North of Forsaken

by Matthew P. Mayo

  And in the next instant I saw why. Shots cracked from within the house. Though Jack and I hugged the log wall of the cabin, we flinched, trying to look in every direction at once, up toward the windows and to our sides, each expecting to see a smoking barrel and to feel smacking pain as our blood leaked out. But no, Jack nudged me in the gut and nodded upslope behind the cabin.

  There came Thomas. Two emotions, raw terror and unbridled glee, warred on his face as he bounded spring-legged down the slope toward us.

  He clutched a rifle around the forestock with one flailing arm, and nearly somersaulted, so wildly was he leaping. Then he locked his gaze on us. His foolish grin widened, as did his terror-round eyes, and a bullet whipped the hat off his head as if cuffed from behind by a trickster’s hand.

  Thomas slid to a stop, spraying gravel and unearthing clumps of dried grass. Most astounding of everything I’d seen already that day, the young fool scrabbled back upslope to retrieve his hat.

  “Thomas!” I shouted, peeling away from the wall. Jack knew what I was up to and kept to his spot, but harangued the foolish young man with a volley of words I don’t dare repeat.

  Jack sent three bullets at the rear-most window at our end of the house. I gulped, dry-mouthed, and prayed the distraction would prevent whoever was shooting at the boy from getting off another shot.

  Trouble was, the new commotion mystified Thomas as well. He spun and stood still on the slope, his fallen hat in one hand, halfway to his head, mouth agape.

  “Get down here!” I bellowed. And when I do that, which isn’t often, it usually commands immediate attention. This time was no different. Thomas ran. Rock chips spattered where his right foot had been a second before. That time he did lose his footing, and that is likely what saved him, for he rolled like a pushed boulder right down before Jack’s feet.

  And that’s where we stayed put for longer than I care to relate. It was mid-morning by that time and the blue strafings of sky that earlier promised a fine day had been blotted out by clouds, low and driving in lower, dark and filled with gloom.

  We stood there, the three of us, huddled and hugging the wall for the next few minutes, trying to be quiet, or rather trying to keep Thomas quiet. I had the added task of keeping Jack from thumping Thomas on the head.

  “I can’t take much more of this,” said Jack. “We have to do something. Even if it’s wrong. Time to make a move.”

  Thomas was about to open his yap, but I held up a finger and shook my head. I felt the veins pulsing on my temples, knew my brushy face, now more than a week since I’d shaved, looked worse than before, and that’s saying something.

  I was not up for hearing Thomas’s voice whining like a late-night mosquito in my ears. A close second would be to hear him spout orders in his imperious rich-boy’s voice. So far he’d taken the hint and kept his mouth shut. But it wouldn’t last, with him it never did.

  “I’m headed around the front, Jack,” I said in a whisper. “You take the back, we’ll meet up on the far side, see if we can tell how many are in there. At least two, as the shots overlapped. Might be we’ll figure out a way for one of us to distract them, enough for the other to climb the stairs, kick in the door, and settle this mess once and for all.”

  “Good, let’s go.” With a quick glance upward toward the windows, one of them now shattered from the shots I’d cranked in, he crept low to the corner.

  I did the same. I stopped, pointed again at Thomas and mouthed, “Stay put!” He stared at me as though he found my obvious rage confounding. I’ve been acquainted with feral wolf dogs with better abilities to mind.

  As I feared, the front and two ends of the house were closed up tighter than a bank vault. The door I’d so recently scrambled out of when rescuing Thomas stood six or so steps up to a landing. From there it wrapped around and became the setting porch along the front of the place. The door had been cobbled back into shape after the woman had blasted it with the shotgun. Nothing for it, I’d have to go on up there and barge in somehow.

  I crept back around to where we’d started, hoping Jack had learned of a way in, maybe a back door—wishful, fanciful thinking, but it pays to explore all potential options before barging in on a dicey setup.

  I slipped around the corner and there was Jack, making his way around back, but no sign of Thomas. We exchanged raised-eyebrow glances and then we heard someone whisper, “Hey!”

