‘Only way when they run wild like that. Shame is you never done it when you had the chance back here in town, time he shot the sheriff.’
Easy to say now, thought Hart. ‘Maybe,’ he said, anxious to change the subject.
‘What you figurin’ on doin’?’ Zack asked Aram.
‘Go see this here lawyer, find out about Jedediah’s will, maybe take a look at this gold that’s supposed to be in the bank. Ain’t never seen that much gold all of a time. Then I guess 111 ride out an’ meet with my kin.’
‘Ever see ’em before?’
‘Long time back. Jedediah’s wife and the eldest kids, Jacob an’ Rebecca, they. . .’
‘She’s been hangin’ around town again,’ Zack broke through, speaking more to Hart than the trapper. ‘Just moonin’ about the place like she was lookin’ for somethin’ she’d lost ’cept she didn’t know what it was. Tried speakin’ with her, told her she’d be best off back at home with her ma, but all she did was stare at me with them eyes of her’n an’ I figured it best to tend my own affairs.’
‘Where is she now?’ asked Aram.
‘Home, I guess. Ain’t seen her around these past few days.’
‘How’d she seem ’bout her brother bustin’ loose the way he did?’ Hart asked.
‘How d’you think? She was pleased as could be. Hell, she was fixin’ to kill you one time for gettin’ him locked away.’
Aram and Hart exchanged glances, puzzlement on the trapper’s face.
‘Ain’t no way of tellin’ how she’ll cope with him bein’ dead.’ Zack bent closer to the stove to warm his hands, rubbing them together energetically.
‘Got me a spare room out back,’ Zack said after a few moments, ‘you’re welcome to share it for a time till you figure out what you’re aimin’ to do.’
Hart looked at Aram, who nodded agreement. They fixed a fair price with the mayor and busied themselves unpacking their belongings and taking them through to the room. Aram said he’d take the animals up to the stable and get them fed and watered and bedded down.
‘How ’bout this attorney? Quinton.’
‘Tomorrow’ll do for that. Him an’ the bank.’
‘Okay. While you’re doin’ that, I’ll take a ride out to your brother’s place. Tell ’em ’bout Jacob. Ain’t no sense in you bein’ the bearer of bad news.’
‘Maybe it’s my task.’
‘Uh-huh. More like mine. I was the one as killed him.’
Aram started to say something and then changed his mind. He showed his agreement with a quick gesture of the hand and a tightening of the mouth, then turned aside and got on with what he was doing. Now that he’d arrived, he wasn’t any too anxious to meet up with the family his brother had fought for so long to keep together and that he himself had already been instrumental in breaking apart.
Chapter Sixteen
The ground ivy by the front of the house was rimed with frost. The sky was iron-gray and so low it seemed you had but to reach up to touch it. Rachel Batt was inside the kitchen, flour on her hands and dying on her mind. First her husband, Jedediah, and now ... it was weeks since she’d seen her son, Jacob. Weeks since Ben had come back with the wagon from town telling her that there wasn’t going to be any more credit from the store and that Jacob had bust out of jail and killed more folk doing it. The posse had ridden by the farm more than once, their horses trampling down the winter vegetables and eating what little feed was left for her own stock. But Jacob had never shown his face and Rachel had no idea where he was save that something inside her said that he was already dead.
The pain of twenty years of living pressed hard on her temples till she thought they must burst, break inwards and shatter.
They did not. The farm was still there, the kitchen, the mixing bowl, flour and water. Outside there were children to feed when the work was done and clothes to wash and patch and mend. There was their dwindling stock to pen and feed. Everything to bed down against the cold and a few hours of huddled warmth that would crack like ice at the first step of light.
She wiped her arm across her forehead and saw Rebecca pause for a few seconds’ rest, the wooden pail from which she was feeding the hens heavy in her hand. The stupid hens clucked and pecked about her feet but Rachel knew that Rebecca scarcely saw them. She wondered if the girl had seen Jacob since his escape; if she saw him now. Wondered if Rebecca saw him as she saw him herself, his body stretched over some anonymous snowy ground, crows jerkily clamoring.
