They seemed to be alone for the moment. The forest around them was deathly quiet. James turned and looked at his employer. He was a huge heap of a man in a ubiquitous red flannel jacket that reeked of body odor. Had the man ever bothered to wash it?
“You said we were scouting the area,” James reminded him. “Since when does scouting the area involve making a beeline straight for one specific ranch and stealing a cow?”
“That ranch is on the far side of our local community, practically the last house before you enter wilderness area,” Eustace replied. Though he spoke quietly, he had a deep voice that tended to carry. “I figured we’d start at the farthest point and work our way back.”
“No, you didn’t,” James replied. “You went straight to that ranch and immediately started taking the fence apart. You intended to steal from that family before we even set out.”
Eustace was quiet for a moment, as if formulating his response. That irritated James more than the theft itself. Was this the way it was going to be? No, if they were going to have a healthy working relationship, Eustace would have to stop these little games. James settled himself, pushing the frustration down until he was confident he could speak in a flat, emotionless voice.
“It has something to do with that specific family,” James said. “You have a grudge against them, perhaps. I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s time to level with me. When you first sent for me, I told you I would work for you again if you were willing to trust me.”
“Right, right.” Eustace glanced anxiously over his shoulder, as if he sensed something behind them. James heard nothing. The man was imagining things. “Okay, look, that ranch belongs to a family called the Healys. They’re going to be a problem.”
“How do you know?” James replied.
“We have a history,” Eustace said, and there was enough strain in his voice that James could tell this history was a violent one. “If we’re going to whip this community into shape, we have to put them on notice. I just figured I’d take care of it while we’re out here.”
“On notice for what?” James replied. “We’re supposed to be gathering supplies and equipment so we can create a hub to provide for the local community. At least, that’s what I was told when you sent for me. You never said anything about carrying on with a neighborhood feud.”
Eustace blew his breath. It puffed out of his beard like a toxic cloud. “Does this look like a feud to you?” He struggled to raise his left arm. It hovered there for a second, shaking badly, then flopped at his side again.
“Ah.”
It was clear now. Eustace’s injury.
Damned annoying, James thought. His personal grudge is going to be a problem. He won’t make rational decisions when it comes to the Healys. Still, I need the man. I’ll have to get control of this situation before it hinders our plans.
“Maybe we should move a little faster,” James said.
“Good idea,” Eustace replied. “Those Healys are nuts. They might overreact when they realize a cow is missing.”
5
Neither of them could concentrate on the fence. When Darryl tried to resume work, he couldn’t even hit a nail. He kept denting the wood with the hammer. Justine didn’t even try. She just sat down in the snow at the base of the tree, her hands in the front pocket of her sweatshirt, brooding darkly inside her hood. Finally, Darryl gave up. His mind was racing, his heart was pounding, and he felt clumsy.
He tossed the hammer back into his grandfather’s old toolbox and dumped a handful of nails into the bucket. Looking at his ugly handiwork, he backed away from the fence with a sigh. He could still hear Horace working away behind the barn. The old man had settled into a nice rhythm, driving in nails like he was tapping out a beat on a drum. He was probably humming a tune under his breath, as he often did when he worked.
I wish I was an old man who didn’t have to worry about things like this, Darryl thought. He knew it was a stupid, selfish thought. Horace had plenty of his own problems in life. Still, it was hard not to feel sorry for himself at the moment.
“Let’s forget about the fence for now,” Darryl said. “We did plenty. Do you want to go back inside the house?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to talk to other people,” Justine replied. She’d pulled her hood so far forward her face was entirely hidden in shadow. “I don’t want anyone to notice I’ve been crying or ask me any questions. I just want to sit somewhere quietly and be left alone.”
“Okay, I’ll cover for you. Come on.” He extended his hand to her. “If anyone tries to speak to you or look at you, I’ll deflect them.”
