Free Blood at Bear Lake by Gary Franklin

waste.
    He added wood to his fire.
    Joe was standing with coffee boiling and meat to offer when the wagons rolled ponderously into view.
    There were only two of them, drawn by gaunt oxen. Three on one wagon. Only two on the other. He could see from the way the wagon wheels cut into the soil that the wagons were much too heavily loaded. It amazed him that anyone so ignorant could have gotten this far. And by themselves, too, without the support of others.
    A proper train should consist of half a hundred outfits or more. For protection, of course, but even more for the diversity of skills that could be found in a large train. Out away from the towns and the farms back East, a good many of these movers were as helpless as babes. They needed one another’s abilities to make a functioning whole.
    But a small outfit like this . . . Joe shook his head and waited for them to reach him.
    Of the five oxen, two looked ready to drop right then. And he doubted that more than the one pale red near wheeler on the first wagon would make it all the way across the Sierras. These people needed to find themselves a nice place to hole up until their animals could recover some strength after the ordeal of the desert.
    â€œHowdy.”
    â€œHowdy yer own self.” The man who seemed to be the leader of this tiny band came forward and stuck his hand out. “Name’s Howard Wickersham.”
    â€œJoe Moss.” He took the offered handshake.
    â€œThese is my brothers, Tom and Benjamin. We’s from Missoura. Would you be Yankee or Secesh?”
    â€œNeither one,” Joe said. “Not that it’s any nevermind o’ yours, Mr. Wickersham.”
    â€œEverybody says that, y’ know. Nobody ever means it. Now us Wickershams, we’s for the Union.” Wickersham, a man almost as gaunt as his oxen, cocked his head and peered at Joe expectantly, obviously waiting for some sort of response to that admission.
    Joe had none to give. He did not know what that war was about, and didn’t give a shit anyway. Instead, he said, “There’s coffee in the pot and meat laid out over there. Help yourselves to ’em.”
    â€œNow that’s real neighborly of you, Mr. Moss. Thankee kindly.” Howard motioned to his brothers, and they hurriedly grabbed cups from inside the driving boxes of their wagons and stepped nice and lively to the coffeepot.
    Howard looked to be the oldest of the brothers, perhaps as old as Joe, while Tom and Benjamin would be in their late twenties or early thirties. All were dressed in flannel and homespun and were barefoot. They were lean and shaggy, with unkempt hair and dark, uncut beards. They seemed to be unarmed save for the large knives on their belts.
    If they had no rifle to hunt with, that could explain the way they pounced on the antelope carcass, each man carving away a huge chunk of meat to roast. If they kept at it that way, Joe thought, it would all be gone before daybreak.
    Not that he gave a damn. He had given it all. They were welcome to use it when and how they pleased.
    Joe turned away from the grunting and gasping as the three men gorged themselves, barely taking time to sear the outside of the slab of meat before they gulped it down, blood running into their beards.
    He turned away, intending to step a few paces off and drop his britches to crap, but stopped short when he saw movement inside the second wagon.
    The end canvas fluttered, then was drawn back a few inches and an eye appeared, peeping out from behind the filthy canvas.
    â€œWho’re you?” Joe asked.
    â€œDon’t be paying her no mind,” a voice behind him said. There was an edge of challenge in the tone, Joe thought. A cold edge of warning.
    Joe grunted. Like he himself said a few moments earlier, none of this was any of his nevermind.
    But he changed direction and walked farther from the wagons before he squatted.

22
    JOE SAT CROSS-LEGGED just outside the circle of firelight,