  We looked upward.

  There was Thomas, at the top of the stairs, crouched down and grinning at us. His rifle was not in his hands. He’d left it leaning against the logs beside us.

  We both groaned.

  “Keep your head down, you fool!” hissed Jack.

  “Cover me,” I said and made my way up the stairs, one at a time, wincing with each creak and pop of the planking.

  I made it up there without attracting any shots my way, but when I got to the top, that damned Thomas had wormed his way around to the front. I followed and found him laid out prone, inching his head up close to the bottom of the nearest window. It was shuttered, likely barred from the inside.

  I wasn’t about to shout, but I wanted to lay a hand on him and drag him back off there. Hell, if I’m honest I wanted to grab him by a leg and toss him off the porch to the ground below.

  Instead, I heard voices inside. A man’s first, rapid. His words sounded like questions, as if he were pleading with someone.

  I stood, looked in a gap between the shutter and the window itself, at the side of the same window Thomas was perched beneath. An oil lamp’s low glow made visible little of the interior.

  A shape passed before the lamp, then moved back. Was it the man, the woman, or a third person—one of the men who’d arrived overnight? That’s when an unsettling thought occurred to me once more—what if these five men really were just passing through? The last I’d seen of any of the newcomers, they were being hunted down by Scribley and his crew and shot like hydrophobic wolves.

  What if they were innocent, had only wanted a place to camp for the night? What if Dibbs had somehow goaded them into a gunfight? Hell, what if Dibbs had been shot by this lot in the house? Worrisome notions, though nothing in this vein of thought accounted for the attack by the man in the barn.

  As with much in this life, the more complicated the situation became, the more seductive the simple solutions, such as those the hot-headed rancher was employing. I hoped for all our sakes the newcomers had been in league with these two gems inside the cabin. Otherwise, we were all answerable for far more deaths and damage than we’d been dealt by them.

  The man’s voice inside was trampled by a woman’s. Hers was low, husky, a barking sound. The man’s voice wedged in, timid, nipping, yapping something, then retreating as if afraid of getting smacked.

  “We can still make money,” he said. “Sell off the land once we get out of here.”

  “You idiot, you think we’re getting out of here?” said the woman. She followed it with a spitting sound, accentuating the truth of her suspicions.

  A clinking sounded, then the woman said, “Don’t be stingy. Pour me another!”

  The man grumbled, and she said, “What? What was that?”

  “Nothing, dearest.”

  “Dearest, ha. You hate me.” Her voice was loud, though the words slurred. A few seconds later something hit the wall close by the window I’d been looking through.

  “Don’t care.” It was the man’s voice. “You said it was good mining land, but it don’t matter. We can sell off this ranch, make a pile, and no one’s the wiser. Have to get to the coast.”

  She responded, but he cut her off. I didn’t think she’d take that well. I was right. Her reverie ended with a shriek. “Two thousand acres! I’m not giving it away!”

  That raised my eyebrows. I looked down at Thomas, who shrugged, his weak smile saying all his voice hadn’t. The property was larger than he let on. I assumed that was intentional on his part. Yep, I thought. As oily as his father.

  I say his b
ecause I will never admit that Italian scoundrel was my father. Of course, knowing what I did of my mother, it was as likely someone else had fathered me. The thought did not depress me. It was something I’d dreamt of as a youth, and I came to the same solution then as now—I did not care. I’m alive, here and now, and that’s what mattered. Does a wolf or a grizzly or a diamondback or a saguaro cactus fret about who or what begat it?

  Not having ever been one of any of those, or any critter other than a human, I can’t say for certain. But a solid guess is . . . no. So why should I? If I’ve learned anything trailing after Maple Jack all these years (and he would argue I have learned little), it’s that people as a rule dwell far too much in their minds on notions they cannot change. We would do well to behave more as animals do.

  In my experience, most critters, other than humans, live from moment to moment, feeding when they are hungry and backing away from the dinner table when they are not. They fight when threatened, and laze in the sun when no danger is close by. This notion has long struck me as sound and I strive to live in such a manner. Not so with the shouting folks in the cabin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Back inside, the couple went at it again, hammer and tongs, and shouts ripped from both of them. Something told me calmer language was no thing they would ever utter.

