black falcon 9 part 1 Family Matters

 

9  Family Matters part 1

 

Luke was glad to receive a message via the telegraph from his father.

“Miss you, son, but do what is right.  Your mother says keep your feet warm. Good luck, Pa.”

Luke smiled. There were a multitude more words in the terse wording of the telegram that he could read between the lines, telling him of the love of his parents, and their support of his choices.  At least he was happy with his telegram, unlike Brad Chesterton, who was scowling at his missive.

“Bad news?” asked Luke.

“You keep your nose out of my business,” snapped Chesterton.

“Oh, well, if you feel that way, I won’t bother to try to be neighbourly and rebuilt relations soured by your attempted murder, because I don’t actually care, and I doubt I’d bother to piss in your ear if your brains were on fire,” said Luke. “Unless it was to stop it spreading.”

Chesterton’s hand strayed towards his gun.

“You’re offensive, boy!” he snarled.

“Not as offensive as you are, ugly,” said Luke. “Do you really want to get in a gunfight? You’re too slow, too old, and as I am contemptuous of you, I’d do something like take your ear off and mount it as a trophy, and you’d be called ‘One-ear Brad’ for the rest of your life. I wouldn’t be merciful enough to kill you.  But I tried to open dialogue with you. You aren’t interested so I don’t care if Fingers Blackman here in the telegraph office sends  message clear all the way from Mexico to Canada that I think that Brad Chesterton is an egregiously lacklustre, languid, lazy, lamentable lump whose brains, if he has any, are a turgid concoction of venal and venomous vestigial veracity.”

“I can’t get all that down to send for laughing,” said Blackman, the telegraph operator.

“What do all that mean?” growled Chesterton.

“I said you’re a lazy sonofabitch who drips with malice and tells half-truths,” said Luke. “But if you have redeeming features, as I’m in the business of preventing trouble not caring for souls, I don’t really care.”

Chesterton did not want to tangle with a man who could cut a rope with his rifle at half a mile, and he walked out, glowering.

He had plans, moreover, which would make the puppy regret his words.

 

oOoOo

 

Luke was ecumenical in his worship, and cheerfully attended the local service. He got some strange looks for crossing himself, but nobody actually made any noises of objection. His father had been raised Orthodox, his mother born into the Church of England, and at home they had a cheerfully chubby little Irish Catholic priest, who was happy enough to compromise around minor doctrinal differences and ignored the Cossacks crossing themselves from right to left, not left to right. Luke had cheerfully assimilated several ways of worship, and admired Mr. Hill’s practical Christianity.

Church, too, was a way of keeping in touch with the community, which was important for a deputy law man, and Luke exchanged greetings with people he rarely saw, unless in town to buy supplies.

He raised his cap to a maiden of some thirteen summers, who he had last seen the day the great blizzard had struck.

“Now, I trust you’ve forgiven me, Miss Kitty, for interrupting your picnic,” he teased her.

She went pink, and grinned at him.

“Oh, Mr. Sokolov, you saved our lives,” she said. “We had our picnic in the yard, and it was hard work just getting into the house, and all the little ones clung together in a chain to follow Pa, and he and Ma and I carried the smallest ones, and Billy carried the hamper, and we got inside. Pa counted us and then he said some very naughty words, and Ma said, ‘William!’ in that tone, you know?”

Luke grinned.

“It’s a universal mother tone,” he said.

“Yes, and we were all as quiet as mice,” said Kitty. “That was a big storm, and you are clever!”

“I was barely a man when the last long winter happened, and I learned a lot,” said Luke.

“We hadn’t come west when that happened, but Pa said it couldn’t surely be as bad ever again,” said Kitty. “It’s hard work making a new farm from nothing, but at least we got all the harvest in, and it was pretty good, though I reckon I’m going to be sick of salted green beans.”

“You try them fried with apple and onion, and a little bit of bacon goes a long way in that.  And you can make a water and salt pastry and roll it thin, and put anything in, spiced if you feel like it, and fry it. The flat pies are called chebureki, and they are good trail rations too. You can pad it out with rice or cooked lentils too,” he added.

