Trail Angel by Derek Catron Page A

might ride in the back of the wagon, but they would have to bind the Colonel with every rope they had to keep him still. It would be a painful ride. The Colonel might regain his strength faster by staying put.
    â€œIf it comes to it, I’ll stay with him,” Josey said. “Give him another couple of days to get strong. On horseback, we’ll catch the wagons by the time you reach Kearny. It’s at least another month before we reach Bozeman’s cutoff.” Josey didn’t want to think about what it would mean if he didn’t catch the wagons by then.
    â€œYou’ll have to go ahead with the train,” Josey told Byron. “Just in case.”
    Byron rose without speaking and stepped away from the fire’s light. The sound of his heavy footfalls carried from where Josey had hobbled the horses. They snorted and stamped at Byron’s approach. He couldn’t have shown his displeasure with Josey more clearly by shouting it in his face. Josey followed and found him rummaging through their gear, collecting extra canteens. The Colonel would need water in the morning, and it was just like Byron to anticipate the old man’s needs. Josey put a hand on his thick shoulder. “I’m sorry, Byron. I—”
    â€œHe means as much to me as you.” Byron loomed over him, a good half a head taller and broader through the shoulders by a third. In the darkness, the whites of his eyes glowed like lamps, and they were moist with emotion. “I can care for him as well as you.”
    â€œBetter, I would say.”
    Byron was missing a tooth and the black gap showed in the flash of his smile. He handed one of the canteens to Josey as they walked toward the fire. “It’s not easy being the only black man in this company,” he said, a smile allaying some of the sting of his words. “You feel like a roach in another man’s rice.”
    â€œAny of those boot-lickers mistreating you?”
    Byron shook his head. “It ain’t like that.”
    â€œThey been tellin’ you how nice they treated their negroes?” It was a joke between them. Every Southerner they met, at least the ones who weren’t outright hostile to a black man, felt compelled to share how kindly they’d been to their slaves. After a while, Josey and Byron figured every Simon Legree must have thrown himself in front of the Union rifles on principle because only the big-hearted graybacks who’d read Uncle Tom’s Cabin seemed to have survived the war.
    â€œThey nice enough,” Byron said, “but you know those white folks won’t follow a black man.”
    In the morning, when they found the Colonel still wracked with fever, Byron stayed with him. Josey went to the wagons where the men were hitching the teams. He spoke of the Colonel’s condition and his plans to rest that day.
    â€œBut tomorrow is the Sabbath,” said Alexander Brewster, a New York farmer who had attended a seminary for a spell and assumed the duties of camp minister. On Sundays he stood at the center of the corral and read aloud from the Bible while the women saw to washing clothes and baking bread, the men to mending harnesses and yokes and shoeing the animals that needed it.
    â€œIf the Sabbath is that important to you, then I expect you will welcome the opportunity to display Christian charity,” Josey said, looking the larger man directly in the eye. “And I thank you for it.”
    Ben Miller, the oldest of the bachelor miners, protested a delay of any kind. “At the pace we’re going, the gold will be gone by the time we get there,” he said, scratching at the sunburn on his neck.
    Rutledge spoke up. “We’re making a good pace, a pace that will get us there without breaking down. That’s the thing you should concern yourself with.” Turning to Brewster, he said, “We will make today our Sabbath, and the Lord will reward us for