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.

33

            “WHERE IN THE HELL IS MAC AND NOISY?” A GNARLED, BEARDED man called down from the seat of the mudwagon. Several of his front teeth were missing, and the gap made a neat channel for spitting tobacco juice. He aimed a black stream cleanly over his swamper’s knees on the side away from Imogene.

            “No Reno stage yet,” Imogene replied; she’d come down from the porch to greet the coach. “They must have broken down somewhere along the line.” It was a clear, cold January day, and Imogene had to shade her eyes against the glare of the winter sun.

            As she spoke, the door of the coach opened and a young man stinking of hair oil and rum jumped down. The ground stopped him cold and he nearly fell. Instinctively, Imogene’s hand shot out to steady him, but his bumbling entrance embarrassed him and he waved her away impatiently.

            “That stage is over two hours late,” he snapped, pulling out a cheap, showy watch and fob. “Two hours late coming in from Reno, and I’ll know the reason why.”

            Ross spat again. “Dizable & Denning’s latest. Maydley, meet Miss Grelznik. She runs Round Hole.”

            “Mr. Maydley and I have met,” Imogene said dryly. “Mr. Maydley used to carry my packages for me.” Ross inhaled some tobacco juice, and he was submitted to a thorough pounding by Imogene before he’d recovered.

            “I’m an inspector now,” Harland retorted. “I inspect all the stops. Make sure they’re up to snuff.” The January wind made his nose run. He sniffed and pinched it. His acne-scarred cheeks were a dull purple with cold.

            “If he ain’t here, he ain’t here,” Ross reasoned, ignoring the new inspector. “Let’s cover these brutes and get in out of the wind.”

            Harland hurried indoors.