into her eyes. She dreaded and wished for his return with confusion. It would be one of the hardest things they’d ever have to face, and yet, they had both known some day the news would come, much as it had, in the form of a newspaper.
“Mama?” James repeated softly, his concern and discomfort at seeing the woman that was usually so steadfast in such shock and grief.
Lou reached for James’ hand and squeezed it tightly. “I think I want to sit out here a while longer. I’ll be fine. You go see if you can’t get Rachel to feed you something.”
“Rachel is always trying to feed me something. If she had her way I’d look like Teaspoon by now.”
Lou genuinely smiled at his brave attempt to grin, “There’s nothing wrong with that. Run along, now.”
He nodded, and with rare wisdom for someone so young walked away. He instantly understood that his uncle’s death had affected his mother in a way that no one else could even come close to understanding. Although Teaspoon looked twenty years older since that morning when for all they’d known Uncle Jimmy had still been alive and well, and protecting the citizens of Deadwood, James knew his mother was fighting with emotions she might not even understand. He knew better than to ask questions. She probably couldn’t have told him, even if she wanted to explain it.
Best to let Papa talk to her. He was the only one who could, James thought.
Lou watched him ride away, his back straight and proud in his saddle, Katy’s granddaughter kicking her heels high and enjoying the run.
Slowly, she turned around and folded her arms across her chest. A chill had come over her, even though small beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. Her long dark auburn hair was pulled back from her face and hung down her back in a thick braid, but a few strands escaped and stuck to her tear and sweat moistened skin.
The same empty, deadly calm settled back over her as she watched the sun sinking lower. She’d just seen him at Christmas. He’d spent two weeks with her and her family, teaching James how to shoot, helping Kid with the horses and talking quietly with her. They’d always had the ability to talk about nothing and everything for hours, although it was strange for two quiet people to have so much to say to each other.
Again, she could feel the trembling of an approaching horseman of yesterday, and she longed to look up and see Jimmy on his golden palomino, black hat pushed low over eyes that were both piercing and guarded, but always gentle.
The thundering persisted, and Lou realized with a start that there really was a rider approaching her.
She stood up and unconsciously moved her hand close to her gun, ever on the lookout for the dangers of the still Wild West. However, her hand swiftly dropped to her side as the big black and white paint mare came into view.
Kid had come to her.
She never tired of watching him ride, she thought, just as she loved to see their son on horseback. The horses were the center of their life, right along with the land they raised them on. They’d tried to get Jimmy to stay on the ranch with them, to be a partner and not just a hand, but he’d refused.
Lou could still remember the shouting match they’d had the day he refused their offer. He’d been too worried that trouble would find him, and along with him the McCloud family.
Kid rode directly up to her, and his horse, Belle, sat on her haunches and threw dirt onto Lou’s split skirt, although she didn’t care. She thought of how much Belle looked like Kid’s old horse, Katy, who was still alive at twenty years old, and as spoiled as ever. Every foal she’d ever had bore her loud markings, and her blood was coveted in the region.
Lou finally and reluctantly turned her eyes up to her husband’s. Even if she hadn’t already known the news that brought him home early, one look into those pools of crystal blue would have told her the worst had occurred. They were more pained than she’d ever seen them. Even the deaths of Noah and Ike hadn’t brought this look to his face. His skin was tight and pale, and everything about him looked haggard. He and Jimmy had their share of disagreements and differences, but they had been brothers and best friends since they were boys. Kid had a lost look about him, and for a moment, Lou felt she was seeing him as she had the first time.
Lou felt the tears come coursing down her dusty face before she realized she was crying. Kid reached down and swept her onto Belle in front of him, putting his arms around her and sobbing into her neck in great heaving breaths.
Lou wrapped her arms around him, and pulled him closer, willing him to hold her tightly enough so that she could take his pain and he hers.
Not a word was spoken. None would do. Jimmy was dead, and nothing in the world could change that. There would be no last goodbyes, no words of love to pass between them ever again.
Kid straightened in the saddle. Lou righted herself also. Kid suddenly screamed into the wind, a cry of grief and rage, as well as a signal to his horse. The spirited animal quickly started into a dead run.
Lou and Kid both leaned low and allowed the wind to dry the tears that continued to pour from their eyes. Lou closed her moist eyes and felt the rhythmic, surging power of the horse beneath her, trusting the animal and her husband to take care of her.
And so they rode hard, away from their home, trying desperately to come to terms with James Butler Hickok’s death.
He’d been part of each of them since they met. He meant so much to each of them separately, and together as well. At times he’d almost come between them, but always, always, he’d been a part of their whole, intermingled and intertwined with their life and their love.
And today and ever after, he was gone.
To be continued...Chapter One
Copyright 1998-This work is not to be reproduced without the permission of the author
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