Trail Angel Read Online Free

of her family’s wagons, Annabelle followed the younger man with her eyes as he picketed the horses in the grass. He was smooth-faced and slender, like a childhood beau she had known from church. Yet there could be no mistaking him.
    He wore twin gun belts, one at his waist like a cowboy, the other one higher, near his ribs, so that the gun handles pointed forward. The butt of a rifle extended behind one shoulder. He looked ridiculous to Annabelle, like a boy playing bandit, but the men stood back when Josey Angel passed.
    People had their reasons for calling him what they did. Angel of Mercy. Angel of Death. The choice depended on which side a man fought. Some said Josey Angel had killed more than a hundred men. Others, that he slaughtered that many in a single day in Kansas. Or maybe it was Georgia. In one telling, after he ran out of Confederates he turned on his own bluebellies and killed them, too. Any Southerner could appreciate that story.
    While Josey Angel saw to the horses, Annabelle turned her attention to the Colonel. He approached with an old cavalryman’s walk, bowlegged, his booted feet tender against the ground like he trod on hot coals. She stepped up on the tongue of the nearest wagon for a better look.
    The settlers had built a fire to ward off mosquitoes, and in its orange glow she saw the Colonel had a lean, weathered face and a gray mustache that drooped over his mouth like a perpetual frown. He wore a buckskin coat like the trail guides in dime novels, and Annabelle wondered if he dressed that way to reassure prospective clients.
    As her father introduced him one of the miners called out, “What do we need with Union cavalry?”
    That set off a flurry of exchanges that required all of her father’s diplomacy to quell. “The war’s over,” he said. “These men have been to Montana. They can help us.”
    â€œWhy do we need anybody?” one of the Yankees said. “The trail’s been traveled so many times, it’s practically a road.” A few others found sense in that. Before her father responded, the Colonel stepped forward.
    â€œThat’s true enough,” he said in a voice so mild some of the men asked others to repeat what they heard. Those in back crowded near while the Colonel filled a pipe, his movements deliberate, like he had all night to complete the task. His long nose and sharp gaze reminded Annabelle of a hawk, but his eyes, alight with the fire’s flicker, twinkled with good humor.
    His pipe filled, the Colonel continued. “Following the Platte will get you through Nebraska, into what some people are calling Wyoming. What will you do then?” He leaned in, drawing a piece of kindling from the fire to light his pipe.
    â€œTake the South Pass?” Annabelle wasn’t sure who had spoken. It sounded more a question than statement, but others took up the idea. One said he had read about the South Pass in a guidebook.
    The Colonel turned his head. “Have you ever been through the South Pass?” No one said he had, and the Colonel continued as if that were the answer he expected.
    â€œThe pass cuts through the biggest mountains you’ll ever see. The trail’s so steep at points, you’ll need ropes to pull your wagons up, one at a time. Other times, you’ll have to put both big rear wheels on one side of your rigs to keep ’em from tipping down the mountainside. It’s hard going.”
    â€œBut that’s how every wagon gets west,” the oldest miner said. He turned to his fellows. “Why should we be afraid? Other men, no better than us, have gotten through.”
    â€œI don’t doubt your qualities,” the Colonel said, his voice just as mild as earlier. “The South Pass is the lowest point you will find in the mountains, and it’s the way I would take you if you were Mormons headed to the Salt Lake or homesteaders going to Oregon. If you weren’t in a hurry,