by Jeff Chapman
“I thought you might skedaddle,” said Wilbur, spitting out his words. “Take the smart trail and leave that fat scalawag to his fate.”
I wiped a spray of spittle from my nose. Leaving Orville to Marzby and his pindigo had never crossed my mind. My grandma taught me loyalty, and the only time it mattered was when the cards were against you.
“I ain’t leavin’ nobody to Marzby. Neither Orville nor Nellie. We’ve got to work together, join our skills. Now are you with me?”
“You think you got the moxie to fight Marzby?” Wilbur laughed and shook his head derisively. “You’d have better odds wrestling a tornado.”
“I almost got away from him the first time. Every man has his weakness. Think about that knife he’s so damned determined to get. Mark my words, we’ll find his weakness in that there blade.”
Wilbur spat out the corner of his mouth. “So we’re gonna join up and overpower Marzby once we’ve got this knife he wants?”
“I was thinkin’ more of outsmartin’, but that’s how I see it.”
Wilbur pushed his tongue round his mouth. “Alright. I don’t fancy playin’ his cats-paw. I’ll get us some horses. You know how to get into this Skull Hill?”
“I know someone who might.” I was thinking of Isobel, the gravedigger’s daughter. If she didn’t know her way around Skull Hill, her father must. “I’ve got a connection with the gravedigger’s family.”
“Do you?” Wilbur brushed past, clipping my shoulder and knocking me off balance. As my grandma said, A cutthroat who acts your friend is more dangerous than a dozen who come at you in the open. Maybe he’d prove a true friend when we came to a fight.
I fell in step behind him as we plunged down the rutted path into moonlit shadows. Not my first choice for watching my back, but Wilbur was the enemy of my enemy and that temper might come in handy if aimed in the right direction.
“Is that Orville your uncle?”
I hesitated to call him my master. I wasn’t sweet on this master-apprentice arrangement. “He ain’t proper family,” I said, “but he’s ’bout all I got left. He did me a favor when I couldn’t buy one.”
Wilbur grunted. We trudged along in silence, following the path as far as I could see. Wings flitted across the moon. I cocked my head skyward at that moment. Wasn’t no bats as I suspected but a single bird. We forded a rippling creek, dark with trees and alive with chirping frogs. Cold water leaked through the worn seams of my boots. An owl called hoo-hoo-hoo.
“You lived in these parts long?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
“You believe what Marzby said about the sheriff?”
“I wouldn’t trust that sheriff any farther than I could kick a cow patty.”
Our conversation ended until we entered a stretch choked with pines. An idle mind is every bit as dangerous as idle hands, my grandma said. I filled the long lulls with thinking about how we were going to find Isobel and imagining what we were going to stumble into at Skull Hill. I couldn’t figure what Marzby meant by a job fit for a mouse, but it was more than an insult. Wilbur and I might have reasoned it out with a bit of speculation, but he proved as reticent as a dead tree stump. What he was cogitating I would soon learn.
Wilbur turned off the path onto a narrower one leading through the trees. Pine needles crackled under our boots. Hoo-hoo-hoo. I craned my neck to study the thickly needled branches, little more than a wall of darkness.
“Where’re we goin’?” I said.
“To my farm.”
His tone didn’t invite questions so I busied myself with our predicament. Dense brambles darkened my thoughts as sure as the pines blotted the moon. I couldn’t see clear how we would use the blade if we could find it. Maybe once we had the knife, we could bargain for both Orville and Nellie, but I felt loathe to give him the knife. In my experience, when servants of evil wanted something, the worst you could do was satisfy their want. I hustled to stay close to Wilbur, navigating by the sound of his steps.
Another owl hooted overhead. Near a nest? I’d heard more owls in a couple hours than I’d encountered in a month. I peered overhead. Nothing but the noonday sun would have penetrated the intertwining branches and needles.
“So many owls is peculiar,” I said.
“Like larks in the day.”
Gray light ahead, silhouetting the trunks of individual trees, bespoke a clearing. Wilbur’s pace increased, and I broke into a trot to stay even with him.
“That your farm?”
“Yup.”
