Gasher Creek

by J. Birch

  The cabin Jack grew up in was smaller, but not by much.

  “Four days ago,” Charlie said.

  “Maybe five,” Emily said, closing one cupboard and opening another.

  “So I just missed him.” He paused. “Did he receive my letter?”

  “Yes,” she said, pulling out two cups. “He said you were coming home. He was sick, Charlie, but he smiled at that.” She set the cups on the table.

  “What was he sick from?” Jack asked.

  “His breath wasn’t right,” she said. “Troy had his doc look at him, but he couldn’t do much—something about water in his lungs.” She fetched a plate of biscuits and set it on the table. “Held on as long as he could.” She sat down in the last empty chair.

  Three chairs. Jack hoped he wasn’t sitting in their pa’s chair.

  “Have a biscuit, Mr. Devlin,” she said to Jack.

  Jack took one and bit into it.

  She looked at him expectantly.

  “Mm,” he said. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but it seemed to cheer her up a little.

  “Made them this morning,” she said. “I’m sorry we don’t have jam.”

  “It’s okay,” Jack said. “I used to eat them this way when I was a boy.”

  Charlie stared at the biscuits but didn’t take one.

  “I’m glad your home,” Emily said to him. “It’s been hard, but Troy’s been a help. He bought us a new andiron.” She twisted around to look at the fireplace. “Said our old one was cracked, though I couldn’t see it.”

  “Well, you won’t have to worry about that much longer,” Charlie said. “I don’t suppose anything is worn or cracked over at his castle.”

  “It’s not a castle,” she said, smiling awkwardly. “You know it’s not.”

  “Sounds large enough, the way he’s always going on about it.”

  Wood crackled in the fireplace. Crickets chirped outside.

  “Is he the good sort?” Jack asked.

  “The rich sort,” Charlie said, speaking over Emily. “A rich old widower.”

  “He’s thirty-six,” Emily said.

  “Old enough.”

  She blushed. “Well, you weren’t here, were you? The ranch was dying.” Her eyes grew glassy. “Pa was dying and Troy—he—just wanted to help.”

  “He wanted our land,” Charlie said. “Not to mention something else.”

  Emily caught her breath. Jack leaned back, waiting for the slap. Hell, a punch to the jaw would have been reasonable. Instead, she just looked at her hands and said nothing.

  “Well, now that Pa’s dead, I suppose he’ll get his land,” Charlie said.

  “It’s not Pa’s land anymore,” she said. “It’s yours. Your land, your house. Such as it is.” She wiped a few crumbs off the table and started to cry. Tears hung off her long, dark lashes.

  Charlie snapped out of his dark mood. Reaching for his sister’s hand, he said, “Stop crying. I’m sorry, Emily. This is our land, you hear me? Ours. We’ll make that decision together.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “This isn’t a time for tears,” he said. “It’s a time to be happy. In three days, you’ll be married.” He grinned. “And living in a gigantic castle.”

  She swatted his arm and smiled. “You’re horrible.”

  After filling their cups with coffee, she fetched a broom from the corner and stepped out onto the porch. She shut the door behind her.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” Charlie said.

  “Do what?”

  “Give her away. With Pa gone, it’ll be my duty.”

  “Never seen a wedding, myself,” Jack said. “I suppose you just walk out and hand her over to that Troy fella.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  Jack sipped his coffee. “Seems to me you’re in hitches over nothing. She’s marrying a rich rancher. Old or not, he’s rich. That means she’ll never go hungry.”

  “But she doesn’t fancy him.”

  “How do you figure that?” Jack asked. “She’s marrying the man.”

  Charlie slipped his fingers around his cup. “I’ve been looking into those eyes for twenty years, Jack. I know her. Now that Pa’s dead, she needs someone to care for her. She ain’t young anymore, and Plymouth is the only man for miles. She’s doing this because she has to, not because she wants to.”

  “That may be,” Jack said. “But this Plymouth must be sweet on her.”

  “She’s a half-breed,” Charlie said. “What white man wants a half-breed?” He smirked. “Somehow, I doubt he’d fancy her as much if I refused to sell the land.”

