Doss suddenly remembered Zachary, and turned to look for him. The youngster was laying dead in the doorway. Evidently Burly Tanner’s shot that had missed Doss, hit Zachary.
Doss rummaged through the cabin and found the money bags. The cash was still inside the leather containers. And there was a little extra money the five gunmen looted from the dead Brethren. Since no shovels were available, Doss would be unable to bury Zachary Steuben. His body would rot with those of the outlaws.
Now there were four widows on the Kiowa Flats.
Chapter Fifteen
Orvie McKenna looked up from feeding the chickens, and sniffed the air. Like all youngsters born and bred to the outdoors, the boy had developed a sixth sense about his physical environment. He could easily perceive the slightest drop in temperature, a quickening of the breeze, change in cloud formations or other natural phenomena.
Orvie smelled a windstorm in the air. He knew there would be no rain or thunder, just dry choking clouds of dust that would sweep across the land in strong gusts. The odors that stimulated his nostrils were arid and gritty. He spent several minutes watching the chickens peck at the grain before he let himself out of the gate of the chicken yard.
The boy took a glance down the road as he had done every day since his father and uncle had ridden off weeks before. So far it had always been an empty horizon that greeted his gaze. But today was different. A blur showed in the distance, and Orvie experienced a strong surge of excitement. He ran to the corral and climbed the fence for a better view. Moments later it was plain that a rider was approaching. The boy jumped from the fence and ran toward the house.
“Ma! Ma!”
Elvira called out the window. “Quit that yelling, Orvie. If you got something to say, just come in the house and say it.”
Orvie burst through the door and raced around the kitchen table in his excitement. “Mr. Kearns is coming down the road! I seen him, Ma! It’s Mr. Kearns.”
“Oh, my Lord! Is your pa with him?”
“I didn’t see nobody ’cept Mr. Kearns, Ma.”
Elvira ran outside and saw Doss riding by the front of the house. “Doss! Doss Kearns! You wait up, hear?”
Doss didn’t slacken his pace. “Come to the church, Elviry. The other women is on their way.”
“Where’s Ed? Where is he?” Elvira demanded shrilly. She ran out of the yard and down the road after him with Orvie at her heels. “Stop! Stop! Where’s Ed? Where is my Ed!” Her voice broke into a sob and she continued running despite the lengthening distance between her and Doss Kearns.
“Elviry!”
She was startled by the unexpected sound of her name. Elvira stopped and saw Mary Beth Dawkins pulling up in her buckboard. Edna Lee Steuben, holding her baby, sat beside her. “Come with us, Elviry!” the young woman urged.
Orvie scampered up and jumped into the back of the vehicle with the Dawkins children as Elvira joined the other two women on the seat. She wiped at the tears coursing down her cheeks. “Have you seen Ed?”
“No I ain’t! And I ain’t seen J.R. And Edna Lee ain’t laid eyes on her man and neither has Nora Turnbull. Doss just rode up to the house and said come to the church.”
“Oh, Lord!” Edna Lee cried.
“That J.R.!” Mary Beth hissed. “He’s always messing things up. I’ll bet he got hisself lost or throwed in jail somewheres.”
“I hope that’s all that’s wrong,” Elvira said, her hysterics hovering close to the breaking level.
“There couldn’t be nothing terrible wrong, could there?” Edna Lee asked.
“Hush!” Elvira said. “Just hush, Edna Lee!”
“Yes, Elviry,” the girl said, beginning to weep.
“And stop crying!” Elvira snapped.
“I cain’t help it!”
They pulled up into the church yard and could see Doss’ horse tied to the hitching rail, but he was nowhere in sight. “I guess Doss didn’t tell Lilly to come to the church with him,” Mary Beth commented.
Elvira stood up on the seat. “Doss Kearns! Where are you at?”
“Sit down, Elviry,” Mary Beth said. “He told us he wanted to see us all at once. Maybe he’s in the outhouse. A long horse ride does shake a body’s bladder.”
Within minutes Nora Turnbull and her brood arrived. They got down from their wagon and joined the others just as Doss stepped out of the church door to stand on the steps.
“Doss, where’s my Ed?” Elvira asked again.
“And all the others?” Nora Turnbull demanded. “What’s going on, Doss?”
Doss hesitated, his face twitching visibly. When he spoke, the usual booming voice was faint and weak. “They’re dead…all of ’em. We was jumped by bandits down Texas way.”
A stillness settled over the scene as the women stared up at him, motionless and transfixed. Finally young Edna Lee broke the silence. “All the men? Dead? Zachary too, Mr. Kearns?”
“I’m sorry,” Doss said.
“If they all got kilt, how come you didn’t, Doss?” Elvira asked.
