A Patchwork Family

by Charlotte Hubbard

  She wanted to laugh but was afraid she’d cry.

  From above them came the sound of rifle fire and horses’ hooves . . . muffled shrieks she chose to interpret as war whoops, for she couldn’t allow herself to think anything else. Nathaniel and Ira Barstow and Judd—the man she and this baby simply could not live without—were up there fighting for all their lives. Mercy blocked the image of those oncoming warriors from her mind, so she wouldn’t think about how badly their men were outnumbered.

  “I shoulda been watchin’,” Billy chided himself. “Emma told me the Cheyenne had been attackin’—”

  “Son, the way they sneak up and hide themselves, there’s no way any of us could’ve known,” Asa insisted. He moved beside them in the flickering candlelight and pulled them both into his embrace.

  “Don’t blame yourself one bit, Billy,” Mercy agreed. “I had a feeling something was odd—ignored the pricklings at the back of my neck. So now Judd and—”

  A loud cry rang out above them. A cry that sounded far too triumphant and unfamiliar to be good news.

  Mercy’s face crumpled and her eyes went wet. The sob she bit back came out as a whimper, and the two men she crushed against herself were shuddering as badly as she was.

  But then Billy wiggled loose. “I’m goin’ up there!” he whispered fiercely. “I’m gonna grab that shotgun and . . .I got nothin’ left to lose if they shoot me, but by God, Judd and Nathaniel ain’t goin’ down to them—”

  “You’ll do no such thing!”

  Asa sprang toward the ladder and grabbed Billy by his pant legs. “It’s Miss Mercy who stands to lose, boy! If you go up there and get yourself killed—or those Indians see you movin’ in the house—they’ll be down this trapdoor in a flash!”

  The two dogs began to yap and circle each other in a frenzy. While Mercy tried her best to quiet them, it was Billy they wanted to follow—and Billy who settled them by returning to the dirt floor with a muffled thump. He knelt to wrap an arm around each border collie, stifling a sob against Snowy’s white shoulder.

  Mercy huddled with them, craving their warmth, and the colored cook took them all in his arms again.

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” Asa began in a ragged voice.

  Mercy and Billy joined in, desperate for the prayer’s familiar promise, in words that welled up without conscious thought. After they whispered the “Amen,” their restrained breathing was the only sound in the candlelit cellar.

  It was absolutely silent above them.

  After what felt like an eternity, Mercy whispered, “We have to go up there. We can drag the men inside and dress their wounds. Elizabeth’s got four children. We have to let her know that Iry—”

  “We’re stayin’ right here,” Billy stated. “Asa’s right. They’re up there just waitin’ for us to show ourselves now! Prob’ly lookin’ in the windows, ’cause the curtains ain’t shut.”

  “We can’t take that chance,” Asa agreed. “I can’t let something happen to you like in the horrible stories I’ve heard. Can’t give one good reason to risk you—and that little baby—on the notion we can do any good up there.”

  “But how long—? How will we know—?”

  The old man stood close enough that she could smell flour and yeast on him. His eyes glimmered like dark coals in the candlelight.

  “We keep believin’ that Judd and Iry and Nathaniel are doing their level best—without having our hides to look out for, too,” Asa said softly. “We keep believin’ the Lord’s got this whole situation in hand. Our faith and our prayers are the best gifts we can offer right now.”

  “But what if—”

  “They know we’re in here, Mercy,” Billy said, pleading for reason. “They was watchin’ us before the attack, and they figure we’ll be stupid enough to open that door if they wait us out. Let’s just hope they don’t break out the windows and come in after us.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but Asa overrode it.

  “The Lord’s the only one we can trust right now,” he whispered urgently. “That’ll have to be enough, until He sends us a sign.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Mike Malloy surveyed the landscape ahead and kept the stagecoach’s team to a trot, rather than racing toward the Monroe home with his usual flourish. Something didn’t look right. It was way too quiet.

  There were no horses in the corrals. No smoke coming from the kitchen chimney.