  * * *

  After sleeping on the ground for so many nights, Jack had forgotten how soft a cot could feel. He and Charlie shared the bed up in the loft, while Emily stayed in her pa’s room below. Charlie fell asleep quickly, but Jack lay awake and listened to Emily pad around beneath them. She hummed softly as she bolted the door and extinguished the fire.

  Charlie was wrong. Troy Plymouth had to be sweet on her. Half-breed or not, Emily was a stargazer and no doubt. She reminded him of a china doll he once saw in a toy shop in Bear Hunt. It had the same black hair and brown eyes, only it wore buckskins and feathers instead of a dress.

  But it wasn’t only her pretty face. She also seemed the kind sort, not a sharp edge to her. She wasn’t anything like the girls at The Ram.

  Beneath him, the lantern light turned low. The door of her bedroom shut.

  Jack fell asleep. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he re-opened his eyes he saw grey morning light shining through the loft window. Charlie and Emily were talking below him. He smelled fried eggs and coffee.

  As he climbed down, Emily said, “Good morning.” She wore a pale yellow dress. Her hair was twisted into a braid over her back.

  “Good morning,” Jack said. Charlie sat at the table digging into a plate piled high with eggs, bacon, and thick slices of black bread. Jack sat down as Emily placed a similar plate in front of him. He started eating.

  “No grace?” she said to him.

  He paused, the fork perched in his open mouth.

  “Jack, say grace?” Charlie said. “Not him. He thinks it’s nothing but wind.”

  “Not all of it,” Jack said, accepting a cup of coffee from her.

  “Don’t fret, you won’t insult me,” Emily said. “I’m not the preacher.”

  “Almost,” Charlie said.

  “I’m not almost the preacher,” she said. “Besides, I like mama’s stories better.” After fetching her own plate, she brought it over to the table and sat down. “Speaking of stories,” she said. “Either of you has yet to speak of your travels.”

  Jack and Charlie stopped eating.

  “Not much to tell,” Charlie said.

  “Nothing, really,” Jack said.

  “I don’t believe that,” Emily said. “And this food comes with a price. That price is either a story, or chores.”

  “I can’t do any chores,” Charlie said. “I’m wounded.”

  “Oh,” she said brightly. “Then I expect a good story. With lots of adventure.”

  Jack stared at Charlie.

  “Well, come on,” she said.

  Charlie gave Jack a near imperceptible shrug. Then, taking a gulp of his coffee, he cleared his throat and began.

  Turns out, Charlie was a pretty good storyteller. Emily sat fully absorbed in his account of their time in the Badlands. She cringed when he told her about hitting Jack over the head with a rock (“You could have killed him!” she exclaimed), weaved around Cole Smith so that he never existed, and nearly brought her to tears as he recounted shooting the horse.

  Even Jack joined in, talking about Mary’s cooking and how his bones jostled in the wagon and the way its bonnet glowed like a candle flame in the sunrise.

  He liked talking to Emily. Most people interrupt so much it’s hardly worth telling a story, but she just listened, giggling a
t Silas’ brashness, looking terrified when Charlie told her about Brush’s no guns sign.

  Charlie didn’t say a word about the gunfight. Perhaps he wanted to tell Emily what had happened but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Maybe he figured she’d had enough heartache for a while.

  That was fine with Jack. He kept his mouth shut about it.

  After breakfast, they worked. Jack chopped two cords of wood, gathered eggs from the coop, milked their cow, and repaired a sizable hole in the roof. Charlie couldn’t do much more than provide conversation and hand him the occasional tool, but Jack didn’t mind. It felt good doing chores again. The muscles of his arms and legs ached, but it was the kind of soreness a man could be proud of. After a lunch of vegetable stew, he fixed the barn door, cleaned the coop, and then moved inside the house to wash the windows, sweep the floor, and fetch water. At first, Emily accepted his help graciously, but Jack proved to be so fast that she shooed him out, declaring that he’d leave her no work. “Out,” she ordered. She was baking biscuits and had managed to dust both cheeks with flour. “Go bother Charlie.”

