Ride to Valor Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  BEFORE THE WEST

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  INTO THE WEST

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  RISE IN THE WEST

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  FOREVER THE WEST

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  FIGHTING FOR LIFE

  James jammed the Yellow Boy to his shoulder. He fed a round, fired, fed another round, fired. Turning, he sent two more shots at buckskin-clad centaurs. Slugs pockmarked the ground around him. Then his head seemed to burst and he fell as if from a great height into a well that wasn’t water but a liquid pitch. He feebly tried to reach the surface and was sucked into near nothingness. Dimly, he was aware of rough hands, of being jostled, of a topsy-turvy world with him on his back and painted visages floating in misty ether. Iron fingers gouged his neck. The tip of a knife wavered before his eyes.

  Teeth gleamed in a vicious sneer.

  This was it, James thought. He tried to resist but he had no strength. His vitality was leaking out his head. The black pitch sucked him down and he was on the verge of going under when a harsh martial blare fell discordant on his ears.

  The blackness claimed him.

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, February 2011

  Copyright © David Robbins, 2011

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47713-7

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  To Judy, Joshua, and Shane

  BEFORE THE WEST

  1

  His parents named him James Marion Doyle. He was their first and only. His mother doted over him and spent many an hour cradling him in her arms and humming softly while rocking in her chair at the window that overlooked Little Water Street.

  His earliest memories were of her. She was always warm and tender and smiling. In those early years she never once spoke harshly to him or hit him.

  Of his father he had fewer memories, in large part because his father was gone from before the crack of day until after the streetlamps were lit. Six days a week his father toiled at the Hudson Barrel Company. On the seventh his parents took him to church. They would have a big meal later, their biggest of the week.

  James got to know his father hardly at all. So little, in later years he couldn’t remember what color his father’s eyes had been.

  They shared a house with three families. The hallways always smelled of food and tobacco and less pleasant odors. Their rooms were small. In the summer they sweltered and in the winter they were cold, but to him those rooms were heaven.

  They lived in the Five Points District. He didn’t entirely understand why, but he heard others say it was a bad place to live. The streets were always jammed with people. There was always a lot of noise and commotion. Hawkers sold everything from coal to apples to knives.

  One day his mother dressed him in his best clothes and put on her hat and took him to the mercantile. He loved to go there. The bins and shelves were filled with so many delights, he’d gawk in desire and amazement. But that day, along the way, his mother suddenly pulled him close and backed into a doorway and he felt her shiver as if she were cold even though the day was hot.

  A group of much older boys was swaggering down the street. Each wore a blue shirt and a high hat. Everyone got out of their way. One man who had his back to them didn’t see them and they shoved him aside and laughed. The man had a cane but he didn’t use it. He smiled a timid sort of smile.

  The group came abreast of the doorway, and James felt his mother’s fingers dig so deep into his shoulders, it hurt.

  He cried out, and all of them stopped.

  “Here’s a fine beauty,” one said.

  “I’d have her,” said another.

  “None of that,” his mother said. She had that tone she used when James misbehaved. It made some of them snicker.

  “Tough muff, she is.”

  One of them with a big belly and a round face came so close that James smelled his sweat.

  “How about you and me, then, beauty?”

&
nbsp; “Leave us be,” his mother said.

  Grabbing her arm, he leered and said, “Right here.”

  James sensed his mother was scared, and he didn’t like that the one with the belly had taken hold of her. “Go away!” he shouted, and pushed.

  The other didn’t budge. But he did scowl and poke James in the chest. “Will you look at this? Her little protector. Didn’t anyone teach you, boy? The Blue Shirts smash gnats.” He balled his fist. “Like I’m about to smash you.”

  James bunched his own fists.

  Just then another of the Blue Shirts, who sported a scar on his left cheek, said simply, “No.”

  “Why not?” the one with the belly demanded. “Do you know them?”

  “No.”

  “Then why shouldn’t I, damn it?”

  “I said so.”