Kitty giggled, stood on one leg, and nibbled one of her flaxen plaits.

“Ma, listen to Mr. Sokolov, teaching me how to cook, and him a bachelor!” she said.

“If a bachelor can’t cook, he suffers,” said Luke. “Rice stores and goes with anything. And the more interesting you can make your string beans, the better it is. And frying uses less fuel than a lot of things.”

“It sounds very interesting, Mr. Sokolov,” said Kitty’s mother. “I’ll try anything once. And any new way of presenting what might become a boring diet has to be good.”

Luke raised his hat to the women, and went into church. He hoped the tenderfoot family would make it through the winter. He only listened with half an ear; and after church made sure to catch up with Dave Smee, the storekeeper.

“Dave, when the Evans family come in for supplies, you make sure you give them over weight on everything, and you tot it up to bill me,” said Luke. “Try not to get caught at it, though. I don’t want them to find out.”

“You’re a good man, Luke,” said Smee. “I can make sure of that.  And let Mrs. Evans think there are things of offer, too, if she’s in the shop alone.”

“Thanks, Dave,” said Luke. “Evans is a hard worker, and Billy too, and it isn’t their fault they came west at a bad time for getting started.”

“I bought in a heap o’ everything as soon as you made that warning,” said Dave. “Dried goods won’t go off, and if we don’t need it, I can sell at cost to people if it lasts so long.”

“It won’t,” said Luke. “Thanks for taking me seriously.”

“Oh, well, you ain’t been wrong yet,” said Dave. “And Granfer Perrin’s knees have been playin’ him up, and that only happens when the wind’s in the wrong quarter. And that means bad weather. I’ll help that little family out, and we’ll split the costs; they’re nice people, and those kids are the future of the town. One day all them little girls will be wives buying from me, and Billy and Lloyd farming.”

Luke clapped the storeholder on the shoulder.

He would have been amused had he heard Smee say to the Reverend Hill, “That boy might be a mackerel snapper, but by george, he’s a better man than most, and don’t want his charity known.”

 

Once the false front on the log cabin was raised, Luke was about to ride out on a patrol when Billy Evans came pelting into town on the family horse.

“Mr. Sokolov! Mr. Sokolov, sir, I seen the mail held up!”

“Where, Billy?”

“Down in the hollow, near our farm, we was expecting a letter, and... and the coach will stop to give us mail, and... and a man in a mask was holding it up! And stealing the mails!” Billy, a sturdy twelve-year-old scrubbed his hand across his eyes. “Cold wind,” he said.

“Go tell Sam,” said Luke, leapfrogging onto Blackwind’s back via the rump, an act which had Billy so filled with youthful admiration that he almost forgot his woe.

Nightwind was happy to go from wait to gallop as soon as Luke landed on his back, with a yelled “Pobihty!” Nightwind responded best to the Ukrainian commands he had been trained with.

“Oh, that is one special horse,” breathed Billy, and then, mindful that his errand was urgent, ran to find Sam.

 

 

Luke galloped towards the site of the holdup, and took Blackwind down the steep side of the valley which few horses would dare to tackle. Blackwind snorted derision at the perilous slope and cantered down it half-sideways without hesitation. He trusted his rider not to expect more than he could manage. The stagecoach was a runaway; and Luke grimaced to leave the still figure of the driver; he might be dead, whereas any passengers had a chance to live if he could catch the coach and stop it before it came off the steep bend which gave Eastbend its name.

Luke urged Blackwind to a full out gallop, and got up to stand in the saddle, leaping onto the lead horse.  It would not be enough, the second leader was too panicked. He grimaced, stood again, and with the consummate skill of a man who has been handling horses since he could walk, straddled to stand with a foot in each saddle, and reassure both horses with his hands on each rein, speaking calmly.

The coach slowed enough to come round the steep bend, Luke feeling the coach rock slightly as it fishtailed more than he would have liked, and he was bringing the horses to a trot as they swept into town.

