May 11 - Somewhere between Gerlach Village and Eagleville
"Well, when did he leave!?" Adam demanded.
"Last night. He told me he was going on guard duty. I thought he was going to check something out on our back trail but he never came back."
"Why didn't you go after him, Joe?" Hoss asked.
"I did!" Joe insisted, his voice breaking. "I followed his tracks for two miles but I couldn't catch up with him."
From the back of the Cartwright wagon came a loud thud and Adam's voice, angry enough to rival their Pa's. "Unbelievable!" Adam came around from behind the wagon. It was hot already, and the sun was barely up. With the rise in tempers, all of them had been sweating through their shirts, and the anger on Adam's face didn't help anything. "He stole the money."
"What!?" Hoss asked, tossing the last of his coffee onto the fire and getting to his feet.
"The lock is busted, the money is gone, along with some ammunition and a rifle."
Joe had tucked his chin to his chest and gone very still, hands on his hips. He was silent for a moment before he quietly said, "I'll go after him."
"Let him go." Adam said. "We'll get to the next town, wire the local law. We can have the army after him in no time."
"With near $2000 dollars a man can get perty far, perty fast, Adam. You think that's smart?" Hoss asked.
"What choice do we have? With only 5 men, we barely have enough to drive all the wagons, and have a point man. We're in the middle of high desert country. We can't spare a day to go chasing after him, and we can't spare the man power, either." Adam argued, pointing at the nothingness behind them as if it were different than the nothingness in every other direction.
"I'll go after him. I'll track him down and bring him back here." Joe said.
"No! Joe just leave it-"
"I can't, Adam. I vouched for him. I took a chance on him. It's my fault we're in this mess and I'm going to get us out of it."
"How much more of a mess are we going to be in if you take off now?" Adam asked, his hand coming to rest on the saddle horn of the saddle Joe was preparing to step up into. "What if those Paiute decide that with two men down and two wounded, the train is a good risk now? We'll be minus two guns and ammunition. We lose anyone else and we'll have to ditch a wagon."
"Losing that $2000 could mean life or death!" Joe argued, his voice rising.
"And losing one more man would be a for sure death sentence." Hoss said, his voice dropping low, eyes casting around the curious faces of the children who were studiously pretending to ignore the adults.
Adam gently laid a hand on his youngest brother's arm, then looked to Hoss. "Get the wagons loaded up, teams hitched."
Hoss, Wilson and Bucky moved to the task and Adam let Joe's arm go. "I know how you feel. I know you're upset, you feel betrayed."
Joe's eyes flashed at him heatedly. "I don't feel betrayed, Adam. I'm angry. At you and at him"
Adam blinked and stepped back. "At me? You asked me to accept his apology, I accepted it."
"You've apologized to your horse with more sincerity." Joe snapped. "You made it clear to him that you didn't want him here, didn't trust him, couldn't stand him."
"A man doesn't desert a wagon train full of children because he gets his feelings hurt!"
Joe backed down a step, then got up into the saddle.
"Joe!"
"I'm checkin' the trail ahead." Joe said, already far enough away that he had shout it over his shoulder.
Adam watched him round the rear of the wagon then take off up the road and found himself standing alone in the heat.
"I'm losin' it, Pa." He went to the back of the wagon and slammed the lock box closed, then slammed the tailgate and took some skin off his finger latching it. "Not even a month in," He said through gritted teeth, "And I'm losin' it."
May 12 - Enroute to Eagleville
"Axel, put your feet down." Adam said for the umpteenth time. He heard boot leather scrape on wood and heard an angry grunt. Adam wiped at the sweat making the sunburn on his head itch like crazy and sat up, plucking at the front of his shirt and using the cloth to fan his chest. He glanced to his left to make sure Edith and Flora were still moving. They'd figured out that they could walk in the shade of the wagon most of the day and would rotate around it as the sun crossed the sky. Unfortunately that meant they were in Adam's blindspot much of the time.
If either of them stumbled or fell he wouldn't know about it unless someone else said something. But for the wagons there was no other source of shade. The wind had stopped blowing the morning before and they were left with pure, hateful heat that had everyone uncomfortable. That meant the younger kids and babies were grumpy, and the adults were even more exhausted than usual.
Eagleville was a day away and the cool of the mountains yet another day. Adam felt the edge of a pair of small boots knocking against his shin and he took a deep breath. Axel had been fidgeting and fussing on the wagon seat most of the morning, leaving dust and small bruises all over Adam's right leg. It was his way of expressing his discomfort after Edith had threatened to thrash him if he whined once more. Adam was trying to cut the kid a break, but he was losing his temper.
