Trail's End

by E. L. Ripley

  “No, it’s all right.”

  Was it? Tom shut up and clasped his hands, keeping his eyes on her face.

  “It’s been a long time,” she admitted, squinting up at the stars. “I’ve done a good job forgetting. I was young.” Her voice was getting husky, but there weren’t any tears in her eyes yet. “To lie down with the devil. I still wonder how it all happened.”

  The crows fell silent. The devil’s fingers? Tom doubted it.

  She abruptly sobered. “But it was years ago, and the devil has been gone from here since. It bothers Mother more than it bothers me. I was surprised she said as much as she did at dinner. She’s more of a mind to tell you it never happened at all.”

  “I imagine a lot of folks feel that way.”

  Mary nodded. “It’s in the past.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  A little of the light returned to her eyes. “You are not afraid of him,” she said, a hint of a smile on her face.

  “Well, I haven’t met him yet. I expect I will be if I ever do.”

  The smile grew. “That is very like you, Mr. Smith.”

  “My name isn’t Smith. It’s Calvert. The reason I don’t go by it is because there’s a chance, likely a very small one, that someone taking the potatoes to Des Crozet would mention it to someone, and that person might mention it to someone else, and it might come back to haunt me.”

  She looked taken aback. It couldn’t have been a total surprise; surely Jeremiah or Saul or Thaddeus had spoken to her and her mother about Tom when they got acquainted.

  “Are you such a villain that your name would be recognized?” she asked.

  “I don’t think of myself as a villain. If I have any notoriety, it won’t be because of the wrong I’ve done. It’ll be because of what I’ve done at the poker table. I’ll risk sounding like a braggart, but the truth is I wasn’t half-bad at cards when I was out and about.”

  She laughed. “I know that’s no boast. I’ve seen you play with Mother.”

  “She’s pretty good. Will she forgive the kid for bringing it up?”

  “Of course.”

  “What about me?”

  “You gave no offense,” Mary said quickly.

  “She doesn’t mind a cripple courting her daughter?”

  That brought a touch of color to her cheeks. Mrs. Washburn did not mind, but Tom wasn’t really asking.

  Mary kept her bearing. “I hope she will come around,” she said gamely, “though she might remark that you appear to have misplaced your walking stick.”

  “I don’t need it,” he confessed. “I like it because the limp’s not so obvious when I use it.”

  She looked sympathetic.

  “What about you?” he went on. “What do you think?”

  “I have no objections.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I don’t know what the hell this damn witchcraft-and-feather nonsense is supposed to mean,” Tom grumbled to Asher as they sat at the rear of the church.

  “I know what it means,” Asher murmured back.

  The church was full; if the community grew much more, they’d have to build a bigger one. Jeremiah was at the front, speaking. It wasn’t his turn, but with Saul’s death the day before, everyone wanted to hear from the elders. Thaddeus had already gone up there and read about a hundred verses from the Bible. Tom wanted to cut his ears off, then blow his brains out.

  “Do you?” he whispered, glancing past the boy.

  Holly was there, across the aisle. A family shared the pew with her, but several feet separated them. She was alone.

  “A woman was hanged,” the boy said. “Someone is not pleased about it.”

  “It happened years ago, maybe before you were born. If they’re sore about it, why kill someone now?”

  “Perhaps they only just found out,” Asher whispered back.

  Someone looked at them, and they fell silent.

  “Friends, our blessings abound,” Jeremiah was saying. “We have prospered to a measure that none of us would have thought to expect. The Lord has given and given, and we are occasionally reminded that he also takes.”

  Someone coughed, and someone else sniffled. All the windows and shutters were open, but it was overly warm regardless.

  “If they cared enough to kill over it, they wouldn’t wait ten years or fifteen years to settle it. They’d have found out in their own time.” Tom was fairly sure of that.

  “Perhaps they were lied to, and only now has the lie been exposed,” Asher offered.

