Adelsverein

by Celia Hayes

  She tidied the graves, kneeling and heedless of her new dress, which, true to Anna’s words, Liesel had pressed upon her. The grass and the soil in her fingers felt wonderfully like working in the garden; how little of that she did these days. It was country-quiet out here, town was far enough distant that the sounds of it carried but faintly: horse hoofs, the regular thud of someone splitting wood in the backyard of a house on Town Creek, and once the crack of something that could have been a rifle shot. Magda wondered who might be hunting so close to town.

  She and Hansi had paid for a fine stone for Vati, with a holder for a little brass vase at the bottom. She emptied out last week’s dead flowers, and Lottie solemnly filled it with fresh water from her pail. They did the same for Rosalie and Robert. They also had a fine stone, a single one for both of them. Mr. Berg had come out of the hills long enough to do it, carving a single rose by way of ornament. Robert Hunter, Rosalie his wife, side by side throughout eternity.

  Magda shouldered her valise when they were done, and took Lottie’s hand. The child swung the empty pail as they walked towards Austin Street and the stage stop at the back of Charley’s hotel. Magda considered walking by Pastor Altmueller’s house and paying him a visit on the way back; after all, that was only a little out of their way, down Austin Street, where all the houses backed on a loop of Town Creek. It looked as if the stage had come in, for there was a small crowd of men at the stop. But something was very strange, for the driver stood gesticulating by the side of his horses. They should have been on their way almost at once. Magda wondered what had happened. Perhaps one of the team had gone lame; not surprising, for the coaches went at a fearful pace, uphill and down.

  As she and Lottie crossed over the Town Creek footbridge, Magda observed there were two groups of people. Some of them stood around the driver, quite upset, adamant in demanding that their journey continue. Most of those were Americans. The other group was men of the town, Germans from Friedrichsburg and nearby. They seemed terribly agitated also, gesticulating and shouting at the first group and each other. Even as she approached, some of them scattered, with a purposeful air about them. Something had happened, something to do with the stage. If the war had still been going on, Magda would have thought the stage had brought great news of some battle, victory, or defeat.

  She had no need to ask, for as she drew closer, one of the men shouted, “Madame Becker, have you heard! He’s back! J.P. Waldrip, he was on the stage from San Antonio! He was in a great bate of anxiety, all the way here, so they say!”

  Magda felt as if she had been turned at once to a pillar of ice, for the words struck her numb and silent. So she had been, when J.P. Waldrip’s masked friends had taken away her husband, binding his hands with rope and leading him away to his death. Then Waldrip had put his hands on her and struck her senseless with a revolver in his fist. When she revived, she was already a widow, although she had not known that for many more hours.

  “Waldrip! Come here to Friedrichsburg? Has he gone mad?” she gasped. “We must send for the Sheriff! I demand that he be arrested for killing my husband!”

  “The Sheriff has already been sent for, Madam!” It was Fritz Ahrens, Charley’s brother-in-law. He seemed most particularly exhilarated. “No fear, on that! He might be quite eager to surrender to the Sheriff, on all accounts!”

  “What happened?” Magda demanded again, “Why did he even come back to Friedrichsburg? Where did he go?”

  “It seems that he has enemies in San Antonio, also.” Fritz Ahrens chuckled with great satisfaction. “Last night, some Mexican chased him into an alley near the Vaudeville Theater, threatened him and drew a knife! So in mortal fear, he bought a stage ticket for El Paso, thinking to get as far away and as fast as he could! Of course, he must have known that the stage stops here but only for a short time, so I imagine he thought to brave it out! But just as everyone was dismounting, up rides young Braubach on a lathered horse, shouting riot and murder and fire!”

  “Philip Braubach?” Magda gasped. “That married Louisa Schuetze? Who was the sheriff here before the war?”

  “The very same! He had ridden after the stage upon hearing that Waldrip was on his way here! Young Braubach took out his revolver and shot at him! Right here, on this very street not ten minutes ago!”

  “Where is Waldrip, then!” Magda demanded. There was no body on the ground, no evidence of anything untoward, and yet it seemed as if the whole universe had suddenly turned upside down.

