by F. M. Parker
Alice leaned her walking staff against the wall and dropped the pack from her tired sore shoulders. She shut the door and dropped the latch into its slot. Now to build a fire and get warm.
She took the hatchet and went to the boards and supporting beams of the loft that had fallen onto the floor. After several minutes, she had cut a large pile of firewood. Using splinters of wood as kindling, she struck a match and started a fire in the fireplace. From the pack, she removed a can of pork and beans. It was frozen solid. Using her knife, she opened the can and placed it on the hearth near the fire so that the food would thaw. Once she had warm food inside her, she would feel stronger
She carried one of the stools up close to the fireplace and sat down, pulled off her gloves and held her hands out to the flames. Wonderful, so very wonderful, she thought and rubbing her hands together in the heat of the flames. How far had she come this day? Twelve miles, maybe fifteen. Not bad considering having to walk in deep snow. Tomorrow she would have a full day and could walk a greater distance. She was thankful that she had found the cabin and had a fire. Now she had the night to rest. Tomorrow she would push herself to the limit. The sheriff would be after her and must not overtake her before she crossed the border into Canada. She hoped it would snow and hide her tracks. And that she would find other places to find shelter and sleep under a roof.
She was very thirsty. She dug the small pan from her pack and went outside and packed it with snow. This she sat on the hearth beside the can of food where the paper label was curling and charring and the food inside was beginning to steam.
She dragged the table up close to the fireplace. From the pack she took a spoon. She lifted up the can of bubbling food and sat it on the table to cool. She couldn’t carry everything needed for so many days of travel and so would eat short rations until reaching Canada. She ate the beans straight out of the can.
Alice studied the sincere and caring expression on Will’s young man’s face, a poem came to her.
A shared hate made friends of strangers
A shared fear made friends of strangers
She thought of Cole Taggert and added ..
Hate gave you strength
Hate gave you courage
Hate made you cherish love
She bit hungrily into the corn.
They ate silently, avoiding each others eyes.
Alice looked about at the small single room of the cabin. Somebody had made a home here. Two stools told that two people, probably a man and woman, had live here. But why did they leave without their furniture? What was the real story? For some unidentifiable reason, she thought it would be a sad one.
The fire burned down and Alice stoked it with fresh wood, large pieces that would burn for hours. Near the fire she spread the canvass and the blankets. She tipped the table to lie on its side and parallel to the fireplace so that its flat top would reflect the heat from the fire back upon the blankets. She would sleep with all her clothes on with half of the blankets and canvas under her and half over her, and she would keep the fire burning all night for the temperature would fall during the darkness.
She removed her boots and held her bare feet out to the fire. The warmth felt grand. She had almost walked through the burlap that had been wrapped around the boots and she now cut pieces from the burlap sack and added a new layer. In the flickering firelight, she drew on the boots and went to the door and checked the latch, judged it a flimsy piece of wood but hoped it would keep out any intruder. She lay down on the pallet and placed the walking staff close to her side for a weapon if one should be needed.
Alice pulled the blankets and canvas down tightly around her. She lay listening to the north wind striking the side of the cabin and the rattling the wooden roof shingles as it continued its journey south. She was exhausted but still she could not sleep. She thought of the panther that had used the cabin and the other wild animals of the forest, and of Oscar who would surely kill her.
She pulled a breath of the cold cabin air and turtled her head under the blankets. As she drifted off to sleep, a loud scratching sounded on the door and a weight was thrown against it. She snapped fully awake with her heart thudding. The big cat had returned.
She leapt from her pallet, grabbed up her club and sprang to the door. She pressed her back against the door, spread her feet on the floor and pushed with all her strength to hold it shut. She must prevent the animal from breaking into the cabin
The scratching came again, up high as if the panther was standing on its hind legs. Alice felts it weight, the door pressing against the latch and her back. The beast gave a powerful shove and uttered a guttural growl. After a handful of seconds, the panther’s weight against the door fell away. There was silence for a moment, and then the panther moved off, marking its withdrawal by growls of disappointment.
Alice’s fear lessened and she breathed again. She had won the battle against the big animal. A sense of pride in not panicking, in her strength and will to fight came pleasantly over her.
She returned to her bed and lay ready to spring from the blankets and again defend herself against the panther. She did not know when she went to sleep. She awoke to the fire burned low. She reached out from under the blankets and fed fresh wood to the hot coals of the fire. For a moment she thought of the cat. Then sleep again took her weary body.
Chapter Ten
The Pursuit
Oscar’s powerful right hand gripped Matty’s neck and held her pressed against the horse stall in the barn. His angry face was within inches of hers. At their feet lay Cole’s frozen corpse. The pitchfork was still embedded in Cole’s side.
“Now tell me again everything you saw and did.” Oscar’s voice held a venomous softness. “Leave nothing out for if you lie to me, I’ll know it.”
Oscar felt the woman trembling with fear and that was good. Now he watched for the steadiness of the eye that told she spoke the truth, or the blink, or that tiny change of expression that exposed the lie, or the half lie.
