by Donis Casey
He listened to John Lee’s horrifying tale of being trapped in the rubble of the barn and Phoebe’s account of watching the side of her house peel away. He informed Mary that he had telegraphed the sheriff of Polk County, Arkansas, in hopes of finding out if the name in the book Trent had found by the wreckage of the dead couple’s wagon, “E.J. Mitchell, Mina, Ark.,” was a clue to the identity of the foundling. No reply yet.
Scott felt a small pang when he saw how relieved Mary was to hear that. He glanced at Kurt, whose expression told him that what he feared was true: Mary was becoming attached to her little guest. She had even given her a name. “I’m calling her Judy,” she told Scott. “She just looks like a Judy to me.”
“Now, Mary, honey, you know we’re going to find her folks.”
Mary didn’t look at him. “I know it. Don’t worry. Kurt keeps reminding me.”
Eventually Scott managed to extricate himself from family duties and walked out to the corral to find Gee Dub.
Gee Dub saw him coming and met him in the yard. Scott liked his cousin’s son, a tall, laconic young man with his mother’s dark eyes and curly hair and his father’s dry wit. Gee Dub had never been one to raise a fuss, but Scott had always thought there was a deep well there that nobody had yet plumbed.
“Hey, Scott,” he greeted. “What’s up?”
“Gee, do you think you could lead me to the spot where you found Jubal Beldon’s body the other night? It would help me to figure out where he died.”
Before he answered, Gee Dub wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve, removed his gauntlets and stuffed them down the waistband of his chaps. “Dad says Mr. Lee thinks Beldon died before the twister got him.”
“Maybe a whole day before,” Scott conceded. “Broke neck. Horse may have tossed him.”
Gee Dub nodded. “I hate to admit it, but I could no more find my way back to that spot than I could fly. I was so turned around in the dark that I was lucky I didn’t end up in Texas. Out in the middle of a fallow field somewhere. There were old furrows on the ground. ’Course, whether he was already dead or not when the storm hit, I don’t know that it matters where I found him. He’s just as dead either way.”
“It matters if somebody killed him.”
If Gee Dub was taken aback, he didn’t show it. “You think that?”
Scott shrugged. “I don’t know, but something about this rubs me the wrong way. I’ve been asking around if anybody saw Jubal right after the church picnic on Sunday, and Trent says you and him ran into him at the Rusty Horseshoe.”
“That’s right. Must have been six or so. Around suppertime, anyway. Didn’t say anything of consequence to one another, though. I can only vouch for the fact that he was alive at the time.”
“All right, then. You ponder on it for a while and if you think of anything helpful, you let me know. Now, show me where that wounded horse y’all found that night is stabled. I want a look at him.”
Gee Dub led him to the barn and pushed open the barn door, but before going in he said, “The horse is crazy, you know. Lost his mind. I wanted to shoot him, but Mary said, ‘I am not letting you kill that horse. After what he has been through, he deserves to live.’ So I didn’t. Kurt and me got him cleaned up, but be careful, Scott. He will kill you if he can.”
“I declare, the wind surely blew a peck of trouble in on Kurt and Mary the other night,” Scott commented.
Gee Dub cast him a knowing glance. “Every wounded and lost thing knows it can find welcome here with Mary.”
The gelding was in an open stall at the back of the barn, blindfolded and haltered with a lead rope tied to the wall. He was a handsome animal, well cared for, his cream-colored mane and tail carefully trimmed. He was standing four-square with his head lowered and his ears back. One ear twitched in their direction as they neared. He snorted. It didn’t sound like a welcome. The two men stopped well back from the slats.
“He likes Daddy better than most,” Gee Dub said. “At least he can get within a mile of the critter without getting bit or trampled.”
“He got a brand?” Scott asked.
“Oh, yes, it’s the Beldon lazy B, all right. The saddle has ‘J. Beldon’ written on the underside, too.”
“I’ll let the Beldons know he’s here. I imagine one of the Beldon boys will take him off your hands directly. What kind of wounds did he have when he come in?”
