Knight in a Black Hat

by Judith B. Glad

  "Don't say anything to Nellie." There was only one reason why the professor's left leg had been cut from his body at the hip. "Whoever it was, he's a monster," he said. He looked again at the mangled carcass.

  Dr. Kremer had learned the hard way that grizzlies were not afraid of humans. Deep gouges on his shoulders and back showed how the bear had held him as it bit at his face and throat. I hope he died quick. That's no way for a man to go.

  "I found Dap," Murphy said as he emerged from a willow thicket. "Looks like the bear got him first, then came on down here after the professor."

  "Dead?"

  "Yeah. Neck's broke. But the tack ain't too damaged, so we can salvage it."

  "Go take care of it, then," Malachi said. "No sense standing around."

  Willard fetched the tarpaulin rolled at the back of his saddle and they wrapped the professor's body in it. "You gonna tell Miss Sanders about how he's cut up?" he said.

  "I don't think so. There's no need for her to know." Malachi sat back on his heels, looked across the long canvas-wrapped bundle at the other two men. "We're going to be twice as alert from now on. If whoever did this..." He had his own idea, likely the same as Willard's. If he was right, Nellie might be the only one of them who was safe. Might be.

  Murphy rubbed a hand across his chin, pinched his nose.

  "Out with it," Malachi said, recognizing that the man had something he wanted to say, but wasn't sure he should.

  "We never told you about the bones, did we?"

  "Bones?"

  "We found a skeleton when we was headin' downstream a few weeks back," Willard said. "Leastwise we found most of a skeleton. I figgered it'd been tore apart by critters, 'til Murphy found knife marks on the hip-bones."

  "Why didn't you say something?" Malachi demanded.

  "Well, they was old bones. Not a shred of flesh left on 'em. I plumb forgot."

  "So did I," Murphy said, "'til now."

  "Damn," Malachi said.

  Both men stared at him.

  "Why are you looking at me? Let's get this done with."

  * * * * *

  "They found him a lot quicker than I'd figgered," Gertie mused. "Maybe I should'a left him be."

  She faded back into the woods, out of sight of any watcher in the valley below. She still could see the men as they carried the long, awkward bundle up the steep bank to the waiting horses. Her Girl stood straight and tall, watching them, and Gertie briefly regretted not keeping a better eye on the old feller. She'd seen the grizzly heading his way, had started on down the hill to warn him, but she'd been too late.

  "She'll be all right, Buttercup. My Girl, she's strong."

  They loaded the carcass across Her Girl's horse, and she climbed up behind the dangerous feller in the black hat. "He's strong too. He'll take good care of her. Nobody'll give My Girl grief with him around."

  She watched them until they rounded a hill and were lost from view. She shifted her burden to the other shoulder. "C'mon, cat. We got a ways to go before dark."

  * * * * *

  They buried Dr. Kremer on a low hill overlooking the lake. Malachi and Murphy together rolled an enormous boulder to sit at the head of the rock-piled grave. Nellie made a careful sketch, showing the location so that, she said, someone could come back here one day and mark the site properly.

  Privately Malachi thought the old man would be forgotten long before then.

  Supper was a quiet meal. Beckett still snuffled now and then, and Nellie was unusually silent. After the chores were taken care of, Malachi said to her, "Walk with me."

  She nodded, but said nothing. Not until they were down by the lake shore. She stopped, right at the edge of the water, and said, "I am such a wicked person."

  Malachi went to stand behind her, but when he put his hands on her waist, she stepped away. "You? Wicked? That's about the most preposterous thing I've ever heard."

  She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out across the water. "Oh, but I am. Only a wicked person would find it impossible to grieve properly for her uncle."

  He could see that she was working something out in her mind, but he'd be hanged if he could understand why she needed to. If anybody had treated him the way Kremer had her, he'd have walked away long since.

  "I was just eleven when Mama and Papa died of the influenza," she said, almost as if she was talking to herself. "Aunt Temperance came for me as soon as she got word." She looked back over her shoulder and her voice took on life as she said, "She was Mama's step-sister. Mama was only about three when her pa married my grandmother."