  That was workable, but it didn’t fit these people. They had their manners and their ways, but as Holly’s arrival showed, there were still vices and difficulties. He wouldn’t judge them for that.

  They might not care for the notion of someone like Holly being brought to Friendly Field to provide companionship for Thaddeus, but that smudge on their values did not threaten them. Not the way that Saul’s murder would.

  Right now they were all but carefree. Sad for the loss of Saul, but otherwise well. Jeremiah wasn’t lying; they were prospering. They didn’t know about any of the trouble that might be brewing beyond their fields. As for back when that woman had been hanged, Tom hadn’t been there. Things might’ve been different then.

  Phillip stepped up beside Jeremiah and cleared his throat.

  “I believe He reminds us not out of cruelty but because He sees our weakness. And He worries, as any parent would worry for their child or their kin. Mrs. Lester worries when she sees me pick up a kitchen knife because I’ve cut myself one too many times. He’s no different, and I wonder if He worries that we are not so vigilant as we have been in past years.” Phillip was what? Tom’s age or a little older? He would’ve been fairly young when this witch had been hanged, but he’d remember it.

  “It’s a woman who killed him,” Tom told Asher, watching the Quakers listen to Phillip and Jeremiah, rapt. “Vigilance” likely wasn’t a word that came up often, and it had their attention.

  “What?” The boy looked surprised.

  “Who killed Saul.”

  “How do you know?” Asher hissed.

  “Remember what those two said in the woods? They’d seen a woman up there where you found that thing. Whoever made it, whoever they saw—that’s who stabbed Saul.” Tom straightened a little and glanced toward Holly.

  She was looking straight at him. He was a changed man, sitting in these simple clothes that the Quakers wore.

  She still recognized him. He’d figured she would.

  “You are certain? From only that?” Asher looked surprised.

  “Not just that.” Tom gestured at his chest, over his heart. “Easy and simple aren’t the same thing, kid. Knives are simple, but they aren’t easy. It’s easy to point and pull a trigger, but to cut flesh—that’s different. There were two wounds. The first wasn’t much good, like she tried to stab him and thought twice, or thought it wouldn’t take much strength. And then he woke up, and she stabbed him hard enough to put that knife in his heart.”

  Asher’s eyes were wide. He swallowed.

  “It’s ugly, kid. Killing with a blade. I don’t know that I could do it,” Tom admitted.

  The boy pulled himself together and sniffed. “I suspect you could,” he whispered after a moment. “Provided you felt strongly enough about it.”

  “Maybe,” Tom grunted.

  “The devil has not come to this place for some time,” Jeremiah said, giving those gathered an oddly direct look. “But we haven’t forgotten him or his face. And we must not forget. We must remain vigilant, because he might yet return. I had very nearly forgotten him and what he’s done, and who would blame me?” He spread his arms. “Do any of us look back on that with any fondness? Of course we don’t. It still happened, even if I wish it hadn’t. He came here. He came among us without us knowing.”


  “It could happen again,” Phillip agreed. “We must be watchful.”

  “Smart,” Tom said under his breath.

  “To lie about what happened?” the boy asked.

  “To put people on edge. We don’t want them to panic, but we do want them to have their eyes open for anything strange. Let them worry a little. Someone might see something that matters, and this way they’ll be more apt to tell someone. Jeremiah’s got the right idea.”

  Tom fell silent as Mrs. White gave him a reproving look. Asher waited until she was looking away to reply.

  “You do not believe in the devil?”

  “Whoever killed Saul likely doesn’t,” Tom whispered. “She’s just using him. She had her own reason for murdering Saul, and the feathers were just for show. To send us down the wrong trail.”

  “If that’s true, why was that thing in the woods?” Asher countered, and it was a fair point. “That thing” hadn’t been meant to be found.

  Tom scratched his chin irritably. “You’re right,” he conceded.

  “What if it’s true?”

  “What if what’s true?”