If Billy had been impressed by his hero before, his eyes almost popped out of his head at the sight of the deputy marshal with a foot on each of the two lead horses, gentling them to a stop. Luke threw the rein to the agent of the stage coach company, and whistled to Blackwind. The faithful horse trotted up, and Luke tossed himself onto his saddle, to wheel and ride off.

Sam had taken Jed and Bart, being competent horsemen, and not otherwise occupied, and Luke caught up with them as the sheriff administered first aid to the driver.

“Sorry I left you,” said Luke. “I had to stop the coach before it tipped into the river.”

“Yes, of course,” whispered the driver. “Bastard hit me on the head, and fired to make the hosses run.”

“Which would have been murder without the coach being stopped,” said Sam, grimly. “If there was anyone inside.”

“A passel of ladies going out as mail order brides,” said the driver.

“Well, they owe their lives to Luke,” said Sam. “Bart, can you take Moses Burrel here into town on your nag? Jed and Luke, perhaps you can backtrack?”

“Do my best,” said Luke. “Did he rob the ladies?”

“No, all he wanted was the mail,” said Burrel. “Didn’t ask if we had any paychest or anything, or if the ladies had jewellery, grabbed the mail and rode off with it.”

“People do send money through the mail,” said Sam. “More anonymous that, than having to fence geegaws, but then, so’s gold.”

“Why mail money when it’s faster and safer to wire a transfer to a bank?” asked Luke.

“Some people don’t trust the wire,” said Sam.

“No accounting for folks,” said Luke. “Right, come on, Jed; you won’t learn any younger.”

“What are we looking for?” asked Jed.

“Hoof marks, primarily, going away and recent,” said Luke. “I imagine we’ll be going upstream a way,  few horses could handle going up that slope; though if anyone has, we’ll likely find a heap of scree, disturbed fallen debris, below where he went up.”

Jed nodded, and followed.

“See this? The nag rode into the river,” Luke pointed to the hoofprints going into the river. “It’s an old trick to throw people off your trail, to go up or down river a way, and get out where you feel like, on either side, and without casting for trail on both sides, up and down stream, you can’t tell. But here we have two advantages. Care to guess?”

“Uh... I suppose so,” said Jed. “He couldn’t hardly go back downstream, could he? He’d soon be visible by anyone coming to the coachman’s aid.”

“Yes, the only way would be if there was a good place to leave without showing much sign on the other side downstream, and there isn’t,” said Luke. “I also doubt he even crossed it. The river’s in spate, and nobody but a fool is going to ford it when he has a good chance of getting wet. Which at this time of year might be fatal. I suggest we keep on going this side, and see if he splashed through the shallows to come out a little later.”

“Are you part Indian?” asked Jed.

“No, but I learned my craft partly from a friend who is,” said Luke. “There’s more people can track than Indians, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” said Jed.

“That’s why I’m teaching you, lad,” said Luke.  “When I move on, you’ll be a better deputy if you can track.”

“Deputy?”

“Well, if you plan on staying here, you’ll want a trade, and you’ll want some work to give you some capital to set up as a carpenter, if that’s what you want.”

“I hate carpentry,” said Jed. “I like being outdoors, and doing the building of houses, but I’d rather be out riding.”

“Deputy work isn’t all riding after criminals,” said Luke. “There’s the paperwork to do as well.  When we’ve done our tracking, I’m going to have to write up about coming on the stagecoach and having to stop it, and then the chasing of the person who did it. I expect when they have more fancy lawyers out in the west we’ll also have to learn all that photography malarkey to have proof we saw the hoof prints, rather than a man’s word being his bond.”

“It isn’t always,” said Jed.

“Well, no, I suppose not,” said Luke.  “Oh, hello, what’s that in that bush ahead?”

That turned out to be the mail bag, the letters spilling out of it.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” murmured Luke, quoting a book his sister Alice owned.

 

 

I'm 2/3 of the way through part 2 so should have that for tomorrow