When Axel's mean spirited mood ended up with a boot to Adam's knee the train came to a halt. Adam set the brake on the wagon and hefted Axel over the same knee, giving him three solid thumps over the seat of his pants before he set the boy back on the wagon. Before he could get the animals moving again, Axle jumped down from the driver's box and ran in front of the mules to get to the other side. He buried himself in Edith's skirts, tears streaming down his face.
Hoss rode up to the stopped James' wagon, looked down to the tear stained boy, then up to his brother.
"What's goin' on, Adam? Somebody get hurt?" Hoss probed hesitantly.
"No." Adam said finally. "Nobody got hurt."
"Well...Axel's down here cryin'. What did happen?"
"He kicked me." Adam said. "So...I spanked him."
"I'm sure he didn't mean it."
"He didn't." Adam said, "No more than the mules mean to be stubborn, and the sun means to be so blasted hot. No more than Fovey meant to hate the indians. Not meaning it, doesn't excuse it happening."
Hoss muttered a soft agreement, looking to the two girls who were talking Axel's tears into non existence.
"You want to switch up. Ride a horse for a while?"
Adam squinted at the wagons that had stopped a hundred feet ahead, then looked down at Axel, wishing he'd done anything at all but swat the boy. "No. I'll be alright. Thanks."
Hoss rode ahead as Edith and Flora lifted Axel to Adam's down stretched hand, and Adam gently set the boy on the wagon seat. The minute he let go, Axel scooted as far away from Adam as he could get on the seat, crossed his arms, and stared angrily out at the desert, making it as clear as he could that he wanted nothing to do with the eldest Cartwright.
Adam sighed, muttered a soft, "Sorry." Then went back to driving the wagon.
An hour after lunch they were stopped again when the heat became too much for the mules. Adam, Hoss, Joe, Sewell and Martha put together a series of lean-tos under which the animals and children could shelter for the remainder of the daylight hours. "We'll let them rest til night fall, then try to get a few miles in. Stop around midnight." Adam suggested.
When the temperatures cooled, the excitement of traveling at night improved the children's spirits and they made more distance than Adam expected. He and the other adults discussed doing the same thing tomorrow, and every day after until they had made it into the mountains.
The following morning the children were encouraged to rest, conserve water and energy, but were given the day to do what they wanted. They were reminded that the evening hours would be spent traveling good and hard. They were told to use their time wisely, and warned against complaining.
Adam went to bed after being awake for nearly 32 hours shortly after breakfast and woke in the heat of the afternoon with a stiff and sore leg, throbbing shoulder, and a headache. The camp was quiet, with most of the children either sleeping or talking quietly. Bucky and some of the older boys had a card game going near where the hand was looking after the animals. Adam smiled softly when he recognized Harry as one of the boys participating in the game.
He spotted Hoss and Joe sitting under two other canopies. Joe was asleep, propped up by a wagon wheel, hat pulled down over his face, along with a puppy pile of ten children, including two infants. Hoss had Flora and Edith giggling at him, both with books open in their laps, surrounded by 9 kids all reclining in the shade. Wilson had six kids under the canopy by the Cartwright wagon.
Adam stood and stretched, stiffly. Axel's kick had landed right between the end of one bone and the start of another, and Adam knew he'd have one hell of a bruise. He also knew what it was to be a young boy, experiencing the heat of the desert for the first time, without a mother to comfort him and stuck in a bouncing wagon. Losing Fovey, surviving an indian attack. Adam added those to the list of things that the boy had been through lately and then put 'being swatted by a grown up' on top. He had making up to do. It should have started with Fovey, but he'd been too proud.
Adam went to the fire and poured himself half a cup of coffee before he went to each of the canopies to find the young boy. He at least had time to make up with the kid.
When his first trip around the camp failed to turn the boy up, Adam squatted down near the card game, watching the play change hands. It seemed that Harry was the most frequent winner, having the biggest pile of stones to his right hand.
"Good thing you boys are playing with rocks." Adam commented, getting a round of laughs. "Any of you seen Axel?"
Bucky sat up a bit and peered over the heads of the boys. "He's over with Joe, I think. Still sore at ya too, I reckon."
Adam clucked his tongue and nodded. "I'm on my way to fix that. I'll take over for you once I'm back, Bucky."
The hand nodded and the game resumed as Adam finished his coffee, crossing through the heat to the 'napping station".
"Joe?"
His youngest brother woke gently with an audible breath. He started to stretch out, felt that at least two heads were pillowed on his legs, then froze and lifted his hat. He looked at the pile of sleeping children that his nap had attracted and laughed softly. "I got pretty popular." He commented quietly.