  “He missed,” Fritz Ahrens said regretfully. “The revolver turned in his hands, for they were sweaty. He missed and the bastard Waldrip—sorry, Madame Becker—ran like a hare. He ran towards the gardens, but he can’t get far, even if he runs true to form and steals a horse. We’ll find him soon, of that you can be sure!” He touched the brim of his hat to her, and went off to join in the clamorous search.

  “We must get home,” Magda said urgently to Lottie, “and send Mr. Vining with word to your brother! He must know of this! And see that the Sheriff arrests that vile murderer!”

  She set off towards Main Street, towards where the large oak tree shaded the Magazine Street entrance to Charley’s stableyard and the bathhouses that served his guests. When they had first come to Friedrichsburg, when it was nothing but a forest of oak trees with pegs and little flags of cloth marking the outline of where it would soon be built, Magazine Street was where the Verein blockhouse and stores had been and the communal gardens that had supplied them all in the very first days. Now, Charley’s hotel and outbuildings lined one entire block, between Main and Austin Streets, facing a row of small homes and shops opposite. She held Lottie’s hand tightly, all thought of a leisurely stroll down Main Street forgotten with this news. She urgently wanted to speak to Charley, to Mr. Vining, to her son, to the Sheriff—anyone! J.P. Waldrip must not be allowed to escape. As she swept past the oak tree, her skirts rustling like a storm in a bed of reeds, she heard someone scream, and the dark figure of a man ran out of the stableyard.

  It was Charley’s daughter Bertha who screamed, and screamed again as the man ran towards Magda and Lottie. “It’s him!”

  Magda stood rooted to the spot; fear, shock and anger warring within her breast. Yes, her mind told her with chill precision; that was J.P. Waldrip, stumbling as his eyes darted here and there, like a trapped animal seeking escape, a fox hearing the hounds baying all around. He did not look much changed, with those feral mismatched eyes and the tall black felt hat by which he was known. But he was caged, however loosely, by the hotel behind and the girl standing in the passageway between the main building and the bathhouses with a pile of towels in her arms. His eyes darted towards Magda. She thought that he did not recognize her at first. She was just a woman in widow-black, holding a child by the hand, a woman who stood between him and his escape. It came to her with a start that there were men at either end of Magazine Street; those standing at the stage stop, as well as those searching. There were men on Main Street as well, even if they were not in on the search.

  His eyes darted this way and that, finally meeting hers and holding for a startled instant, as recognition flashed between them. Recognition and desperate calculation too—and in the blink of an eye, something in Magda’s intellect read his impulse and reacted with cold and unthinking precision. He knew her. When his eyes slid down towards Lottie at her side and he took one step closer and made as if to reach into his coat, she was in no doubt about what he meant to do. She had no intention of letting him do it. No, her mind cried out. No, not again. He will not hold my child hostage.

  On that single thought, she set Lottie behind her and took the Paterson revolver from her valise, marveling at how cold and composed she was, how pure of doubt and hesitation. She held the old long-barreled revolver straight out, locking her elbows as her dear husband had advised her so many years ago, and calmly aimed as he had also instructed her to do. Aim for his breadbasket, Carl Becker’s voice whispered in her ears. The shots rise up. In that moment which see
med eternal, she was ice cold and aware of everything around her, and yet it seemed distant, as if everything else happened behind a great glass window. She and the man who had killed her husband, threatened her children, held that very same revolver to Hannah’s head; they stood facing each other. Lottie huddled at her back like a chick sheltering under the mother hen.

  The first shot crashed like a thunderbolt in her ears. She supposed that she was at least as startled as J.P. Waldrip was, for he looked with amazed horror at the spreading red mess on his vest-front, just below where his coat buttoned over his chest. Then his parti-colored eyes met hers.

  He took one wobbling step forward and said in a voice that sounded queerly normal, “You shot me.”

