by Jodi Barrows
Liz smelled his filthy stench and realized that the skinny one had released her face. She rubbed her numb cheek and tried to breathe, but it didn’t come easily. Willing the pain to go away, she tasted fresh blood in her mouth. She tried to inch backwards without being noticed, away from the men. Within seconds, though, the big one had his hands around her neck, picking her off the ground, the toes of her black boots barely touching the wood floor.
He growled at her as he held her against a support post. “You can give us what we want, or we can have some real fun and just do it our way.”
His dirty calloused hand held her firmly around the neck, blocking her air. It became harder and harder to focus, but the fleeting thought that this had nothing to do with the county records fluttered through her humming mind. God, please help me! she prayed.
The big man loosened his grip slightly and she instantly grabbed a gulp of much-needed air. The oxygen allowed her brain to clear enough that she thought to reach for the gun under her apron. He stood just a step away from her and didn’t notice her movements.
The skinny man looked to the red doors and reached to turn the lock. He came closer to her and repeated, “Where’s the money?”
Liz thought he looked more evil than anything she had ever seen before. Clearly, they would kill her without a thought. Her fingers found the gun under the apron and she pointed it at the big man’s gut and squeezed the trigger. The Colt went off and both men looked at her, not knowing from where the shot had come. The big, stinking man loosened his grip completely and fell to the floor, pinning Liz under him as he fell.
A hole had burned through Liz’s apron, and the man’s blood had splattered across her. She knew she had to get up and pull the trigger once again, and his blood on her was of no consequence at all, nor was the dead man lying across her. The only thought she had was to stop the skinny man from moving toward the back of the store and absconding with her money.
She knew he would try to get the bag holding the day’s proceeds, and that he wouldn’t think a thing about killing her afterward. As he moved, he knocked over the display she had made earlier that day, and buttons flew across the floor like ants scurrying from an ant hill that had been kicked. Just as he reached the register, two gunshots blasted through the store. Liz scrambled to her knees as the smoke cleared.
Horror struck her heart as she saw that two more men had sprawled across the wooden floor of the mercantile, both of them covered in blood. One of those men … was her grandfather.
Liz scrambled across the floor toward her Grandpa Lucas, looking for either of the robbers’ guns as she crawled. Liz stayed low until she finally spotted the gun of the skinny man and slid it under the denim display.
He’s not moving. She continued across the floor on her knees until she reached Lucas. “Grandpa,” she cried. “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right, please.”
Dear Lord, this is too much blood, she prayed.
Tears streaming down her face, she took hold of his hand as he struggled to get a breath. She wanted to embrace and comfort him but didn’t know where to touch him safely.
“What … should I do?”
Lucas fluttered his eyes and then squeezed them shut as he winced in pain. He lifted his head a little, taking in the quiet mercantile after so much calamity only moments earlier.
“Are they dead?” he asked before letting his head drop down again.
Liz looked back at the two men and said, “I think so.” She could barely make out their bodies through her tears.
She tore a section of her petticoat with her teeth and quickly folded it, looking for the source of so much blood loss. His thick crimson blood pooled around her, making it hard to find where it originated. Lucas moaned when she applied pressure to the left side of his chest.
“Don’t you dare leave me, Grandpa!” Liz begged as she tore at the edge of her petticoat again. “We’ll get you some help! It’ll just be a minute. Just stay with me.”
Liz tried to gain a little control, but the flow of blood continued to saturate the petticoat bandage.
Lucas’s voice was weak as he spoke. “Liz, take care of the others. Remember where your strength comes from.”
“No!” she sobbed. “Grandpa, noooo! Please, please don’t go. We need you here with us.”
Liz whimpered and leaned down to him, her dress soaking up his life blood. She wrapped her arms around his thick neck and draped her body across his chest.
“You can’t leave me,” she cried. “Don’t leave me, Grandpa.”