“Splinters, mostly. Only one bad hurt place, on this side, there, see?
Through the slats on the side of the stall Scott could make out a large white dressing on the animal’s left side, fairly high, close to the hip. “Looks like somebody was able to get close enough to tend to the wound,” Scott observed.
Gee Dub nodded. “Dad did that. Had to blindfold the beast, though. He does better blindfolded, as you see. Dad said it’s a narrow, deep, wound, and a lucky thing the horse’s innards weren’t punctured. Just the muscle.”
Scott folded his arms and looked at the horse in silence while he thought, gazing at the white square of bandage on the horse’s flank. “I’d like to get a closer look at that puncture wound,” he said finally. “I’m not keen to get my head kicked in, though.”
Gee Dub didn’t question his motives. “That covering is just stuck on there with a little mastic. I can lean over the fence and pull it off easy. It wouldn’t hurt him none.”
Scott was remembering the condition of Jubal Beldon’s body, flayed by the tornado, bones broken, and one narrow, deep, puncture wound on his left thigh. Then he thought about the condition of the storm-maddened horse. Not flayed, not broken, no bodily injury worse than splinters, and one narrow, deep, puncture wound on its left hip. He nodded. “I’d be beholden if you’d do that, son.”
Trenton Calder
The Rusty Horseshoe dance hall was about a mile due south and southwest of the Beldon farm, and there was no direct road betwixt the two. I could either have gone three or four miles back into Boynton and picked up the road to Morris, or I could go cross-country as the crow flies. Since most of the fences in the area were still down and there was a footpath or two that I knew of in that direction, I chose the last one. I had to ride across some private property on the way, but I didn’t get caught. And if I had, I doubt if anybody would have objected much.
There was still an awful lot of wrack and ruin to see as I rode that first mile south, then the damage thinned out and for another mile it didn’t look too bad. Then I turned west. The closer I came to Morris, the worse things got. I could make out the path of the tornado plain as day.
I reined old Brownie in and scouted the terrain for a minute. The storm track ran almost like a graded road about a hundred yards wide, directly southwest to northeast. I started thinking about Jubal Beldon’s body, deposited by the twister in the middle of a field. If he was dead before the wind picked him up, then he had to have died somewhere to the southwest of where he was found.
Now, I hadn’t seen the spot where Gee Dub found Jubal, but from what I had been told, it was in a fallow field somewhere between the Tucker place and Boynton. But the Tucker place was northwest of Boynton. What was southwest? I consulted the map in my head.
The Beldon farm was southwest of town, but it was west of the storm path, and I had seen with my own eyes that they had sustained little damage. It had to have been somewhere east of Beldons’.
Well, I wasn’t going to figure it out right then. But I could tell that if the storm path stayed true, I wasn’t going to find much left of the Rusty Horseshoe, either.
I was right about that.
At first I wasn’t sure I had the right place, being as it had been dark when I was there last. But if I had been there a hundred times, I still might not have recognized it. There wasn’t much left of the little house by the side of the road. No roof, the front wall gone, two walls caved in, and one wall standing bright and chipper like it had no idea what had
happened to its mates. Mr. Dills and several other men were going through the rubble, which was strewn across the yard and into the trees, separating out usable bits of building material. There wasn’t much.
I reined in at the edge of the biggest heap of kindling, where Dills was picking out bricks and stacking them into a neat pile. “By durn, Mr. Dills!” I said. “I’m sorry to see this.”
Dills gave me a narrow squint. “Who the hell are you?”
“Name’s Trenton Calder. I was in to your place the other night with Gee Dub Tucker. We come looking for Walter Kelley.”
“I remember. Well, as you can see, I am currently not in business, so if you’re in the market for a snort, I suggest you go elsewhere.”
I dismounted and walked over to him, picking my way through the damage. Dills straightened up when I stopped in front of him, annoyed at the interruption but curious, too.
“That ain’t why I’m here, sir. I come on behalf of Scott Tucker, law in Boynton. I want to ask you about Sunday last.”
