Sheila forced herself to stand.Moving in a wide arc around Wendell’s body, she went to the creek and dropped to her knees.Rinsing her mouth, she drank a little.She rose and shot a quick glance at the road agent’s corpse.
Something gnawed at her.She knew very little about him, except that he’d lived the life of an outlaw.He’d robbed stagecoaches, kidnapped her and her father, perhaps even murdered.Nonetheless, Sheila told herself, the Christian thing would be to say a prayer or something over him.
She put one foot in front of the other and walked slowly toward his body.
As she approached, she looked past the blood-soaked ground, past the savaged throat.She kept her gaze on Wendell’s face.His eyes were open, and he stared blankly at the patch of sky above the spruces.
With the exception of when her mother died, she’d never seen a dead person before arriving in Colorado.Her eyes had been closed.
Sheila was nine years old when her mother passed.It was summer, and most her family’s friends had fled the oven-like city to places where cool sea breezes made the season bearable.Those with loved ones off fighting the Southern rebels could not escape their fears, no matter how far they ran.
Her father couldn’t come home to bury his wife.He was away at war.Not fighting, but plying his medical skills.Sheila knew nothing of it at the time, but he was trying to save lives in a bloody place called Groveton, where General Lee and his forces had nearly annihilated the Union’s armies.
Before the funeral started, Sheila’s grandparents took her into the front parlor where the casket sat open on a table she’d never seen before.The room was filled with the cloying scents of a thousand flowers.Her grandfather, stiff and businesslike as always, walked with her to the open casket.Her grandmother stood back, weeping quietly.Her mother looked at peace, as if she were sleeping.She was wearing a navy-blue, velvet walking dress that she loved.It struck Sheila oddly that they would dress her in that on such a hot day.
She had looked very different from the man lying at her feet now.
Sheila crouched down and closed the man’s eyes.
“Rest now,” she whispered softly, surprising herself with the tenderness in her own voice.
She’d seen Dodger take the revolvers, but it occurred to her that perhaps Wendell had something that could help her.She glanced at his boots, where he kept a knife.She could see the butt of the handle, peeking out.Reaching down, she withdrew it, sheath and all.
“I know you won’t mind, Wendell,” she murmured.“It’s a matter of survival.”
Dodger had already gone through Wendell’s pockets, but she checked them anyway, hoping she might find something else that might help her, anything that might give her an added ounce of courage as she plunged off into the wilderness.There was nothing.
Sheila started to get up but stopped.She rolled the dead man’s body to the side.His coat had pulled when Dodger removed the gun belt.She almost cried out when she saw the derringer tucked into a holster fastened to his waistband.
“Thank you,” she said as she took the small weapon.
It was a Remington firearm, and when she broke it open, she saw there were two unfired bullets in the chambers.She slipped it into the pocket of the duster with his knife.
The derringer wouldn’t kill a bear, but she hoped it would be loud enough to at least scare a wild animal away.
She rolled Wendell onto his back and stood.Leaving him like this beside the creek seemed wrong.But what choice did she have?She couldn’t bury him.Besides, she thought, she’d probably be dead as well before too long.
Still, she had to do something.
Sheila took his cold, limp hands and dragged him a few steps from the water to a boulder beneath an aspen tree.She was shocked at how heavy he was.She laid his arms at his side, arranging him in what she decided would be a respectable manner.
At the edge of the pool, in a place where the sun warmed the ground, a patch of small, white flowers had just begun to bloom.Although she realized it was a fairly ridiculous gesture for a hard-bitten outlaw and the situation, Sheila picked a small bouquet anyway and placed it on his chest.
Standing back, she addressed him.“I’m sorry I can’t do more for you, Wendell.If there were a minister here, he could say a few words.But I’m the only one to send you off.So I’m just offering up a prayer that you find some forgiveness before you meet your Maker.Amen.”
The sheriff and his men had followed them from Elkhorn, and Sheila knew Dodger’s plan had been set before they left town.Wendell did kidnap her, thinking she could be used as a pawn against her father, but he agreed to her plea and stopped to let her make water.If he hadn’t, she’d be in the grasp of those outlaws right now.
“But before I go, I will tell you this.I’ll never forget what you did for me.”
Sheila walked away and stood for a moment by the creek.Behind her lay the trail to Elkhorn.She checked the timepiece pinned to her shirt under the vest.It had stopped when she went into the river, but she judged it was somewhere between three and four in the afternoon.They left town before dawn and had ridden almost without stopping.If she tried to go back, she’d never make it by nightfall.She’d be dinner for a pack of wolves, for sure.
Sheila stared the other way, at the trail where Dodger and the sheriff had gone.Wendell told her they were about ten miles from the outlaws’ camp.If she followed, she’d be walking directly into the maw of the tiger.At the same time, she’d get to the camp close to sunset.
And she’d be going to where her father was.
The dangers in either direction were real, but she knew what she had to do.
It was possible her father was still needed to keep someone alive.If she approached the camp with caution, maybe…though it was a vague and unconvincing maybe…she could be a help to him.She touched the derringer she’d tucked into her duster.