He stuttered out his last words. “Liz, the death angel is here for me. I see him in his white robe and the pearly gates are behind him.” He coughed, more blood coming from his mouth, his words slurred, “Marry Thomas, child. You need each other.” His eyes began to shut and he whispered, “Don’t worry, Elizabeth. I hear music. My Claire is waiting there for me.”
Liz fell completely limp across him. She heard the emptiness echo as his heartbeat slowed and then stopped, and she felt his last breath leave his body.
Her own cries howled as if they had been thrown into a barrel in some distant location.
The sun hung low in the sky as riders anxiously approached home, at last. Thomas, Tex, and Samuel had ridden together for two days. They didn’t talk much, but Thomas had begun to appreciate Samuel a little more as he got to know him better over the course of their ride. It turned out that Samuel owned land for a ranch not too far from where Thomas planned to build his own.
The motion of the horses as they galloped hypnotized Thomas and took him deep into his own thoughts, which placed him back in the land office in Houston.
The door had jingled as he entered, and the man with round glasses peered up at him from his desk. “Be right with you, mister,” he said, adjusting the bill of his hat. Thomas watched the little man as he continued with the work in front of him and dipped his pen into the inkwell three more times before looking up at Thomas again. “Welcome to the Texas Land Office. What county are you filing in?”
The man’s spectacles sat perched on the end of his long, pointed nose, and he looked at Thomas over them. He couldn’t help thinking that the man resembled a rat. “Denton County,” Thomas had responded.
The man pulled out a new form and dipped his pen. He held it firmly and began to fill in the lines. Within the hour, Thomas had filed on his land.
“I need to send a letter. Can I borrow a paper and pen?” Thomas asked the clerk. The man reached into his desk and pulled out a clean sheet and pen with an inkwell. “You can write over there.” He motioned to a counter by a window.
Thomas looked out to a busy city. Horses and people, all in a hurry to go somewhere. He knew the quiet ranchland he had purchased was exactly what he wanted. He couldn’t imagine ever longing for the hum of city life. He looked forward to sharing his excitement with Liz, Lucas, and the rest of the family. The time he was away made him forget his anger of days ago.
Thomas had picked up his pen and began to write:
Found land to purchase in Denton County. It is north of Fort Worth, where we are now. Ready for the total amount of my belongings. Send it with the next freight wagon leaving Saint Louis. Also please arrange for my inheritance and all items to be shipped as soon as possible. Thanks. Your nephew, Thomas W. Bratcher.
Thomas read the letter over again and folded it into the envelope. He addressed the outside and sealed it shut.
“Where can I post this letter?” he asked, and the clerk motioned with an ink-stained finger.
“Down the street a ways.” He rubbed his nose, and now it had ink on it. Thomas smiled as he tipped his hat to bid goodbye.
Samuel asked Tex a question, bringing Thomas back from his daydream.
“We’ll be in Fort Worth within the hour,” Tex answered.
Thomas began to recognize the countryside, and he enjoyed the landscape as much as he had the first time. His own land looked much like this, and he could hardly wait to begin construction on a
homestead there. He felt like a real Texan-in-the-making as he mulled over his plans of breeding fine horses and cattle and thought about where exactly he would place their house. Did he want it to face the west or east? He even pondered where Liz might want to put the henhouse.
It was easy to think on the back of a horse.
Tex yanked the reins and exclaimed, “Hey, men! I think that’s gunfire!”
The three riders jabbed their spurs at the flanks of their mounts, leaned close to their mares, and took off. They rode hard over the last hill toward Fort Worth.
Suddenly, Thomas realized shots had indeed been fired.
As Thomas, Tex, and Samuel rode into the dirt streets of Fort Worth, they saw a commotion in front of the mercantile. Immediately, Thomas’s heart lurched. Horses stood silently without riders, and people that Thomas didn’t recognize turned to look at them. Thomas instinctively knew something bad had happened. He could feel it hanging about the crowd and over his gut like a steel beam. Everyone in the street watched as the three rode up, and Thomas leapt from his horse first.