Now Dills really did look put out. “I know Scott. I ain’t in his jurisdiction and he never has set about trying to change that fact. If he aims to persecute me for violation of the blue laws, he has picked a blamed bad time to start.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “No, sir, Scott has no such notion. I’m trying to track the whereabouts of Jubal Beldon last Sunday night. When I was here with Gee Dub, Jubal Beldon was here, too. In fact we exchanged some pleasant conversation. Was he a regular customer of yours?”
Dills removed his leather gauntlets and sat down on his brick pile, resigned to the fact that he was going to have to deal with me. “Yes, I saw all them Beldons right regular. Good customers, but I sure had to keep an eye on them. What roguery has Jubal got up to now?”
“He’s got himself killed, is what he’s got. The last time his ma saw him was late Sunday afternoon and the next thing anybody knows it’s Monday night and Jubal is dead. We’re trying to retrace his movements between the two events.”
“Well, I’ll be switched! Killed, you say. I can’t say I’m much taken aback by the news. Jubal was here for a spell that evening, it’s true. He was in the back room most of the time, so I didn’t see what he was up to. But Dan may know. He keeps a good eye on what goes on back there.” Dills turned on his seat. “Dan,” he hollered, and the big galoot who had let us into the secret den of iniquity that night put down the ceiling beam he was hauling across his shoulder and came over.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Dills?”
“Dan, this feller is asking after Jubal Beldon. Him and Gee Dub Tucker seen him here on Sunday night and he’s wondering if any of us know what became of Beldon after they left I said that you’d know if anybody did. Did you talk to him any?”
Dan rolled his muscle-bound shoulders while he conjured up the memory. Finally he pooched out his bottom lip. “He just sat by himself in the corner and had a drink or two, like he was thinking something over real hard. I didn’t engage him in conversation, but I did notice that he counted some cash while he was sitting there. He didn’t make a fuss over it, but it looked to be quite a wad. That was before y’all come in. I remember you.” Dan nodded at me and cracked his knuckles. “I thought for a while I was going to have to bust some heads.”
Dills shot me an ironic glance, and I said, “Yes, well, good sense prevailed and we left in peace. What time was it when he come in, and how long was he here after we left?”
Dan shrugged. “He wasn’t here long after you’uns left. Less than an hour.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He did not. He just stood up and put two whole bits on the table and left. I was surprised. Jubal never was a good tipper before that.”
I turned back to Mr. Dills. “Did you see which way he went when he left?”
“No. I had no interest in the matter. You think he met his killer after he left us?”
“Jubal got killed?” Dan’s hat practically flew off. “Well, knock me over!”
“Now, I never said he was murdered,” I cautioned. “But he did get killed somehow. Sometime that night, we reckon. Before the twister, anyway. I’m trying to figure out where he went and who he met.”
Dan started to say something, but hesitated and looked at Dills for guidance. I wasn’t surprised. I figure a place like a roadhouse relies on its reputation for discretion.
“It’s all right, Dan,” Dills said, then answered the question himself. “I don’t know where Jubal went after he left, but an hour or two later, his brother Hosea come in. I told him he had just missed Jubal. Hosea stayed long enough to have a drink, then he left, too.”
Well, well, I thought. Hosea didn’t mention that, did he?
“Now, mind,” Mr. Dills added, “them Beldon boys may be trouble and I got no use for them generally, but they’re good customers, and the truth is I doubt if Hosea killed his own brother.”
“Mr. Dills, I tend to agree with you. But Hosea could know something that’ll help, so I’ll ask him. Thank you for the information.” I waved my hand at what was left of the roadhouse. “You intend to rebuild?”
“I do, indeed, young feller. You can tell Scott I’ll continue providing the local farmhands with ice tea and a place to play dominoes for as long as I’m on this side of the ground.”
Trenton Calder
I wasn’t entirely convinced that looking into Beldon’s oddly timed death was the best use of my time. It looked to me that he got tossed off his horse and nobody noticed he wasn’t around until after the storm. But Scott had a bee in his bonnet about it, so I didn’t argue with him. I just figured that Jubal had been such a low-down dog that Scott naturally assumed somebody killed him.
