She surprised me yet again with her agility by bolting straight for that blasted-out front window. Like a fat rabbit through a hole in a fence, she dove on through, headfirst, and landed on the porch floor. I made for the window myself, and that’s when Thomas appeared.
He nearly fell over her, surprised to see the hog flop at his feet. The oddness of the moment stunned all three of us, but Thomas broke the spell. He grabbed her by the snaky nest of silver-and-red hair atop her head and shoved a revolver in her snout. “Stop this madness, damn you! Stop it now, I say!”
And she did.
“Get on your feet!”
And she did.
I headed for the window to lend him a hand.
And then she raked his face with the talon-like nails of her fat right hand, snatching away the revolver with her left. She was fast, fast enough to turn the gun on him, jamming it into his cheek hard enough that it pushed his head to the side. His thin face puckered around the barrel.
I moved forward, nearly to the window, hoping to get in a quick shot. She wrapped an arm around his neck and yanked him down to her height, jamming the barrel harder into his face. Any boldness Thomas had shown moments before drizzled down his trouser leg. He simpered and blubbered. Tears oozed out his eyes, snot strung from his nose.
“Shut up! Shut your mouth!”
He tried, and managed to reduce his display of fear to a moan and a few shallow breaths.
The piggy woman was at a momentary loss as to what to do next. If she headed toward the steps, she would expose her back to me. If she backed toward the steps, she would expose herself from the rear to whoever might be waiting at the end of the porch, around the corner. I hoped it was Jack.
I had no clear shot from my angle. I’d advanced too far to one side and now once more she had the upper hand. As long as she didn’t carry through with her threat and shoot Thomas, I didn’t care. If I didn’t rile her she might well leave Thomas alive.
That was the weak-kneed, logical way around the tree.
What I did instead was inch my way forward to better position myself to shoot her at the first possible moment. And that’s when everything changed.
A tremendous burst of rupturing glass filled the air in the dark to my left. The shattered window panes blew inward, pushed from the outside by the wood shutters that had covered them. The wood popped and snapped. I saw a burly hand grab one canted ruptured board, wrench it backward quickly. Jack. I’d know those clamp-like hands and that ragged buckskin cuff anywhere. Twice more and he’d cleared enough wood to climb through.
“Get him out of there! Back out!” The fat woman’s shouts had grown more frantic, frazzle-edged.
Her threats didn’t stop Jack. He grunted on in through that ragged back window and made his way straight across the room. When he was but a few feet from the window she’d jumped through, she screamed again.
“Stop where you are or I’ll shoot this fool in the head!”
That dragged a whole new round of moans and racking sobs from Thomas. She jammed the barrel harder than ever into his face and growled something at him.
Jack dropped to his knees with a pop and a grunt, and leveled his old war cannon up through the ragged window hole, directly on her. “Let the boy be, you evil sow.”
Jack’s voice was smooth and level. I knew what he had in mind and I stopped my advance toward her.
“Thomas!” I shouted and he skittered his eyes at me.
“Don’t talk to him!” squealed the pig woman.
“Thomas, step away . . . now!”
As soon as I sent that last word out of my mouth, Jack’s shot cored the harpy’s forehead. For once, Thomas did as I said, and in quick fashion, too. The brute of a woman collapsed backward, crashing through the porch railing, snapping the top rail under her girth. She kept on going, eight or so feet down to the ground, and slopped in a grotesque heap.
Jack and I climbed through the window and joined Thomas in looking down at her. She’d landed partially on her head, not that it mattered—Jack’s shot was true and final. The man can shoot. But it was not a pretty scene. The fall snapped her neck, canted the head too far to one side, her mouth wide, as if she were trying to gnaw at her own shoulder. A ragged halo of blood leached into the brittle brown grass.
Her dress, a much-mended blue-and-white garment, had split and the thick body she’d stuffed into it that morning sagged out the side. One arm was trapped beneath her girth.