  She faced the lake again and the life faded from her voice. "Aunt Temperance was a wonderful woman. She made me feel welcome, even though Uncle clearly found me a nuisance. She even convinced him to let me go to school, until I'd finished the eighth grade."

  "Your uncle was a college professor and he wanted you to quit school?"

  "Well, he didn't believe girls needed education like boys did." She sounded almost like she was apologizing for her uncle. "But he never complained when I sat in on college classes, as long as it didn't keep me from my tasks in the herbarium. I really got a better education than I would have if I'd gone on to Normal School."

  "I thought you said you didn't have a college education?" He'd been relieved when she'd told him that, for his own lack of formal schooling had always made him feel somehow inadequate.

  "Oh, I don't. I wasn't allowed to matriculate, you see. Since I worked in the herbarium, most of the professors didn't mind my attending their lectures, though."

  Malachi, who'd moved up to stand beside, her, saw her bite her lip. Again he reached out to her, but she moved away.

  "Of course, I was never allowed to participate in the laboratories, or to take the examinations," she said, and longing was plain in her tone, "but I still learned a great deal."

  Having seen in too many saloons what could happen to young women with no skills and no education, Malachi sought to make her see how fortunate she'd been. "With what he paid you and a place to live, you were better fixed than a lot of young women."

  "Paid me? Uncle considered my work in the herbarium what I owed him for food and lodging." For the first time, he heard bitterness in her tone. "Aunt Temperance gave me pin money as long as she was alive, and she left me a small property that Uncle managed. After that, I had to ask him whenever I needed anything, and if he thought it unnecessary, he would not pay for it."

  Malachi, who'd not expected life to be fair since the day he walked away from the only home he'd ever known, wondered if her uncle was burning in hell right now.

  He hoped so.

  This time he gave her no chance to avoid his embrace. He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly.

  She resisted for a moment, then relaxed against him. "I know I should think well of him, but right now all I can think is that I'm free, at last. And to wonder what I'm to do. Uncle's will leaves everything to the college. I won't even have a place in the herbarium. Whoever replaces Uncle will surely want to choose his own assistants."

  Her sigh nearly broke his heart. "I can see why you don't mourn him," he said, stroking her hair. "What a miserable creature he was."

  "Oh, but you mustn't think he was a bad man," she protested. "Uncle was a genius, you know. I think his immense intellect made it difficult for him to understand ordinary people, or to sympathize with everyday concerns."

  I didn't see any sign that he even tried. But Malachi said nothing, only held her for a long time, until the last rays of sunlight faded into the darkening sky.

  * * * * *

  Nellie slept like the dead. Malachi had stood first watch last night, and if he'd come to her bed, she hadn't noticed. This morning, other than a mild headache, she felt quite normal. Uncle's death still seemed unreal to her, but she knew that she would gradually come to accept it. Perhaps even to mourn his passing.

  When she entered the common tent the next morning, the men, save young Tom and Mr. Creek, were just finishin
g their breakfasts. She apologized for sleeping late.

  "Never you mind, Missy. You needed the rest," Mr. Willard said, as he tossed the dregs of his coffee onto the fire. It spat and hissed.

  "Sit a while, John," Malachi said. "We need to plan, now that Nellie's here."

  Plan? She looked curiously at him. He stared back, his mouth hard, the way it got when he didn't like what he was about to say.

  "We're two horses short now, which won't be a problem, since we've got enough to mount us all. But it'll hinder us some, for we've plenty to pack out. The mules won't be loaded heavy, but that's to the good, since I want to travel fast. We'll need to see what supplies we can leave behind. No sense carrying anything out we don't need." He paused. "Nellie, is there anything you can--"

  She had listened with disbelief, and now she interrupted. "What on earth are you talking about? Carry what out where?"