Tex pulled his gun and cautiously looked around. Gunpowder hung in the air, and Thomas drew his weapon as well. The red doors swung open and Pastor Parker came out with a stunned look of disbelief. He scanned the crowd, noticing that Tex, Samuel, and Thomas had returned.
Thomas took the steps of the mercantile three at a time and stood there facing the pastor. When instinct propelled him toward the front door, Pastor Parker placed his hand on Thomas’s shoulder.
“Liz is inside and she needs you, Thomas. Lucas was killed, along with two strangers.”
Thomas shoved through the doors and searched for Liz. He stepped over a dead man and found her crumpled in the back corner of the room beside Lucas’s still and motionless body. She rocked back and forth, weeping with no sound. Only the occasional gasp of breath on her lips betrayed her, and her shoulders convulsed.
Blood covered his beautiful Liz. He couldn’t tell if it was hers or not, and Thomas fell to his knees beside her.
Megan was on her knees at her grandfather’s head, with one arm on Liz’s shoulder and the other arm under Lucas’s neck, weeping quietly. Abby and Emma stood by the back door of the mercantile, quietly in shock, tears streaming down their faces. Abby held the edge of her apron and used it to stop the tears at her chin. A thick trail of blood trickled past them on the wood floor and dripped down the back step. Thomas knew they had never witnessed anything like this in their young lives.
Luke stood like a fence post just beyond Abby and Emma with his hands jammed down in his pockets, his face ashen in color. When his gaze met Thomas’s, he kicked at a rock and took off running to the woods by the cavalry barracks.
Thomas saw his mentor, a man he loved and respected, lying on the crimson-stained wooden floor. He looked to his left at the register and saw another dead man he didn’t know with the copper-colored register bag lying open on the floor next to him. A few coins had spilled out. After surveying what he saw, it didn’t take him long to figure out that the men had tried to rob the mercantile. Thomas looked back to Liz and saw that her dress had been torn. He prayed to God that the men hadn’t done anything to her, and anger began to swell inside him.
Thomas helped her stand and she became limp in his arms. She had no words, and he couldn’t blame her. She buried her face in his chest and whimpered.
Thomas stepped back for a moment and looked her over. Covered in blood, from her face to dress, she looked as if she’d been painting that red door of hers. She looked small and broken, almost unrecognizable, and Thomas wrapped her up in his arms and held her close to him, rocking her from one side to the other.
“Thomas—oh, Thomas—” she croaked, and the pain in her voice was enough to break Thomas too. He worked hard to hold back his own tears as she continued to repeat his name again and again. “Thomas—oh, Thomas—”
When she started to trail off to silence, he reached one arm out to comfort Megan, and the two Wilkes cousins who hovered at the back entry moved toward him as well.
“Come here,” he reassured them. “Come to me.”
He unexpectedly found that his arms were long enough to encircle all four women, with Liz at the center of the circle pressed against his pounding heart. The women felt wilted in his embrace, and Thomas felt slightly wilted himself. Shocked by the scene in front of him, he made a conscious decision to stuff his own personal grief deep down inside in order to help this family survive this tragedy. He was now responsible for them. They were in shock and would feel the loss of Lucas Mailly for the rest of their lives. Thomas knew he would feel the loss almost as horribly.
Tex timidly approached the group and offered his sympathy to the Mailly family.
Thomas looked to Tex and asked, “Will you go after Luke? He ran off in the direction of the old barracks. Make sure he’s all right and bring him here to me?”
“I’ll see if I can find him and make sure he’s okay.” Tex nodded his head and walked to the door and spoke to the pastor and Samuel before the three of them headed off with conviction in their eyes. Thomas spoke softly to his group of women. He knew they needed to get to the house and out of the mercantile.
“What can I do?” Anna blurted, and Thomas sighed out of sheer relief.
“Do you think you can help me get the women out of here? And Liz will need a hot bath and a change of clothing. Megan, too.”