She accepted his hand, and he pulled her to her feet. Then they started back toward the house, using the tracks they’d already left behind. As they walked, Darryl thought she might let go of his hand, but she actually clamped down even tighter. Though he still felt shock, Darryl found that he had begun to access some part of his brain that was disconnected from the emotion.
Compartmentalization. The word came to him as he considered his current state.
When they reached the house, Darryl mounted the steps first and cracked open the front door, leaning in close to listen for the others. He heard voices upstairs. Grandma? Maybe Mom? He wasn’t sure. He poked his head through the door and saw the big wood-paneled living room. The familiar elk’s head glared down at him from its place above the couch, and didn’t its expression seem somewhat accusatory today?
Oh, what are you looking at? Darryl thought, returning the scowl.
The embers of a fire still glowed in the fireplace, but the cake and utensils had all been put away. There was nobody in the living room, and he didn’t think there was anyone in the kitchen or dining room either. He dared to push the door open a little farther.
“I think we’re safe,” he said. “Everyone’s upstairs.”
“My room is upstairs, too,” Justine said. “How do we get past them without being seen?”
“I’ll get you there. Trust me.” Still holding her hand, he stepped inside. As soon as she was through the door, he shut it behind her and headed for the stairs.
“We’ll take it slow,” he said, as he started up the stairs. “Step lightly. The stairs are noisy.”
He made his way up the stairs, moving as softly as possible. The old wood steps loved to creak and crack, and he couldn’t avoid the sound entirely. As he approached the second-floor landing, he realized Tabitha, Marion, and Emma were discussing plans for creating a garden in the field behind the root cellar.
At the top of the landing, Darryl poked his head around the corner. The door to the hobby room was ajar, and he saw Emma sitting in a bean bag, just visible, unraveling a ball of yarn, as if she were about to begin crocheting something. Darryl looked back at Justine and put a finger to his lips. She was wide-eyed and anxious, breathing loudly through her mouth.
As soon as he started down the hall, the floorboards gave him away. A single loud creak made the conversation in the hobby room suddenly cease.
“Darryl? Greg?” It was his mother.
“It’s me, Mom,” Darryl replied with a wince. “Just going to my room to take a little break.”
As he spoke, he made a spinning gesture at Justine and pointed toward her room. She took off running, moving on her tiptoes. A chair in the hobby room made a soft whooshing sound, as if someone were standing up. Darryl moved to intercept. Justine managed to fly past the door just as his mom’s face appeared in the opening.
“Dad and Horace are still out there dealing with stuff,” Darryl said, drawing her attention toward himself. “They’ll be back inside a little later, but I needed a break. Um…Dad said it’s fine since it’s my birthday and all.”
“That’s okay with me,” his mom said.
Justine disappeared into her room, just as Marion decided to glance in that direction.
“Anyway, I’m going to read a book or something until they’re done,” he said, moving past the hobby room. “I guess when they come back, we can
play games or whatever you guys planned.”
“Sounds good,” Marion said. Her gaze lingered for a second, as if she saw something strange in his expression. He expected her to ask a question, but she finally backed into the room and returned to her chair.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Darryl rushed to Justine’s room and slipped inside, shutting the door behind him. Justine had collapsed onto her bed, her arms crossed over her face. She seemed so small just then, barely more than a kid, though she was closing in on eighteen. Darryl took a seat on a corner of the bed.
Justine’s bedroom only had a bed, a small dresser, and a single chair. She’d tacked up a few abstract paintings which she’d retrieved from her house, but most of her personal possessions were dumped on shelves in the closet. It was a spare, uncomfortable room.
No place for a new mother, Darryl thought, but that only made his terror of the future rise.
“So…so…are you absolutely sure?” he asked. Maybe she was wrong, after all. Maybe she was confused. Maybe…something, anything.
“No, I can’t be absolutely sure until I feel the baby kicking,” she said, after a moment, her voice muffled by her arms. “I told you, I’m almost two weeks late for my period. Plus, there are other symptoms.”
“What other symptoms?”
