Johannsen learned about the boy only minutes after he’d sent two of his men back to St. Louis to scout for the boy’s father, the Army Officer. He’d been warned that an Officer and a Sheriff were both looking for the boy. Somehow, he’d wandered off and gotten lost from the man who’d brought him.
Two hours after he’d sent the pair to town, his scout, the half-breed called Flat Iron galloped into camp on a horse that had been run half to death. The Indian slid off the saddle with the ease of a man who had spent his childhood on the back of a horse, and he dropped the bundle of rolled-up oilskin duster at the outlaw’s feet. Johannsen gave it a nudge and it unrolled to reveal a slender child, his face bruised and swollen. There was blood in the sun-streaked hair and purple shadows beneath the eyelids.
Johannsen reached down and picked up the boy, noticing the blued lips and quietness of the child as he held him in his hands. “What did you do to him, you damn Injun?” he roared furiously, noting the dark bruises on the child’s neck.
“Oh, he’s just sleepin,” the half-breed grunted. “I had to shut him up, he was screaming like a wild cat.”
“He’s dead, you fool! He’s not sleeping! You choked him to death!” Johannsen raved. He wasn’t angry because the boy was dead, just pissed off that he had been deprived of the pleasure of taking the boy’s innocence and life himself.
He swung his arm, a brutal blow that took the breed in the face, sent him backward in a limp sprawl, dead before he hit the ground. He put his hand on the child’s chest and felt for any sign of life but there was none. One of his remaining crew asked timidly whether they would be meeting Captain Lacey for the exchange.
“Of course, we will,” he snarled. “Lacey don’t know his kid is dead. Tie him on the breed’s horse and lead him but keep him in the rear behind me. We ain’t letting none of them live, no how.”
Johannsen dropped the boy as if he were nothing but garbage and went to his horse, mounted and checked his weapons. Within a few minutes, all were mounted including the dead boy and were on the way to the rendezvous with Captain Lacey and Fitzsimmons.
*****
I opened my eyes. I was somewhere that was very foggy, so thick that I could not see my feet, yet I was not cold as the thick mist drifted over me, soaking everything it encountered. Drops dripped off my eyelids and had no taste as I licked them.
I walked and if I went in circles, I could not tell because there was no way to judge directions. There was no light other than the general diffuseness through the mist. As if the sun was there but it could not pierce the fog.
I tried to remember the last thing that had happened to me. I remembered the bad man hitting me, his hands on my neck as I screamed for help, the pressure as he squeezed, and I could not take a breath. How the light faded to a darkness and I could not hear but only felt the blood throbbing in my head and ears.
There was a deep sensation of fear, a heaviness on my chest and I could not breathe. I struggled and struggled until abruptly, white light filled my vision and burned away the mist and the darkness.
I was riding on a horse and floating above it, trotting through the woods but I couldn’t feel the animal under me. There was someone sitting in the saddle with me, but he did not look at me or see me.
I turned my head and looked into a pair of crystal blue eyes that had a gray haze in them. Blue lips and pale, bruised skin. It was my own face that I stared at, noting the rope wrapped around my wrists and the saddle horn. Rope that held a limp body onto the horse. Ropes on my feet and waist to keep me from falling off because I was no longer capable of moving those muscles because I was dead. Curiously, this did not disturb me. It was as if I were no longer connected to the flesh that I saw tied to the horse.
I tried to touch it and made no contact, had no feeling as my fingers brushed through the body. My hand reached for any touch but went right through it. My body. I was dead.
The half-breed had killed me. I looked around and did not see him, wondered if the bad man had killed him because he wanted me alive. I recognized the horse, it was the Indian’s.
I floated down to the ground and found that I could keep up without moving any part of my…form. I wasn’t sure if I still had a body, but I could move simply by willing myself to follow. They were riding somewhere in a hurry and I was curious where they were taking me.
That was answered as they rode into a clearing just off the main trail where more of his crew were waiting. From the scuffed-up ground and cigarillo butts, they had been there for a serious length of time. They looked at me on the breed’s horse and it was a few moments before they noticed that something was off.
The redhead spoke in an astonished voice that carried and he echoed the words that I looked dead. I wanted to tell them that it was not so, that I was right there but no one heard or saw me. No one dismounted but remained on their horses and waited. Their gazes at me were furtive and almost frightened.
The shadows were growing longer and nearly vertical when the man on the pretty bay horse trotted down the road, followed by an Irishman wearing a bowler and twin guns. The bay’s rider had his hand on his pistol and the second man remained behind, hidden just off the road. I could see him, but the others did not.
When the man halted the bay, he called out and I knew his voice immediately. It was my father and the hidden man was Fitz. I yelled to warn them of the ambushers hiding in the trees but not a word reached them. I shouted and ran to his side, trying to pull at his boot heels but I still could not touch him.
“Pa!” I shouted, dancing in my terror and the horse snorted and stepped side-wise in fear.
“Johannsen!” my father shouted. “I’m here. Where’s my son?”