  “Whoa, now,” he murmured, and grabbed the field glasses from beneath his seat. The telegraph wires into Topeka had buzzed with the threat of attacks from the Southern Cheyenne and confirmed that this hostile tribe had been on the warpath farther west, along the Solomon River. But he hadn’t figured on their coming this close to Abilene. Not when drovers and vast herds of longhorns had become such a common sight this summer.

  But then, maybe that was the very reason the Indians were upset.

  A sick feeling in the pit of his stomach told him not to take his passengers into the yard. A moment later he spotted three figures spread-eagled in front of the house, left so those traveling the road would see the consequences of homesteading in what had been tribal territory. The wind kicked up in an empty, desolate whisper.

  Mike had some quick decisions to make. His first urge was to help the Monroes, because Judd and Mercy had become fast friends, but he was responsible to Wells Fargo for these passengers, and the coach and team.

  He hopped down from his bench, grabbed his Winchester, and opened the coach door. The gun got everyone’s attention, as he’d planned. Mike kept his voice low.

  “Folks, there’s been Indian trouble, so I’m sending you back to the previous stop,” he announced, looking into their startled faces. He pointed to a man of about thirty, dressed in denim, who’d mentioned he was searching for work on a ranch.

  “You, sir—drive the stagecoach back to the Barstow place, and then telegraph Fort Riley that we need their help out here. You two ladies, lend whatever assistance you can to Elizabeth Barstow, and—”

  “But we must get to Denver to meet our connecting—”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but your inconvenience is nothing compared to what these homesteaders have just been through,” he replied, his voice rising with his anger. “Did you see those four little Barstow kids? Do you recall Mrs. Barstow’s agitation because her man wasn’t home from harvesting with the Monroes? Well, this is the Monroe place. There’s three men tied to the ground in front of the house. Any guesses as to who they are?”

  He hadn’t intended to upset them with the gruesome details, but some folks just didn’t listen any other way.

  “Right now, being a couple days late is pretty small potatoes compared to what Mrs. Barstow has sacrificed—and to what might’ve happened to Mercy Monroe and the rest of this family. So I’m hoping you folks will be decent enough to stay with Elizabeth, and to tell Reverend Larsen we’ll be needing him. Telegraph Wells Fargo so they can send another driver for you. Tell them Mike Malloy’s picking up the pieces at their way stations west of Abilene.”

  Without giving them a chance to protest, he swung down from the doorway and loped up the road toward Judd Monroe’s log house. The September sun beat down relentlessly, and he hoped those three men in the yard hadn’t suffered long in the heat. Hoped he wouldn’t find Mercy and Billy tortured in some other way—or, God forbid, not find them at all.

  He entered the yard with his heart in his throat, because even from this distance, his worst fears were confirmed: Judd, Ira Barstow, and Nathaniel lay displayed as grisly reminders that the West hadn’t yet been won. He bit back a moan at the way they’d been stripped and mutilated, and then moved on around the house to look for survivors.

  A few chickens pecked forlornly at the ground, but the empty corrals and the dead milk cow told him all he needed to know about the livestock. It was pure relief not to find any more bodies—outside, anyway. As he approached the house, Mike was torn about telling Mercy the details.

 
Mercy. Carrying Judd’s baby. She was unaware of her man’s fate or she would be out here to—

  I can’t let her see him this way.

  Quietly, he tried the door, knowing she might come out if she heard that someone was here. It was bolted shut.

  No windows were broken, so, for reasons only God would ever know, the Indians hadn’t gone in after them. Could be the bloodstained ground and flurry of hoofprints back here meant the three men out front had fought hard and well, and the Indians had retreated with their own dead, knowing they’d slaughtered the muscle that kept this place running.

  Malloy exhaled, concentrating on survivors. A peek through the back window revealed a bed and simple furnishings, immaculate except for a rug that looked rumpled.

  She—they—must be in the cellar. And they weren’t going to know he was here until he’d tended to those men. The grisly sight of those bodies would haunt him forever, and he couldn’t let Mercy and Billy suffer the same nightmares.

