by Bill Crider
"They fell like they was dead," another man said. "One of 'em didn't even holler. Just pitched on his face and slid."
The sheriff put his left foot in the stirrup and threw his right across the saddle.
"We'll see," he said, pulling the reins and turning his
horse's head. "We'll see."
9
Naomi thought that she was going to be sick.
She was bouncing up and down and the smells surrounding her were awful. There was the smell of horse and the smell of unwashed man. The second smell was worse.
Her head was hanging downward, and she could see the rising and the falling of the dark ground.
The only thing that kept her from vomiting was that she was so disoriented. She knew that the motion, the smell, the sound of hoofbeats, and the trees rushing by her in the darkness must mean that she was lying across a horse, but she didn't know how she had gotten there, or why.
She tried to raise her head, and someone slapped her on the rump.
"Hot damn, Sam, she's awake," said a man's voice that Naomi did not recognize.
Suddenly she remembered what had happened: the two men on their horses, the gunfire. She remembered fainting.
When she realized that somehow the men must have taken her, she began to struggle frantically.
"She's got gumption," the man said, pressing his hand down hard on the small of her back to hold her where she was lying in front of the saddle. "I like a woman that fights back."
"Me too, Ben," another voice said. It must be the man called Sam, Naomi thought. "Now shut up and let's get on back home."
But Ben didn't want to shut up. "How much money you reckon we got, Sam?"
"Fifty or sixty dollars," Sam said. "Couldn't have been more than that."
"Did you see those bastards scatter? I bet they thought we was gonna shoot ever' one of 'em."
"Yeah," Sam said. "They scattered, all right. All but two of 'em."
Ben laughed. "Hell, they won't be scatterin' for a long time. They're dead as that terrapin."
Naomi stopped struggling to think about the implications of what she had heard. She had not seen anyone shot, but she had been too frightened to look around. What if Lawton had been one of those who was killed? Who would come after her then?
For she never doubted that if he was alive her husband would come looking for her. She had learned that he was not a passionate man, but he was surely not the kind to allow his wife to be carried off by outlaws of the worst sort to suffer a fate worse than death.
"Oh dear!" she said aloud. She had just realized who Sam and Ben were.
"You say somethin', honey?" Ben asked.
Naomi did not answer. She was thinking about the sermon Lawton had preached about the Hawkinses. How she had admired him then! He had let the townspeople know where their duty lay, and preaching to them that way had been the most intrepid act her husband had ever performed. She had been a bit surprised. She had not known he had it in him.
Then she thought about the results of the sermon and of the way the Hawkinses had responded. The church had been badly damaged, and Lawton had not done a thing about it. It was as if his sermon had taken all of his courage and there was no more to replace it with.
She experienced an abrupt chill, as if the night had turned suddenly cold.
What if Lawton didn't come? What if she were left alone with the Hawkins brothers?
She pushed the thought from her mind. There were some things that simply didn't bear thinking about.
* * *
The Reverend Lawton Stump felt the same way, but he was thinking about his wife just the same. No matter how hard he tried not to think of her, his thoughts would take no other direction.
He was on his knees at the altar of his church, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands clasped in an attitude of prayer, his chin resting on his hands, but it was no good. He could not pray.
He stood up and looked around the church at the empty pews, at the moonlight streaming through the windows. In one place the moonlight was colored by the remaining bit of stained glass.
My God, the reverend Stump thought. Those men have my wife.
Panic filled him, and he ran to the door of the church, wrenched it open, and bolted into the street. The bright moonlight cast long shadows in front of the church and across the yard of Stump's house.
Down the way, the crowd was breaking up in front of the jail as Wilson rode down the street in the direction of the clearing where the show had been held.
Stump knew more or less what had been going on at the jail. The men had been assembled there when he got back to the church, but he had not joined them. Now he was surprised to see that Wilson was riding away alone.
He walked toward the jail until had saw Carl Gary. Calling out to him, he motioned for the saloon owner to join him.
Gary quickly explained the situation, and the panic that threatened to overwhelm Stump increased with every word. If the sheriff was not going to confront the Hawkinses until morning, what did that mean for Naomi?
"Two men were killed?" Stump said. "Nothing else?"
"Nothing else." Gary said. "Why, isn't that enough?"
Stump did not know what to say. Apparently no one but him had seen Naomi being taken by Sam and Ben. Having kept his silence until now, he feared to break it. Everyone would ask him why he had done nothing to prevent the taking of his wife.
"Yes," he said. "That's enough." He didn't know what else to say.
He left Gary and went back inside the church, but his mind was as restless as before. He could not concentrate on his prayers; his thoughts kept returning to his wife.
He was filled with regret. He had never been able to be a real husband to Naomi because he had been consumed by guilt, a guilt that he suddenly realized had been caused by an excess of love for her. He had been afraid that if he gave in to his love for a woman, his love for his church and his religion would be lessened, and he had let his normal human feelings be suppressed by his guilt.
He had been stupid.