“Whar’s the gold?” the old man yelled back. He gestured for his men to flank Dad. I jumped up and down, making Dad’s horse spin around and bolt away, which made my father look to see what had so unnerved his horse. I stared in pride as his seat remained solid, he never budged and followed the horse in the bolt. He saw the movement in the woods and shouted a warning that was echoed by Mr. Fitzsimmons.
Coming up behind them were more people, a carriage and riders. Sheriff Harris and Miss Caitlin and Mr. Baker driven by a Coachman who carried a shotgun. All of them were armed and ready, unaware of the others identity until Harris and Miss Caitlin shouted my name.
“Crispin!”
My father said, “more of your thugs, Johannsen?”
‘No, Dad,’’ I said. ‘They’re friends’, but still he couldn’t hear me.
“I’m Sheriff Harris,” he said. “We’re looking for a child named Crispin. Was told that he was taken this way by a half-breed. Are you his father?” They took refuge behind the carriage.
“Captain Lacey. My son was stolen by Johannsen. He offered to ransom him back.”
“Crispin is your son?” the lady asked.
“You know him? How?” They closed ranks to present a united front to the outlaw.
“I found the boy in the company of Frenchies. They were using him as a slave, took exception to the treatment and took him away. We came here to find his parents, I put an ad in the Dispatch.”
“This ain’t old home week,” Johannsen interrupted snidely. “Where’s the gold? No brat until we sees the gold. You ain’t carrying no gold on them horses. Where’s the wagon of gold?”
“Fitz,” my Dad said quietly, and Mr. Fitzsimmons rode up to drop two sets of heavy saddlebags in the middle of the road. “That’s all I could borrow,” he added. “It’s 50,000 worth of gold coin.”
Johannsen’s eyes glowed with lust.
“Where’s the boy?” my father asked softly. He stood in his stirrups and called my name sharply. Harris and Miss Caitlin crowded close to my father.
Johannsen nudged his horse out of the way and pulled the reins of my horse forward. Just close enough so that my body could be seen but not close enough to make out my filmy eyes and blued skin. They had pulled my coat up high on my neck so that the bruises from the choking could not be seen.
Yet, something warned my father and with a heart-wrenching cry of pain and rage, he spurred his horse forward toward me. His gun was leveled on Johannsen. Bullets peppered the air and I watched each one from my friends find a target with unerring accuracy. The boom of the shotgun sounded like a cannon. None of the bullets from the outlaws touched my father, Fitz or the Sheriff. In fact, the only bullets that found flesh were in the bodies of Johannsen and his men, their horses and mine.
When it was over, they were all dead and the horse that I was tied to groaned and sat down. Rolled over and pinned my body half beneath it and the ground. My father leaped from his mount and ran toward me, grabbing me loose before I could be pinned completely under the dead horse. He rocked me in his arms as he sobbed unabashedly before them.
Mr. Fitz came and laid his hands-on Dad’s shoulder as the others joined him.
“He’s dead,” my father mourned. “He has been for hours, maybe days. Strangled.” He pulled my collar down and the marks on my throat were blued fingerprints on white skin.
“I’m so sorry,” the lady whispered and there were tears in her eyes. “I met him, a sweet boy and very loving.”
“I took care of him for a couple of months,” Harris told Fitz. “We came to St. Louis to put an ad in the Dispatch. On the way to dinner, he took off and we lost him in the streets. We had the street urchins looking for him and was told that a half-breed had taken a child from the tanneries down at the river. Took him out of town on a fast horse. They said he was one of Johannsen’s crew. We followed the breed’s tracks when we caught up to you.”
Fitz said, “I didn’t see a half-breed with them. Did he escape? We could get a posse after any survivors for a necktie party.” He looked around to see if anyone had managed to flee. There were none left alive to ask.
“Cap’n,” Fitz said gently. “We need to take care of him. Bury him.”
Lacey refused to let go until Miss Caitlin gently pulled me from his grasp. “Let me take him, Mr. Lacey. I’ll see that’s he treated respectfully and ready for what’s next. I’d be honored if you’d let me do this last thing for him.”
Wordlessly, my father let me slide out of his arms and she carried me to the carriage, handing me up to Mr. Baker before climbing in herself. She took me back and held me close to her breast, closing my eyes so that no one could see the film covering my eyes. There were blood red lines in the whites and my face had swollen from the pressure of those hands around my throat.
I watched them, kicking at the saddle bags only to stare at the one that had split open. Instead of the gleam of gold, I saw the dull gray color of lead and iron. When I heard Mr. Fitz yell No! in horror, I turned to see my father stick his pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger.
I screamed and ran to him, his body fell over, blood and tissue spattered the ground and the back of his head was gone. I fell to my knees and sobbed, angry that he had done that to me. I looked up, hoping to see him join me but he was not there. Mr. Fitz cried as he picked up my father.
“Oh, Faille, my lovely laddie. Why did you do this?”
Both Harris and the lady came running to stare in shock at my father. I watched as they carried him to the coach and laid him next to me. Watched as they turned around and headed back to the city, leaving the other bodies for the buzzards.