Prologue
Prologue
The buckskin mare moved across the grassland at a brisk trot, a sure sign she scented water. It was growing late, and if they found the spot before nightfall, it could be a good place to set up camp. It had been a long day, and Zachary Taylor Browne, known as Sharps, was looking forward to bedding down for the night.
He was sure the mare was too. They’d been traveling west to St. Joe for weeks—Sharps saw no need to push Salida. He knew Captain Marriott, the man he was searching for, usually took wagon trains heading to California or Oregon out from that city. Sharps didn’t mind waiting for the captain to return; he had become quite good at cards during the war and had planned to make some extra cash money while he waited.
However, once he’d reached St. Joe, he’d learned Captain Marriott had already been and gone, only this time to guide two wagons north. No one asked much about it; it didn’t pay to be nosy, not if a body wanted to stay alive.
Sharps had stayed in St. Joe long enough to win that extra cash, and then he’d saddled up his mare and left town. He’d been riding north for the past week, and now that his meeting with the captain was so imminent, he realized his nerves had become tied in knots.
Suppose Cap was pleased enough to see him again, but then sent him on his way? There had been women in the small wagon train, and although they were married, things happened on the trail, and by the time Sharps caught up with them, they could be widows, and Cap could be courting one of them
Well, there was nothing Sharps could do about that—it was the captain’s choice. But Sharps was on a mission, something he’d become familiar with during the last year of the war, and he had to find his captain.
Slung across Sharps’s back was a canvas case that held the banjo his pa had crafted. Pa wasn’t an instrument maker precisely, but he was an excellent gunsmith, and he’d spent the years before Sharps had returned designing and putting it together, taking it apart and doing it again when it failed to meet his exact standards. It was in gratitude for what Captain Marriott had done for his son in keeping him safe through three years of the war—Pa had no idea about what the last year had entailed for his son. Or the years after.
Pa had planned to make this journey himself, but he was getting on in years, and when the damp winter caused a congestion of the lungs, he’d done poorly. By the end of March he was gone, leaving Sharps no reason to remain in Brooklyn. He knew some of the tricks of Pa’s trade, but he wasn’t a gunsmith, so he’d sold off Pa’s tools and took on the task of delivering the banjo himself.
Not that it was a chore. It had been a long time, and Sharps missed the captain. He wanted to see him again.
He tipped back his hat and studied the sun as it began its downward journey, and while he remembered that time, he took out the makings and rolled himself a cigarette.