  "All this." He waved an arm, encompassing everything along the side and back walls of the tent. "Your uncle's collection, what's left of our supplies, all your books and maps and such. Beckett can move in with Willard, and we'll leave the professor's big tent behind. We'll have no need for it on the way out."

  "Just one minute, Malachi Breedlove! I think you're getting ahead of yourself, here." Nellie set her plate aside and went to stand in front of him. "We are not going anywhere, except perhaps to find a better campsite, one not cut off from half the valley by those confounded bears. We've half the season still before us, and it will take all our efforts to explore this valley sufficiently before fall forces us out."

  Malachi started to say something.

  "Let me finish, please. Uncle has collected extensively from the valley floor, but he has done little at the higher elevations. From now on, we will concentrate our efforts there. Mr. Beckett, I trust you can be depended upon to work independently from now on?"

  Not waiting for an answer, she went on, "Mr. Willard, will it be possible for you and young Tom to manage a base camp for us? That way Mr. Murphy can accompany Mr. Beckett and Mal...Mr. Breedlove can be my assistant. I think that will work for the best, since Tom seems more inclined to accept your guidance than anyone else's." She paused to consider what she might have neglected.

  Malachi said, "Are you crazy? There's a monst--" He clamped his mouth shut and stood up, turning his back to her.

  Nellie looked at the others. Mr. Beckett looked both gratified and mystified. Mr. Willard was busy loading his pipe. "There is something you are not telling me, isn't there? Something bad."

  "Let it go, Nellie. Just don't insist on staying here," Malachi said, without turning around.

  "I will not let it go. With Uncle gone, this is my expedition now. And unless you can give me a reason why we should not stay until the end of the season, then I say we'll stay." She waited, and the silence lengthened.

  Willard finished with his pipe and lit it with a burning twig. "Better tell her, Malachi. She's got the bit 'tween her teeth."

  Malachi spun around. "Your uncle's body? It wasn't just mangled by the bear."

  Nellie waited, not sure she wanted to hear more, but knowing she must.

  "Something...someone...cut off one of his legs," Malachi said. "As if he was a...a side of beef."

  Nellie stared, speechless. When she finally found her voice, she said, "Cut? As with a knife?"

  "Clean as a whistle," Mr. Willard said.

  Malachi glared at him. "There's no need to dwell on it, John." To Nellie he said, "When Murphy went back to get the tack and the rifle from Tom's horse, he found that someone had taken a haunch. It wasn't a wild animal, because the cuts were clean and the joint dismembered, not broken. Whoever did it was a fair butcher."

  When her eyes closed, he wished he'd chosen a different word.

  The next moment, she was looking at him and there was no fear in her expression. "Then we will have to be twice as vigilant, won't we? But since this...this butcher of yours has not directly attacked anyone, perhaps he is merely an opportunist. After all," and she gagged as the thought struck her, "there was all that meat just going to waste." The matter-of-fact tone she had striven for had not been entirely convincing, even to her own ears.

  "Nellie!" Malachi's tone showed his shock.

  "Miss Sanders!" So did Mr. Beckett's.

  "Missy, if'n you're tryin' to shock us all, you done a good job. But you're right. 'Cept for your old woman, nobody's bothered us since we come here, and you say she's fond of you. You want my opinion, Malachi, I vote we stick. Missy wants to finish a job and she needs us to help her, not to hinder."

  Nellie waited, while Malachi considered. Much as she wanted to plead, she refused. Either he saw the logic and the legitimacy of their remaining here to fulfil the expedition's purpose, or he did not. Either way, he must make up his own mind.

  She had said her piece.

  * * * * *

  Dadgummed stubborn woman! Hasn't the sense to come in out of the rain! Malachi slashed at another clump of the grass that grew hip-high in the meadow. Got her mind set on going her own way and it'd take a locomotive to move her.

  She doesn't care that I won't sleep a wink from now 'til the end of summer, just worrying about her. "As long as we're alive, we're probably perfectly safe," she says.

  What kind of a woman doesn't blink an eye at something that would sicken a strong man?