Then he had cowered in hiding like a rabbit when two men had abducted his wife. He felt an even more intolerable guilt when he perceived that for a moment he might actually have wanted them to take her. If she were gone, there would be no more conflict in his mind about where his love and loyalty should lie.
Could he really have sunk that low? It appeared that he could, and as he sat on the back row of the church, looking foward at the simple altar and feeling the hard back of the seat pressing against his spine, he knew he would have to do something about it. His shoulders slumped. He could no longer serve his calling if he allowed himself to continue feeling about himself as he did, and if anything happened to Naomi, he would never forgive himself.
God could forgive anything, Stump knew that. But sometimes you needed more than God's forgiveness. You needed your own, too, and more than that you needed the forgiveness of other people, just as he needed Naomi's forgiveness. He hoped that she would be able to give it.
And he hoped that he would be able to receive it.
* * *
Ray Storey found The Boozer leaning against the same tree where he had rested earlier in the day and blithely saluted the mules and told them how wonderful life was.
The Boozer was not blithe now. Tears ran down his cheeks and sparkled in the moonlight. Storey thought first that it had been a long time since he had seen a moon so bright. Then he thought about the tears.
"Useless ol' man," The Boozer said. "Jus' a useless ol' man."
Storey would have liked to help The Boozer, to tell him that he wasn't useless at all but that he was a valuable member of the medicine show team, but he didn't see any point in lying. When you got right down to it, The Boozer's self-pitying judgment was pretty much on the money. He didn't do a damn thing except lend a bogus air of legitimacy to the show, and no matter what the Colonel thought, Storey did not believe that The Boozer was capable of performing so simple a task as the anatomy lecture.
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At the same time, Storey knew that he was in no position to criticize. "You're no more useless than I am," he said.
The Boozer looked up, surprised that anyone was around. He had thought his remarks were being made to himself only.
"Not true," he said.
"It's true, all right," Storey said, thinking of the way he had stood there and how he had not been able to move his hand toward his gun. What difference did it make that the gun had not been loaded? He could not have drawn it even if it had.
"Not true," The Boozer repeated. He held up his shivering hands. "I used to be able to help people with these, sick people. Now they're no good at all. No good." He sank back against the tree, letting his hands drop into his lap.
Storey reached down, intending to help The Boozer to his feet, but when his hand touched Stuartson's shoulder the old man shook it off.
"Go 'way," he said. "Jus' go 'way."
"You can't stay out here all night," Storey said. "You'll get sick."
The Boozer didn't answer. He just sat there, staring off into the trees. The silent tears were still flowing.
Storey looked at him in silence for a minute and then left him there.
* * *
"I can't see why Ray didn't do something," Louisa said. "He just stood right there and let them ride off with that woman. He could have done something."
She was standing with her parents between the tent and the show wagon. Lantern light not much brighter than the moonlight spilled out of the tent and the back of the wagon.
"He told you that his gun had not been reloaded, did he not?" the Colonel said. "There was nothing he could have done."
That wasn't the answer Louisa wanted to hear.
"Those men spit at me," she said. "They shot at your feet. What if they had taken Mother or me? Would he have stood by and watched that, too? And why didn't he go after them? That poor woman--"
"You could ask him yourself," Sophia said. "Here he comes now."
Louisa turned to look, and Ray felt her eyes on him. He was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking about him, since he was thinking more or less the same thing himself.
"How's Mr. Sanders?" he said, avoiding the topic he figured they had been discussing.
"I cleansed the wound," the Colonel said. "It doesn't appear to be serious, but he is still unconscious. Where is Dr. Stuartson?"
"Sulking in the woods," Storey said.
"Oh!" Louisa said. "I don't see how you can talk like that about Dr. Stuartson. I'm sure that if I had behaved like you did, I wouldn't have anything snide to say about anyone else."
"Now, Louisa," Sophia said.
Louisa turned to her mother. "Don't try to keep me quiet, mother. You know very well that Dr. Stuartson has had a sad life and that he's not to blame for his drinking. At least he has an excuse, which is more than you can say for some people."
She looked at Storey again with her last words and then turned and walked away, her back stiff.
"She's a bit upset by the events of the evening," the Colonel said.
"So I see," Storey said. He felt awkward and ungainly and stupid in his buckskins, not knowing what to do or say. How could he explain himself? What excuse could he offer?
He was saved from saying more by the arrival of Coy Wilson.
"I hear you had a little trouble out of the Hawkins brothers," Wilson said when he had dismounted and introduced himself.
"Is that who they were?" the Colonel said. "They did not offer formal introductions."
"I can understand that," Wilson said. "But they were identified by a number of witnesses. Folks around here have had trouble out of 'em before." He shook his head. "That's who they were all right."
"Those witnesses," the Colonel said. "I imagine that they told you about the men who were shot."
Wilson nodded. "Dead, both of 'em, is what I hear."
"Not both," Storey said. "Mr. Sanders is alive. He's in the tent there."
"What about the other one?"
"Oh, he's dead all right," the Colonel said. "He's still lying where he fell. We have not had time to move him inside as yet. But what do you intend to do about the woman?"
"What woman?" Wilson said.