“It’s like I told you already.” Matty’s voice quivered. “Cole left this morning to buy some feed for the livestock. Afterwards, the girl we took in gets up and I send her to the barn to fetch eggs for breakfast. I turn on the Victrola and listen to the music while I’m cooking. You know that I often listen to the Victrola. Because of the music, I don’t hear Cole drive past the house to the barn. When the girl doesn’t come with the eggs, I go to the barn to see what’s keeping her. She’s not there. The truck is, but not Cole. The dogs have followed me and they start barking at the pile of hay and then start digging in it. I see Cole’s foot and I uncover him the rest of the way to see if he’s alive. He wasn’t breathing.”
Matty tried to look away from Oscar but couldn’t break her eyes free of his. “I saw the pitchfork stuck in his side and the blood. I didn’t think she could kill him by herself so I looked around the outside of the barn in the snow to see if somebody had helped her. But there was only her tracks going off to the north. I wanted to tell you quick as I could. So I drove the truck to Bemiji to get you and bring you out here to show you.”
“And?” Oscar asked. He closed his hand tighter around Matty‘s throat and stopped the flow of her breath. After a few seconds, he released his grip sufficiently to allow her to breathe. “I know there’s more. In fact I think you kill Cole. Or helped the girl do it. Out with it.”
Matty sucked in a fast breath of air, and then another. She would speak the truth for she had not helped Alice. Oscar must believe her. “Cole broke into her bedroom last night, but I talked him out of hurting her. She was terribly afraid of him. I think she saw a chance to kill him went into the barn where she was gathering eggs and rammed the pitchfork into him. I swear that’s all there is to tell, Oscar. I wouldn’t hurt Cole. Please don’t kill me.”
Satisfied that he had the true story, Oscar removed his hand from Matty’s throat. “Why, Matty, what ever made you think that I was going to kill you. Be a good girl and show me those tracks that you
mentioned.”
“Yes. Yes, Oscar. I’ll show you.” Matty led Oscar to the side door of the barn through which Alice had left. She had planned the location of the tracks to agree with her story. She pointed at the tracks in the snow.
Oscar readily interpreted the tracks. “It seems you told the truth. Come with me.”
He caught Matty by the arm and propelled her to his sheriff’s car parked near the barn. There he opened the trunk of the car and clothed himself in a heavy wool coat and a pair of fleece lined boots. He buckled on snow shoes and settled a pack onto his shoulders.
“You take my car and drive to Bemiji and tell Sam what you told me and that I’m going to catch the girl. She’s got a short head start on me of about six hours, but I’ve got her tracks to follow and I’ll catch her late today or early tomorrow. You and Sam take care of Cole’s body. You got all that?”
“Yes, Oscar, I’ll tell him exactly that.”
Oscar strode away to fall upon Alice’s tracks. He stretched his snow shoe stride until three of his engulfed four of Alice’s steps.
*
Matty sat across the desk from her nephew Sam in the Sheriff’s Office in Bemiji and in a tight voice relayed to him what she had told Oscar about Cole’s murder. She suddenly leaned toward Sam and her voice became sharp with anger “Sam, Oscar choked me.” She lifted her chin and touched the red finger prints on her throat. “He shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t right.”
Sam rose abruptly from his chair and stood rigid with his fists clenched. Slowly he lowered himself back into his seat. “The sonofabitch.”
“That he is Sam. Now he’s going to kill that girl. I’m sure Cole tried to rape the girl and somehow Alice managed to kill him with the pitchfork. But she’ll never have a chance to tell a judge her story for then it would come out that Oscar and Cole killed those other two girls.”
“What!” Sam was on his feet again. “What did you say?”
“They killed those two girls we took off the Orphan Train that was supposed to have run away, the one this past April and the one last year.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I found their graves.”
“For God’s sake, Aunt Matty, tell me what you know.”
“One of the horses got loose and I found him behind the barn. There I saw these two low places in the ground just the right shape and size for graves. They were sunk down like ground does after it has been dug up and then sinks over time and from getting wet. I can show you both graves.”
“When did you find them?”
“In early December when we had that warm spell and all the snow melted.”
“Why didn’t you tell somebody? Tell me?”
“I wasn’t exactly sure they were graves. And I was afraid for you. Jan Johansson, that deputy before you, came around once when Cole wasn’t home and asked me questions about the girl that had run off in April and where was Cole when she disappeared. I told him that Cole had gone off fishing. Johansson asked me if he caught any fish. I said no, that Cole told me that they weren’t biting. Shortly after that, Johansson was found dead. Now I think he made a mistake by mentioning his suspicions of Cole to Oscar. And then either Cole or Oscar killed him.”
“How do you tie Oscar into this?”
“The first night Alice was here, Cole went into her bedroom. She started yelling and I went in. She had this knife in her hand and was trying to keep him off her. When I told Cole that Oscar wouldn’t like him bothering the girl, he said something strange. He said that he couldn’t wait for Oscar. When he said that, the graves behind the barn came to my mind. I think Cole and Oscar together killed those two girls and buried them.”
