Angler In Darkness

by Edward M. Erdelac

  He hadn’t liked the way she looked but he’d been afraid to let go, so he’d leaned forward and pressed her tongue back into her mouth with his own. Then....well, he wasn’t sure about what had happened then. Being there doing what he’d thought about doing with her since the day he’d seen her carrying a stack of linens out of Bigelow’s down in Tahlequah with the sun shining through her skirt had sort of put the devil in him. The next thing he knew, he’d ripped her yellow dress down the front, lapping at her mean little teats like a thirsty hound. Then he’d just done what any red blooded man is inclined to do to a good looking woman. It was only after he’d slid out from between her legs and caught his breath enough to ask her how she’d liked it that he’d realized she was dead.

  Peggie had a brother just out of the 10th cavalry. A big black buck named Fisher. He knew that not only would Fisher come looking for him, but the Cherokee Light Horse too. He’d only stopped at his cabin long enough to get his knife and his pa’s canteen before he’d headed up the Sparrowhawk.

  Jimpsey booted the chestnuts out of the fire and wrapped them in his bandanna. He got out his pocketknife to pear away the shelling and was about to crack them when an old woman came out of the copse. She slid so quietly into view it nearly made Jimpsey jump out of his flesh. He picked up a stick and got up on one knee.

  She was a rail thin, wild looking old squaw, with loose, ruddy skin. A bushy mane of mossy white hair sprung from her skull like dusty cobwebs aglow in the moonlight. She was wrapped in a frayed brown blanket, one knobby fist holding it shut. She had a broad, friendly, close mouthed grin on her wrinkled face, and glassy black eyes. Maybe she had gotten into some coffin varnish and wandered off into the woods drunk, or maybe she was one of these old time Keetoowahs with a cabin up here somewhere. Jimpsey hoped it was the latter.

  “Hey Granny,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “Whatcha doin’ out in this cold? Whyn’t you come on an’ set over here by the fire? I got some chestnuts roasted.”

  The old woman’s smile did not falter. She came quickly across the clearing in little shuffling steps and settled on the other side of the fire, the glow under-lighting her face, filling the crevices with deep, flickering shadows and shading the drooping lower lids of her red rimmed black eyes so that she seemed like a wary varmint staring at him.

  Jimpsey was unnerved by that stare. She was surely off, maybe an imbecile. She looked like she’d been living out in the woods, smeared with dried mud and adorned with bits of sticker and brush as she was. He was giving up all hope of shelter as he cracked the chestnuts open in the bandanna, then opened it and began to peel away the blackened shells.

  “You got a place out here, Granny? A lodge, maybe a cave somewheres?”

  The old woman’s beady eyes flickered down to the nuts in his hand. If it was possible, she seemed to smile wider. What was it about her eyes? They were abnormally tiny in her face, so small he couldn’t make out the whites, just a pair of black shiny holes twinkling at him like creek stones.

  Hell, she wasn’t going to be any help.

  He sighed and popped one of the chestnuts into his mouth.

  “Here Granny,” he said, holding the open bandanna across to her.

  She was like a wild dog contemplating proffered food. One gray and filthy hand snaked out from underneath her blanket, the other still curled about the folds. She reached out slowly.

  “Well come on,” he said impatiently. “I got to be going.”

  The hand hovered over his open palm, then slapped down fast. Her bony fingers clamped over his wrist, hard, with a grip like his pa’s. The bandanna, knife, and the chestnuts spilled into the fire.

  He tried to jerk away, but she held him there. Her skin felt like cool creek clay around his hand, and was hard and intractable as a branch. It felt larger too, like it encircled his whole arm.

  Then the hand that held the blanket unclenched, like a waking spider. One finger was longer than the others. The nail reached a full six inches past the fingertip. It curled and gleamed like a boar tusk in the moonlight, like some prehistoric weapon carved from yellow bone. The blanket fell away. The sagging flesh drooping on her skeletal body was as dirt caked as the rest of her, as if she had risen from slumber in the earth itself.

  Something in her black eyes made the hairs uncurl on the tops of his arms, made something quiver deep between his shoulder blades. They seemed to expand past her eyelids, bugging out like Peggie Scalloe’s had, but they were still wholly black.

