by Donis Casey
“Maybe he’s just insane,” Trent speculated.
“Well, if he is, he’s done a good job of keeping it to himself.”
“I’m wondering if maybe he’s not who he says he is. In any event, I reckon I’d better have a talk with him,” Scott said. “Where is he?”
“I haven’t seen him since this morning,” Shaw told him. “I sent him out to the back pasture with a pickax to bust up some caliche where we’re aiming to dig out that new well. Alafair has had her suspicions up about him lately, and I’ve been setting him tasks away from the house.”
Scott nodded. “Show me where he sleeps. We’ll have a look for that gun while he’s away from the house.”
“John Lee, Charlie, go back up to the house and stay with the women,” Shaw ordered. “Gee Dub, go with them and bring us back a couple of rifles.” He turned back to the sheriff. “Scott, you and Trent come on with me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Alice wasn’t much impressed with Uncle Bill’s story. “But Arvid Weiss was hanged, Uncle Bill. Do you suppose his ghost is revenging himself by going around and pushing his accusers to their deaths?”
“Naw, he’s met his maker,” Bill told her, “and has other things on his mind now that he’s consorting with Old Scratch.” But he admitted that he did wonder about it. At the trial, Arvid’s lawyer said that he’d practically raised up his brother and sister without any help from his dad after their mother died, and whereas old Weiss never beat on them, he never had a good word for any of them, either. Bill thought the lawyer never did say exactly what the smith did to set Arvid off, but he did try to lead the jury around to thinking that Arvid was protecting his brother and sister from something.
***
The barn was big and cool and dim after the hot early evening sunlight outdoors. Mary sat down on her favorite feed sack next to the byre and sighed with relief at the quiet. The family’s three milk cows had come home a couple of hours ago and had already been milked and fed. They watched Mary with equanimity while they chewed their cud. Specks of dust floated in the shaft of sunlight that cut a swath across the packed earth floor. After a silent minute or two, after they had thoroughly checked her out from their nest behind the hay bale, the kittens came skittering, rolling, and tumbling out to play. Their mother, too dignified to frolic, followed them at her own speed and daintily rubbed against Mary’s ankles as her kittens pounced on Mary’s feet and clawed their way up her skirt. There had been seven kittens in the litter when they were born. Now there were four. Mary shook her head. It wasn’t unusual that so many had met an early end. There were plenty of hazards for barn kittens on a farm. She picked up a black and white kitty and set it in her lap.
A shade moved across the sun trail on the floor, causing her to look up. Since the light behind him threw his face into shadow, it took her an instant to recognize the figure standing at the barn door, looking at her. She smiled. “Micah. What are you doing out here this time of day?”
Micah walked into the barn, scooping his hat off, and came to a halt before her. “Afternoon, Miz Mary. I was looking for Kurt. We were together in the paddock earlier in the day, but now he’s got clean away from me. We still got some mares to move before sundown.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
Micah gazed at her, a speculative expression on his face. “What are you doing out here in the barn all alone? Your folks know where you are?”
Mary heard accusation in his voice, whether it was there or not. “Reckon I’m old enough to walk out of the house on my own,” she replied, sounding pettish.
Micah made a conciliatory gesture. “I reckon.” He put his hat back on. “Them kittens like you.”
“You have to just sit and be quiet, and they’ll get so curious they can’t resist.”
“So are you wanting to be alone?”
“I was wanting to be out of that madhouse for a bit. I’m hoping I’ll have a few minutes of quiet, at least, before my mother notices I’m gone.”
“Mind if I sit with you for a spell?”
She tried to look uninterested, but the quirk of her mouth told him she was not displeased by his offer. “Suit yourself.”
***
Alafair searched for Mary in ever-widening concentric circles from the house, thinking that in the very few minutes Mary had been missing, she couldn’t possibly have gotten very far. Alafair’s search pattern took her through the vegetable garden, around the outhouse, by the root cellar and the smoke house and the chicken coop. There was nothing in the tool shed that wasn’t supposed to be there, all neatly arranged as Shaw insisted.
