by Grace Walton
“I never claimed to be ‘nice’ or ‘good’ Carrie. ‘Nice’? There’s too much blood on my hands for that, and ‘good’? Well, I used so many the women. Half the time, I didn’t even know their names. Does that disgust you? Does it turn your stomach? It should. It disgusts me. I’ve got an ocean of regrets. Too much to ever make amends for. Even if God has forgiven me, and I know He has. I haven’t forgotten. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget.” She whimpered softly in response. His gaze instantly changed.
“Don’t.” A muscle jumped along his jaw. “Don’t be afraid of me Baby.” He lowered his head. He gently kissed her lips. He had meant it to be a comforting kiss. And it genuinely started out that way. But as her lips softened under his and she reached up for him, a dam broke inside Gage.
Carrie felt his big body press into hers. She welcomed his weight. His gentle searching lips traveled softly across her face and down her trembling throat. She was sure she’d die if those lips didn’t come back up to rest upon her own. The heat was unimaginable. So this was what all the ‘to do’ was about? Now she understood why her Dad had protected her so carefully all those years ago. No wonder songs, books, and poems were written about love. She felt like she was going to melt into a puddle and fly up to the stars all at the same time. And when he finally came back to her aching mouth, she couldn’t think at all for the sheer wanting.
Gage had never tasted anything sweeter or more powerful than Carrie’s innocence against his lips. Nothing in his life, no one in his life, had moved him the way she did. She didn’t know that, of course. She was too inexperienced to realize where it was leading. But he knew. And he couldn’t do that to her, with her. Not like this, not when she didn’t trust him. Or even know him. He tore his lips away and resisted the impulse to return to hers when in her innocence she tried to hold him close.
He was gasping for breath like he’d run a marathon. And he couldn’t explain because if he saw the same desire he was feeling burning in her eyes, he knew he’d be lost. They both would. He tore away and began pacing the floor of the cabin. Behind him on the bed he heard a few little jerky sobs. He forced himself to stop and look at her. She had curled up like a baby on her side and was crying as if her heart was shattering. He turned his back and hid his clenched fists.
“Don’t.” His words were low and incredibly intense. “Do not cry.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he calmly enunciated each word. “If you keep on crying, I’m going to be over there with you, in the bed. And I won’t be able to stop next time Carrie.”
“So?” She tried to put up a brave front.
“So, I’m not that kind of man anymore. And you’ve never been that kind of girl. I don’t just want something cheap with you.”
She stiffened on the bed. “Cheap?”
It was if somebody had thrust a pile-driver through her heart. She’d been rhapsodizing over the love immortalized in songs, poems, and books while all along he’d been thinking she was cheap. She was just another quick notch on his bedpost.
“Well, you know us models.” She sat up and pushed back her heavy hair. “We’re nothing if not cheap. Although I must say, as enthusiastic as you were, I’ve had better.”
His eyes narrowed at her careless tone. “Don’t do this.”
She ignored him. “Take old Sam for instance, he’s a pretty good kisser. Not as good as Monty, but more than adequate. Monty… now he had real talent.”
“Do. Not. Do. This,” he ground out.
“It’s not like you’d be the first.”
“I would be. I read your file Carrie. You’re a virgin, thanks to dear old Dad and a host of impotent men who were too in awe of your beauty to try anything other than kissing the hem of your designer garment. I’ve read your file.”
Carrie blanched and whispered, “My file?”
“Yeah, you know us cold blooded killers for hire. We’re nothing if not thorough.” He mocked her and strode out of the cabin leaving the door swinging behind him.
Carrie watched him leave in confused silence. She couldn’t cry anymore. She was numb inside and she didn’t care. That’s how Grace found her, sitting up in the bed, staring at the wall.
“You look like death warmed over.” She observed bustling to the fire to fix some food. “You and that big Injun have harsh words?”
Carrie didn’t answer she just kept staring at the wall.
Grace stirred the dying embers of the fire with an iron poker. “I saw the way the wind was blowing between you two right off. He’ll make you a good husband.”
Carrie began giggling. It was a disturbing sound.
“Here now Child, you stop that before you lose yourself,” Grace chastised her. Carrie managed to stop.
“He thinks I’m cheap.”
Grace turned to show her disbelief. “He did not say that?”
Carrie nodded. “He did. He kissed me right here on this bed. Then he turned around and said he was leaving because he didn’t want something cheap with me.”
Grace shook her head. “That’s not saying you’re cheap.”
“Yeah, right, whatever.” Carrie sighed. “Don’t try to make me feel better.”
“Listen here Child, that man, he knew what he was doing. And it wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. A man who cuts your wood, and fetches your water sure don’t think you’re cheap. He was trying to protect you, from himself.” Grace nodded sagely. “Like I said, a man like that, he’ll make a fine husband.”
“I don’t want to talk about him anymore. Where are the girls?”
Grace looked ashamed. “I’m right sorry I had to do that to you Carrie. But I don’t trust that Sam Dole. It wasn’t a lie. Truth is the girls are at a hunting lodge about four miles away. They got a phone there. I bet their folks are on the road right now to pick them up. That’s what makes it so strange. Sam showing up like he did this morning, clear out of the blue. Between you and me, I bet the sheriff’s office knew about those kids being safe last night. So how come Sam comes strolling into town, shooting his gun to wake everybody up before the crack of dawn?”