I went directly to the jail to report to Scott, but his son Butch, who sometimes watched the office, told me that he hadn’t shown up yet. So I went around to his house.
“As far as I know, Trent, he’s still out to Shaw and Alafair’s,” Hattie said.
Well, there wasn’t much I could do until he got back, so I dropped in on Miz Beckie to pay my respects and ask how she was doing since Streeter McCoy and me had rescued her. Of course the real reason was to see Ruth. I didn’t want to dally, so after a tip of the hat and a solicitous inquiry I took my leave of Miz Beckie, but Ruth followed me out and asked me if I’d accompany her home now that the roads were cleared up enough for horses. She said she hadn’t left town since before the storm, and she was missing her family and feeling homesick.
I felt like I had won the jackpot. And to boot, if Scott was still there and jumped to the conclusion when he saw me that I had gone all the way to Tuckers’ to tell him what I found, I figured he’d give me credit for zealous application of duty. So Ruth and me rode out of town together, me on old Brownie and her on Miz MacKenzie’s mare Teacup. The day had advanced considerably. The cold aftermath of the tornado had moved on, and it had gotten hot and humid and windy. But the sun was shining, for once. We talked a lot on the way out there.
She said that as much as she loved Miz Beckie, the atmosphere in that house was mighty gloomy, especially since Wallace had come back, and she didn’t know what to do to make it better. She told me that the two of them had fallen out over his friend Randal Wakefield, which I thought peculiar. Of course, I liked Wakefield a lot better than Wallace. I told Ruth that I expected that Miz Beckie, for all her going on about what a good soldier Wallace would make, was not happy that he had joined up. And now that she was faced with the idea of him going to war and getting killed, she blamed Randal for either talking him into it or going along with it.
Ruth said that sounded reasonable. She kindly thought Miz Beckie was a mite jealous of Randal.
I told her that Scott was determined to look into Jubal Beldon’s demise in case the death was not an accident. “Scott said that Jubal was such a nasty creature, always digging up dirt and making up evil stories about folks, that
he’d be surprised if it turned out somebody didn’t kill him.”
Her expression changed in a blink. She was wearing a blue-green scarf around her neck, which caused her eyes to turn the color of the turquoise stone in the bracelet my sister had brought my mother from her trip to New Mexico. The color amazed me so that I had to concentrate real hard in order to understand what she was saying. “Does Scott think Jubal slandered the wrong person and got killed for it?” she asked me.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s just what he thinks, Ruthie. All these years I’ve known Jubal and his brothers, they’re always looking for a dog to kick. Makes them feel like big men, I reckon. Do you know of somebody in particular who Jubal might have had something bad on?”
“Who doesn’t have secrets they’d rather keep hid, Trent, whether it’s their own or a loved one’s? He threatened to spread a calumny about me, for one.”
The idea that a disgusting piece of work like Jubal Beldon could have something to threaten Ruth Tucker with was so ludicrous that my first reaction was to laugh. My second reaction was a red-hazed rage. “What did he say to you?”
A corner of her mouth twitched, which usually meant that she was amused. Not this time. “He implied that if I didn’t give him my favors, he’d just tell everyone I had anyway.” Then she did smile. “No surprise, I guess.”
That’s when I knew in my bones that Scott was right. Somebody murdered Jubal Beldon. If I’d of had him there at that moment I’d have killed him myself. A man would do anything to protect the ones he loves.
My cheeks were hot. It galled me to know that I had flushed red and that she could see my feelings written plain on my face. I realized that I hadn’t breathed in a while, and I let my breath out in a gush. I came within a gnat’s eyebrow of saying something unfit for her ears, but I caught myself in time and said, “That’s low.”
“But how on earth could Scott possibly tell for sure if Jubal was murdered, Trent? After what the wind did to Jubal’s body, there’s no way he could be certain it wasn’t just an accident.”