She strode briskly to the room at the back, just in case Mary had decided to seek out the comforting presence of one of the hired men. Alafair didn’t even knock before she entered. No one was there, either. The room was not as messy as Alafair might have expected, considering that two bachelors lived there. One bed was made and one unmade. A tan cowboy hat adorned the middle of the table between the beds. She recognized the hat as Kurt’s, which gave her pause. Night or day, Alafair had never seen Kurt outside without his hat. He had been here recently, but where was he now? She went outside and looked up the rise toward the stable, where she could just see at that distance that Scott and his deputy had arrived and were standing by the door with Shaw and John Lee. She turned and started walking briskly toward the corral and the barn, where she knew Mary loved to go to be alone.
***
Micah sat down next to Mary on a feed sack of his own. The mother cat and most of the kittens had disappeared, but the black and white kitty seemed to take into account Mary’s good opinion of the hired man, because it immediately began to climb up his pants leg. “I hear y’all are headed to your grandfolks’ in the morning.”
“Yes,” Mary affirmed. It occurred to her to elaborate, but she didn’t have the energy to go into it, and said nothing more.
“How long you reckon to be gone?”
She shook her head. “’Til the murderer is caught, is what my mother says.”
“It’s a shame,” Micah opined. “It’s an awful thing to say, because I wish your uncle hadn’t been murdered, but I’ll miss watching over you.” He blushed and amended. “All y’all.”
Mary smiled, but said nothing.
“Kurt was just asking me this morning how you was doing, if any more of that bad night has come back to you, that might help to identify the scoundrel.”
She shook her head again, her attention intently on the kitten attacking Micah’s leg. “I try not to think about it.”
“I don’t blame you,” he sympathized. “Kurt asked me, too, if you had seen Miz Laura Ross recently. I heard her dad sent her off somewhere. We wondered if she’s doing any better.”
“I haven’t seen her since the fire, but last I heard, she’s about the same.” Mary looked up at him. “Kurt does a lot of wondering, doesn’t he?”
***
Shaw and Gee Dub stood at the door and watched as Scott and Trent searched the tool shed apartment. Kurt’s hat on the bedside table had caused them some concern, as well.
“What makes you think he’d hide the gun in here?” Shaw asked. “I’ve never seen him with such a rifle. I’d think that Micah would have noticed it, them living together and all.”
While Trent searched the footlockers, Scott paced around the little room carefully, prodding the floorboards occasionally with his toe, looking for loose boards. “Human nature,” he replied. “Folks usually want to keep an eye on something important to them, something they want to keep hid. Make sure nobody’s found it. He’d sneak the thing around, only take it out when he was sure Micah wouldn’t see him.” He paused and put his hands on his hips, thinking. “Most criminals ain’t geniuses, in my experience. They’ll do the most obvious things…”
He leaned over and began poking the mattress on the messy bed. He looked under the bed, sat down on it and bounced, then overturned the mattress to examine the springs. He dropped the disturbed pallet back down on
its springs and repeated the process on the neat bed. Trent looked up from his footlocker examination, intrigued.
Scott never reached the point of looking under the bed. After a few random pokes, he upended the mattress and bedclothes onto the floor. Wedged tightly in the springs, close by the wall, was a rifle. Scott picked it up and examined it before he handed it to an ashen Shaw and pointed at the marks on the butt plate—WM. “Mauser,” he stated. “Shaw, where is this well you’re aiming to dig?”
It took Shaw a couple of tries before he could get any sound to come out of his mouth. “In the pasture south of Cane Creek.”
“Let’s go find him.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bill said that folks around Waco knew that blacksmith’s family too well. After he heard the testimony, Bill figured the old man was rough, but the boys were hell-raisers and nothing much to write home about; mean to animals, kids, old folks, anybody weaker than they were. So the lawyer couldn’t drum up much sympathy for Arvid.
Now, the sister was there at the trial, but the brother disappeared before the murder, and as far as Bill knew, he hasn’t been heard from since. When he found out that Nix died in an accident, just like poor old Farrell Dean, he got to wondering if one thing didn’t have to do with the other.
