by Julie Weston
“Miss Burns. You’re under arrest for the murder of Herbert Pitts. Hank Fischer says you admitted to shooting him in the head and he saw you holding a gun when he and Luke found you and the dead body by Washington Lake. Do you deny this?”
“No, I—I did say that. Wolfman Pitts tried to kill me and tried to kill Moonshine. I was fighting for my life.” She wanted to say, “Charlie, it’s me. Nellie. Your friend. What are you doing? Of course I didn’t shoot him, but I did stab him. He tried to murder me.” But she couldn’t choke out any words other than those she already spoke. Even speaking those few words brought back the scene, brought back the nausea and fear she had felt.
“Do you have a weapon in your possession?” The sheriff held out his hand. His eyes, dark and wrathful, stared into hers. There was no hint of friendship, trust, compassion, caring. His face could have been cut from the stone of the ramparts behind him. Gwynn cleared his throat, glanced at Nellie and away. His age seemed to have trebled since they had sat around the campfire with the Basque sheepherder.
“Yes. I—it’s in my pack.” She swung her pack off her shoulder and began to reach for the gun. The sheriff grabbed the pack from her, bumping into her hurt arm.
“Owww.” Nellie leaned over with pain. So much for a healed knife slash.
“Goddamnit, Sheriff. She’s been slashed with a knife.” Luke took a step forward and eased his arm around Nellie’s shoulder. “Let me look at that arm. It might be bleedin’ again.”
“It’s fine, Luke. Thank you. He just bumped it.” But the throbbing had begun again.
“Show me your arm, Nellie,” Luke ordered, his eyes telling her something. He reached for her hand and began to unbutton the sleeve.
At the same time, Nellie grabbed for her pack, an instinctive reaction to protect the work she had just accomplished. The sheriff took the gun and knocked Luke’s hand off Nellie’s arm. “Step back, Luke. You’re interfering with the law. I’ll arrest you too if you continue to assist Miss Burns in her resistance.” He handed the pack to Gwynn, who took it as if it were a haunch of meat instead of a valuable camera with exposed film inside. “We’ll need a horse to take Miss Burns down the mountain with us to the road. I’ll leave it there for you.” He motioned with the gun for Luke to move.
Nellie looked from one to the other, at first stunned and then realizing she was getting Luke into trouble, but finally understanding what he had tried to do. “My arm,” she cried. “It’s bleeding again.” She undid the sleeve and rolled it up. In fact, blood was seeping into the makeshift bandage. “Wolfman Pitts tried to kill me with his knife, Sheriff. You can see for yourself.” She tore open the bandage and blood welled along the wound. “Isn’t a woman entitled to defend herself in this godforsaken ‘wild west’?” Tears filled her eyes. Damnit, she would not cry. She wrapped the bandage around her forearm again, pulled her sleeve down and buttoned it, and held her wrists out. “Where are the handcuffs? I might attack someone else, you know.”
The sheriff’s expression changed not a whit, but Nell saw a ghost of a twitch around Gwynn’s mouth. At least he cared for her still.
By then, Luke had brought a horse over to the trio and the tourists behind were murmuring with excitement. “She’s under arrest!” one of the women exclaimed. Nell heard her and glanced toward Pearl, whose back was to Nell, talking to the women in a group. Now everyone had a story to tell when each of the dudes returned home.
The sheriff helped Nellie mount the horse and took the camera pack from Gwynn, who took the bridle and began to lead her away. She felt a prisoner already and regretted deeply saying she had shot Wolfman. Still, she half turned in the saddle and called to the dudes, “I’ll get the film developed soon and send the photos to you. Thank you for taking care of my arm.” Gwynn jerked on the bridle to stop her talking.
The sheriff led the way down the trail, his back stiff, the gun no longer in his hand, her camera pack on his back. All the gaiety of the morning had disappeared like morning fog. Nellie turned back again when they reached the junction of trails. The tourists were busy climbing onto the horses. It was as if they had already forgotten about her. The lake was no bigger than a pond and dust from the trail rose to choke her. Above the lake, the ramparts had lost their gold and no longer resembled castles. They were gray, silent stones.
CHAPTER 14
“Charlie,” Nell ventured once, but the sheriff did not turn his head. “Gwynn,” she tried, but the old sheep man turned to her and shook his head, placing a finger on his lips. “Moonshine,” she called. He barked.