“That’s for the girl,” Jack said in a near whisper. “And for filching my prize lynx hat.” He turned and walked down the length of the porch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
By the time we made it to her, Scribley and his men had closed in. We looked down at the sloppy wreck of a woman for a few moments, no one certain what to say or do next.
The rancher shifted to the crook of his right arm the shotgun he was carrying, and broke the silence. He looked up at Jack, then at me and Thomas, and grinned. The first time he’d done that in a long while, I’ll wager. “Well done, men.” He offered a hand. “Well done. You have my congratulations.”
You could have punched Jack in the face and pleased him more. The old mountain man stepped backward as if Scribley had offered him a handful of fresh dog leavings, and turned away.
It didn’t affect the rancher. He turned his attention back to the woman. Next we saw, he’d dropped to his knees beside her, jamming the butt of the shotgun to the ground, using it as a prop. Before we could stop him, he pawed at her breasts with his free hand.
“See here, Scribley,” growled Jack. “That ain’t right!”
The rancher ignored him and shouted, “Ha! Ha!” He held aloft a wrinkled, bloodstained wad of folded papers. “The deed! The deed! At long last, I have the deed!” He stood, holding it tight in his left hand, and walked away staring at it. “Oh, praise God.”
Scribley didn’t seem to notice as Jack stepped before him and put a hand to the rancher’s shoulder. “Easy now, Scribley.” Jack’s voice was kind but firm, as if he were speaking to a child who’d unknowingly stepped out of line. “That belongs to the boy, to Thomas over there. That’s why we’re all here, ain’t it?”
Scribley reacted as if slapped. “But this was stolen from me!” He backed away, looking at us all, me, Jack, Thomas, his own men. “Cover me, boys. Don’t let them at me!” This last he directed to his ranch hands, but they stood still, looking confused and weary from the day’s dark undertakings.
“Damn you all to hell!” Scribley barked the words and kept walking toward the barn and the lane beyond, where the horses were tied along the tree line.
Jack, Thomas, and I followed, with Scribley’s men thronging close. I tried to crack this odd new shell the rancher had covered himself with. “Mister Scribley, this isn’t the way. That deed rightfully belongs to Thomas. You’re no better than those who stole it from him.”
For a moment I thought perhaps I’d gotten to him, but he barely paused before stepping up his pace. As he strode, more purposefully with each step, it seemed as if he had made some decision, as if his former forthright attitude was taking over once more.
I wasn’t certain what was about to happen, but I saw Jack had the same thought as me—he rested a gnarled hand on the butt of his Dragoon. In case the situation dug itself further down the dank hole it was headed.
Scribley walked to the nearest of the assembled mounts tied off by the pines. Standing smack-dab between Tiny Boy and Ol’ Mossback the mule, Scribley turned and faced us. Once more he wore the odd, beaming smile. He tucked the deed into an inner coat pocket, looked at his men, all of whom ringed us, and said, “Kill them.”
“What?” said Thomas, backing up, his hands raised before him as if he could shove the bad situation backward.
“Those three are as I suspected from the first, nothing more than common thieves. I am the law in these parts and I order you to kill them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A raven rasped by high above. Every
one who had a weapon drew it, though no one knew quite where to aim. Scribley’s smile melted once more into a mask of intolerance and bubbling rage. His cheeks reddened and I swore I heard his teeth grind together.
He raised the scattergun he’d kept cradled in the crook of his right arm, and brought it to bear up high, snugged to his right shoulder.
“Hey now!” shouted Jack, his ancient revolver poised in a firm grip. “Enough of this!”
But Scribley didn’t hear him. He was too busy leveling that shotgun first at one then another of us. “I said kill them! Now, damn you!”
His men might not have known what to do, but at least they weren’t following his orders. Then Neufeld, the big Swede, said, “No . . .” He swallowed, licked his lips, began speaking again. “No, sir! We will kill no more for you. It is not right . . . sir!”
Swain stepped forward, his repeater held gut high, aimed in Scribley’s general direction. He nodded. “Neufeld’s right sir. No more killing. It’s . . . it’s too much.”