“Where were you the time this last girl vanished?”
“I was visiting your mom. We hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks and I drove over there to have a talk with her.”
“Is there anything else that I should know?”
“Oscar thinks Cole was killed this morning. It was yesterday morning that it happened.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yes. I wanted to give the girl a head start to get away from him. I just had to for I felt responsible for her being where Cole could get his hands on her. I should never have agreed to taking her in, not with all that I suspected. Sam, you’ve got to find that girl and keep Oscar from killing her.”
“If what you’ve said is true, he’ll kill you for lying to him.”
“I’ve thought of that too. It would be best if he never returned.”
Sam ignored his aunt’s suggestion. “If I’m going to arrest Oscar for murder, then I’ve got to see at least one of the girls’ bodies.”
“I can show you where they’re buried for I marked their graves.”
“You ride home with me in my car. Then I’ll spend the night there and leave at first light.”
Sam stepped to the door that led down a long hallway to the jail. He called out in a loud voice to the junior deputy who had his small office close enough to the jail to watch the prisoners. “Charlie, Oscar is after a runaway and wants me to help him catch her. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. You’ve got the office until Oscar or I get back. It may be a few days.”
“Right, Sam. I’ll take care of everything.”
*
Sam parked the sheriff car near the barn and he and Matty climbed out.
Matty spoke to Sam. “We can get a mattock from the barn to dig one of the graves open.”
“I want to see Cole’s body first.”
Matty led Sam to the barn and to Cole’s body lying in the hay. Sam studied it for a moment.
“All right let’s see the girls’ bodies.”
Matty took up a mattock and continued out the rear door and along the side of the barn. Sam followed.
She halted and pointed at a scratch on the side of the barn. “That marks one of their graves. It lies parallel to the barn and about here out from the wall.” Matty pointed at the snow. “Dig here. It won’t be deep.”
Sam raked the snow away with the mattock and set to digging the frozen ground. He believed his aunt, but hoped that she was wrong, that he would not find a girl’s body.
Sam knew by the texture of the ground that it had been preciously dug, and not too far in the past. Even so the frozen dirt gave but slowly to his strong blows with the mattock. Then the blade of the mattock sank to the hilt. He withdrew the blade, and in the hole that remained, he saw rotten flesh and rib bones that were of the size of a young girl.
Sam leaned heavily on the mattock and stared down at the evidence proving the death of an innocent orphan, a girl whose life had been brutally cut short by two men.
“God damn the Taggerts to hell,” Sam exclaimed.
“Amen to that,” Matty spoke in a hushed voice. Then her voice became savage, “Kill him, Sam. I’m afraid that if you bring him back for trial that somehow he’ll not be convicted. And he’ll sure find a way to kill me for testifying against him for I damn sure intend to.”
Sam gently raked the dirt to again fill in the grave. “Say nothing of this to anybody until I can catch Oscar. I don’t want him to come back here and know we opened the grave for then he’d do something to you.”
“I won’t tell anybody. But hear me, nephew, I’m begging you to just kill that raping, murdering bastard.”
“I’m a lawman, Aunt Maddy.”
“Then that is even more reason to do justice for these poor little girls. Now you do it. Hear me!””
Sam stared down at the grave. He had important things to decide and he wanted to make the right choice. The sight of the girl’s decaying chest was as visible as if the dirt did not again cover it. He thought of the girl Alice running north through the woods with Oscar closing on her. Make the right choice when you overtake Oscar, he told himself.
*
Alice leaned against the broad trunk of the pine tree and rested. This was the evening of the second day and for the last several hours she had seen no sign that
humans had ever been here. Nothing moved within her view, and the total stillness of the dense forest held an eeriness, a threatening presence. She knew nothing of forests for her life had been one of towns with houses and people always within a shout. She wished that she had somebody with her to lessen the aloneness she felt so sharply.
She looked about at the forest where the big trees were elbowing each other for space. A little poem came to her.
Forest, oh forest,
You know not what you do,
Open up an avenue,
And let me pass through.
She struck off through the trees. In the edge of night, and where the thick forest met the shore of a frozen lake, Alice made her camp near a large dead pine tree that had fallen to the ground. As the tree fell, it had struck a live pine and stripped the limbs from one side. Now the trunk of the dead tree and the green boughs of the live tree lay in a shattered mass. The great abundance of readily available firewood caused her to stop the laborious journey through the forest.
She built a fire of hot burning pine knots and warmed her cold body and thawed a can of food for the evening meal. She ate the simple fare standing close to the fire, and finished the meal with water from melted snow.
Alice gathered a large quantity of wood and placed it where it would be available to keep the fire burning during the night. Then exhausted, she sat down upon the pile of wood and removed her gloves and boots and held her hands and feet out to the fire. She examined a chafed area on her right heel. She examined her boot and, and finding the rough spot that had caused the rubbing, smoothed it with her knife.