  Jeremiah was praying, and a hush had fallen. Tom and Asher waited patiently in silence. Phillip started reading from the Bible, and Asher gave a little shrug.

  “The devil. Suppose he was here all those years ago, just as they say.”

  “And?”

  “And now he has returned,” the boy said.

  “You got more sense than that, kid.”

  “Let’s rise,” Phillip announced, and Tom woke up. Not because everyone was standing, though that was happening as well. He woke up because he’d suddenly understood what just happened. His stomach did a flip.

  “Did you see that?” he muttered.

  “What?” Bewildered, Asher stood up beside Tom.

  “Phillip Lester just became the new Saul Matthews.”

  The boy didn’t get to reply; the hubbub of the Quakers had filled the church, and they were all moving around, shaking hands and such. It was a strange thing; they worked long, exhausting days—but they still took breaks; they still had their evenings to spend more or less as they pleased. They had time to mingle this way whenever they liked, yet they still did it during services. They would be doing this for twenty long minutes or even more—they seemed to enjoy it so much, and Jeremiah would likely let it stretch on, on account of Saul’s death and because he wanted to cheer folks up.

  Tom stood like a statue, his eyes fixed on Phillip at the front of the church, embracing Sebastian.

  There really wasn’t any question that the Quakers’ notion of no leaders was nonsense. Jeremiah, Thaddeus, and Saul—it had been those three, and everyone had seemed content.

  Had Phillip not been content? What did he have to gain from taking Saul’s place? What did the leaders have that the others didn’t? They ate the same food; they lived in the same houses. There was some . . . prestige associated with it, Tom supposed, but most of these Quakers really were more interested in what God thought of them than what other people did.

  Thaddeus had the privilege of hiring a girl like Holly to keep his bed warm, but it seemed unlikely that Phillip would envy an arrangement like that. He was married to a fine woman, and he had children.

  What if it wasn’t Phillip behind it, then? What if the murder hadn’t been to make a new leader but instead to remove an old one? Had Saul been on poor terms with Jeremiah and Thaddeus? Was this their doing? Why? Surely there was another way to be rid of Saul if that was what they’d wanted.

  It didn’t make sense to kill him, particularly for people who were, rather pointedly, not inclined toward killing in the first place.

  No one wanted to shake Holly’s hand. She startled when Tom pulled her behind one of the beams. For a moment she was tense, but upon seeing it was him she relaxed. That was an odd reaction; she’d been aboard the Newlywed when Tom lost his temper and threw his life away.

  “You aren’t afraid of me?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve got your measure.” That was why he’d liked her back when they first met. “You look different,” she added quietly.

  “I like to think I am different,” Tom replied, leaning in so they could speak quietly. “How much is Thaddeus paying you?”

  “You want to make me a better offer?”

  “I just want to know he’s treating you all right.”

  “He’s harmless. Five dollars a day.”

  Tom balked. That was—well, that was a problem for two reasons. First, it was an immoral expenditure of Friendly Field’s money. It was Friendly Field’s money. It came from the men in the fields. The boys as well, and Asher. Tom didn’t begrudge Thaddeus some company—it was a fair enough thing to want—but to pay that much for it when the money wasn’t really his?

  Tom could see Thaddeus up there at the front of the church. Tom had to be honest with himself, even if he wouldn’t be with other people. He was more inclined to see Thaddeus as a fool than as a villain. It was more likely this was an act of stupidity than of callousness. Thaddeus wasn’t young anymore, and Tom had begun to see that Friendly Field really had had only two leaders. Now it had two again, and Phillip would probably be a decent one.

  That was, provided he hadn’t murdered Saul Matthews. And Tom was fairly sure he hadn’t, at least not with his own hand.

  And there was the second thing. Holly? Five dollars a day? Tom had spent a mere two nights with her, and if his memory served, it had cost him considerably more than that. Admittedly, he was always generous with girls—but the point was that Holly could have made a hell of a lot more money just about anywhere else.