Wilbur made for a two-story clapboard house as we emerged from the trees. A barn sat a hundred paces from the house and another hundred paces past it was the edge of a corn field. A few outbuildings were scattered around the property. Behind the house and barn stood rows of trees, uniform in size. Too dark to see what kind, but an orchard I reckoned.
“Throw some feed in the chicken coop,” said Wilbur. “Behind the barn. I gotta leave a note for the hired man.”
Wilbur stalked toward the house. I turned to the barn, where I figured to find some grain for the chickens. Not sure what it was about me and farms but every time I set foot on one, people felt the need to bark chores at me.
I unbarred the double doors and swung them both wide. The insides looked blacker than the woods. I considered waiting for Wilbur, who would surely bring a lantern, but there were small, square windows along each wall, leavening the darkness with a little moonlight. A horse snorted, and on the other side of the barn an animal rustled some hay.
I stepped inside. Moonlight reflected off three pairs of eyes. Smelled like horses and maybe a milk cow. Draft horses I figured, broad and muscled brutes like our trusted Maggie, the sturdy mare who pulled our wagon, bred for heavy loads and hard work. Not the fastest mounts, but they would beat walking.
“Back outa there,” said Wilbur from behind. His voice cut with a knife’s edge.
My breath caught as my heart raced round my chest and up my throat. I sensed a gun barrel aimed at me as clear as if I had eyes in the back of my head. I didn’t figure Wilbur to be a gunslinger, so he likely aimed a rifle or a shotgun. Either would do the job at this range.
“Wilbur, I—”
“I said back outa there. And put yer hands where I can watch ’em.”
I raised my hands to shoulder height and did as he said. My legs quivered. If I ran, he’d gun me down. Talking seemed my only option.
“Wilbur, we gotta work together.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
Even my grandma would have agreed honesty wasn’t always for the best. “Course not, but you ain’t helpin’ no one but Marzby right now.”
“I’d trust a rabid coyote afore I’d believe you and yer double-talkin’ scallywag of a partner. Stop! Now shuffle over to the cornfield.”
Shotgun I reckoned. He didn’t want to risk pellets hitting his animals. At least a slice of his mind was working.
“For all I know you’re in this with Marzby. Hopin’ to take this here farm, ain’t you?”
“We’re mired in this mess as deep as you.” I moved toward the head-high corn. If I could duck in amongst the stalks and weather the first blast of his gun, I might lose him in the cover and darkness, maybe make it to the woods.
“Hold it! Right there’s good enough.”
I was three strides from the corn, too far to make a run for it.
“I don’t hate you.” Wilbur’s voice trembled. “But there ain’t nothin’ standin’ between me and gettin’ my Nellie back. That knife’s going to buy one soul and that soul is gonna be Nellie.”
“You wouldn’t shoot me in the back?” Was this how my life would end, shot in the back staring at a cornfield? A breeze whispered through the stalks and sent a chill rippling across me. The hairs on my arms stood on end. My face and chest were wet with sweat. Keep him talking, I told myself. He might come to his senses. I moved to turn around.
“Stop! Ain’t nothin’ you can say. My mind’s made up.”
He didn’t shoot
. Guilt? Fear? Didn’t sound like he’d ever shot someone before.
“Would Nellie want you to kill me?”
“Nellie don’t understand. What a man has sometimes got to do.”
I inched closer to the field. “We’ve got to work together. The two of us can beat Marzby.”
The world stilled, as if every bug and beast waited with bated breath. Wilbur cocked a hammer. The click resounded like thunder to my ears.
“You don’t wanna save Nellie and swing for murder.” Two strides now. My inching had progressed to shuffling. Maybe I could walk away. Maybe he wouldn’t have the heart to squeeze the trigger.
“I’m sorry, but it ain’t me. Marzby murdered you.”
I leapt to my right as the trigger screeched and the hammer fell.
Chapter Six
I expected to hear a blast, to feel hundreds of bits of hot buckshot burrowing into my back. I heard a fizzle, no louder than a branch snapping, and a torrent of curses from Wilbur.
