by Bill Crider
When he had gone twenty or so yards to the left, he turned to where he guessed Rankin and Bowman would be. He yanked the chain to get Jephson’s attention and put his finger to his lips. Jephson nodded, and they started working their way back toward the wagon track.
Angel had no real idea where Bowman and Rankin might be at the present, however. The rain was still coming down hard. Everything was blurred. He looked back to see if Hoot and Jack were behind them.
They were, and Angel motioned for them to catch up. When they did, he put his mouth near Hoot’s ear.
“Where the hell are they?” he said.
Hoot didn’t hesitate. He pointed off through the trees, and Angel thought he could make two dim silhouettes through the haze of falling water.
The sky flashed white, and for less than a second Angel had a clear view of Bowman and Rankin slinking through the trees. Then it was dark and thunder crashed above them.
“We’ll come up behind them,” he said. He was pretty sure that neither Bowman nor Rankin could hear half as well as Hoot. “Bowman’s mine. Jack, you and Hoot will have to take care of Rankin and that sawed-off Greener of his. Can you do it?”
Hoot held out his left arm. “I’m not sure. This thing hurts like hell.”
“This is gonna hurt even worse,” Angel said. “Don’t make a damn sound.”
Angel grabbed the splinter with both hands, Jephson’s hands coming awkwardly along. Hoot’s mouth opened, then clapped shut as he bit off the yell before it escaped.
“You ready?” Angel asked.
Hoot’s eyes were wide, but he kept his mouth resolutely shut as he nodded.
Angel yanked out the splinter. Blood gushed out with it and swirled away in the rain. Hoot slumped, but Jack held him up.
“Goddamn,” Hoot said, shaking his head. “Goddamn.”
Angel waited for a ten-count. Then he said, “Let’s go get ’em.”
FIVE
Ellie and Laurie were finished with the reading. Laurie had been quite taken with the story about the skinny school teacher named Ichabod Crane and his amusing encounter with the Headless Horseman.
“Can we read it again?” she asked. “It’s even better than the one about Rip Van Winkle.”
Ellie closed the book and put it back on the shelf. She’d enjoyed the story, too, but she didn’t want to read it again so soon.
“There are other stories in the book,” she said. “We’ll read some of those, and then we’ll read about Mr. Crane again. But not today.”
“Can I read it to you, then?”
Ellie knew that Laurie could read well, but she didn’t think the child’s skills were quite up to tackling the words of Mr. Irving.
“We should go look in on your mother,” Ellie said.
Laurie shook her head impatiently. “Oh, she’s all right. She just didn’t sleep good.”
“All the more reason we should see about her. What would you like for lunch? I’ll speak to Juana before we go.”
The thought of lunch took Laurie’s mind off reading. She skipped a step or two around the room and said, “Fried steak. Can we have fried steak? And peas? And potatoes?”
Ellie laughed. “I’ll see.”
She went into the kitchen with Laurie tagging along behind and told Juana that Laurie would be joining them for lunch. Juana said that she would be glad to fry some steak and mash some potatoes.
“And peas,” Laurie said. “Don’t forget the peas.”
“And peas,” Juana said. “Bueno.”
Ellie told her to fix enough for Sue Tolbert. “She might not feel like eating much,” Ellie said, “but I’m going to ask her to come up here and eat with us anyway.”
“Bueno,” Juana said.
Ellie and Laurie went out the back door into the sunshine that had replaced the darkness and rain. The sky was washed a brilliant blue, and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen.
Ellie stopped for a moment to enjoy the view, then turned toward the small foreman’s house, which had never been lived in until Lane Tolbert and his family had moved in. Jonathan Crossland had never had a use for it. He’d been the ramrod of his own spread, but Ellie hadn’t wanted to take on that job for herself. She was grateful that the house was there. Tolbert had said that it was just what he was looking for.
There was a small bunkhouse as well, where Ellie’s hired hands lived. Crossland had hired men when he needed them, but he’d never had a permanent crew.