  The ruckus was sounding better all the time to me, and I pressed my face closer to the gap in the board to see if they were alone and armed. That’s when Thomas chose to utter a loud whimper. He’d propped himself up on a knee beside me. The noises inside pinched off like a blown match, then the lamp was blown out.

  I heard frantic whisperings, something dragged across the floor, came closer to the window. I backed away from my spot, but kept the revolver thumbed back and ready. I was about to bend down and grab Thomas by the ankle when a shot from inside crashed into the shutters. They blew outward, ripped clean of half their weight in wood.

  I had hoped that the drunken couple might well do themselves in, deal mutual mortal blows, and, luck of luck, save us the headache of doing it ourselves. I hoped so, anyway.

  Now, thanks to Thomas, we were exposed, and there was only one direction this mess could run—straight into a fusillade.

  I clapped a hand down hard onto his shoulder, at the same time heard a yelp from Jack down below.

  Nothing to lose at this point, I knee-walked backward, dragging the fool boy with me, and shouted quickly to Jack: “We’re good!”

  No response from him, so I knew he took it in stride and was likely moving around back to figure a way into the house.

  I wasn’t able to look in two directions at once, still not, in fact, and the lack of that ability is what nearly got me killed. Yet of all wonders, Thomas saved me. I’d like to say I was happy about it, but it still bothers me. Childish, but there you have it.

  Though I was dragging him backward toward a safe stretch of wall, Thomas, who was still facing the window where we’d been snooping, shouted, “Scorfano!” as the brute end of a shotgun poked out. It was leveled at me, a foot above Thomas’s head, and barked flame.

  I had enough time to twist out of the path of certain death, though I felt the whistling of the buckshot as the pellets sliced air by my head. If Thomas hadn’t shouted, I would have caught the blast full in the face.

  I finished dragging him and slammed him, out of harm, against the logs.

  The proceedings were not going as I had planned. For a pair of angry drunks, the man and woman certainly were formidable foes. I looked out across the meadow, but saw no sign of Scribley and his boys. I did see a man leaning against the plank fencing, his arms draped across the topmost board, his head bent all the way back as if he were enjoying a few quiet moments in the sun.

  But the rest of him told the story. His white shirt beneath a brown wool coat, parted in the center, was a splotchy, mud-red mess. He was dead, or on his way there. Gut-shot men rarely do well. Most often it’s a slow, certain trail to death. How he remained upright was a mystery.

  I wondered where Jack had gotten to, but didn’t dare open my mouth. After the hollow clash of the shotgun blast ebbed away, and with ears ringing like a town crier’s bell, I noticed the fullness of the silence that had draped over the scene. It lasted for a number of seconds, then I heard footsteps inside the house once more. A bottle clinked against a glass.

  “Too much, I tell you!” The man’s voice was reedy, shrieking. “Too much shooting and killing! The filching I can swallow, but all this shooting and killing and hiring others to do your foul deeds! You got—”

  She cut him off fast, hard, and with a finality that marked her for who she was—a ruthless woman. “Shut that drunken mouth of yours. You think I can wait for you to make us rich? Up to you we’d be all but naked, gibbering in the gutter for bread and water.”

  He said something else, but again she stomped all over his words until he simmered once more. “You don’t shut your mouth you will regret it mighty, I tell you.” Her voice was a mannish growl.

  Another clink, then a thump as the glass was set on a hard surface. “You ain’t got it in you, you foul hog. I could have had a different life, taken over the folks’ home place back in Ohio. Now look at me! I have wasted my life with you and I am done, finished, all over it now.”

  I heard bootsteps cross the room, then the sound of someone from within wrestling with the poorly repaired door. It raised up a couple of inches and jerked inward.