The path down seemed steeper than the night she and Pearl had climbed it. The horse lunged once or twice and Nell grabbed the saddle horn, once again tweaking her arm. Although the morning sun shone through the trees, dappling the trail in places, the gloom of the closely spaced fir trees gradually worked into her. Her shoulders slumped. Her tailbone hurt. This horse was no rocking-chair ride, as had been Luke’s.
Memories of crisp mornings in Chicago with traffic moving back and forth, crowds of people hurrying to work or to shop, even the faintly rancid smell of the packing plants, almost brought tears to her eyes. The gangsters there never bothered ordinary people, although she suspected she might be wrong in that supposition. Still, they would not have bothered her or her mother. Her sweet mother who, even now, was laboring away in the library where she worked, rebinding dusty books, reshelving those used the evening before, cataloging new arrivals, touching each one as if it were a child who needed tender care. Books had always lined the walls of their apartment, often resting on the floor as well. Her mother read voraciously. Nell read, too, but was more interested in photographic books. Still, she could hardly recall even seeing a book in Ketchum or Hailey or even Twin Falls.
Maybe she had inherited all of her father’s bad qualities. She’d lost her job as a portrait photographer in Chicago, and now she was under arrest. How many times had her father been arrested for drunkenness and mayhem? She remembered her mother’s white face, her tight lips, her despair when she left the apartment to visit him in jail, to bail him out, to sober him up. The most distressful moment of her life, before Wolfman Pitts’s attack, had been to identify her father in the morgue, a duty she took on when her mother took to her bed upon news that he had been killed in a street fight.
The sheriff abruptly stopped and Gwynn pulled on the bridle to hold the horse. Moonie continued to trot, sniffing at the trail, but the sheriff grabbed at the scruff of his neck. Her reminiscences thankfully interrupted, Nell opened her mouth to ask what was wrong. Then she heard a noise of brush breaking, rocks rolling, and a bull elk leaped across their path, followed by two cows and a calf. They disappeared almost as rapidly as they had appeared. Still, Charlie and Gwynn stayed motionless, the former’s hand still on the dog’s neck.
“What’s going—?”
Three men, two with rifles, tailed the elk and appeared on the path. They were just as startled to see the sheriff, Gwynn, and Nellie on a horse as she was to see them, although her—what? her captors?—didn’t look surprised at all. A gun had appeared in the sheriff’s hand, and although it wasn’t pointed at anyone or anything, it had a life of its own, wavering briefly up and down as the sheriff spoke.
“What are you men doing?” His voice rang with authority.
“What’s it to you?” Dick Goodlight answered. “We might ask the same thing of you.” By now he had seen Nellie on the horse. “Where’d you find her?” He motioned toward Nell with his rifle, but didn’t look at her. “She stole a gun from our camp, along with a few other things.”
Nellie wondered if he was referring to Pearl as one of the “things.”
“Your camp?” the sheriff said. “It’s somewhere along the trail here?”
“Down yonder,” Goodlight answered. Again he motioned with his gun, and the other two men with him, Long John and Bob from the moonshine operation, stared at the ground. “We’re after elk today. You keep us jawin’ much longer and we’ll miss ’em altog
ether.”
“Let me see your license.” The sheriff’s gun still hovered between pointing down and pointing at Goodlight.
“You ain’t the fish and game officer. You’re just a sheriff from Blaine County. You got jurisdiction here?”
“I do now. The license?” He stared at Goodlight, who stared back.
Goodlight caved. “Left the license back at camp. Didn’t expect no lawman up in the wilds. Usually they stay behind their desks—them that knows what’s good for ’em. But I got one. You can check with old Rainy Jones at Smiley Creek.”
The sheriff’s gun quit wavering. It pointed directly at Goodlight. “Hand me your rifle.” He motioned to the others. “Yours, too.” They looked at Goodlight to see what he’d do.
“Goddammit, Sheriff. You ain’t got no right to take our guns.” A shaft of light lit on Goodlight’s pale hair, turning him almost wraith-like. His shabby garb appeared even dirtier and more ragged than usual, lit from behind.
“Gwynn,” the sheriff said, motioning with his head toward the three men. The sheep man let go of the bridle and stepped toward Goodlight, grabbed the rifle, and ejected a handful of cartridges, which he placed in the pocket of his jacket. Then he handed the gun back. He did the same with the other rifle.