  Then she was pulling him towards her across the fire, towards her unchanging expression, towards that long, curling finger.

  He opened his mouth to scream. The stone sharp fingernail darted in over his tongue and pierced the back of his throat like a dagger, choking off the sound at its source, drowning it in an eruption of bubbling blood.

  “Waterback!” Ben yelled into the fire-lit clearing, levering his Winchester for effect. “It’s Ben Burnham! I’m comin’ in. Show me your hands and don’t make no moves.” Or I’ll put one in your leg and you can limp to the scaffold, he thought.

  ‘Redbone’ Ben Burnham had been trailing Jimpsey Waterback up the side of Sparrowhawk Mountain for a good five hours, ever since he’d cut the murderer’s sign out back of the man’s cabin and followed it east into the foothills. He’d had to turn his horse loose at the bottom, and had faced a hard scrabble with the cold wind coming down the mountain urging him back the whole way. Fifteen minutes after he’d seen the light of Waterback’s campfire above, he now had a long hike back down with his prisoner to look forward to.

  This whole business had put him in a sour mood. He knew and liked Fisher Scalloe, a freedman just mustered out of the 10th cavalry, and had ate at Peggie’s table. The Cherokee part of him wanted to tie this son of a bitch to a tree and deal with him the old way, but his father’s cool English blood counseled him against it. Fort Smith was still keeping an eye on Tahlequah and the Light Horse Guard, ever since the big shootout between Zeke Proctor and the marshals at the Whitmire schoolhouse two years ago. Waterback was a miserable half breed whiskey peddler, but his pa was a marshal in Judge Parker’s court. If he didn’t make it to trial it would go hard for the tribe.

  Waterback remained hunched in front of the fire, his back to Ben as he stepped into the clearing. His long dirty hands were held out at his sides and he looked back over his shoulder at Ben like a scared rabbit.

  “Don’t shoot me, Ben!” he pleaded.

  “Don’t give me no reason,” Ben said. “I’m takin’ you back to Tahlequah for what you done to Peggie Scalloe this mornin.’”

  “OK, OK,” said Waterback.

  Ben came to stand behind him. The barrel of his rifle almost touched the back of Waterback’s patchy head. He could easily scatter his brains into the fire. It would be a damn sight easier than towing him back down the mountain. He looked down at the wretch, and noticed something in the fire, what looked like a piece of rag. He could smell chestnuts burning.

  “You ain’t got nothin’ to say about it?” he pressed.

  “I’m sorry for what I done,” said Waterback quickly, like a kid prodded to apologize.

  “Get your ass up.”

  Waterback rose slowly. Ben grabbed his elbow and spun him around. He was a sorry looking bastard, his head newly shaved and spotted with flea bites, his threadbare clothes covered in briars and streaked with dirt. A quick onceover showed he hadn’t any kind of weapon on him, just a couple chestnuts in his pockets and an old CSA canteen over his shoulder. There was dry blood on his lips. Peggie had been found with bite marks on her breasts.

  “You know, you hadn’t lit that fire, I mightn’t have caught you so quick,” said Ben, unlocking the iron shackles he’d ported and fitting them around Waterback’s skinny wrists.

  “I got cold,” said Waterback lamely.

  It was cold. The trees were waving overhead, the branches click clacking together like skeletal applause, the wind an unseen tide breaking again and again over the mou
ntain. It was gonna be hell going back down in the dark. The little campfire was nearly laying on its side, struggling to stand aright.

  He thought for a minute. There was an old timer he knew named Tsi-s-du who everybody called Doc Rabbit. He lived in a cabin up here. It was on the other side of the mountain but only half the way down. Probably an hour’s walk as opposed to five.

  When Waterback was in fetters, Ben made up his mind.

  “Awright, walk ahead of me,” he said, stamping out the fire and pocketing the key to his chains.

  The full moon made the descent a little easier. There was a clear view off the mountain. The land below was painted silver, and the Sparrowhawk Loop of the Illinois winding between the swaying sycamores was all shimmery, almost clear on to Goats Buff rising in the distance. They circled through pines and slid now and then down the slopes of loose flint rock. Waterback spoke not at all. Ben was not inclined to hear what he had to say anyway.