She moved her arms and gave him a flat, unhappy look. “My breasts are more sensitive for one thing.”
Darryl laughed uncomfortably and looked away. “Oh, right. I didn’t know that was a sign of pregnancy.”
“You’re about to learn all sorts of things about pregnancy,” she said. “I hope you’re ready.”
“Are you?” he asked.
“Hell, no, but whatever.” She rolled onto her side, facing the wall. “We don’t have access to a pregnancy test. Believe me. I looked. I thought maybe your mom might have kept one stashed around here somewhere. I dug into the backs of all the bathroom drawers and cabinets. Nothing. Just old bandages, tampons, empty lipstick tubes, and weird creams of one kind or another. Someone in this house really suffers from itchy hemorrhoids, judging by all the rolled-up tubes of anus ointment I found.”
Darryl couldn’t bring himself to laugh, not authentically. He reached down and grabbed her boot, needing some kind of contact. Her boots and pants were soaking wet from all the snow, and the wetness was seeping into the quilt on her bed. He didn’t dare say anything about it, not now.
“I’m too young to be a mother,” Justine said softly. “Look at how we’re living, Darryl. We’re like hill people or something, or like Mennonites in the nineteenth century. I’ll have to give birth here in the house. There’s no hospital, no doctors—not unless we want to ride a horse all the way to the big city. Can you imagine? That means they’ll probably bring some untrained midwife or something right here into the bedroom, or worse yet, your grandma will be the midwife. Oh gosh, how mortifying. I can’t even begin to imagine it.”
This hadn’t occurred to Darryl yet, and it just compounded the fear. Yes, this was a bigger problem than he’d realized. He couldn’t begin to wrap his head around it, so he just sat there holding her damp boot and staring at the far wall. The abstract painting in front of him was a kind of purple spiral, and he could imagine that it was a vortex pulling him in, dragging him down into a void from which he would never escape.
The thieves were moving fast now, and Greg was determined not to let them get away. They were heading roughly south, in the general direction of the old Carmichael house, but he wasn’t yet close enough to see them. Ahead, through a break in the trees, he spotted an opening where a narrow backroad cut through the rural community. The dirt road was entirely blanketed in snow, but he could see that the footsteps of the thieves turned and headed in that direction.
They’re going toward town, Greg realized.
He dared more speed, running full-out toward the road, despite the extra noise. When he stepped through the trees into the opening, he turned and aimed his rifle due south down the road. He saw them then. Bodies in the distance, pulling the poor cow along on a lead line. Two people. The one on the right was wearing a heavy coat with a fur-lined hood. The other thief was a big bear of a man in a huge red flannel jacket. Though he had a toque pulled low to hide his hair, Greg recognized the shape of him.
It was like turning over a rock and finding the devil hiding underneath. Eustace Simpson. It could be no other. He was a lumbering mountain of a man with a thick neck, thick arms, a generous belly, red hair and beard. The shock of seeing him here caused Greg to stumble to a stop and catch himself against the nearest tree.
He survived the shootout with Tuck, Greg realized. Sorry you didn’t get him, Dad.
Then again, Tuck had probably saved Greg and Emma by engaging the man in a gunfight. Still, it was a shame that Eustace had been able to walk away from the fight.
Greg raised the rifle, trying to sight them, though they were quickly disappearing. The shock of seeing a man he’d assumed was dead, or at least long gone, made him clumsy. He braced his shoulder against the tree and tracked Eustace, finger sliding down to the trigger. He heard snatches of a conversation, bits and pieces of words carried to him on the wind. They seemed to be arguing about something. Who was the other guy? Greg didn’t recognize him from the back. The fur-lined coat wasn’t familiar.