“I got no idea, Elviry. I reckon it just wasn’t my time to go.”
“All dead,” Nora Turnbull said softly.
“I knowed it,” Elvira said grimly. “My Ed called out to me from his grave. I reckon, I knowed it all along. I tried to deny it, but…”
Edna Lee wailed so loud her baby began crying, and the women all drew close together.
Elvira’s teeth were clenched with angry grief. “Where are our men at?”
“They’re all buried,” Doss replied. “Ever’thing went to hell, ladies. It was awful! After we finished panning Ben’s gold—“
“That’s a lie!” Mary Beth Dawkins screamed. “J.R. told me the truth before the bunch of you left. Y’all stole that gold. You stole it!”
Doss was stunned by the revelation. He stood open mouthed for a moment, then took a deep breath. “All right. We stole it. And we took it to Texas and a banker bought it from us. But we was…we was jumped by bandits in the Injun Territory. That’s when ever’body was kilt.” He raised the saddlebags he held. “I got the cash money for the gold. All of it. Y’all won’t lose your land.”
Nora Turnbull, her face rigid with scorn, said, “That cash money you brung is no good.”
“O’course it’s good,” Doss said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the increasing strength of the wind. “Your men took big risks to get it. They died to save what was theirs and yours.”
Elvira screamed, “They died for nothing, Doss!”
“No! No!” Doss retorted angrily. “They died to save the farms!”
“They didn’t have to die,” Nora Turnbull said. “Andy Wilkerson from the Union Bank in Dodge City came out here less’n a week ago and gave us the good news.”
Doss stepped down from the steps with a quizzical expression on his face. “What good news?”
“Banker Treadwell and his chief teller has left Dodge City,” Nora Turnbull explained. “The Commerce Bank is closed down, Doss. Them two was sent up to the Dakotas where gold’s been discovered. Treadwell said there was a lot more money to be made there than here on the Flats.”
Doss snapped, “But we still owe the Commerce Bank in Boston on them loans we signed for.”
“No we don’t,” Elvira McKenna said. “Andy Wilkerson bought ’em up for fifty cents on the dollar. And he’s gonna extend our loans for the same amount. We owe less than we did before.”
Doss stood in shocked silence for a moment, then recovered. “But we need new loans for this season’s planting.”
Edna Lee Steuben glared at him. “Andy said that he’s gonna give ’em to us, Mr. Kearns.”
“But we can still use the money I brung,” Doss insisted. “We can finally fix up our houses like we been wanting to for so long.”
“That cash money was stole!” Elvira shouted. The wind seemed to catch her voice and carry it far out over the prairie. The women blinked their eyes as the swirling gusts whipped onto the Flats.
/> Doss held out the saddlebags again. “Take the money. It’s yours!”
“We don’t want it,” Elvira McKenna shouted as the gusts continued to send up sweeping clouds of dust.
“Your men did this for you. Maybe we did steal it, but Buford said God led us to take that gold. He said the Lord sent them grasshoppers to start a miracle to save us. He prayed hard and got that very message.”
Mary Beth was bitter. “Then God played a cruel joke on us!”
Doss’ face reddened with rage. “Take the money I brung!”
“You already been told we know that cash money was stole,” Elvira said.
“It don’t matter a bit,” Doss replied. “Listen! if we didn’t take it, then them wicked Brethren woulda used it to spread their evil ways.”
“I don’t want none of it, Doss Kearns,” Elvira stated.
“Me either,” Nora Turnbull shouted.
“It’s evil,” Mary Beth added.
Edna Lee Steuben turned her head away as she held her baby tightly to her body to keep him out of the wind.
Doss frantically gestured from woman to woman, and got nothing but stony scowls. Then he noticed the children standing off to the side. He appealed to them. “Listen, kids, your pas is gone. But before they died they got this cash money for you. It’s yours.”
The children looked at him in silent refusal.
Doss’ face darkened with rage. “Y’all listen to me! I said come and take this cash money! Now, godamn it! I ain’t fooling about this a’tall.” He strode over to seventeen-year-old Clem Turnbull and pushed one of the saddlebags at him. “Take it, Clem!”
“No, sir, Mr. Kearns.”
“You take this cash money, boy,” Doss repeated. “You take this godamn cash money home with you.”
“I’ll tend to the bell,” Clem announced. He turned from the man and, followed by Eldon Dawkins, walked up the church steps.
Doss whirled around wildly as the women led their children past him into the church. “Wait! Wait! Y’all cain’t leave this here. It’s money. Cash money!”
But within short moments he stood alone in the windstorm as the sound of his voice was drowned out by both the gale and the church bell that was, even now, tolling out the beginning of the mourning period for the dead.
The End of
A Piccadilly Publishing Western
By Patrick E. Andrews
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