"The one those men took away from here," Sophia said. "They carried her away with them."
Goddammit, Wilson thought. This is gettin' worse and worse. He had hoped for a minute that things weren't as bad as he had feared. Only one man dead instead of two. That wasn't so bad. Things had been looking up. And now they were talking about some woman being carried away. Sam and Ben must have gone plumb crazy.
"Who was she?" he said.
No one knew. Storey was able to describe her fairly well, however, having seen her in town and remembering that she was the only woman still there. Besides, she had bought some of the Miracle Oil from him, and he wasn't likely to forget that.
"Sounds like Naomi Stump," Wilson said. "The preacher's wife." His mind was racing. Everything he heard unnerved him more. What the hell had the preacher's wife been doing here, anyway. Didn't she have enough sense to know not to come to a medicine show?
"The preacher's wife?" the Colonel said. "I imagine that will cause a bit of trouble in town, especially if she is harmed."
Trouble was right. Wilson dreaded having to tell the preacher. But if no one else had seen her taken, maybe he wouldn't have to tell anyone, not if he could get her back before anything happened to her.
That meant he was going to have to go out there before morning and convince the Hawkins brothers to let the woman go and get out of there. If he could. Sam and Ben might not want to give the woman up so soon, and they might not want to go.
It almost seemed as if they were intent on ruining his plans, though there was no way they could know what those plans were. They did not yet know that it was not his plan to return to Kansas with them.
He knew that most of the townspeople did not like him, that they thought he was a bully who liked to push them around, and maybe he had been a little uppity with them from time to time. Living there had changed him, however. He could see that he no longer wanted to live on the wrong side of the law. In playing the part of a lawman, he had decided that he liked the job and wanted to do more than play at it. He'd done a lot of things wrong in his life, the worst being running down that kid, but maybe he could make up for a few of them if he stayed on and did a good job of lawing.
Sam and Ben wouldn't understand that; they wouldn't understand that at all. So he wasn't going to tell them. He was just going to let them have the money and go on their way. He would look good to the town, and they would be gone. Life would be pretty easy after that.
Or it would have been if Sam and Ben had gone along with the scheme he had laid out for them. Now it was looking more and more as if they were deliberately trying to mess him up.
"What do you think, Sheriff?" the Colonel said, drawing Wilson out of his meditations.
"I think I'm going to have to ride out to the Hawkins boys' place and see if I can talk some sense into 'em," Wilson said.
"Talking won't bring back that man over there," the Colonel said, looking over to where the body still lay.
"It won't help that woman they took, either," Louisa said. She had walked back and joined the group to hear what the sheriff had to say.
"I reckon I might have to do more than talk, then," Wilson said.
"And you plan to go up against them alone?" Louisa said. She was looking at Wilson, but Storey knew who the words were aimed at.
"Yep," Wilson said. "I won't need no help against those two." He hoped that he wasn't lying. If Sam and Ben decided to cross him, he was in big trouble. It would take more than him to get them then. It might take more than the whole town.
10
Sam and Ben weren't going along with Wilson's plan. They had talked it over after they shoved the woman in their one-room house and shut the door, warning her not to try to escape.
"Shoot you if you do," Ben warned her. "It wo
uldn't mean no more to me that it would to shoot that damn cat."
The cat was sitting on the porch watching them when they rode up. Naomi thought she had never seen a more miserable cat, and she forgot her own troubles for a moment as she looked at it. Its hair was sparse and thin; she could see patches of skin where there was no hair at all. She wondered where the cat had come from and why it stayed there.
She did not want to go inside the house, but Ben dragged her up on the porch, slapped her, and pushed her through the door, sending her sprawling.
She fell heavily inside and lay still for a moment. The smell in there was worse than it had been on the horse, and the floor was covered in filth. She sat up and wiped her hands on her dress.
The moonlight came in through the one empty window and made a pool of brightness on the floor, crosshatched by the shadows of the pine limbs.
Naomi could see the outlines of two ragged corn shuck mattresses, a rickety table and two chairs that looked as if they could collapse any second, and a shelf that held a tiny supply of canned goods and a sack of flour. That was all. The Hawkinses didn't go in for high living.
Naomi took the threat of shooting seriously, and she was not yet ready to attempt an escape. She was sure that her husband would come, and if he did not, Kit Carson, that strong young man from the medicine show would come. She knew that a big man like that must be courageous and possess a sense of justice. Surely he would not allow the Hawkinses to get away with taking her away as they had done.
For now, there seemed to be nothing for her to do except wait for rescue. At least the two men had not actually tried to do her any harm as she had feared they might. Maybe they would not molest her after all. Maybe they were worried about her husband, or about Kit Carson.
She moved to the door and put her ear against it. She hoped to overhear the Hawkins brothers and get some idea about their plans for her.
Ben and Sam weren't worried about Lawton Stump, Kit Carson, or anyone else. They had seen the townspeople scattering like rats at the medicine show, and they had seen the way the man in the buckskins was afraid to stand up to them. Sheriff Coy Wilson was no threat; he was on their side.