  That was for my husband, Magda thought coldly, as she drew back the hammer. My husband, my children’s father, my lover and dearest friend in the world. You fired the shot that killed him, after molesting me within his sight, with your hands and your words. You are loathsome, and the most unforgivable thing you have done is to make me hate you so. The Paterson’s narrow trigger slid obediently open to her finger. Why did the man not fall? Was he a devil spawned from hell, impervious to lead and any weapon at hand? She fired again. This one is for Trap Talmadge, whose weakness you used, whose guilt for having betrayed my husband to your gang led him to seek death in battle. Poor Trap, who sought oblivion at the bottom of a whiskey bottle only when it was put in his way . . .who worked happily at our farm in the hills, teaching our sons to ride, working for my husband. You led him to commit the worst betrayal of all—giving up a friend into the hands of his enemies!

  A second bloody mess blossomed on his vest-front. Waldrip clutched his belly and his mouth opened in wordless bewilderment. Yet he remained on his feet, and as Magda pulled back the Paterson’s hammer once again, his coat fell a little back and she saw that he had a revolver also, in a leather holster under his coat. What would make the wretched man fall?!

  That is for our children, Magda thought, as she shot him again. You used his love for them as a weapon, in order to make him go with your filthy gang. You knew that he would do anything rather than see his children harmed. And yet they were—Hannah was plagued by nightmares for years . . .and Dolph—Dolph was nearly lost to us all, for he loved his father well! You wish to make enemies, Waldrip? Threaten a woman’s children, and see what an enemy you have made, when she has the chance to repay in blood!

  Waldrip fell then to his knees, stark bewilderment on his countenance. What had he expected? Magda thought with vicious satisfaction; that he would be welcomed with rose petals into Gillespie County where his wolves had ravaged and murdered all during the war? That a woman he had wronged in every way but the worst way imaginable would allow him once more to threaten harm to those she loved? That little Mrs. Feller, left destitute to care for her children on charity and sewing, or Louise or Clara Schuetze, would not do the same, if they had a chance—and if their husbands had taught them to shoot!

  That’s for Schoolmaster Schuetze, the kindest and cleverest of teachers, who made a jest one afternoon and the Hanging Band came to his house that very night. That shot hit high, and left him gasping from a gush of bright blood that came out of his mouth. She could hardly see his shirtfront and vest for dark blood, yet he still lived, racked in agony for every breath he took as he lay on the ground at her feet, in the dust under the tree by Charley Nimitz’s stableyard.

  “Oh, God, please don’t shoot me any more,” he gasped. Pitilessly, Magda pulled back the Paterson’s hammer one last time.

  This is for me, she thought. There was a tremor in her arms. No need to brace her arms out straight, no need to really aim, that last time. You made many enemies in your whole wretched, thieving life— but never knew until your last moments that the deadliest enemy of them all was a woman. With a final crash of the Paterson firing, the life burst out of J.P. Waldrip in a tide of blood.

  Magda stood over him, trembling like a leaf. She felt nothing more than an enormous sense of satisfaction. It had happened all so very fast. She looked down at the body at her feet, thinking that she ought to feel something more than that. She had killed a man, five shots with a Paterson, out in the street in front of everyone. All that she could muster up by way of regret was a conviction that if she had more of a chance to think about it, she should have contrived to shoot him without any witnesses. There would be trouble over this. Hansi and her son would be furious with her on that account, especially if it affected the business.

  “Mama?” Lottie’s voice quavered from beside her. “Is that man dead?”

  “Yes he is, little miss!” Charley answered cheerily. Magda looked up, startled out of all countenance. How on earth had he managed to appear, so neat and unruffled in his black town suit and carefully trimmed beard? He winked broadly at Magda, chucked Lottie on the chin and in one swift movement he took Magda’s wrist and slipped the Paterson out of her grasp. Magda blinked; he had palmed it neatly and conveyed it out of sight with all the aplomb of a stage magician, somewhere underneath the tails of his suit coat. “I do believe,” he added in a louder voice, “that this would be the infamous J. P. Waldrip. I’ll leave it to Doctor Keidel to confirm the details, but he certainly looks dead to me.” He looked around at the murmuring crowd, suddenly gathered from the stage stop, from within the hotel and from up and down Magazine Street. Many of them were men carrying weapons—among them young Philip Braubach, and the cobbler, Mr. Fischer, who had his workshop in a house opposite Charley’s stableyard. Mr. Fischer clutched a long carbine and looked much put out.

