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  LARAMIE: JOURNEY TO THE WHITE CLOUDS

  LARAMIE: JOURNEY TO THE WHITE CLOUDS

  WALLACE J. SWENSON

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2016 by Jacquelyn Swenson

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Swenson, Wallace J. author.

  Title: Laramie : journey to the white clouds / Wallace J. Swenson.

  Description: First edition. | Waterville, Maine : Five Star, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016024394 | ISBN 9781432832537 (hardcover) | ISBN 1432832530 (hardcover) ISBN 9781432832483 (ebook) | ISBN 1432832484 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432833442 (ebook) | ISBN 1432833448 (ebook)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3248-3 eISBN-10: 1-43283248-4

  Subjects: LCSH: Frontier and pioneer life—Nebraska—Fiction. | GSAFD: Western stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.W4557 L37 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024394

  First Edition. First Printing: December 2016

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3248-3 ISBN-10: 1-43283248-4

  Find us on Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage

  Visit our website– http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star™ Publishing at [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 20 19 18 17 16

  To fellow travelers who know the journey can never end, until it does.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A wholehearted thanks to Tiffany Schofield at Five Star who took another chance on a new writer. Thanks also to Rod Miller and J. D. Boggs who encouraged me to submit my work to Tiffany, and to Alice Duncan who edited the work, liked what she saw, and said so. I am grateful for the group of people I write with: men and women of the West, writers of all stripes, and readers who’ve told me what they want to see in a book. I thank God for my gift and His continued support. I am humbly grateful.

  CHAPTER 1

  Resolute, Simon Steele focused his attention on the western horizon, still purple-black in the early morning. Since ghosting out of Carlisle with Buell Mace, his best friend, the ties that bound him to the small Nebraska prairie town pulled harder and harder. With each step his horse took, the nagging urge to look back grew stronger, until, lowering his head in resignation, he reined his mount around and stopped. Buell did the same, and then they stood, side by side, looking at the town that had rejected them, Simon for thievery, and Buell for . . . well, Buell for being Buell.

  A light flickered in the newspaper office, dark when they had ridden past it fifteen minutes before. Several slender columns of chimney smoke rose vertically in the dead calm air as kitchen stoves were lit for breakfast. The eastern horizon glowed yellow-orange as rays of light, like tethers tugging the sun out of bed, reached into the morning sky.

  “How’d yer folks take it?” Buell asked.

  “Ma got pretty upset last night. Pa still can’t see the sense in our leaving, but he’s willing to let me try. How about you?”

  “Pa surprised me. I felt like he’d expected this. Found out he came to Carlisle at nineteen, same age as us. He jist asked that I keep in touch.”

  They sat and watched as the town slowly woke up.

  “Gonna miss it?”

  “Huh?” Simon answered, startled.

  “Are ya gonna miss it?”

  “Some of it. My family, John, Fred Luger and Jake, your pa.”

  The question was already floating around in Simon’s mind when Buell asked. He’d been falsely accused of stealing from Swartz’s Mercantile where he’d worked. Sheriff Staker had no choice but to go with the evidence that showed Simon did it. The sheriff suspected what Swartz knew: the truth; but nothing could hold the tongues of the jealous and the mean-spirited. For them, Simon had been proven a thief and was treated as such.

  And Sarah, his Sarah from childhood, suddenly rejected him, no reason given to him or anyone else. Yeah, he’d miss some of them, but all the things he’d been taught, like honesty, tenacity, faith, and loyalty, had let him down. He no longer knew what to believe. He had to find something he could live with or by. And that something wasn’t in Carlisle.

  “I’ll miss Pa and Jake but that’s about it,” Buell said. He surveyed the scene, from the Platte River north of town, to the South Road, still hidden in shadow but familiar in his mind. Just to the west of where he now sat, that road swung north and joined this one, the Kendrick Road, the one he’d been on only days ago.

  There, he’d waited in the moonlight for a talk with David Steele, Simon’s cousin. Buell had wanted to talk, to warn him of the consequences if he continued to abuse people, especially the people Buell cared for. But the talk turned to violence, and Buell shot David, right through his mocking mouth, his face untouched, killing his brain even as it remembered Sarah’s rape. The sheriff ruled it an execution by a bushwhacking back shooter, and with David’s money belt gone, robbery seemed the motive.

  With David’s death, Buell remained the only person besides Sarah who knew the horrible truth of her rape and the shame she claimed for herself. Shame so great she denied the one thing that could make her happy: Simon.

  Simon picked up the slack in his reins. “Ready?”

  “Guess so.”

  “One last thing. Don’t mention her name. Ever.” Simon touched his reins to the horse’s neck and turned toward the west. He hoped Buell couldn’t see his face in the early-morning light. The low bushes shimmered, and Simon turned his head as tears coursed down his cheeks.

  A few minutes later Buell stopped in the road. “Hold up for a minute. I gotta run over there.” He nodded his head toward the river, half a mile away.

  “Okay. Nature?”

  “Somethin’ like that.” Buell turned and urged his horse toward the distant trees.