  With no more warning and no more words from inside, the man emerged. As soon as I saw the side of his head I knew there was no way I could shoot him. He was unarmed, drunk, and well on his way to being unable to walk. He crossed the few feet to the steps, and miraculously worked his way down them to the ground. Where was Jack? He should be down there, making sure the old man didn’t run for it.

  The drunk hit the grass, stayed upright, tottering slowly along the pathway toward the barn. “I want a truce! Keep me free and away from this bitch. She’s evil, you all know it! Hell, we’ve left a trail of dead bodies and stolen goods all the way from Ohio. Finally get us a cozy cabin where we can take ’er easy, enjoy the fruit of our work. But no, not this one!”

  He thrust a skinny arm roughly back over his shoulder, pointed at the house. Then he turned, faced the house, and shouted. “You witch! You evil cur! The Good Lord has saw fit to kill off most of your mean-eyed kin, but not you! You take everything and then some. Take take ta—”

  The crack of a rifle shot echoed through the window to my right and the bullet whipped straight into the man’s head, up above the eyes. It cored a path clean and true, and looked for a moment like a third eye. Then blood bubbled out, leaked down his face.

  A second shot drove him to his knees, already dead. His arms flung straight out to the sides and he pitched facedown. His bald head smacked a rock like a hand slapping water.

  Beside me Thomas threw up. I rolled my eyes and left him there. Time was precious. I peered around the corner once more hoping to snatch up the end of the rifle. But the burly cow of a woman had already withdrawn it. I gave Thomas one more silent admonition then kept on, edging toward the still-open door. I swallowed hard once and held the revolver at full cock, poised before me. As I stepped into the doorway, I did what I could to make myself a small target. Wishful thinking.

  I didn’t pause there but dropped low and clambered on in. I had to end this right now, she was too crazy, shooting her own man, likely her husband.

  The room was darkened from lack of lamplight, for the closed shutters, and for the clouded day’s wan light. But I didn’t see her in there. Back in the next room, then. The door was closed. She would be in there with her rifle, shotgun, or both, waiting to finally deal me the blow she’d been trying for many days now to deliver.

  By then I’d had more than my fill of this foul, hellish creature and her unending shenanigans. My shoulder was a clot of pain that exploded like lightning with each step I took. My energy dwindled, and what little patience I had left me when
she shot that wretched drunk.

  I moved straight at that closed door to the inner room, raising my revolver and glancing quickly to make sure I had reloaded. I had.

  I did not stop, but raised a boot high and drove the sole hard at the wooden latch. The entire door shuddered, cracked in half lengthwise, and spasmed inward. As soon as I felt the door giving way beneath my boot I turned sideways and followed it on in, hugging tight to the right side of the frame.

  My shirt snagged on something, a jutting knot or a nail, and tore. I kept going, and made it out of the doorway in time to see a shotgun blast from the middle of the room savage the doorway. A couple of pellets nibbled at me, but I was still on the move, unsure if she was about to trigger the second barrel. She didn’t. She threw the spent shotgun at me. What she did with her rifle I had no idea. At least it wasn’t in her hands.

  I barreled straight at her as I had the door, and she squealed, actually squealed, like a barnyard pig chased by a hound.

  The room was dim, the only light coming from the front window she’d blasted out, the same one I’d peeked in not long before. It overlooked the porch and I found myself hoping someone might lean inside the frame, to lend a hand and an extra barrel so we could stop this pig of a woman from trampling around the small room. Her breathing was ragged, her wheezing squeals louder and more frantic with each odd maneuver she made.

  She hurled herself onto a bed, the frame groaning as she rolled. I figured all I had to do was wait her out, keep her from bolting out the door, through the kitchen, and down the stairs. Even at that she’d come to some end. With Jack and Scribley and his men outside, there was no way she could make an escape. They’d all witnessed the mess she’d dealt her partner, the drunk. She was done for, regardless.

  She bounced off the bed, snatching up spare, dusty furnishings and whipping them in my direction: an oil lamp that shattered against the back wall, a woman’s fancy hat which I recognized as the one she’d worn on the street in Forsaken, a hairbrush, and lastly a small ladder-back chair.