She was closing the oven door when she heard the horse approach, one rider. She turned, almost dropped the pie, burned her forearm against the inside of the oven and bit down into her lower lip hard enough to draw a trickle of blood.
Through the steam and dirt of the window pane she saw that it was not Jacob. Not anyone that she knew. Rachel saw Rebecca run towards the barn. She wiped the edge of her hand against the glass and looked at the man, tall in the saddle even though his head was stooped against the swirl of the wind. He wore a striped blanket over his coat with some kind of Indian design patterned on it, there was a rifle butt sticking up over his saddle, gloves on his hands and the bottom of a holster showing through the folds of the blanket. The breath of man and horse plumed out on to the air.
Rachel thought he was a peace officer, maybe a United States Marshal.
She didn’t know for sure.
Jedediah’s old pistol was in the kitchen drawer; the rifle with which Ben had been learning to shoot was resting on two pegs above the door.
She glanced again at the man and knew it would be no use.
Ben came running hard from the pig pen, feet skidding here and there on the hard, uneven earth. He crashed through the door and came to a halt breathlessly against the kitchen table.
‘It’s okay, Ben.’
His eyes swiveled nervously, purposefully towards the rifle over the door.
‘No. It’s all right.’
‘You don’t know …’
‘Shush!’
The man had dismounted and left the gray to stand or wander in the yard. Rachel guessed that Rebecca was still in the barn and wondered if she had the two younger boys with her. Hart knocked on the door with a gloved hand and before the woman could answer he had stepped inside.
He recognized Rebecca’s features in her mother’s face, but not the eyes; saw something of Jacob in the uncertainty and aggression of the fifteen year old. He told them his name.
‘You the marshal?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘What then?’
‘Jacob an’ Rebecca, they didn’t tell you about me? I’m the one as went to find their uncle Aram.’
She crossed her left arm under her breasts, clutching the elbow of the right. ‘Never heard your name. Don’t reckon they … she ever said it.’
‘No matter.’
Rachel’s fingers twisted and pushed. ‘You come to tell us you couldn’t find him.’
‘No, ma’am, I found him.’
‘But he wouldn’t come with you?’
‘He came.’
The eyes of mother and son stared at the window on to the yard but it was bare of anything save the slow movement of Hart’s horse. Ben’s eyes lingered a moment more on the rifle that was at the stranger’s back and out of reach above the door. He wondered about the pistol in the drawer and wished he knew if it were loaded.
‘He ain’t fixin’ to visit his kin?’
‘He’ll be out right enough. Wanted to talk to the attorney back in town, get things clear in his mind before he talks with you.’
‘He come for the money,’ she said with resignation, not looking into his face.
‘That money’s ours!’ called Ben and moved across the room towards the kitchen table.
‘Ben!’ She seized his arm and spun him round, flushes of anger and fear red against her sallow cheeks.
‘When he comes out,’ Hart said, ‘he’ll settle the matter with you then.’
Rachel’s mind turned slowly. She gra
dually let go of her son’s arm and turned her head towards the tall stranger. He read her question in her resigned eyes before she spoke.
‘Why d’you ride out? Not just to tell us Aram was in town. Not to get paid by us ‘cause you know we ain’t got nothin’, not even what we need. There’s somethin’ else, ain’t there?’
Hart spoke slowly, flatly. ‘Yes, ma’am, there’s somethin’ else.’
Rachel cried out and grabbed her son and pulled him against her chest. For several minutes she rocked against him, her mouth open and struggling for breath, body heaving. But there were no tears in her eyes.
‘How did it …?’
‘He was back along the trail. Place called Frenchman. Hid up till he could pull a gun. Put two bullets into Aram before …’
The fifteen year old ran straight at him and Hart swerved to the side and parried a fist. He seized the boy by the arm and twisted hard, bringing it up between his shoulder blades and turning till Ben’s face was pressed hard against the table top.
‘Before I could stop him.’