  The scarred one spoke so quietly that James barely heard him, yet the one with the belly jerked his arm down and let go.

  “I was only playing, Coil. A bit of fun.”

  “We have somewhere to be,” Coil said, and the one with the belly and the rest moved on. Coil looked at James and then at his mother.

  “I had a little brother. Looked up to me, he did. It got him killed.”

  “I’m sorry,” James’s mother said.

  Coil didn’t seem to hear her. “The Dead Rabbits gutted him. They didn’t care he was only twelve.” Coil reached out as if to place his hand on James’s arm, but instead he suddenly stepped back. “Sorry about Orlan, missus. He’s a bit of a pig.”

  Then they were alone, and James heard his mother let out a long breath. “Who were they?” he asked.

  “A gang.”

  James’s father had warned him about gangs. The Five Points was overrun with them. There were the Slaughterhouses, the Bowery Boys, the Swamp Angels, the Dead Rabbits, and others.

  Sometimes at night James heard his parents mention them, but most of the time they talked about money, and how they had too little of it and their dreams of having more. He didn’t care about money. He had them, and he was happy.

  His mother did washing and ironing. People brought baskets of clothes and she’d spend hour after hour with her arms in water up to her elbows scrubbing and wringing, or applying the heavy iron. He helped with what little he could, but mostly he spent his time playing. He had a good life and as young as he was, he knew it was good. He would have liked for it to last forever.

  Then came a day that started like any other.

  His mother was up first, bustling about making breakfast. James lay in bed half asleep. The occasional clank of a pot or a pan would rouse him and he’d drift off again. Presently James heard the sounds his father made clearing his throat and sinuses, and other sounds James would rather not listen to. Some mornings father came in and pecked him on the head but not this morning. James heard him say he was running late.

  After the front door closed, it was always quiet for a while. His mother liked to sit by the window and sip her first tea of the day. Her quiet time, she called it.

  A woman brought a basket of clothes to be washed and his mother set to work. He handed her the wet shirts and dresses, and she hung them on the line. He mentioned that he would very much like a kitten.

  “Our place is barely big enough for us, son. We don’t need any animals besides.”

  “You’d like a bigger house, wouldn’t you?” James asked. He’d heard her say so many times.

  “Yes,” she admitted, and a wistful expression came over her. “I’d like one with an upstairs and a downstairs, and an extra bedroom for guests, and a yard so I could plant flowers.”

  “Could we have a pony?” James had wanted one ever since he saw another boy on a pony in the park. He’d pestered his parents to death, but his father always said it was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

  “A pony for you and a carriage for me,” his mother said, and laughed. “Listen to us. Silly, isn’t it, James? But a person can dream.”

  His mother liked to call him James. His father called him Jim. He liked James better.

  By early afternoon they were done. His mother was in her rocker, watching the passersby on the street. He was playing with tin soldiers his father had bought for him when there came a knock on the door. He went on playing as his mother rose and asked, “Who is it?”

  A man answered, saying he was Mr. Wilbur from the Hudson Barrel Company.

  James hardly paid attention. Men from his father’s work came to see them now and then. It was nothing new. He heard the buzz of voices and realized there were other men with Mr. Wilbur.

  Then his mother screamed.

  James would never forget her cry. It stopped his heart in his chest and his breath in his lungs and filled him with his first taste of deep and total terror. He recovered and jumped up in time to see his mother swoon and one of the men catch her. They carried her to the rocker and carefully set her down and Mr. Wilbur went and filled a glass with water.

  “What’s the matter?” James asked. “What have you done?”

  “Hush, boy,” one of the men said. His name was Charley, and he was a friend of James’s father. “Be still for her sake.”

  James didn’t know what to do. He yearned to run to her, but they were in his way. He saw Mr. Wilbur tilt the glass to her lips. She swallowed and straightened, her blue eyes wide with fright.

  “It’s not true. It can’t be true.”

  “I’m sorry, Mary,” Charley said. “There was nothing any of us could do.”