Laurie ran on ahead of Ellie, not being as careful as Ellie to avoid the puddles and the worst of the mud. She made a meager attempt at wiping off her shoes, then opened the door and ran into the house. Ellie could hear her calling for her mother.
Ellie went inside. There was no one in the front room, but Ellie could see into the tiny kitchen, where Sue Tolbert sat at the table, trying to smile at her daughter, who danced around her, telling her all about Ichabod Crane.
“…and there was big man named Bones, and he was big and strong, and…”
Ellie came into the kitchen, and Sue looked up.
“You can tell me about it later, Laurie,” she said. “I’ll bet Miss Ellie already knows the whole story.”
“She ought to,” Laurie said. “She read it to me.”
“And did you thank her?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember. Thanks, Miss Ellie.”
“You’re welcome,” Ellie said. Then to Sue she said, “Your husband said you weren’t feeling well today.”
Sue shook her head, and her bright blonde hair danced. “I hope he didn’t worry you about me. I’m not sick. I just had a bad night. I tossed and turned and didn’t sleep much. It’s nothing. Just bad dreams.”
“I have bad dreams sometimes,” Laurie said. She looked thoughtful. “But I don’t remember them now.”
Ellie knew all about bad nights and bad dreams. She’d had more than her share in the last year or so. Even worse, she could remember them.
“Do you remember yours?” she asked Sue.
Sue didn’t meet Ellie’s eyes.
“They were just silly dreams,” she said.
Ellie pulled out a straight-backed wooden chair and sat down. She rested her arms on the table and said, “Dreams aren’t always silly. My grandmother used to believe they could tell the future.”
It wasn’t the right thing to say. Sue’s face crumpled, and for a second Ellie thought Sue might be going to cry.
Laurie tugged on her mother’s dress. “Don’t cry,” she said. “It was just an old dream. Dreams aren’t real. Remember? You told me so.”
Sue composed herself. “Of course I remember. I was being silly, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were,” Laurie said sternly.
“I won’t do it again.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” Sue said. “Now why don’t you go clean some of that mud off your shoes and let me and Miss Ellie have a little talk.”
“All right,” Laurie said, running out the back door to the small covered porch where she sat and began removing her shoes.
“The dreams worried you, didn’t they,” Ellie said.
Sue nodded. “But that’s just being silly, as I told Laurie.”
“What were they about?”
“Just some things that happened a long time ago. They’re nothing. Really.”
“They were about things that are still worrying you, weren’t they,” Ellie said.
“Not so much now that it’s daylight. Those things always seem much worse at night.”
Ellie knew all about that. Sometimes she woke up all in a sweat after dreaming that she was lying in the back of a wagon with a man named Ben Atticks about to rape her. It had been bad enough the first time, when it had really happened. Reliving it so vividly in the early hours of the morning was somehow even worse.
“It was probably all that thunder and lightning,” Sue went on. “Things like that can cause dreams, you know. I don’t much like storms.”
“We needed this one,” Ellie
said. “Or we needed the water it brought. Sometimes good can come out of bad.”
She thought about Jonathan Crossland and the friendship that had grown up between them. It had been a fine thing, though short-lived, and it would never have come into being if not for all the bad things that surrounded it.
“That doesn’t change the bad things,” Sue said. “You never forget them.”
“No,” Ellie agreed. “You never do.”
She considered herself an expert on that topic, but she’d never discussed it with Sue. For that matter, Sue had never discussed much about her past with Ellie.
“Would you like to talk about your dreams?” Ellie asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sue said. She stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then said, “Did you ever have a brother?”
Ellie shook her head. “I’m an only child.”
“Consider yourself blessed,” Sue told her.
SIX
Angel told Jephson what they were going to do. Bowman was lagging a little behind Rankin. They’d get as close to Bowman as they could and then jump him while Jack and Hoot took on Rankin.
“You think you can jump when I tell you to?” he asked Jephson.