“How am I gonna kill my elk without cartridges?” Goodlight whined.
“Guess you’ll have to head back to camp, won’t you?” Gwynn answered as he picked up the bridle rein. “Next time, remember your license.” His voice mocked, as the sheriff’s had not.
“You old bastard.” Goodlight studied Gwynn. “I’ll remember this. You own sheep, don’t you? Better keep a good eye on ’em.”
“You’re in deep cowshit already, Goodlight. I reckon you better steer clear of me.” Gwynn began walking down the trail again. “And her.” He jerked his thumb back toward Nell. “If you don’t, you’ll have hell to pay.” He stopped briefly. “You’re gonna have hell to pay anyway. If I were you, I’d clear out of this country.”
Nellie felt Goodlight’s glare on her as she rode past, her back straight again, her eyes looking ahead. She hoped he didn’t have another gun hidden somewhere in those ill-fitting clothes. Bob was off to one side, and as Nellie passed, she risked a glance at him. He gave a little wave with his hand down near his hip, and she remembered how his voice blended with his ukulele.
When they reached the road at the trailhead, Nellie saw a jumble of automobiles, but none of them was hers. She recognized the sheriff’s and Gwynn’s truck. A third one belonged to one of the tourists in the group behind. A horse was tethered near where Hank’s old Model T had rested, a pile of straw nearby. Not far up the rough track were weather-beaten shacks, the last remnants of a mining operation at Fourth of July Creek, the reason for the road in the first place. At dusk, neither she nor Pearl had noticed them.
“Now what?” she asked. “Since you think I’m an outlaw, are you taking me to jail? Don’t you want to hear my story at all? About how Wolfman Pitts attacked me, and how he was going to strangle me, turn my tongue purple, he said.” Her words began to shake and she could feel the anger grow inside.
“First, we’re going to sew up that slash on your arm, Lassie.” Gwynn helped her dismount, trying rather clumsily to avoid touching her hurt arm. He led her to his truck and sat her down in the bed at the back. “Stay there. This won’t look pretty, but it’ll stop the bleeding. I done this to a lot of sheep, and the sooner we get it closed, the better off you’ll be. You’ve got some rough days ahead of you.”
“I do?” She looked from Gwynn to the sheriff, who wasn’t paying any attention to her at all. He had placed Nellie’s camera next to her in the truck, then tied up the horse at a railing near the path and then walked back to his auto. None of his motions were hurried, and yet he accomplished everything in the space of a minute or less. He climbed in the auto and started it up, then backed around. “Wait! Charlie, where are you going?” She jumped down and began to run after the sheriff. “Charlie!”
“Cora Nell, get back here!” Gwynn roared.
Her full name stopped Nellie cold. Moonshine, who had followed and then passed her as if she were playing a game, ran back and licked her hand.
“What is going on? I thought I was under arrest.” Her throbbing forearm, her aching shoulder, her tired feet, her bruised body—all these things, compounded by lack of sleep, fear, and then relief—threatened to undermine the determination she’d dredged up from the bottom of her being in the last few days. She slumped back onto the truck bed, as weary as she’d ever been in her life. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Rest your arm on this box,” Gwynn ordered. “This is gonna hurt like hell, . . . heck, . . . no, dammit, it’s gonna hurt like hell. First I’m gonna pour some moonshine over that cut. You better drink some yourself. That might help. I’ll be fast as I can. If you gotta scream, try to do it quiet-like.” He glanced around toward the trailhead. “Don’t wanta scare them tourists, and I’m hopin’ Goodlight and his scallawags hustled back to their camp. Don’t know if they was after that elk or was after you and that tart.”
Gwynn handed Nellie a tin cup filled with clear liquid. She sniffed it, held her nose, and took two big gulps before she choked. Fire filled her mouth, ran down her throat, and slammed into her stomach. “Aghhh! Are you trying to poison me?”
The old sheep rancher ignored her while he opened a box marked with a big red “X.” Inside was rolled gauze, gauze patches, a needle and two spools of thread, one white and one black, a tube of ointment that smelled like the goo Alphonso had spread on the wounded dog in the sheep camp, and white tape. Already, her knees were feeling wobbly and she wasn’t even standing up.
“Drink some more.” Gwynn threaded the needle. His hand trembled as he concentrated. Then he poured more liquid from the bottle standing by the first aid box onto the needle and thread both. When he held Nellie’s arm and prodded the wound open with the needle, then splashed some of the liquid across it, she almost came up off the truck bed.