  With a strength he didn’t know he possessed, Malloy pulled up the stakes and dragged the three bodies into the barn. On his way back to the house, he kicked loose dirt over the trails their weight had made, hoping Mercy wouldn’t ask too many questions.

  She’d be running the way station alone now—with a baby on the way. And what about the rest of the crops? How could she and a worn-out old colored man and a pint-sized kid hold it all together out here?

  He pounded on the door. If they were down there in that cellar, they had to come out and face the facts. And he was the one who had to help them.

  He pounded again. “Mercy? Billy?” he called into the gap under the door. “It’s Mike Malloy! Anybody in there?”

  Silence. A silence that tore at him.

  “Mercy! It’s all right to come out now!” he hollered, his voice rising with fear. He pounded on the plank door again, more urgently. “Billy, you in there, boy? Asa? Can you hear me?”

  Not a sound.

  Heedless of how precious glass was in these parts, he thrust the butt of his gun through the kitchen window. She had to be here—and she had to be alive! He would hunt those Cheyenne down and slaughter them all himself if Mercy Monroe had lived these six years on the plains in vain.

  Mercy jerked awake, instinctively wrapping an arm around her belly and then reaching for Billy in the darkness. What was that sound? Had the Cheyenne come back to finish them off?

  Asa and Billy moaned, and the dogs stood to shake themselves.

  “How long have we—”

  “Shhh!” Mercy insisted, afraid to speak loudly enough that their upstairs intruder might find them. The candle had guttered out long ago, and they were drowsy from lack of air and sleep. “I think I hear footsteps. Right above—”

  “Mercy? Billy? It’s Mike Malloy,” came a voice that made her choke with emotion. “You can come out now! Where are you?”

  “Down here!” she rasped, struggling to her feet.

  “Mike! Open the trapdoor—under the rug!” Billy yelled. He was already groping for the rope ladder that dangled in the darkness.

  Rapid footfalls—a creak of hinges—and then daylight! And a face they knew framed in the opening above them.

  “Come on out of there—”

  “Here—take Snowy!” Billy said, thrusting the wiggling dog toward Mike. Spot was handed up next, and then Billy climbed up.

  “Praise God, didn’t I tell you He’d send us a sign?” Asa rasped. “Now let me steady that ladder while you—”

  But Mercy was already halfway up the swaying rope, fighting a stomach that rumbled and a head that spun like a top.

  “Michael! Michael Malloy, you’re an angel!” she panted as he grabbed her hands and pulled her up. He did appear to have a halo, with the light from the windows shining in his hair. “The Cheyenne attacked before we knew . . . Judd and Iry and Nathaniel ran in from the cornfield to . . . oh, please tell me you’ve found them! Please tell me they’re safe and they’ll recover from—”

  But his expression said otherwise.

  She was still grasping Michael’s hands as she stepped onto the puncheon floor . . . the floor Judd had cut and laid himself six years ago when they’d made this their home.

  Mercy swallowed hard. She was vaguely aware of the two dogs scurrying past her toward the open door, and Asa faltering as Billy helped him out of the cellar, but all she could see was Malloy’s blue-gray eyes. The way they didn’t waver as they got wet and shiny. The way his sandy mustache didn’t flicker with the grin he always flashed at her. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed with words he had to say but couldn’t.

  She crumpled; her heart and mind and soul shut down before she fell against him. A single sob racked his body—a body that felt shorter and smaller and more compact than she was used to, but she leaned into his embrace anyway. It was better than collapsing.

  “What happened?” she asked, needing to know while she could still manage rational thought.

  “You don’t want to know, Mercy,” he rasped. “I drove the stage up the road and—”

  “Oh, my Lord, all those people need to eat and use the—”

  He grabbed her to keep her from rushing to the kitchen. Hysteria would set in soon unless he stopped it.

  “They’re fine,” he stated, gazing into the depths of eyes already denying what she knew inside. “I sent them back to help Elizabeth, and to tell Reverend Larsen we’d be needing him.”

  Her mouth fell open but no sound came out. “Elizabeth, too? So—so all three men—?”