A strangled bark of rage flew from Scribley’s mouth. “You weak-souled bastards! After all I’ve done for you!” He snugged the shotgun tight to his shoulder, even as shouts came from us all.
But quick as the angry rancher was, the mighty Percheron, Tiny Boy, was quicker. And annoyed at all the commotion so close to his head. His demeanor is dicey on his best days, and the past week hadn’t helped his disposition any. He drove that big head of his downward, nostrils wide, and quick as a bee sting sank teeth into Scribley’s shoulder.
The rancher howled, saved from severe damage by his thick coat. He jumped to the side, and swung that heavy shogun upward. The barrels caught Tiny alongside the jaw. I heard it smack and saw the big horse flinch, jerk his head to one side.
“No!” I shouted, certain the fool rancher was going to shoot my horse. The angle was all wrong, and Scribley backed up fast to make it right.
I bolted forward, but Neufeld was already ahead of me.
“Drop it now, Mister Scribley! We have had enough of this!”
Reason filled the silence. Scribley relaxed, slowly lowered the shotgun, and let it drop to the ground. He turned toward us, a drained look on his face. I saw blood leaking down the fingertips of his right hand, dripping onto his boot. Tiny Boy had landed a solid bite after all.
Scribley nodded slowly, as if finally taking in Neufeld’s demand. His eyes rose, focused on us. He stood up straight. Then faster than I could have imagined, the surly rancher dragged upward with his good hand, raking free a revolver from its holster.
He thumbed back on the hammer as Neufeld, Swain, me, Jack, and everyone else shouted, “No!” once more.
Gunshots barked.
Scribley’s thick body jerked left, then right with each plowing blow. He convulsed forward as he dropped, as if sledged, to his knees. He dropped the revolver and looked down at his chest. With bloody, shaking hands he reached into his coat and pulled out the deed, now little more than a mass of bloodied, shredded paper. He stared at it, horror widening his red eyes.
He looked outward, as if through us all, toward the meadow, his trembling fingers groping the air before him. “My . . . land!”
His eyes rolled heavenward, then he pitched face-first to the ground. A long, slow wheeze drained out of him and his hands and feet, shoulders and head all sagged as they gave up their tasks for the last time, not in sleep but in death.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Over the next couple of hours, the ranch hands faced the mess they’d created that day—a mess I am ashamed to say we brought to their doorstep, though Jack disagrees. One by one they told us, as if in a defensive eulogy, what a good man Clement Scribley really was. He was a hard man, they said, but always fair in his treatment of them. And if his handling of strangers appeared harsh, it nearly always proved, in the end, to ring with truth, no matter how bitter the tolling sounded.
As the years passed, though, his belief that strangers were not to be trusted warped to become a conviction that all strangers were criminals. So when we three happened along, the men were surprised he didn’t bull ahead and try to string us up. They figured he intended to keep us alive long enough to glean information about the neighboring ranch, then kill us off when it suited him.
Looking back on the day before, we were worn out, to be sure, but we should have been more wary. He lulled us into trusting him with that damn tasty venison stew. But that’s neither here nor there, as we lived through it.
“Too bad about the five strangers who rode in, though.” My comment was sincere, but it raised the ire of Neufeld.
“What do you mean?” His big Scandinavian jaw jutted. “They were hired killers, yah? That much was plain.”
“Was it now?” said Jack, crossing his arms, the Maple Jack equivalent to jutting his jaw. “ ’Cause they could just as easy have been innocents riding on through. Bad luck on them that they showed when they did, got cornered here.”
Swain toed the dirt, looked red in the face. “Now, we don’t know that.”
“You’re right, young fella. We don’t. Nor do we have any such proof that Scribley was right, neither.”
Swain perked up, pointed a finger. “There was Dibbs, though. They shot him.”
“Did they?” I said, joining the fray. “Could have been the folks at the house. None of us was here when Dibbs was shot, after all.”