  Simon watched him ride away, a little puzzled by the distance he went. He freed a foot from a stirrup, moved his rump off center in the saddle and relaxed.

  The sun cracked the horizon as he watched. The blood-orange slice of solar fire flashed into view and grew thicker by the second. Soon a quarter, then a half and finally, sitting huge on the river bluffs, sat the mother of the universe in all her glory. The crispness in the morning air rapidly lost the lopsided battle with the sun, and its warmth crept through his coat. Buell appeared, centered in the flaming disk. As he loped toward Simon, the dazzling light jerked him around as though a crazed puppeteer held him on strings.

  “Get ’er dropped off?” Simon squinted as Buell rode clear of the bright light.

  “Shithead,” Buell said, a grin breaking across his swarthy face.

  “Took ya long enough, and you sure got private all of a sudden.”

  “Picked up a bonus.” Buell reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something flat and square. He han
ded it to Simon. “This is yours.”

  Simon looked at a folded stack of bills, then at Buell. “What’s this?” He unfolded the money and counted it. “There’s two hundred twenty-five dollars here.” The source of the money dawned on him. “Buell, what in hell have you done?”

  “Ol’ Swartz cheated ya outta that. You know it, I know it, and so does he. I expect in ’bout an hour he’ll find out he didn’t get away with it.” He offered Simon an impish grin.

  “But this isn’t right. You stole it from him. Damn, Buell.” Opposing sets of ethics, one old, and one just being learned, crafted the confusion Simon felt.

  “And he stole it from you.”

  “Yeah, but two wrongs don’t make a right.” Simon stared at the sheaf of money.

  “Does this time. You was always right, and I just got it back for ya. He’s still wrong for cheatin’ ya, only now it’s a little more even. One right, one wrong, and another might-be wrong, dependin’ on who ya ask.”

  Is this what Avery Singer called ad hoc justice? Simon recalled the crooked town banker. It’s my money. And I didn’t steal it—it came to me by proxy.

  “But it was stolen,” his conscience shouted.

  “It’s stupid to look a gift horse in the mouth,” he argued with himself, shaking his head sharply. “It’s mine, legally. It’s simply been reappropriated.”

  “No, it was stolen. Please, reconsider,” Conscience said, weaker now.

  “Swartz will know how it feels. Serves him right.”

  “Please,” the voice said, now barely audible.

  Simon smiled. “Damn right. Let’s get going.” He leaned forward and his horse responded, moving ahead at a fast walk.

  Buell felt the weight of David Steele’s money belt around his middle and chuckled. He clicked to his horse and caught up.

  A couple of hours later they spotted the small town of Kendrick, about a mile away. “Might be a good idea if we rode a little wide of the town,” Buell said, and angled his horse south.

  “What you got to worry about in Kendrick?”

  “I expect by now Swartz will have told Sheriff Staker somebody robbed the store. And knowin’ Staker, he’s gonna put two and two together and ask the law in Kendrick to keep an eye out fer us.”

  “Now you know why I got a little upset about you taking it. We haven’t been gone a day, and we’re already dodging like a couple of criminals.” Simon scowled at Buell.

  “How long’s it gonna take you to learn that if you lie down, you’re gonna get stepped on? You want to go back and let ’em give ya another dose of fairness and honesty? I don’t!”

  “I’ll give you that point, but I still wish we could’ve just ridden out, never mind the gettin’ even.”

  “You amaze me, Simon. What did turnin’ the other cheek get ya? Slapped again, that’s what.” Buell puffed out a cheek full of air and kicked his horse forward.

  The morning disagreement simmered throughout the day as they skirted two more small settlements. Three other riders had appeared near the last one, but had been some distance away. Simon watched the landscape now with an eye for a campsite since they’d decided not to stay in a town even if one was convenient. Riding closer to the river, it wasn’t long before Simon spied a good stand of trees. “What say we stop for the day? My butt’s about to join my shoulders.”

  Buell shrugged. “Suits me.”

  They turned their horses toward the trees.

  The reason for the trees became apparent when they rode into them; a seep fed the tiny stream that ran off to the river. They weren’t the first to take advantage of the spot. A clutter of cans, their tops peeled back like rusty petals, surrounded a well-established rock fire ring. Abundant grass allowed Simon and Buell to unsaddle the horses and turn them loose with nothing but rope hobbles to keep them close.

  “Guess we better sort out right now who’s gonna do the cookin’,” Buell said. “And it probably better not be me.”

  “And why not?” Simon hadn’t thought about it.

  “Cuz you’ll starve. I can’t cook a thing. Pa always did it at home, and I wasn’t much fer watchin’ Randall when we was herdin’ with the Texans. I’d be hopeless.” Buell smiled, obviously pleased with the way he’d stated his case.

  “So I get done for being the one who paid attention?” Simon felt a little irritated.

  “Looks that way. Sorry. I’d do it, you know I would, but I just don’t know how.” He looked almost contrite. “I’ll do what I can.” Buell shrugged, then offered a cheeky grin.

  “Can you make coffee?”

  Buell hesitated. “Yeah.”