  James had never seen his mother so pale. He edged toward her to take her hand but stopped when tears trickled down her cheeks. He had never seen her cry before.

  “The team spooked and the load shifted, Mrs. Doyle,” Mr. Wilbur said. “Randall was behind the wagon and—” He stopped and sadly shook his head.

  “Crushed,” another man said, and both Mr. Wilbur and Charley cast harsh looks at him.

  “Dear God,” his mother said, and bowed her head. “What are we to do?”

  Mr. Wilbur patted her arm. “Randall was well thought of. We took up a collection.” He reached into a coat pocket and produced bills and coins. “There’s nearly fifty dollars here.”

  “It’s the best we could do,” Charley said.

  “Fifty dollars?” his mother said. As if in a daze, she took the money and placed it in her lap.

  Mr. Wilbur patted her some more. “I’m sure you and the boy will do fine. I’m told you are a laundress.”

  “Fifty dollars,” his mother said.

  “All the best to you.” Mr. Wilbur motioned at the others, and they filed out.

  Charley lingered in the doorway. “If there’s anything my Sally and me can do, Mary, get word to us.”

  “Thank you.”

  The door closed. James hesitated, wanting to go to her but confused and uncertain. She had such a stricken look. He thought she would cry and she did; she covered her face with both hands and sobbed in great racking heaves. It scared him almost as much as her scream. She sobbed and sobbed, and he stood in the shadows until she grew quiet and still, and he asked, “Mama, what’s happened to Papa?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” James had seen dead animals and gone to a funeral for a dead aunt, but he never, ever imagined his father or mother would die.

  “Gone, dear. Forever.”

  James went to her and clasped her hand. “What will we do without him?”

  Instead of answering, she burst out sobbing anew.

  2

  His mother was never the same.

  Where before she was always smiling and often laughed and had a sunny disposition, now she never smiled and was often grim. She took in more laundry than ever. She worked so hard that at night she was too exhausted to do more than sit in her chair and stare gloomily at the walls.

  James did his best to help all he could. For a while a lot of people came and went and several ladies lent a hand, but they couldn’t lend a hand forever and soon it was only his mother and him in th
eir own little world.

  One night she lifted him onto her lap on the chair, something she hadn’t done since he was small. “I want you to know what’s happening. I need you to be brave and it will help you if you know. Do you understand?”

  “I think I do.”

  “I’m doing the best I can, but I can’t promise it will be good enough.”

  “Good enough for what?”

  “To keep the life we had. Women don’t earn as much as men. I’ve never thought it fair, but there it is. It would help if we had relatives to help us out, but your father’s side of the family never did take to me. They thought he could do better.”

  “Grandpa and Grandma Doyle?” James got to see them twice a year. They’d bring gifts and tell him that they loved him.

  “I was too common for them. They wanted your father to marry up.”

  James didn’t know what that meant, but he decided not to ask.

  “I wish my own parents were still alive. The yellow fever took them, as you already know. And I don’t have any brothers or sisters.” She stopped and closed her eyes and for some reason said softly, “Oh, God.”

  “Mama?”

  She opened them and tenderly touched his chin. “I’m all right. I’ll always be all right as long as I have you.” She kissed his forehead. “Anyway, I don’t want you to worry.”

  “I’m not,” James said.

  “We’ll make do. It won’t be easy, and we’ll have to scrimp, but we’ll get by.” Suddenly she clasped him to her and shuddered. “Oh, my sweet boy. My sweet, sweet boy.” She held him awhile and then she set him down. Her eyes were moist. She told him to get ready for bed and went back to rocking and staring at the wall.

  James was afraid. He’d lost his father and his mother was acting peculiar. When she took him for infrequent walks, the bustling streets that once fascinated him now seemed a lot less friendly.

  His mother lost weight. She didn’t keep herself as pretty as she used to. Her hair wasn’t always in place and her dresses weren’t always as neat. In the evening, she’d open a bottle and sit in her rocker with a glass in her hand.