Carrie got up and walked over to the fireplace. She held out a cold hand to the fire and frowned.
“That doesn’t make any sense Grace. What is the Prophet saying?”
Grace snorted, “Him? He’s saying he ain’t seen them girls, and the rest of the men are following his lead. We’re all supposed to meet out in the street after breakfast to be ‘questioned’ by Sam.”
“What about Gage?”
“Who’s Gage,” Grace asked, stirring a pot?
“Black Knife.” Carrie had just made a big mistake and she knew it.
Grace cocked her head to one side and grinned. “Thought you didn’t want to talk about him no more?”
Carrie wrapped her arms around her body and went to look out of the window. “I don’t. There’s a crowd gathering. We better hurry.”
Grace lifted the pot off the hook over the fire and set it on the stone hearth. “This’ll keep. Let’s go see what Sam’s up to.”
She led the way out the door and down the rickety steps. Carrie could see her breath and everyone else’s in the cold mountain air. Streams of heat were escaping from the surface of coats leaving tiny undulating wisps of white as a signal they’d once been there. Boots were being stamped to help the circulation in frigid toes. It was an icy bitter morning and there was a lot of grumbling and complaining going on.
Carrie and Grace heard it all as they approached the crowd. Nobody wanted to talk to Sam. Just like nobody wanted to be standing out in the middle of a frigid street while a watery sun tried to dispel the hard freeze. Even the black mud sparkled with frost. Grace and Carrie finally settled towards the outskirts of the group. Carrie saw Gage standing away from the others. His hands jammed into his back pockets.
“OK, OK, everybody, Sam here has a few questions he wants to ask.” Harvey Beasley had stepped up on a porch to make himself appear taller. He was yelling t
o be heard.
“It’s real, real important you all tell Deputy Dole everything you know. Maybe we can help him catch the dirty dogs that kidnapped those poor girls.” Carrie was sure he was up to something. He looked like he might wink at them any minute sort of like the bad guy in one of those old westerns playing continually on TV up here. Why wasn’t Sam aware of the undercurrents? He’d been in enough honky-tonk cowboy joints to know that real people didn’t talk that way. Hadn’t he?
Sam took out a notebook and pen. “First off, I need to know who found Miss Smith?”
Donnie raised his hand. “That’d be me. It was a good thing I found her when I did, cause she was already a rambling mess. Glasses gone, I don’t know where. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in forever. She was just stumbling along the trail. It was pitiful, plumb pitiful.”
“Donnie’s right,” Troy said. “We almost shot her, thinking she was a deer. It’s a good thing we came along when we did.”
This was too much. Carrie had planted her fists on her hips and was opening her mouth to refute his lie when Grace jabbed her in the ribs with a sharp elbow. It came with a quick look in her direction and a curt shake of the gray head. Carrie closed her mouth. Looking around, she noticed the men in the kidnapping party shoot her furtive glances as if they expected her to argue. At least they expected to be accused of what they’d done. So instead she tried another tactic her Dad had taught her. She smiled at them sweetly. Leroy’s mouth fell open and Troy rubbed his eyes like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Dad always said if you couldn’t fight with your foes at least confuse them.
“Good, OK.” Sam wrote everything Donnie told him, “Now about the girls from the school. Has anybody seen them?”
The crowd became a sea of shaking heads. Carrie did notice that Grace stood as still as a statue. Almost as if she was afraid any movement on her part might be construed as a response of some type.
Leroy turned around and pointed to Gage. “Why don’t you ask that big Injun? He come strolling in a couple of days ago. Kind of strange don’t you think, a man all the way up here off the road with nothing but a backpack? He looks real suspicious to me.”
Where before there had been silence now there was an uproar. Every man in the town started shouting his own accusation.
“Yeah! I bet he did it.”
“He looks like the kind who would go for a bunch of helpless little gals to me!”
“Arrest him!”
“Maybe we ought to just string him up, like in the old days!”
Carrie watched in horror as the last comment seemed to stir up some kind of twisted righteous indignation in the men. One guy broke off from the rest and announced he was going to get a rope. This was insane. A few walked toward Gage fingers jabbing in accusation.
Gage didn’t move. He just stood leaning against the side of a building watching. Carrie got an eerie feeling he knew exactly what was going to happen next. There was a weird little half smile playing around the edges of his mouth. It was almost like he was enjoying the fact that the whole town was preparing to lynch him. OK, maybe she was the only sane person on this street. Maybe she was the only person within the radius of the town who didn’t think this was some kind of John Wayne movie re-enactment. Who cared what the reason was, she was going to stop this stupidity before Gage Ferguson got killed.
Carrie shouted, “Stop this right now!” Everybody turned to look at her as if she’d lost her mind. Gage’s little weird smile turned into a full grin.
“You all know what really happened to those girls and you all know that he.” She pointed at Gage, “Had nothing to do with it.”
The women nodded at her while the men all frowned. Well, they could do whatever they wanted. The truth was the truth.