Murmurs of begrudging agreement rippled through the small group.
Of course, none of this palaver explained the man in the barn. If they were innocents, it’s likely he was afraid for his life, logical if those in the house were the ones doing the shooting. None of it sat well with me.
“We’ll likely never know,” said Jack. “What’s done is done. Law will have to be called in to poke and prod the situation.” He looked around at the desolate place, a ranch that but two days before had seemed so pretty and promising. “They won’t figure it out neither, I expect.”
“I will send men to ride for the law in Walla Walla,” said Neufeld.
Jack and I nodded. Up to then, Thomas had been silent. For all the day had brought him, a city boy from back East with frail sensibilities, I could hardly blame him. To my surprise, he cleared his throat and looked around at the gathered men. “For what it is worth to you all, I am sorry, truly sorry, to have brought this”—he gestured broadly with outstretched hands—“this mess to your door.”
His words seemed genuine, and the men appeared to take them in the way they were intended. There was something about him that made me want to believe his budding sincerity. I was wary, though, as throughout this venture he’d made a habit of pulling the rug out from under me. Maybe the day’s raw proceedings had changed him.
“Since he had no heirs, what do you suppose will become of the ranch?” said Jack later, as we stood by Neufeld watching the buckboard carrying Scribley and Dibbs back to the home ranch.
The big blond man turned a quizzical look on Jack. “What do you mean?”
“He confided to us he was a bachelor, hadn’t found the right woman yet. Hopin’, he was. Like the rest of us. Hope is eternal, but can be a mighty poor substitute for companionship.”
I marveled not for the first time at Maple Jack’s propensity for doling out satisfying helpings of wisdom. He’d given me much to chew on over the years and I reckon he will for some time to come, Lord willing.
“No, no, Mister Scribley was no bachelor. At least not as you say. He was, how do you say it, putting you on, yah? He had a wife, yes.” He nodded at our confused looks. “But she died years ago. She worked herself to death to please him. But what took her in the end was a broken heart. When their daughter left home.”
“Daughter?” I said, my mind working over our extensive conversation with Scribley, wondering if anything he had told us was the truth.
“Yah, she could not stand his harsh ways. I think she is the one who will inherit it all now.” He sighed, looked suddenly so sad. “She was a beautiful girl, such pretty green eyes
.”
Now it was Jack’s turn at surprise. Even in the waning light of that cold autumn afternoon I saw the high color drain from his face. “What was she like?” His question came out as little more than a whisper.
Neufeld nearly smiled then, lost in fond recollection. “Bold she was, and with a laugh as if she had no cares. But she was more like her mother, a good soul. Though enough of her father in her to be always at odds with him. That is what made her leave, I think.” He nodded again, looking as though he were holding back tears.
Jack shook his head slowly and closed his eyes.
I could do nothing but stare at my big, dumb boots. It had to be her.
It was Thomas who spoke, surprising me once more. “What was her name?”
“Carla,” said Neufeld. “Her name is Carla.”
Thomas rubbed his fingers hard in his eyes. He looked for all the world as he did when he was five and caught by Mimsy with the pasty remnants of one of her berry pies on his hands and cheeks.
“What is all this?” said Neufeld. He squared off on us. “What do you know?”
I sighed. “She was on her way back here. We knew her for a time. On the trail. She was as you say, kind.”
Neufeld nearly smiled, but caught himself, caution edging his voice. “What do you know? What are you not telling me?”
“She was murdered by a man. He . . . he was working for those two in the house. We buried her there, not many days back.”
A low groan escaped the big blond man’s mouth. “And her killer?” he whispered, finally, his face and voice hollowed, gaunt.
“We done for him,” said Jack, sounding like he was speaking through gravel. “We avenged her.”
The big ranch foreman didn’t say anything. For long moments the only sound was Thomas’s quiet crying. Then Neufeld breathed deeply. “I will bring her back here, to be buried with her mother . . . and father.”
North of Forsaken Page 19