Adam nodded, thinking of a dozen smart alecky things he could say. He didn't say them because once more he didn't find Axel.
"What's the matter?"
"I'm...looking for Axel."
Joe searched the heads around him, then looked over to where Hoss sat with the little boy's sisters.
Hoss called out, "Hey brother, Adam. Mornin'." Then…"What's the matter?"
"Have you seen Axel?"
"No...might be in one of the wagons."
Hoss started getting to his feet as Adam jogged to the wagons, Joe working on extricating himself from the pile of sleeping children. They started calling the boy's name as Adam peered into each wagon bed, the drive boxes, under the wagons. When he looked into the James wagon and found it not only empty, but missing one important article, Adam started checking the ground.
"He not in there?" Hoss asked, coming up to the tailgate.
"No...and that toy gun he's always toting is gone, too."
Hoss looked into the wagon then blinked. "You think he run away?"
Adam met his gaze but didn't respond, checking the sand and hard packed dirt for clues that weren't coming to him.
"Get everybody up. I want to make sure he's not anywhere in the wagons."
In minutes every child but the most stubborn of infants was awake and hunting through every nook and cranny of the wagon beds. Adam took one of the saddled horses, circling the wagon train in growing concentric loops trying to spot sign, hardly believing that a boy could leave nary a print.
When Wilson came to tell him that the thorough check had turned up nothing, Adam started riding in wider and wider circles, scanning the horizon for anything that looked even remotely like shelter. He was soon joined by Bucky and Joe and had them each go in a different direction. Once Wilson had a horse under him Adam sent him along the trail ahead, while he took the trail behind. He tried to calculate how far a boy could get on foot, especially in that heat, how long Axel's anger might fuel him before he started to get too hot, too scared, too lonely.
He chastised himself for not talking to Axel sooner. Hadn't Pa always made a point of correcting whatever lay between himself and his boys before the sun went down?
Adam was nearly a mile from the train when he remembered the dried up river gorge. They had passed it the day before and Axel would have been staring right at it when they did, pouting as he had been. Adam urged his horse into a run and covered the ground quickly, dismounting at the edge where the trail met the narrow canyon.
"Axel!"
The name echoed back at him in the silence. Adam tried again, aiming his voice up the canyon and then down again.
He walked his horse along the top of the canyon wall checking for tracks, boot prints, scrape marks, anything that might indicate that Axel had been there, or slipped and fallen. When the gorge pulled away from the road Adam turned and went the other way, following the ridge line back up the trail, then where it diverted again, weaving to the north east.
He was about to climb back into the saddle when he spotted the toy gun. Unpainted and raw as the wood was, it nearly blended into the sun dried dirt. Adam picked the gun up and screamed Axel's name again, getting as near as he dared to the ridge.
He spotted a footless boot lying on its side, five feet down on a jutting out rock and he felt like he'd been hit with a hammer. Adam ripped at the bandages keeping his right arm immobile, forcing the limb free and through the empty sleeve of his shirt. He went after the rope on his saddle, secured it around a narrow boulder and tied the other end around his waist. Using his right arm as little as possible he dropped down to where the shoe was, plucked it up and tossed it back onto the ridge, then shouted Axel's name again, searching from his new vantage point.
Axel's hat was wedged down in the shadowy crag of a boulder, an additional forty feet down. Adam climbed back up to the horse and grabbed his canteen, then slapped the animal on the back to send it back up the trail. With the canteen against his back, and his arm tucked into the sling-like strap, Adam picked his way down to the hat, eyes burning at the heat and the glare of the sun, desperately trying to take everything in so that he missed nothing.
He spotted a stockinged foot sticking out beyond a shaded spot close to the dry river bed. If Axel had fallen all that way...Adam watched the foot, calling the boy's name. He scrambled over rocks and slid through stones and dirt until the rope around his waist pulled taut, still twenty feet away from Axel. Adam loosed the rope and let it hang, traveling the rest of the way in a stumbling run before he hit his knees near the foot.
The appendage was jerked back into the shade once Axel could see who it was that had been calling. The boy's face was streaked with dirt and sweat but for two trails that meandered down from his eyes. There was a bloodied scrape on his forearm, and across the tip of his nose, but Axel's eyes were open, and his breathing seemed steady.
Adam reached a hand toward the crag then froze when Axel tried to back further against the rock.
"Axel...it's me, Adam. I'm here to help you."
"I know who you are." Axel croaked.