  “How long you been here?” she asked him bluntly, searching his face.

  “Just a couple weeks,” he replied, staring back just as hard.

  “It’s good to see you, Tom. I’m glad you’re alive.”

  Tom had questions, but he’d spotted Mary—and she’d spotted him. He remembered himself and hurriedly drew back from Holly. The instant he moved, Mary did too, but Tom wasn’t about to let her run away. He’d seen what misunderstandings had done to his life in the past, and he’d be damned if he’d let that happen again.

  Threading through the Quakers, he pursued her to the rear of the church, where she opened the door and went out into the sunlight, or at least tried.

  She was frozen in place, though, and he nearly ran into her.

  He saw what had made her stop. There was a mare in front of the church, and a man feeding her sugar from his hand. He looked over as the door opened and smiled. The sun was bright on his perfect white shirt, stitched with blue flowers. He was Tom’s age, and clean-shaven. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing tanned, muscled forearms, and his boots were black.

  Tom did what he’d done a thousand times before.

  He put on his poker face, moving past Mary and limping out into the open.

  “Good morning,” he called out. “Peace be with thee.”

  The man smiled. “Well, uh—same to you, partner.”

  Tom reached him and put his hand out. The other man shook.

  “My name’s Tom,” he said. “Welcome to Friendly Field.”

  “It’s good to know you, Tom. My name’s John.”

  It was true; his name was John Porter, and Tom knew his face from the posters. He was worth ten thousand dollars.

  PART TWO

  DEAD OR ALIVE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tom was a little surprised he hadn’t run into more outlaws in his time playing cards. After all, men chose to rob banks because banks were where the money was. Well, there also tended to be a fair amount of money where good poker players sat down together.

  No one had ever tried to rob Tom or a game he was playing in. He’d heard of those things happening to others, but that misfortune had never come his way. He liked to think he’
d have killed anyone who might try anything like that, but it was just as well not to have to.

  That luck had just run out.

  With a grin that sparkled, John turned in a full circle, taking in Friendly Field. It wasn’t much of a settlement, but the impeccable neatness of it all still made it something to look at.

  “What a thing,” he said. “I never knew you all were here, so close to Des Crozet.”

  “Is that where you ride out of?” Tom asked, stifling a yawn as Mary disappeared back into the church. She would bring Phillip and Jeremiah—or possibly everyone—but there wouldn’t be any cause for alarm. John Porter was an outlaw, but they didn’t know that. Only Jeremiah knew of what had happened in the woods, and this man was perfectly dressed and groomed. The sight of him wouldn’t be enough to bother anyone. The sense of friendliness came off him like heat from a rock in the sun.

  “It is,” John lied. He hadn’t come from Des Crozet. “Friendly Field, huh? That kind of name makes you want to visit, don’t it?”

  “You won’t believe it, but I know a kid who drove a wagon more than six months to come here, knowing not a thing more than the name.” Tom folded his arms. “What brings you to us?”

  “Well,” John replied, taking off his hat. He squinted, turning it over in his hands. “I’m a banker. And when I learned there was a town without a bank, I had to see it for myself. Of course, ‘town’ ain’t quite the word.”

  “God has more sway here than the taxman. I can’t see that we’d get much use out of a bank,” Tom told him frankly. He scratched his head and shrugged. “Unless the bank’s meant to hold potatoes.”

  “Potatoes,” John echoed, gazing past Tom toward the fields. “I see that. Well, I don’t suppose you might have met my friends. A tall fellow named Ben, and one about my height. Both of ’em very crude and disagreeable.”

  “Does the shorter fellow wear a . . .” Tom trailed off, gesturing at this throat.

  John’s eyes brightened. “He does.”

  “Course, yeah. Here, come with me.” Tom put a friendly arm around the man’s shoulders and led him away from the church. “Pious folk, you know. Quakers and all. They’re worshipping in there, and a man passed yesterday, so they’re a little touchy.”