Bill laughed when he was telling us the story, but I didn’t think it was all that funny, myself.
***
While Micah watched, Mary picked up the black and white kitten, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Kurt is asking a lot of questions about whether Laura or I remember anything about Bill’s murder? Why do you suppose he’s doing that?”
Micah shrugged. “I don’t know, but he really is interested. He’s always asking me, ‘how is Miss Mary, how is Miss Laura,’” Micah said to her, mimicking Kurt’s accent. When Mary didn’t laugh, he added, “It’s starting to make me wonder about the fellow.”
Mary shook her head. “I’d just about die of shock if Kurt had anything to do with the murder.” She sighed. “I don’t know. I just don’t know who to point the finger at. What reason could anyone have to do such a thing? I’ve been thinking and thinking on it, and I’m about to decide it must have something to do with that Fourth of July get-together in town. We were all there—me and my family, Bill and Laura, Art and Johnny and Trent, you and Kurt. Shirley didn’t join us, but I saw her over by the bandstand talking to Art after dinner. Maybe Bill said something that didn’t sit right with somebody who was there. I can’t imagine what, though. Laura and him had just told everybody they were engaged, and we were all so happy. Poor old softhearted Johnny Turner bursting into tears and all. It’s been niggling on my brain. I can almost grab hold of it, but it’s just out of reach. I know it’ll come to me by and by, if I can just…” She fell silent, and her forehead creased as she thought about it. “Waco,” she murmured absently.
“Waco?” Micah echoed. “What about Waco?”
Mary looked over at Micah, surprised. She had almost forgotten that he was there. “Yes. At the Fourth of July shindig. Bill told a story at the Fourth of July shindig about the blacksmith in Waco who got killed.”
“I remember that tale. He saw somebody kill the blacksmith with a poker.” Micah crossed his legs comfortably and leaned back against the barn wall. “Kurt is a smith, you know. A pretty good one at that.”
Mary emitted a snort of disdain. “That has nothing to do with anything. The murderer in Waco couldn’t have been Kurt. The murderer was caught and hanged. Bill testified at the trial.”
Micah leaned forward. “No, no, I didn’t say that the murderer was Kurt.”
Suddenly something clicked in Mary’s brain, like a piece of rusty machinery finally starting to turn over after long disuse, and Bill’s words played in her mind as though he was speaking them in her ear.
At the time, Arvid’s lawyer said that he’d practically raised up his brother and sister.
“The killer’s brother…” Mary said.
“Maybe.”
“How could that be? Kurt’s not from Waco, you know that. He’s from Germany.”
“Well, maybe he lied about where he’s from,” Micah proposed. “Texas is cram full of German folks who were born there in Texas and can’t even speak English.”
The machinery in Mary’s head rumbled again.
The lawyer never did say exactly what the smith did to set Arvid off, but he did try to lead the jury around to thinking that Arvid was protecting his brother and sister from something…
“No,” she said firmly. “Not Kurt. I could believe it of just about anybody but Kurt. But you may be on to something.”
Now, the sister was at the trial, but the brother disappeared, and as far as Bill knew, he hasn’t been heard from since…
Micah leaned forward. “Could it be that Kurt is wreaking vengeance on them that got his brother hanged?”
When he found out that Nix died in an accident, just like poor old Farrell Dean, he got to wondering if one thing didn’t have to do with the other.
***
Alafair was moving at a brisk clip toward the barn. The Fourth of July, the Fourth of July. She kept repeating the date in her head. It meant something to Mary, something that might well be the key to this whole mystery.
Bill was telling a story about murder in Waco, and now the witnesses who had condemned the murderer were disappearing, one by one.
That was the connection, surely. The killer had to be someone who was involved in that sorry incident. She had almost reached the corral when she stopped in her tracks, thunderstruck. She had been thinking about it all wrong. This didn’t start with the Fourth of July, or with the trip to Waco, or even the murder of the blacksmith. Not with hate. This had to do with an awful, perverted love.
A dusty wind rose suddenly and shook the leaves of the pin oaks at the side of the fence, the sound fading smoothly from a rustle, to a shudder, to a moan. A woman crying.