  “Then this is how we’ll do it. I cook, but you have to make the coffee first thing in the morning.”

  “But, that means I have to—”

  “And . . . you get the wood and make the fire. That about evens things up.” Simon smiled at Buell’s confusion.

  “But. You . . . I . . . shit!” Buell shook his head and stormed off into the trees.

  Simon’s mother had packed his saddlebags tight with supplies, and she knew how to conserve space. The cornmeal had been salted with a little soda mixed in. All he had to do was pour in the water and stir it up. She’d sliced the bacon and cut off the rind. The ground coffee and sugar rode in the pan used to brew the drink, and the skillet had almost no sides. Simon was sitting on a chunk of deadfall wood, forming corn cakes, when Buell struggled into camp dragging a fifteen-foot maple tree branch.

  “They’ve burnt up everything for half a mile,” he groused, “and I shoulda worn m’ damn gloves.” He inspected the several bloody spots on his hands. Unbuttoning his shirtsleeve, he further inspected a fiery-looking scratch that ran up his arm. “So what we havin’? I’m hungry.”

  Simon looked up from his work. “Nothin’ till you get a fire going. Then fritters, bacon and coffee.”

  Buell licked at one of the larger bloody spots on his hand, wiped it on his pants leg and kicked the maple branch.

  Simon stood. “C’mon, you big boob. I’ll help you bust that up.”

  The meal hit the spot, a whole lot better than either had expected. Simon had cooked the corn cakes in the quarter inch of grease formed when he crisped the bacon. The pot made nearly two quarts of coffee and they’d drank most of it. They had enough cakes left over to make getting breakfast an easy chore.

  Buell took out his tobacco and papers and rolled a smoke. “That was real good, Simon. I think maybe I got the best of the deal.” He poked a twig into the fire and then lit his smoke.

  “You’ll talk different in the morning. I’m not getting up till you have the fire going.” Simon put the paper-wrapped bacon in the skillet and stuffed it into an oilskin bag. He pointed at the pan by the fire pit. “You want to save that coffee for morning, or do you want to make fresh?”

  Buell shrugged. “I suppose if I’m gonna make a fire, I can make coffee too.”

  “We can have a cold breakfast. Up to you. You’re the man in charge of the fire.” Simon chuckled.

  Buell flicked the charred twig at him. “So, where we headed?”

  “I’ve dreamed of seeing the Rocky Mountains. Ever since Miss Everett read to us about them in school, I’ve wanted to go there. Just where exactly, I don’t know.”

  Buell took a drag on his smoke. “You mentioned Fort Laramie once. What d’ya know about there?”

  “When Ma sold chickens to the trail folks, I heard them talk about Fort Laramie. She said folks stopped there just like in Carlisle, the last place to adjust wagonloads and buy stuff for the trip over the mountains. Sounds big enough to support a couple guys looking for work.”

  “Got any idea how far it is?”

  “About three hundred miles. But it’s not rough or steep. Mostly like it is here, so I’m told. That being the case, it’ll take us about two weeks to get there.” Simon reached over his saddle, dragged his saddlebag around to the front, and opened one side. “I got a map.” He pulled out a folded piece of paper and flattened it out. “
Next fair size town is Platte City. I figure to stop there and get some more corn meal. Maybe buy a few cans of fruit and vegetables. Eating just corn meal and bacon is gonna stay with ya, if you know what I mean.”

  “That’s only about fifty miles from Carlisle. I think we still wanna be careful. I don’t expect we’d get rousted, but ain’t no sense takin’ a chance. One of us can go in.”

  “Still hate to think we’re hiding. But that two hundred dollars does come in handy. I only had eighty-seven saved up. Wished I felt better about it.” Simon’s conscience stirred again. “How much have you got?”

  “More than that. I kinda run onto a little bonus.” Buell poked at the fire.

  “How much more?” Buell always seemed to have money, but other than helping his father run the livery stable and feed supply store, he’d never worked at a paying job. Simon had always found that curious.

  “Plenty.” Buell didn’t look up.

  Simon knew from countless past conversations that Buell had said all he intended to say. He put the map away and got up to drop another chunk of the hard-won wood on the fire.

  Darkness still claimed the sky when Simon awoke the next morning. Lying flat on his back, he wondered if he had moved the entire night. Shifting to his side, he got his answer; he felt stiff as a fence post. Groaning, he rolled over and could just barely make out Buell’s sleeping shape about ten feet away. Rolling back, he pulled an arm from under the cover and laid his hand on cold dewy ground. His mind drifted to Sarah, his efforts to push her back as futile as punching at smoke. Her face lingered at the edges of his consciousness as he drifted back to sleep.

  All his brothers and sister sat around the table, Axel and Abe squabbling over table territory as they did every morning. The door to the sod house opened, and Simon hunched his shoulders, hugging his chest against the blast of cold air coming through the door. His father, Paul, walked in carrying a milk bucket that he set on a counter by the stove. Ana, his mother, scooped oatmeal porridge into bowls for the children. She looked tired. The winter had been hard on everyone; most of their chickens had frozen to death in a blizzard, costing them the little money they got for their eggs.