  “I—I’m so sorry, Mercy, but yes—those damned savages—”

  He paused, crushing her closer than he had a right to. But he knew no other way to deal with a grief that already scorched him. Knew no sane way to tell this woman the truth she would be determined to hear.

  “What they did was unspeakable,” he finally whispered. It was all the voice he could muster as the grisly recollections came rushing back. “I—I put them in the barn, until we can make their coffins and dig the graves—”

  “I have to see him, Michael. I have to prepare him for burial.”

  Her voice sounded firm with purpose, and he pulled away more forcefully than he intended. “No!” he cried. “No one should ever see another human being in such a . . . let alone see her husband that way.”

  Mike recognized the glassy look in her eyes. It signified the state folks entered when they functioned from need alone, one task drawing them to the next because they couldn’t think about the realities they faced. Mercy Monroe had already known her husband was dead—what else did she have to think about, all those hours in that cellar when Judd didn’t come for her? So now she was engrossing herself in the practical necessities.

  But he couldn’t allow her to witness what the savages had done to the magnificent man that had been Judd Monroe. Nor to her friend’s husband, nor to the strapping hired hand who’d worked beside them so faithfully.

  And, considering that Billy Bristol had watched as his father got shot down and his twin was snatched away, and then watched his mother ride off with a handsome hustler, he didn’t need to see Judd’s remains, either. Monroe had become the kid’s idol, his father figure. Even a boy as resilient as Billy had only so much mental fortitude. And considering how long it took Gabe Getty to recover after a similar loss, Mike simply couldn’t risk it.

  Mercy needed Billy. And Asa.

  And right now, they all needed him to set their world back on its broken axis again, so they could at least wobble along.

  Glancing over at the boy and the old man, seeing tears but determination, Malloy made some quick decisions. “I want you two to stay with Mercy. Figure out where you want to bury Judd and Nathaniel, because this heat’s not doing us any favors. And then, Billy, I’ll need you to start digging. All right?”

  “Yessir, I can do that.” He was fighting to remain calm. Already taking on the burdens that came with being the man of the family, as he’d done with his mother.

  “I knew I could coun
t on you.” He squeezed the boy’s shoulder, looking pointedly at Mrs. Monroe. She’d be the most obstinate about following his instructions. “I’ll take water out and clean them up as best I can. Meanwhile, Mercy, I’ll be needing clothes for all three of them. We don’t know whether Elizabeth will want to bury Ira here or take him home, but I can’t just leave any of them—”

  “Only if I get to see him after you’ve dressed him. Otherwise I’m coming out there to prepare him myself.” Her brown eyes simmered like coffee left for hours in a pot, and her gaze never wavered. “It’s my right, Michael. His last words to me were ‘take care of my family.’ He died protecting us. I need to tell Judd I love him one more time. Need to tell him . . . good-bye.”

  There would be no arguing with this woman. Even though Mercedes Monroe was shrinking in on herself with this loss, she would have her way—just as she had prevailed through so many other hardships out here. If he was to keep her friendship and respect, so she would accept his help in the months to come, Malloy knew he couldn’t completely protect her from the harsh realities of this life she’d chosen.

  It would be a challenge to cleanse the dirt and gore from that thick black hair—yet only by the grace of God had Judd’s scalp remained attached. Mike hoped he could wipe the grimace of a horrendous death from those handsome features, just as he would need to dress and arrange the rest of Judd so his disfigurements didn’t show.

  “I understand,” he finally murmured. “I consider it an honor, and I—I’ll do my very best to make him look the way he’d want to for you, Mercy. It’ll be my final gift to a fine man. My very good friend.”

  “ ‘I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress. My God, in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the. . . .’ ”

  Billy stood staring at the coffin Mike Malloy had pieced together from lumber scraps. It rested in the hole Billy had started digging yesterday, until it got too deep for him to throw the dirt out of. The blisters on his hands still hurt, but nothing was as horrible as knowing Judd was in that makeshift box—and that Nathaniel lay in the one a few feet away. It didn’t seem fair that these fine men had met such a horrendous end.