Jephson’s clothing was plastered to him by water and mud. He looked like a drowned rat, incapable of any action at all, but he said he thought he could do it.
“You’d damn well better,” Angel said. He held up his hands. “Just let me get this chain around his neck and my knee in his back. You try to keep out of the way.”
Jephson nodded, but getting close to Bowman wasn’t going to be easy. The manacles made walking difficult at best, and walking quietly was almost impossible. The noise didn’t make much difference, however. It was almost impossible to hear anything over the roar of the wind and the rain.
They got to within two yards of Bowman before something warned Rankin, who turned to look behind him.
Angel didn’t wait to see what happened.
“Now!” he said, and sprang for Bowman, who was so slow to react that he still hadn’t turned.
Jephson came right along, and Angel landed on Bowman’s back. Bowman pitched forward, and Angel looped the chain around his neck before they hit the ground.
There was a shotgun blast off to the left, but Angel paid it no mind. He landed on Bowman’s back and felt the breath go out of the fat guard. He braced his knee on Bowman’s spine and yanked back on the chain.
The shotgun blasted again, but it had no effect on Angel, who continued to put the pressure on Bowman’s neck.
Bowman thrashed under Angel, kicking his legs and flailing his arms. Angel locked his legs around Bowman’s broad middle and refused to be thrown aside. He pulled back even harder on the chain. Bowman started to make a wet cawing sound, and his hands tore futilely at the chain that was sunk in the folds of his neck.
Angel laughed and gave a hard jerk backward. Something in Bowman’s neck popped like a broken branch. Bowman shuddered and collapsed face down in the mud.
Angel unlooped the chain and looked to his left. Over Jephson’s head he could see Rankin struggling with Hoot and Jack. There was no sign of the shotgun.
“Let’s go help the boys out,” Angel said to Jephson.
They stood up, and Angel kicked Bowman’s limp body.
“Bastard,” he said.
He would have spit on him, but with all the rain it would have been a wasted effort.
“Let’s see if he was the one carrying a key to these manacles,” Angel said.
He and Jephson bent down and searched through Bowman’s clothing. They found the keys in his coat pocket. Angel didn’t waste any time in getting free.
“Not let’s see about that bastard Rankin,” he said.
He and Jephson ran toward Rankin, who was struggling on the ground in a tangle with Hoot and Jack, who had been unable to get the chain around Rankin’s neck.
The shotgun was lying uselessly a yard or so away from the struggle, so Angel picked it up by the double barrel. He waited until Rankin’s head was clear of the tangle and then clubbed the guard on the back of the skull.
Rankin collapsed like an empty bag. Angel waited until Hoot and Jack had squirmed out from under him and then hit him again. Water drops flew off Rankin’s hair, and his skull crushed like the shell of a terrapin hit with a rock. Rankin shuddered all over. Then he was still.
“Let me have a turn at the son of a bitch,” Hoot said as he got to his feet. “I thought for sure he was gonna kill us.”
“He didn’t even get a shot at us,” Jack told Angel. “I had a hold of the gun. He fired in the air a couple of times while I was trying to take it away from him. He got in a pretty good lick on me before he dropped it, too.”
There was a bruised lump on Jack’s forehead, but it didn’t look too bad. It would look worse later, Angel thought.
“What now?” Jack asked.
“Now we get you out of those chains,” Angel said, tossing Jephson the keys.
While Jephson was freeing the others, Angel bent down to Rankin’s body. The guard had a belt full of shotgun shells looped over his shoulder. Angel lifted Rankin’s right side, slipped Rankin’s arm through the belt and pulled it off. Then he looped it over his own shoulder.
“Is he still breathing?” Hoot asked.
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Angel said. “No use to waste good buckshot on him.”
He took two shotgun shells from the belt and broke the shotgun. He inserted the shells and snapped the gun back together.
“Let’s go see what Gut’s up to,” he said.
The four men slogged through the mud and rain to where Gut was still kneeling beside Yankee Tom. Gut looked up and saw them, but he didn’t move from where he was.