Anna nodded, and she looked more than ready to take on a task in the name of helping her new friends.
“Abby, Emma,” she said with her arms outstretched toward them. “Come with me, darlings.”
“I want to leave this place and never come back,” Abby wailed, and she wriggled into Anna’s embrace.
“Let’s get you and your sister over to the house,” Anna said, and Thomas marveled at her ability to remain calm in the midst of such a horrendous storm. “Liz, Megan? Can you come with me?”
Megan followed silently, her eyes wide, and Thomas realized how shocked she was. When Anna tried to nudge Liz along with them, she whined and tightened her grip on Thomas.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “I’ll bring Liz along.”
Megan took one last look over to her grandfather and asked, “Thomas, can we go out the front?”
Thomas nodded and wrapped his arm around her shoulder before leading both of the sisters through the front door. Anna led Abby and Emma ahead of them, and Abby reached for her sister’s hand as they passed the first dead intruder. Emma stopped for a moment and angrily spat on him before she continued.
A group of people gathered on the street as the evening sun faded to twilight. The night sounds began their somber prairie symphony. Women dabbed their eyes and men held their hats in their hands. One small boy hid in his mother’s skirt. Thomas observed all of this in slow motion as he led Liz and Megan home.
At the back door of the small porch, Thomas stopped in his tracks as he saw the quilt spread out across the chair. Abby saw him as he noticed it and she managed a weary, fragmented smile. His mind went back to the morning that he had saddled up and left Fort Worth, and his heart heaved under the heavy weight of the memory.
“It’s been there the whole time,” Abby told him, and Megan lifted her head and looked him in the eyes, simply nodding her agreement.
Inside, Emma started the teakettle while Anna went with Liz and Megan to help them begin the arduous task of removing the last living traces of a man so deeply imbedded in their lives from their clothes and skin.
Anna turned back to him at the door. “Thomas, I will see about things here. I’m prepared to stay the night. Parker and Tex could probably use your help back at the store.” She leaned toward him and touched his arm. “There was nothing you could do, even if you had been here. God is good, and He will get us through this tragedy.”
Thomas stood on the back porch in the new darkness. His chest felt close and heavy. He had let this family down with his own stubborn foolishness. He hung his head and took a d
eep, shaky breath. As he started to the mercantile, he stopped at the quilt and ran his hand over the catalyst, the reminder of the chain of events that led to such disaster.
If it had been on the porch, would he have been here to save Lucas? The thought made him sick and full of misgivings.
The group around the breakfast table remained silent when Tex and Samuel tapped lightly at the door. Liz flooded with relief when Anna opened it to let them inside. She poured steaming cups of coffee and offered them a chair.
Thomas walked in just as they cautiously took their first sips. He leaned on the cupboard behind Tex.
“We know of those two outlaws, suspect them in two other robberies and three murders. Never thought that they would be put down by a woman and her grandfather.”
Tex paused for a moment before he continued. He looked away, and Liz saw that he held back his own emotion. He tapped his boot and twisted his mouth around the words of loss that followed.
“I’m real sorry about your grandfather, ladies. I enjoyed working with him. He thought highly of all of you.” Tex smiled. “I thought for the longest time that he had all grandsons. I would have never known from the way he spoke that you would be women.”
Samuel spoke next. “Parker and Smithy have Lucas at the church.” He swallowed and cleared his throat. “He looks real peaceful.”
Liz swiped at the unyielding rivulet of tears that washed her face. Abby handed her a fresh, embroidered hanky with an “A” on the corner.
“Pastor Parker is planning to have a prayer service at the church before the burial. Will that be fine?” Samuel asked soberly.
“Thank you, Samuel,” Megan replied. “Just let me know the time and we’ll be there.”
A few gray clouds lumbered across the sky as Lucas Mailly’s friends and family stood by the open grave. Lucas had not been in Texas long, but the local folks had already come to care about this new family. Pastor Parker opened with words of praise that pinched Liz’s heart.