“Works for sheep. Oughta work for you.” He took one of the gauze pads and brushed more liquid along the sides of the slash, cleaning off blood and bits of bandage stuck in it.
Nellie looked away and took two more huge swallows of moonshine. It didn’t taste as bad this time, nor burn as intensely going down. Still, she preferred the wine served up by Alphonso. Would this make her an alcoholic?
“Where did you get the moonshine?” She didn’t care, but she needed whatever distraction she could drum up. Another two swallows and she slumped against a thick blanket Gwynn had rigged up behind her. He handed her a stick.
“Found it along the road,” he said and chuckled. “Now, I’m told if you bite on that stick, it’ll help.” He sounded as doubtful about that lore as Nellie felt about it. “You can grab my shoulder, but keep clear of my hands. I’ll be neat as I can about this, but if we don’t get this cleaned out and sewn up, you’re likely to get good and infected and maybe lose a limb. Hard to take pictures then.”
Whether Gwynn intended to scare her men’s pants off or not, he succeeded in frightening her to her marrow. She took two more swallows and then gripped the stick between her teeth. “Mmm ruddy.” She watched as the needle neared the soft skin of her forearm. As it pricked into her, she closed her eyes. The pain was so intense when the needle went in, tears squeezed out, and she clamped on the wood, moaning. She pressed the fingernails of one hand into her palm, trying to create a counter pain, but it was so pale by comparison, she stopped. Almost worse was the feel of thread tugging her skin as Gwynn moved from stitch to stitch, muttering curses whenever the thread stuck.
“Almost done, Lassie. You’re doin’ all right. You’re braver than any sheep I’ve ever worked on. They squeal and jerk around—takes twice as long. Hold on, honey. I’ll be done in a minute.” And still the needle pierced skin and the thread pulled and the pain filled her until every nerve ending was burning. When she thought she couldn’t last another sec
ond, it stopped.
“Whoever fixed you up at the camp did a right smart job,” Gwynn said. “You’ll have a scar along this arm, but it won’t be too bad. Now you keep cleanin’ the stitches with the moonshine and then rub salve into the skin around it. I’ll give you some from the box here.”
Nellie opened her eyes when she was sure he had stopped. Her arm might have been burned in a fire, it felt so raw. The earlier throbbing was a mere bruise compared to the agony she suffered now. And yet, as she studied the neat line of stitches, the burning began to subside. Whether that was because the wound was already healing or the moonshine had finally knocked her senses out of kilter, she didn’t know.
“You ever show on a kilt?” Something about the words didn’t come out right.
“You’ll never see a kilt on me, Lassie. My old legs would be too embarrassed.”
“Qu . . . qu . . . quilt,” she amended. “Show.” No, that wasn’t right. Carefully, she said the word again. “Sew.”
Gwynn stopped putting away his supplies and studied her arm. “Good job, huh? Nope, just sewed up sheep and men. Maybe I got a hidden talent.” His movements became more hurried. He helped Nellie to the front of the truck and folded the blanket around her back and then over her knees. “Don’t want you bouncin’ around. Hold this arm—” he pointed to the freshly sewed up forearm “–with this arm.” He lifted her good arm. “We gotta get hustlin’.” He called Moonshine over and let him in below Nell’s knees. He slammed her door shut and stepped quickly around to his side. “I’ll fix up a sling if you need it.” As he pushed the starter button on the truck, he swore. “Damn dudes are comin’ outta the woods. Keep your head low.”
She couldn’t do anything but keep her head low. She was already unconscious.
One sense at a time, Nellie came back to consciousness. There were few sounds except that of water, perhaps, softly touching a beach of sand, flowing in, flowing out. A familiar smell drifted around her. Something green and dusty, sharpened by an earthy scent and softened by something like hand lotion, the thought of which made her aware of her arm, a limb that felt big and bloated and red to the touch. Darkness swaddled her in the same way soft, thick blankets held her, warm but not heavy. Her lips were crusted and dry as was the inside of her mouth. Her tongue, when she tried to moisten her lips, scraped along chapped and broken skin. Something inside her head grunted and then twisted, causing a screech of pain. She heard a short, quiet groan. Afraid someone lurked over her, she tried to push up with the arm that didn’t feel bloated and hot. Then the pain ripped down the back of her neck.