“How dare any of you try to pass your own crime off on somebody else? You know as well as I do, not two days ago you were herding me and those girls like a flock of sheep. Don’t think I’ll forget all that nonsense about your drawing straws to see who’d get to marry me.”
Nobody moved or said a word. That made Sam’s strident laugh even more surprising. He was hooting for all he was worth.
“Carrie, you’ve really got to quit. You’re breaking me up over here. Draw straws to see who got to marry you? We’re getting you to the hospital first thing.”
Her hands were on her hips now and like a runaway freight train there was no stopping her. “I am not crazy Sam Dole. Everything I’ve said is true. Are you just going to stand there and let these religious nuts hang an innocent man?”
He ambled over to her and took her arm in a surprisingly firm grip. He said, “Of course I’m not. I’m only going to hold him in the town jail until I can get a call in to the sheriff. Now come on, you need to go lay back down.”
He walked her all the way back across the street to Grace’s shack. And he solicitously helped her up the steps.
“I’ll be by as soon as I get Black Knife under lock and key. We’ve got a lot to talk about Carrie. Now you go on in there and make a cup of whatever it is you women make when you need to calm down.” He gave her a little push which could have been playful, or it could have been an outright threat. It was impossible for her to tell.
Carrie looked back to where Gage stood. Others were milling around him, giving him plenty of leeway. He was watching her. She wished she could do something to keep him from being locked up. But cold hard reality came crashing through and she realized she was probably safer with him in jail. No matter how he stirred her senses, he’d been bought and paid for by somebody who hated her very much. Someone who felt like she was a threat and had paid to have her killed.
By now she knew Gage well enough to realize he wasn’t going to kill her for any personal reason. It was just business. And chances were pretty good he’d regret having to take her life. But he’d do it anyway. She pushed the door to the cabin open and shook her head. When did her life become a parody of a really bad cable movie? Worse than that, how do you go about saving someone who’s trying to kill you?
Grace came in the door right behind her. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Carrie flopped down in the chair.
“Well, we’ve got to do something. Once Sam gets Black Knife in that corn crib Beasley uses as a jail, there’s no telling what could happen to him.”
Carrie rubbed her fingers across her weary face. “I know, I’m thinking.”
“Well, you best think fast. As soon as Sam gets Black Knife shut in that shed, he’s gonna be over here.”
“Why didn’t you do something, like speak up?” Carrie couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her tired voice. “If just one or two people backed up my story, Sam couldn’t ignore me.”
“I know child, I know. But none of them women are gonna turn in their husbands or sons. Especially since nobody has really gotten hurt. And I have to live here after you’re gone. You think they’ll trust me once I side with you?”
“No, but that doesn‘t make it right.”
“No it don’t. But the way I see it, we got a chance here. It’s a chance to make a difference in the lives of the whole town. I don’t reckon, once this thing dies down, that any of the men will be out looking for ‘brides’ ever again. Not even Beasley’s that stupid. Maybe we can get back to being what we started out to be. Just a nice little small town where people care about each other.”
“But what about Black Knife?” Carrie persisted.
“You gotta think of something,” Grace said.
Chapter Nine
An hour later when Sam came tapping on Grace’s door that’s just what Carrie was doing. She was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace with her legs crossed under her an old spiral notebook perched on her lap. She’d been writing out her options on how to save Gage. Sam came in and stopped right inside the door. He liked the way she looked sitting there in the firelight. There was both innocence and confidence. And it tugged at something in him. Something he’d thought had died a lon
g, long time ago. It was a shame really.
He wished he’d asked her out for another date back in the spring. It would have made things so much easier. But he hadn’t, and that was that. He shifted to police mode. He was very adept at moving from one persona to another. He cleared his throat to get her attention.
She looked up and gave him an involuntary smile of welcome before she remembered he had just locked up Gage.
Grace eased the awkward moment. “Come on in Sam, make yourself comfortable” She indicated he was to sit in the chair. He nodded his thanks and did so. She settled on the bed.
He cleared his throat again. “Grace, do you think I could speak to Carrie alone?”
Carrie was surprised. What could he have to say to her that would embarrass her in front of Grace? “That’s OK, Grace can stay.”
His steady eyes seemed full of compassion, but he didn’t budge from his earlier request. “I think it’d be a whole lot better for you if she could leave and let us talk alone.”
Something in the kindness of his voice convinced Grace she ought to leave.
“You two go ahead. I got to check on my chickens anyway.” She got up and left.
The minutes dragged out as neither said anything to the other. Finally, Carrie could stand it no longer. “Sam, you know I’m not nuts. Don’t you? I was kidnapped along with all those 5th graders from the school and brought here against my will.”
He dragged his hand through his hair and sighed. “Yeah, I know you’re telling me the truth about the girls. And I know how you’ve been treated. We picked up the kids early this morning, around 3 AM at the O’Grady’s hunting lodge.”
Carrie was astonished. “Then what is this all about. You’ve got an innocent man locked up. He was almost hanged.”
Sam pulled at the collar of his uniform. “I wouldn’t exactly call him innocent.”
“He had nothing to do with the kidnapping.”