  His toe struck a rock and he kicked at it, sending it skittering across the ground. I knew she was trouble the day I first laid eyes on her. Knew it in my bones.

  He looked at the pile of grass he'd cut and decided it was enough to last the stock until tomorrow. As he bound it into small sheaves, he wondered why he hadn't simply taken command and told the others what they would do. I told the professor more than once that I was in charge of this expedition and made it stick. I didn't even try with Nellie. She's so blasted stubborn, she wouldn't have heard me. Just gone her own sweet way and let the devil take the hindmost.

  Once the grass was stacked inside the corral, he lingered to scratch behind Sheba's ears. "I might as well admit that I'm scared to death for her. I thought I'd lost her once. I don't think I could endure going through that again, Sheba."

  The ass lipped at his shirt pocket. "No, I don't have any sugar for you. If we're going to stay through the summer, we'll need what we've got left. But since you're such a little sweetheart, I'll ask Willard to keep an eye out for a bee tree. You'd like a little honey, wouldn't you?"

  Sheba nodded vigorously, knocking Malachi's hat askew. He straightened it. "She said last night she'll be taking her uncle's collection back East when we get back to Ogden. I'll never see her again."

  A soft whuff was Sheba's only answer, but Malachi read a world of sympathy into it.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Nellie still had trouble believing that the men had accepted her demand to remain until the end of summer so calmly. She had expected to have to argue and plead and cajole, as she had with Uncle when she'd first broached the subject of joining his expedition.

  Their only real objections had been due to the danger they perceived, not to her being a woman, and without professional credentials. The realization had given her a tremendous sense of confidence.

  They decided not to move their camp, since the big meadow where they harvested feed for the livestock was so convenient. The men did build a more permanent corral, with access to the creek draining the lake, so they no longer had to lead the animals to water twice a day. While the others were busy, she and Mr. Beckett sorted and listed Uncle's collections, so they could identify any gaps.

  The more she dug into her Uncle's specimens, the more appalled she became. While she had been instrumental in pressing most of them and had copied at least half of his notes, she had not seen before just how...how uninteresting his collection was. Very little of what she was seeing was unique to this area, she was certain.

  Most of Uncle's collection was the same hundred-odd species, collected again and again at different locations. All were
common in the valley and on the lower slopes. She knew, because she had seen them in her own travels. The Phacelia, for instance, grew in dry soil from the river bottom to higher elevations. Why had he collected it at twenty-some different locations?

  "We must be extremely selective," he'd told her when she had asked to have one vasculum and one press for her own use, "because we can only take so much material out when we go. So collect nothing but the most remarkable plants. If you see it everywhere, it's too common to bother with."

  What was so remarkable, she wondered, about this Spiraea? She rather thought it was the same as the one he'd collected in Montana and perhaps even in Colorado. She checked her inventory notes. Yes, there were thirty-two specimens, all from along the river. "Mr. Beckett, please sort these by location. Then take a good look at them. If they all seem to be the same species, pick the five best specimens, making sure they represent the entire length of the valley, and discard the rest."

  He opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it again. "Yes, Miss Sanders."

  Surprised at his easy capitulation, she said, "What are you thinking Mr. Beckett? That I am being careless with valuable specimens?" The question came out sounding defensive, but it was too late to call the words back.

  "No indeed. I had wondered myself why Dr. Kremer collected so much, but disliked asking. You know how he..."

  "Yes, I know how he sometimes took umbrage at what he considered impertinent questions," she said, remembering how many times Uncle had ranted about Mr. Beckett's incompetence, and he'd invariably done it in the young man's hearing.

  She had never seen any sign of incompetence, merely inexperience. Jonathan Beckett was painstakingly meticulous. His only failing, in her opinion, was that he was so unsure of himself that he would not act without instruction. While he'd had only the two years of college, he had been with Uncle for some time, and had accompanied him on all his field trips. Besides, he was intelligent and interested and deserved the opportunity to prove himself.

  Uncle's constant harping on his ineptitude had certainly not added to his self-confidence.