Adam sat back on his heels, breathing hard. "Are you hurt?"
The boy shook his head.
Adam felt a flash of anger that disappeared as quickly as it had come. "Axel...come on out of there…"
"I won't go with you."
Adam's eyes widened, and he shook his head, looking down at the dirt. Hard packed, sun bleached dirt in the middle of the desert, not a drop of water for miles but for the canteen on his back, and the thing the boy was most afraid of was the man trying to help him.
"Why? Are you afraid of me?"
"I ain't afraid of you." Axel said.
"Then why'd you run away?"
"Cause you hate me."
"What!?"
Adam shifted, moving off his already bruised and tender knee. He stretched his right leg out and settled on his left leg, leaning sideways against the boulder to take some of the pressure off his right arm.
"You smacked me."
"I...spanked you. There's a difference. And I don't hate you."
After a few minutes Adam could hear soft sobs coming from the crevice and he leaned toward it, pulling the canteen from his back. He fed it into the crack, heard the cork pop out, water slosh, then the canteen was edged back out toward him. Adam took it back, drank from it, then resettled the cork and sighed. "Axel...you're stranded out in the desert, you don't have a horse, you don't have water, you're minus a boot, and you lost your hat and your gun. And I'm fairly certain you didn't bring any food with you, either."
Adam bent his head down, peered at the teary eyed face and watched the little boy shake his head. "No..didn't think so. What kind of a man goes out into the desert without food or water, without a horse...leaving behind a perfectly good wagon train."
Adam heard dirt shift under the boulder and after a moment Axel's top half popped out. Propped up by his elbows, his legs tucked into the shade, Axel played with a bit of dirt while he said. "I was gonna go get the robber."
"The robber? Oh...you mean Fovey."
Axel shifted again, this time extracting himself completely and sitting cross-legged by Adam. "I was gonna capture him, and make him bring back the money. And then you wouldn't be so mad anymore."
The admission set Adam back and he was silent for a spell. He reached out his left hand and cupped the boy's face gently, using his thumb to clear the tears away before he softly said, "C'mere."
Axel leaned in against him and Adam pulled him in tight with his good arm. He felt bony arms going around his waist and rested his chin against the boy's head. "I'm not mad at you, Axel. I shouldn't have spanked you like I did. And I shouldn't have let so much time go by without talkin' to you. I'm sorry, son."
Axel's arms tightened and Adam thought he heard a sniffle or two.
"Are you going to forgive me?" Adam asked.
Axel's head came up and he nodded.
"Can we talk about this...robber business."
Axel sat back, his feet folded under his bottom in the way that only young children could be comfortable doing. He nodded his head, focusing on his hands.
Adam shifted, his free hand reaching for the bandages, wishing he hadn't freed his arm. "That was a brave choice." Adam said carefully. "Do you think it was a smart choice, tho?"
Axel thought about the question then shook his head.
"Don't you think you could'a used some help, tracking down a robber?"
Axel thought again, then nodded.
"I think so, too. That's why I didn't go after him all alone."
Axel scooted a little closer to him and Adam took his hat off his head, then gently settled it on Axel's pile of curls. The boy situated the hat so that he could see out from under it, then scooted a few inches closer.
"How did you get all way down here?" Adam asked.
"I climbed. And falled. But only a little."
Adam reached over and gently turned Axel's arm to look at the scrape there.
"Do you think you'll live?" He asked.
Axel looked up at him and nodded, his face and lips wrinkled in a look that Adam had seen Joe make, especially when his brother was that age. It made him smile and Axel responded by easing his eyebrows up his forehead.
"Are you mad at me for going after the robber?"
"The robber's name is Fovey, and he's not just a robber. Up until recently, he was our friend. And he might just be again." Adam said, his voice drifting. He caught the look of confusion on Axel's face and grabbed the crown of his hat, shoving it down over the boy's eyes.
Axel giggled and shoved the hat back up again. Then he leaned hard into the sweat covered, bandaged, grumpy old man and said, "I love you, Adam."
If Adam had ever imagined he would leave the train without being heartbroken, he knew it was impossible now. He fought tears of his own, hugging the boy against him, every ounce of stress and emotion from the past week crashing down on him at once. He gritted his teeth and felt the salt water rolling down his face, soaking into the start of a beard that had been growing on his chin.
"Love you, too, Axle." Adam bit out. He guided the boy away from him and cupped his chin hard enough to keep his attention. "Don't you ever run away again, hear?"
The boy nodded into his hand, Adam's hat flopping up and down with the motion, and Adam grinned through his tears, like a rainbow appearing in a stormy sky.