My knees and fingers sank in the cultivated soil at the corn’s edge. To the Almighty I offered a word of gratitude for Wilbur’s defective shotgun shell. As my grandma said, When the good Lord sees fit to grant you a miracle, you don’t thank him by asking for another one. So, with nary a backward glance, I sprang into the field and sprinted down a row. Papery leaves brushed my pumping arms and slapped my face. I cut to my right, toward the orchard, crashing through rows of stalks, sweeping my arms to knock the tassel-topped shapes aside. I broke into another blind sprint down a row, hoping to distance myself from Wilbur’s shotgun.
A blast peppered the stiff stalks with buckshot. If we weren’t on the same row, the corn would give me some cover. I stopped, willing my lungs to quit heaving, and listened. My pounding heart drummed in my ears. I willed it to settle down. After a moment I heard Wilbur crashing through the field. Another shotgun blast shattered the corn behind me, closer than the first one. The top of a stalk flew across the moon.
I broke into a panicked sprint. Another boom. How many shells did he have on him? If I kept running down a row, I was going to run out of cornfield before Wilbur fired his last shell. What if the corn opened onto a pasture or beans? The orchard promised less cover than the corn, and I had not the first inkling what lay beyond it. The forest bordering the field to my left offered the best cover and a path back to the road to Misery Creek.
Cornstalks thrashed in the distance behind me. Maybe Wilbur wouldn’t hear me doubling back toward the woods over his own racket. I plunged through the rows to my left, flattening stalks underfoot. Some snapped under my weight. Others gave way and slapped the ground, uprooted like trees in a wind storm.
A short stalk slapped me in the face as I ran plumb into it, filling my mouth with tassel. I stopped to spit the foul-tasting bits from my mouth before I inhaled them. With a curse as might raise a sailor’s blush and a kick worthy of a mule, I uprooted the stalk and sent it flying. Anger is the sister of misfortune, my grandma was fond of saying. Breaking stride to vent my frustration on a corn stalk brought a heap of trouble.
A flash erupted through the darkness down the row. I shrieked with the roar of the gun. Pain like plunging red-hot needles seared my cheek, arm, and shoulder. My hat lifted and then resettled. Agony bloomed through my jaw and head. I touched my face at the pain’s center. My fingers came away slick and sticky. I counted myself lucky. The mass of the shot had gone high and wide and the pellet buried in my face had missed my eye. Either Wilbur was a bad shot or he was haphazardly shooting at sounds or a bit of both. Scaring a fox away from a chicken coop, the extent of Wilbur’s experience I reckoned, didn’t require precise aim.
Had he heard me? Did he know I was hit? I listened, but heard nothing save the wind rustling through the field. Reloading or he’d gone stealthy, creeping in for the kill. Ignoring my blossoming headache, I charged through the stalks, aiming for the woods, determined not to let the corn get the best of me again. Having escaped certain death at the field’s edge, I was determined to escape Wilbur’s cornfield alive. At least I had an idea where Wilbur had been a moment ago. My left arm ached with weakness.
I veered toward the path we followed through the woods. My best hope, I figured, was to double back past Wilbur and leave him to search and shoot where I wasn’t. He wouldn’t expect me to move closer. I slowed my pace to make less noise and stopped after passing every row to listen. My heart stopped knocking my breastbone, which gave my ears a chance to hear. Dawn lightened the horizon. There were no rays peering over the distant peaks but dark gray shapes of individual stalks instead of a black wall appeared to my sight. The dawn was a mixed blessing. The increasing light, which had aided my weaving through the corn, could also assist Wilbur’s searching and might improve his aim.
I held my breath until Wilbur resumed his thrashing through the corn behind me, increasing the distance between us. There was a frantic quality to his blundering, maybe going in circles. He hadn’t fired his gun again. Out of shells or mayhap down to his last and saving it for a sure shot. Fear took hold of me again as I listened. I’d come so close to dying in a flash of lead and powder. My legs turned to lead, impossible to lift. My heart pounded like a runaway stagecoach. I’ve heard of animals freezing with terror as a predator swoops in for the kill. I didn’t want to be the rabbit that fed a fox.