“Laura!” Alafair said aloud. Her hair was standing on end. “Help me, girl,” she called to the wind. “Help me find Mary.”
The moan faded, then rose again. A dust devil swirled up to Alafair’s right, and began to move in a twisting path toward the barn. Alafair ran after it.
***
Mary laughed incredulously. “Why, I think you may be right about somebody wreaking vengeance, Micah. But why does it have to be Kurt? Just because he’s been hanging around, watching me? Isn’t that what Daddy told y’all to do?”
“Well, your uncle said that his friend died at the oil field up around the Glenn Pool. I got to thinking, Kurt and me worked up there before we came here. Oil field work is mighty dangerous. Roustabouts were dying right and left, and I don’t remember that particular accident, but the timing…”
“No, no, I won’t believe it. He said he’s from Germany, and he has no brother,” she reiterated patiently, as if to a slow child.
Micah bit his lip and blushed. The remaining kitten leaped from his pants leg and pounced onto his boot, and he casually kicked it away. The kitten yowped in surprise and skittered off to join his family in hiding.
Mary forgot what she was saying for a second.
The boys were hell-raisers, and nothing much to write home about, mean to animals…
She blinked, and shook her head. “And besides, this tale of yours doesn’t even take into account why he would kidnap Laura.”
Micah said nothing for a moment, then sighed. “Well, that was just for fun.”
Mary’s newly activated thinking processes came to a sudden stop. She sat bolt upright. Micah’s perverse comment was like a slap in the face. All at once, Micah’s blush looked to her less like charming diffidence and more like rage. Suddenly the light of truth nearly blinded her, and she knew everything. “It was you. The blacksmith that got killed is your daddy. You’re Arvid Weiss’ brother…” She leaped to her feet in alarm. “Why are you telling me this?”
Micah’s gray eyes looked up at her from under black lashes, but he said nothing. He
didn’t have to. There was only one reason he would tip his hand to her. She had betrayed her thought processes to the wrong person.
He reached up and absently adjusted his hat. “You know, I thought I’d killed Laura the first time, but I’ll be durn if she didn’t crawl out of that hole where I stashed her and into the middle of the road. And then, the Devil take me, her pa found her. I couldn’t manage to finish her off the second time, either. Now they’ve hid her, and I figure she’ll come around one of these days. Even if she don’t, Gee Dub will remember something he seen at the Rosses’, or the sheriff will figure out something from the trail I didn’t have time to rub out. Everything went so well ’til now! Dang, I’ve had bad luck on this last enterprise. I reckon you and me both are going to have to disappear, now.”
Stunned, Mary stood rooted to the spot for an instant, before it occurred to her that she should be running for her life. She attempted to sidle by Micah and head for the barn door.
But Micah was intent upon his tale, now, and had no intention of letting her leave. He stood and blocked her path. “It’s too bad to have to do this,” he admitted. “I always liked you. You see, Arvid killed our pa after the old man said we were all good for nothing and none of us were ever getting another dollar out of him dead or alive. Arvid was the only person on God’s big old earth who ever gave a damn about me. Taught me carpentry and smithing, and how to hunt and track like a Comanche. I thought the least I could do for him was take care of those three sons-of-bitches who got him hanged. And it was easy to get rid of the first two. Nobody suspected their deaths were anything but an accident. After I killed them, I hightailed it, but this time, my idea was to sit tight for awhile so nobody would put two and two together.
“I thought the jig was up when Bill told that story to y’all at the Fourth of July parade, but after a day or two I could see that he had no idea I had anything to do with what happened. I knew then that I’d have to get on with the deed. I’ll tell you, I was worried that one of you gals saw me in the woods, but it was a mistake to try and get rid of y’all. I liked that pretty Laura, though, and it was just too tempting…But now, it looks like I’ve left it too long and you’ve figured it out.” Micah glanced at the open doorway and pulled a bandanna out of his hip pocket. “I was glad I didn’t kill you the first time, but now, I reckon it would have saved me a lot of trouble.”