Something about Eustace’s gait seem off. His left arm hung down and flopped about, as if there were something wrong with it. This, in turn, made the man move in an awkward limp. Unfortunately, Eustace was partially behind the cow, and Greg didn’t want to risk shooting the animal. He pushed away from the tree and resumed following them, trying to step quietly as he moved along the edge of the road. Eustace and the other man were approaching a bend in the road when they stopped. The other man began gesturing with his hands. Greg heard the backwash of angry words and knew they were now arguing with each other. Taking a few more steps, Greg found an old pine tree with a split trunk. He used the angle to brace the rifle and took aim at Eustace.
He murdered your father, Greg reminded himself, and now he intends to victimize your family. Your only safe option is to take him out.
Shooting a man in the back wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, even when that man was Eustace Simpson, but Greg found that when he tapped into the deep well of anger all hesitation fell away. He took careful aim at the big, red target in the distance, aiming high so he would hit him somewhere between the shoulder blades.
As he did, he realized it had begun to snow again. Fat snowflakes were falling, carried on a strong wind. It complicated his aim, but he knew he wouldn’t have a better chance than this. Eustace was standing still, jabbing his finger in the direction of the other man and shouting at him, as the poor cow just stood there patiently.
Now or never, he told himself. Take the shot.
6
They sat there in the silence for what might have been half an hour while Darryl listened to Justine’s soft breathing. He saw the rise and fall of her left shoulder, felt the soft rubber of boot, and he tried to think of the next thing to say. Maybe there was nothing else to say. Nature was going to take its course now, and that was that.
You should be comforting her, he told himself. She’s more scared than you are. Say something. Make it all better.
But he didn’t know what to say. He felt like he’d gotten stuck somehow in a blank space that he couldn’t pull himself out of. Finally, he forced words out of his mouth, even though he had little plan for what he was going to say.
“Do you want me to break the news to the others,” he said, “so you don’t have to? If I get it over with, then it’ll be done and you won’t have to worry about it.”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Don’t say anything.”
“Okay, then, you can do it, I guess.”
She grunted. “No, I don’t want anyone to break the news to anybody, not until I’m good and ready. And maybe I’ll never be ready, and they’ll just think I’m eating too much until suddenly—surprise, su
rprise. How the heck did that get in there?” She uttered a soft, fragmented laugh. “The looks on their faces would almost be worth it. Maybe I could tell them I found it in the woods. ‘It’s a magic baby. The fairy people left it on a rock under a tall tree in the heart of the forest. Let’s name it Mortimer the Mysterious.’” This made her laugh harder. “You think they’d believe me?”
Somehow, Justine had found her way to maximum weirdness, but Darryl just couldn’t find humor in the moment. “I’ll keep it a secret as long as you want me to,” he said. “I promise, I won’t breathe a word of it.”
“Okay, good,” she said. Somehow, the laughter had turned to tears, and she was crying again, burying her face in the quilt. “I’m just scared, Darryl. I know I keep saying it, but I can’t help it. I never expected to get pregnant this young.”
He was tempted to slap himself on either cheek to snap out of his mood. This wasn’t really about him now. Justine had to carry the baby and deal with the pregnancy, so he was simply going to have to step up, whether he felt ready or not.
What a birthday present, he thought. Can we trade this in for more cake?
“Everything’s going to be just fine,” he told Justine. “I’m sure of it.”
“How can you keep saying that?” she said. “We don’t know what we’re doing. We’re new at this.”
“It doesn’t matter if we’re new at it,” he replied, giving her leg a gentle squeeze. “I can say it because I’m going to make sure of it. I’m going to take care of you, Justine, you and the baby. I helped create this situation, and now it’s time to accept responsibility for it. That’s all there is to it.”
He was speaking to himself mostly, trying to get the words to stick. They almost did—almost. It still didn’t seem quite real. Justine pushed against the bed and slowly sat up, dabbing her eyes on her palms. She gazed out the bedroom window for a second, where she had an expansive view of the back of the ranch. Darryl looked over her shoulder and saw the snowy lump that was the top of the root cellar. He could still recall all of the hard work he’d done to dig out the cellar. It seemed like it had happened years and years ago.
EMP: Return of the Wild West Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 28