  It was a little less than an hour when Waterback stopped in his tracks and perked up his head, sniffing the air lingeringly like he had detected a fresh baked pie.

  He looked over his shoulder at Ben. He was grinning like a simpleton.

  “Smoke,” he said.

  The smoke was streaming from a black iron pipe poking through the canopy below. In a little bit they spied Doc’s hickory log and mud wattle cabin with the old white rabbit hide nailed to the door and the branches of a corkscrew tree scraping the roof.

  Ben hadn’t been to Doc’s cabin in seven years. Doc and his father had been friends, but after his father had run off, Ben hadn’t had much reason to come around. Doc was an old time medicine man, and had been on the Trail of Tears, though he never spoke about it. When Ben was eight he had been bit by a copperhead down by Elephant Rock. His pa had taken him to Doc to be cured. The old man had saved his life. It struck him funny that he hadn’t come around to visit before now. Maybe he associated Doc too much with his crazy father, though the two were as different as night and day.

  As they came down the mountainside, the door creaked open. Doc himself stepped out, his long gray hair whipping about his shoulders as the wind kicked up to a gust. He had the same old hat with the three rattlesnake tails in the brim, and he was carrying a bowl of milk. He stopped when he saw them coming.

  “O-si-yo!” Ben called over the howling wind, raising his hand.

  “Who’s that?” the old man hollered back in Tsalagi.

  “Redbone!” he answered, using the name the old man had given him as a boy and most others had since picked up. It meant mixed blood, but it was affectionate.

  The old man’s face brightened into a smile that shone beneath the black brim of his hat.

  “Hey a-tsu-tsa! Good to see you! What the hell are you doin’ up here on a night like this?”

  “Had to run a man down,” he answered, coming closer. “What’s that you got?” he said, nodding to the bowl.

  “For the little people. Got some livin’ under that big stump over there.”

  Doc peered at Waterback and his chains. Waterback hunched his shoulders like a pigeon against the wind, and he nodded to the old man awkwardly.

  “How do?” said Waterback.

  Doc’s face fell.

  “This ain’t Jimpsey Waterback is it?” he said.

  “How’d you know?” Ben asked.

  He sighed and looked at Ben.

  “What if I was to tell you Fisher Scalloe and Buck Tate was settin’ inside at my table eatin’ kanuchi?”

  Ben stiffened. Fisher had stormed out of the cabin upon finding his sister’s body and lit out to kill Waterback himself. Buck Tate, another ex-soldier, half Choctaw and half Negro, had gone along. Some said Buck and Peggie had been sweethearts. They must have come another way up the mountain and had the same idea of holding over at Doc’s.

  “I’d say this is a hell of a mess. Might as well get it over with.”

  When they went into the cabin, the smell of hot stew and the warmth of the fire, even the cessation of the biting wind, provided little comfort.

  At the table, swabbing their bowls with chestnut bread, were two men. Fisher was powerful, broad shouldered and thick fisted, with a long kinky beard flecked with grey and round spectacles that made him look like a fighting scholar, a schoolteacher who recited the classics but felled forests in his free time and spent his summers embracing black bears to death. Buck Tate was slighter and yellow skinned, with long, wavy hair and a faint mustache. They looked up with dull curiosity as Ben walked in, but when they saw who was with him, their intent crystallized before his eyes. Ben saw two drops of soup fall from the hunk of bread poised over Fisher’s bowl.

  Then Waterback stupidly said;

  “Hey, Fisher.”

  In a minute the table and everything on it was over on its side and Fisher kicked over the chairs to get at Waterback, a long knife in his hand to cut through Ben if he stayed in the way. Buck had snatched his Winchester off the table before it went. A split second after Ben had his own rifle pointed at Fisher, Buck levered his Winchester and aimed it at Ben’s face.

  “Hold on!” Ben yelled.

  Fisher didn’t even pause. He slapped the barrel of Ben’s rifle away and lunged at Waterback under his arm, nicking Ben’s side as he did.