Angel bent down and picked up Gut’s hickory club, then handed it to Jephson. Jack got the club that had belonged to Yankee Tom.
Angel pointed the shotgun at Gut and said, “Gut, you sorry son of a bitch, you’ve pounded on your last prisoner.”
Gut looked up at him, rain streaming off his face. His eyes were red, and Angel thought he must have been crying.
“You can shoot me if you want to,” Gut said. “I don’t give a damn. Yankee Tom’s dead, and I might just as well be dead, too.”
“So that’s the way it was,” Angel said.
“You can go to hell,” Gut said.
“You first,” Angel said, and pulled one of the triggers.
There was a sound as loud as the thunder, and the heavy buckshot tore away half of Gut’s chest. For a second the rain around Gut was hazed with red.
“Some fun!” Hoot said.
“It’s not fun,” Angel said. “It’s just necessary. Let’s go see if we can catch those jarheads.”
“I don’t like the idea of ridin’ a mule,” Hoot said. “It’s not dignified, and they’d just as soon kick you as look at you. Besides, they’re bad about bitin’.”
“Talk to him, Jack,” Angel said.
“A mule’s a whole lot better than a horse in some ways,” Jack said. “Smarter, steadier, and a lot harder worker. You don’t need to be ashamed of riding a mule.”
Hoot looked skeptical, then smiled. “As long as I’m ridin’, I don’t much care. What about my arm?”
“It’s just a scratch,” Angel said. “We’ll bandage it up as best we can. It’s going to bleed a little, but there’s not a damn thing we can do about that.”
“Where do we go from here, then?” Hoot asked.
“We can split up if that’s what you want,” Angel said. “Or we can stick together for a while and see what turns up.”
“I been inside a long time,” Hoot said. “I’d like to kill somebody, burn down a barn or two, pay those bastards back for putting me in that goddamn place. What about you?”
“Me?” Angel said. He pushed his streaming hair back out of his face. “Me, I think I’ll pay a visit to my family.”
SEVEN
“My brother was a beautiful child,” Su
e Tolbert said. “That’s why my mother named him Angel.”
Sue and Ellie were sitting at the round wooden table in the main ranch house, having just finished the lunch prepared by Juana. Laurie was in Ellie’s office, paging through some of the books and reading what she could. She couldn’t hear what the adults were saying. Otherwise, Sue would never have been willing to discuss her brother.
“He had the finest blond hair,” Sue said. “It flew all around his head like floss. And blue eyes, light, pale blue. He even had dimples when he smiled. To see him, you’d think he’d just dropped down from heaven.”
“I guess he didn’t, though,” Ellie said.
“No, he didn’t. The way he was and the way he looked didn’t match up. If he came from anywhere, it wasn’t heaven. Just the opposite, maybe. But we didn’t know that at first. He was just like any other baby, only prettier. I was five years old when he was born, and I thought he was the best thing that had ever happened. It was like having a new doll to play with, only better.” Sue’s eyes got a faraway look. “I can still remember our mother singing to him when she sat in the rocker and held him.”
Ellie thought that was a nice memory. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and she didn’t remember much about her own childhood. What she remembered mostly had to do with working. She didn’t remember any singing at all.
Sue’s eyes closed, and she hummed a few bars of some half-forgotten lullaby.
“I can’t remember any more of it than that,” she said, opening her eyes and smiling faintly. “That was a good time, though, when Angel was just a little baby and before the bad things started happening.”
Ellie wasn’t sure she wanted to hear about the bad times. She’d had plenty of those herself. But she could tell that Sue wanted to talk, and maybe it would do her some good.
So she said, “What kind of bad things?”
“Angel started to kill animals,” Sue said. “It was before he was even six years old. I saw him outside one day, chucking rocks at something on the ground. When I went out, I saw that it was a horned frog. He’d flattened it out good and proper, and there was blood all mixed in with the dirt, but he was still chucking at it. I tried to make him stop, and he started throwing rocks at me instead.”