By an act of will, I forced my legs to move. Each step came easier. The crackle and rustle of Wilbur’s thrashing diminished with distance and I hazarded some hope that I’d lost him. I stumbled out of the corn and blundered into trees and brambles. The ordered density of the cornfield was nothing to the random wildness of the woods. Branches slapped and scratched me. Roots and fallen logs tripped me. I gave up finding the path to Wilbur’s farm. If he abandoned searching the corn, that was where he’d start. I veered in the direction I thought would intersect the road to Misery Creek. I hadn’t heard nothing from Wilbur since entering the woods. The paralyzing fear I’d felt in the cornfield lifted, as if I’d dropped bags of feed from my shoulders. I stepped with ease and confidence through the tangled woods. If luck were with me, Wilbur was searching the orchard.
The dawn had risen to full force when I emerged from the woods onto the rutted path which passed for a road. No one to be seen in either direction. I’d lost him. I bent over, hands on my knees, fighting the exhaustion pressing me to the ground. I’d been up all night, most of it running for my life, and laying down in a pile of leaves along the road seemed mighty inviting. Before I gave in to rest, I had to mind the pain throbbing in my head and arm. Crusty blood covered the side of my face like caked mud. I must have been a sight. I wasn’t going to feel better until someone dug the buckshot out of me. Pain dulled the edge of my fatigue, as fear had when Wilbur pursued me. I set off for Misery Creek, managing a trot for the first quarter mile.
Following the road, I felt as exposed as a turkey in a barnyard and glanced over my shoulder more than I looked ahead. When the trees along the road thinned, a tree-lined creek caught my attention. I left the road. The cold water relieved my thirst and dulled the pain as I gingerly splashed my face to wash off some of the blood. I travelled under the creek’s tree cover until it crossed the road at the town’s edge. I didn’t figure Wilbur would gun me down in front of witnesses. I debated retrieving Maggie from the livery before or after visiting a doctor. The pain decided me as did the horrified gasp and scurried retreat of a young woman wrapped in a shawl and bonnet.
I remembered a doctor’s placard hanging a few doors from the telegraph office. With the brim of my hat tilted low to hide my face, I stepped along the boardwalk, hoping the doctor was an early riser.
The early morning sun lit the placard: Dr. M. M. Physician for All Ailments and Injuries. White curtains hid the surgery’s interior. The door rattled, but the knob didn’t yield to my twisting. I knocked.
Footfalls crossed the floor inside. A key turned in the lock. When the door swung open, I stepped forward, figuring he wouldn’t send away a bleeding man to come bac
k later if I was already past the doorsill. Don’t go sticking your hand where you can’t see, my grandma warned me more times than I could count. Apparently I hadn’t heard that bit of wisdom enough.
“Sorry to bother you so early, doc, but I—”
Surprise scared me stiff, and my mouth hung open with my unfinished sentence. With his red eyes ablaze, Marzby grinned down at me. He shot forward his long fingers, gripped my shoulder and yanked me inside.
Chapter Seven
I should’ve known I’d used up all my good luck escaping Wilbur. Should’ve fetched Maggie and rode to Busted Axle, but I hadn’t, and I regretted it more than that time I left the door open to grandma’s chicken coop. Marzby dragged me through a sitting room set with a few wooden chairs. Shock and exhaustion blunted my resistance. I dragged my heels, but the effort I managed was feeble. Marzby’s iron-shackle grip threatened to wrench my arm out of joint if not snap it.
“You’re the doctor?” I asked.
“As the sign says, my friend. I assume you can read?” he mocked.
I pitied the ailing denizens of Misery Creek. From what I’d witnessed of Marzby, the demons of cholera and yellow fever looked benign next to him.
Marzby yanked me into his office and shoved me into a cushioned leather chair, tossing me like a rag doll.
“Of course I can read.” If my grandma had been there, she would have given him a tongue-lashing to remember. She sent me to school and made me work hard until I could read the Bible without faltering. Couldn’t say reading and writing have done me much good, but they weren’t skills to sniff at.
“Hmm.” Marzby surveyed my face. His gaze slipped across my features like bluebottles crawling over a carcass. “I see Wilbur has run up his true colors.”
“What’d you expect, settin’ us against each other?” I had hoped better of Wilbur, but Marzby was as black as coal with pessimism, all the way to his heart.
“I had planned to send Orville on my little errand, thinking he was the brains of you two, but I see my change of plans was wise. Your simple sense of loyalty and plucky resourcefulness have proven you an ideal candidate. I fear your fat friend would have met a quick end at the barrel of Wilbur’s shotgun.”