  Waterback stumbled back and fell half out of the door. Ben, enraged at having been cut, smacked his rifle barrel against Fisher’s head, bringing him down like a train run short of trestle. He was sure Buck would have shot him if the old man hadn’t stepped between them.

  “Knock it off, goddammit! You’re wreckin’ my place! You wanna shoot each other to pieces, do it out in the wind!”

  “I don’t wanna do that, do you, Buck?” said Ben.

  “Naw,” said Buck. “I guess not.”

  Ben relaxed a little, letting his rifle barrel drop, but Buck did not lower his own.

  “But soon’s you step out the way I’m gonna blow that sonofabitch behind you off the side of this mountain.”

  “You can’t do that, Buck,” said Ben. “We got laws and they got to be upheld. I know you and Peggie were sweethearts. I’m sorry for your loss. But you know the trouble that’ll come down on all of us if a breed with an uncle in the marshals turns up dead in Tahlequah District killed by a Choc soldier. The marshals, the Army, and both our tribes’ll be fightin’ over who gets to build the gallows.”

  “We could tie him to my tree and whip him to bits, let the crows eat him,” Doc offered helpfully. “That’s what we woulda done in my day.”

  “This ain’t your day no more, Doc,” Ben said.

  “Yours neither, a-tsu-tsa,” Doc said, peering past him. “Your prisoner just scuttled on out the front.”

  Ben whipped around. It was true. The bastard had wriggled away on his belly, out into the dark. He hadn’t even heard the chains clink.

  He rushed out front into the wind. There was no trace of Waterback. He cursed himself for not packing the leg chains.

  Buck was at his side in a minute. In the doorway, Fisher was getting slowly to his feet, wiping his bleeding head with his sleeve.

  “You dumb sonofabitch,” he spat.

  “We’ll get him back,” Ben said, crouching down and staring at the dirt. “I think he doubled back the way we came down.”

  The brush and trees through which they’d passed were too thick to see if he was there. The wind was shaking them every which way.

  “You think!” said Fisher, lurching unsteadily out of the cabin. The knife was still in his hand. Ben noticed that most of the point was broke off the blade. He hadn’t remembered if it had been that way before.

  “I ought to cut you too,” Fisher said, stalking over, glaring.

  “You already did,” Ben said, inspecting the thin line of blood on his exposed ribs.

  Fisher looked away.

  “I didn’t intend to, you damn fool.”

  “I think he’s right, Fisher,” Buck said, after studying the trail a little himself. “He’s headed bac
k up.”

  “Then we get that fucker at the top,” Fisher said, putting his knife away.

  “You can’t kill him, Fisher,” Ben insisted.

  “See if I can’t,” Fisher said.

  “You do it and you better run, ‘cause I’ll have to come for you,” Ben said.

  Fisher got within a few inches of Ben, so that his dark face filled his whole vision.

  “Only one law on this mountain tonight, boy,” Fisher said. “See you don’t get in the way of it.”

  “I’ll be comin’ with you,” Doc called from the cabin. “Just lemme get my squirrel rifle.”

  Ben and Fisher held each other’s eyes for a moment.

  “You bring the old man,” Fisher said.

  He turned and rushed off into the trees with Buck.

  Ben turned toward the cabin door, thinking of how to tell Doc to stay, but the old man was already closing the door behind him, a big Sharps rifle in his arms. Ben wondered just how large the squirrels got on the Sparrowhawk.

  “Hey Redbone, c’mere a minute,” Doc said.

  Ben watched Fisher and Buck slip into the trees and trotted over. If he didn’t stay with those two he’d have a passel to answer for in Tahleuqah. The worst part was he didn’t care to stop them. Jimpsey deserved whatever Fisher did to him.

  “What’s this, d’you think?” Doc asked, handing him a flat shard of steel.

  Ben held it between his fingers. It was broke on one side, uneven, honed to a razor on the other, about four inches long.

  “Huh,” he grunted. “It’s a piece of Fisher’s knife. Musta broke off on something. Some stone in the doorway?”

  “There ain’t no stone in my cabin.”