‘And Aram?’
‘The old man had his back to him. Never stood a chance. It’s a wonder he ain’t dead.’
Rachel wrinkled up her eyes. Ben struggled and tried to kick backwards, but Hart increased the pressure and the boy yelped and went still, face burning.
‘Jacob?’
‘I called a warnin’. Twice. He weren’t goin’ to heed. Put a bullet through his leg but he still come at me. Didn’t allow me no choice.’
‘You shot him.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Killed him.’
‘Yeah.’
There was nothing but cold in Rachel’s heart. The words did no more than confirm what she already felt … knew. Hart looked at Ben and released his grip, standing back and away. The boy remained where he was for some moments before going to the back of the kitchen, holding his aching arm. He looked at Hart with a sullen hate. There were steps outside close by the door but no one came in.
‘Did he …?’
‘Died right off. Doubt he felt a thing. His uncle and me, we saw he got buried good an’ deep.’
‘There weren’t no marker?’ Rachel’s faced seemed to wobble and Hart watched for the tears to come.
‘No, ma’am. Stone, but no marker.’
He looked at her and the tears failed to run.
‘Ben,’ she said, ‘go fetch your sister. She has to be told. Tell her to leave the boys. I’ll tell them later.’
She had to tell him twice before he dragged his feet, sullenly, from the room. When Rebecca came into the kitchen her cheeks were bright from the cold and her long black hair was pinned close to the back of her head. She stood silent while her mother told her what news Hart had brought. She looked at her mother’s face all the while, impassive, but Hart knew that in her heart she was looking at him. Only for a second did she turn her face towards him and her eyes were black stone.
‘You’ll tell Aram to come by as soon as he’s able?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
There was nothing more to say. Steam rose up in coils from the sides of the oven door and struggled with the wind that bit beneath the door and through the gaps in the window frames. Mother and daughter stood close to one another, not touching. Hart turned aside, closed the door back of him, picked up the gray’s reins and slotted his left boot into the stirrup. From the barn Ben watched him mount up and ride out, watched till he was a shadow that moved past the alders into the graying mist that rose up off the land along the creek.
~*~
Aram was waiting for Hart in the rocker that Zack Moses kept close by the stove. The mayor was up at the bank and he’d left the trapper in charge of the store. It tickled Aram’s fancy to be a store clerk and he was sore disappointed when the only customer who came in was Hart.
‘How’d she take it? ’Bout the boy?’
‘Fine. As if she weren’t surprised at all.’
Then I guess she weren’t.’
Hart nodded and pulled off his gloves, pushing them down into the front of his gun belt. He had taken off the blanket and thrown it over a barrel of backstrap molasses. His hat was tilted back from his forehead.
‘You ridin’ out there?’
Aram nodded, without looking any too certain.
‘She said for you to come.’
The trapper nodded again. ‘I’ll do it.’ He seemed to think of something by the way his eyes narrowed and his head turned to one side. ‘How ’bout the girl? How ’bout Rebecca?’
‘What about her?’
‘Was she there? How’d she take her brother bein’, well, dead the way he was?’
Hart shrugged. ‘Never said a word.’
Aram shook his head like he didn’t understand. ‘Recall when she was no more’n a button, shiny black button, she come runnin’ into my arms an’ …’
Either the memory deserted him or he realized he was talking too much in front of another man. He began to fidget with the possibles sack that dangled from his neck.
‘Want me to ride out with you?’ Hart offered.
‘No call. Kind of you, but no, there ain’t no need. I’ll walk down the livery soon as Moses gets back from the bank. Ride out.’
Hart nodded and pulled a chair by the stove and sat across it, straddling it. ‘You went by the bank yourself?’
‘Yea. Saw that Quinton, queer bird. Gold’s there an’ it’s worth every cent as was said an’ more.’
‘You figured out what you’re fixin’—’
‘Ain’t my money. Not by any kind of right I understand. It’s theirs, Jedediah’s fam’ly. Figured I’d take out enough to pay for your time, see me through the winter. All the rest is theirs.’