  Charley put his arm comfortingly around his daughter and added, “Bertha saw him in the stableyard. When she screamed for help, I came out and saw him running towards the street, in the direction of Madame Becker and her daughter. And suddenly,” Charley looked exceedingly bland, although his eyes danced with suppressed mirth, “I heard gunshots, but couldn’t see from whence they came. Waldrip fell dead, right in front of us, and I have no idea who shot him. Some unknown assailant, I suppose. Waldrip had many enemies hereabouts.”

  Young Braubach snorted; it sounded suspiciously like a stifled laugh and a rustle of agreement went through the gathered crowd. Charley looked straight at Magda and continued, “And he had friends and kin, as well. Knowing that he is dead at the hands of an unknown assailant,” Charley emphasized that phrase again, “they might wish to avenge themselves against the person who killed him . . .if they knew who what person was, of course. Alas,” Charley shrugged elaborately, “I have no idea who shot Mr. Waldrip. Did anyone see anything at all? Bertha?”

  “I didn’t see anything at all, Papa,” Bertha took her cue demurely. Magda saw comprehension flicker from face to face around her, saw the idea move like witches’ fire, like ball-lightning, saw the complicit acceptance on every face, even those who couldn’t possibly have been where they could have seen her shoot J.P. Waldrop five times in his body.

  “’Twasn’t me.” Philip Braubach was the first to speak. “I had a shot at the bastard, but I missed, clean. Everyone saw me.”

  “Some will do anything to keep from having to buy wine when they win the shooting competition,” commented Mr. Fischer dryly and to a general laugh. “So, if anyone cares to ask, what did he die of?”

  “Lead poisoning,” suggested Charley sweetly. That elicited another round of laughter. “Still and all,” he added, significantly looking at no one in particular, “I suppose we should bury him decently, lest his next of kin come to complain of our hospitality. If they have cause,” he coughed, and sent another significant look, “they will come and complain. Dissatisfied guests always make that special effort. Just as well they know nothing of where to direct their complaints, eh? Bertha, Madame Becker looks quite shaken; would you conduct her to the little parlor, and tell your Mama what has happened?”

  Charley looked indecently pleased with himself, Magda thought, as Bertha led her and Lottie into the family parlor. As soon as they were safe indoors, Charley presented her w
ith the Paterson, saying, “I do believe this antique weapon belongs to you, Madame Becker—I found it in my stableyard. I can only imagine how it got there.”

  “Charley . . .I . . .” Magda began to say, her heart overflowing with gratitude and affection for Charley’s quick thinking; and affection too, for all of those townsfolk who had seen her shoot J.P. Waldrip.

  “Not a word, Mrs. Magda.” Charley kissed her other hand, the one that did not hold the Paterson. “Not a word. I did not see anything, nor did you. But . . .” he held her hand just a fraction longer than necessary. “I can’t tell you how long it has been, since something I did not see, gave me such an enormous sense of satisfaction!”

  Chapter Eleven: A Plague of Cattle

  “And truly, Mama—did everyone keep silent about Mr. Waldrip?” Lottie marveled. “That is a wonder, that so many people could have seen such a thing and without a word being said, all agree to a secret!”

  Magda nodded. “It was indeed a marvel, but all knew very well the wickedness done by Waldrip and his friends. Our neighbors, Charley, his daughter—everyone! They held my life in their hands! But I did not fear betrayal for we had all suffered so during the war. No one had forgotten the malice of the Hanging Band, or doubted for a moment that those who had been a part of it would seek vengeance—if they knew who to seek it from! So we all kept silent, knowing that justice had been exacted upon a murderer. Even you, Lottie; you kept my secret also.”

  “I believe I thought it had been a dream,” Lottie mused, “because no one spoke of it afterwards. I came to think I had imagined being there and seeing you holding a revolver and with Waldrip dying at your feet. How very gallant and quick-witted of Captain Nimitz, too!”