‘After the winter,’ Hart said, ‘you goin’ back?’
Aram turned his head slow and looked at him and didn’t say a thing. Less than an hour later he was on his way out to the farm.
~*~
He sat stock still in the saddle down past the tree line and looked at the pitiful place. Twenty years of his brother’s life till it claimed him and now it was taking his kids, Jacob runnin’ mad and the others. He didn’t know about the others, just about what growing up on a farm like that might do to them. There was folk who said it was the best way, would make you strong enough to withstand anything that came to pass. But Aram didn’t know if that was true. Not for all folk it weren’t. Not for Jacob - realizing he’d been slaving all those years over stubborn ground for nothing had broke his reason like a boot on a brittle branch not yet formed true.
The others: Aram wondered about the others as he saw them moving like shades about their tasks. He wondered about his niece, about Rebecca. If only …
The cold was tugging at his shoulders and his bad leg was aching like someone was prizing at the bone with the blade of a knife.
He saw the smoke drifting up towards the flat, imprisoning gray of the sky. He touched his heels to the horse and it began to walk slowly forward.
Rachel was waiting. She’d seen him away off down the creek, past the bare alders. There was coffee brewing and a slice of pie she’s saved and reheated against his coming. She’d changed her dress and set a brush to her hair and now she sent the youngest to fetch Rebecca and Ben to the house. She wasn’t certain what it was she expected from this man who had been a stranger to her for so many years, existing as a moving shadow she sensed always at the back of her husband’s thoughts, moving and free.
Aram tethered his horse and came into the house. Rebecca wasn’t there. She had tossed her head at her mother’s message and run off across the yard, past the vegetable patch and out towards the place she loved, the line of alders that overlooked the crisp shifting creek.
Aram could see her dimly through the window, her hair no longer pinned but loose and catching in the wind.
He pulled his mind from her and back to the thin, sallow-faced woman who had been his brother’s wife. His hands accepted the coffee, the pie; he ate and talked sp
aringly, telling her something of his life out by the Platte, a little about the setting of traps, the stretching and scraping of skins. The boy, Ben, asked him about Indians and he told him a couple of tales about the Blackfeet that caught the boy’s excitement and which were three-parts true. Warmth flowed from the stove, from the sparse conversation; Aram forgot for those moments the hours of hard, grinding, thankless work that went on endlessly to make them possible. He warmed to his brother’s memory, his wife and kids. He told Rachel what he’d decided about the money. Told her impulsively and was disappointed when she heard him with a barely stirred silence, as if it was no more than she had expected.
‘Will you stay with us, Uncle Aram?’ called one of the youngest.
Aram looked at Rachel. Her face expressed nothing he could readily understand.
‘Please, Uncle Aram!’
The old trapper looked at the woman again and she nodded a brief agreement.
Aram said: ‘Be pleased to stay, long as that’s what everyone wants.’ His eyes turned towards the window.
‘She’ll come around,’ said Rachel. ‘She always was a strange child, an’ since Jacob …’
‘I’ll ride back to town, settle things with this attorney. Sign paper an’ such. Pack up what little I got an’ come back out. Tomorrow, most like.’
He was standing now, close to the door. He moved by the window and looked out. Rebecca was leaning against one of the trees, one hand resting on the bare branch close by her head.
‘Leave her be,’ advised Rachel.
Aram nodded, but it was not what he wanted. What he wanted was a young girl to come running across the yard towards him, hair flying out behind her and her arms outstretched. He nodded again and let himself out of the house. She had scarcely moved, save that her arm was back down at her side. Aram’s hand toyed with the reins, but the pull was too strong. He began to walk across the yard, ridged ground, away from the stink of stale cabbage that rose up from the ivy by the door, out towards the gray-blue of the stream, the line of alders broken only by the girl’s body.
If she heard him – and she must have heard him – she gave no sign. Aram watched the wind catch her hair and lift it up and saw the white of her neck an instant and something caught his breath. He spoke her name and she leaned away from the trunk but nothing more.
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