  “I can stoke the fire,” Jack offered.

  “The fire is fine.”

  “I can—”

  “Go!” she commanded, pointing at the door. Jack left, hanging his head like a kicked puppy. She laughed.

  He found Charlie smoking his pipe at the corral.

  “She give you the boot?” Charlie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s best to stay out from under foot while she’s baking.”

  Jack leaned on the fence. The sweet smell of tobacco wafted over his face. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had a proper smoke.

  “Quite the horse, huh?” Charlie said, nodding at the Clydesdale.

  “Sure is,” Jack said.

  Samson was aptly named, standing at least eighteen hands high and around two thousand pounds by Jack’s estimate. His coat was a dusty brown, his mane black, his nose and underbelly splashed with white. His shoulders and rump bulged with muscle. Thick, white hair covered his hooves.

  “It’s called feather,” Charlie pointed out. He led Jack around the corral, saying, “See how he stares at the prairie? That’s his second favorite pastime.”

  “What’s his first?”

  “Trying to break free.” Charlie ran his finger along the fence rail. Cracks spread along its surface in an odd, spider web pattern. A nearby post was cracked at its base. “He’s tried to break out of this corral a dozen times or more, at least until Pa died. Emily told me he hasn’t moved much since.”

  Samson stared down at Jack, his eyes the color of rosewood.

  Back at the house, Emily stepped onto the porch and started sweeping. She saw them and waved.

  Jack waved back.

  Tapping his pipe bowl against the fence, Charlie said, “This morning, while you were still asleep, she asked me what I wanted to do with the land. I couldn’t give her an answer. It seemed to trouble her.”

  “Why?” Jack said. “Either you own the land or her husband does. Either way, she won’t lose it.”

  “I don’t think that’s why she’s troubled,” Charlie said. “I think she wants me to stay and work it.”

  “But you’re heading back to Bear Hunt.”

  Charlie knelt and gave the post a tug. “I’m not sure about that anymore.”

  “Is this,” Jack said, and waited until Emily went back into the house. “Is this because you shot Cole?”

  Charlie hesitated, and then nodded.

  “Well heck, isn’t the Almighty supposed forgive a man all his wickedness?”

  “Yeah, but when I shot him…”

  “What?”

  Charlie looked up at him. “I lost something,” he said. “Something I’ll never get back.” He stood. “At first, all I could feel was shame. Evil as that man was, I felt sorry for shooting him. But then it got worse, because I realized that I wasn’t sorry for what I’d done. He was going to shoot you, Jack, and I kept him from doing that. I broke one of God’s oldest laws and I’d do it again. How can I preach the good word to my people when I won’t obey?”

  Back on the porch, Emily shouted: “You two! Stop bothering Samson and come in for supper.”

  “One moment!” Charlie called.

  “You could stay,” Jack said. “But it might be awful lonely without your sister.”

  “Somehow, I think that if I stay, she’ll stay too.”

  Jack shook his head. “Not her. She’s too smart to pass up a rich rancher, and he’d be a fool not to take her.” He thought about her stepping about the house in her bare feet, the flour on her cheeks, humming to herself without a care. A man would have to be quite the fool.

  “You think she’s pretty?” Charlie asked.

  “No,” Jack said.

  “It’s okay if you do.”

  “I don’t,” he said, pushing off the fence. “I couldn’t.”

  You sick son of a bitch.

  “Why, because she’s a half-breed?” Charlie asked.

  “No.”

  YOU SICK SON OF A BITCH!

  “Let’s go eat,” Jack said. “I’m starving.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Psst.”

  It was evening. Tracker was almost free of the town when he noticed the Doc peeking his head around the side door of the waiting room.

  “Psst, Tom,” he said.

  Tracker stopped. “Doc?” he said. “What’s—”

  “Shh,” the Doc said. “When a man says psst that means shh.”

  “What?”

  “Just come here,” he said, waving him over. “I have something to show you.”

  Tracker sighed. He headed toward the Doc’s, but he didn’t want to go anywhere except home. He needed to wrap his head in a cold cloth and lay down. His head trembled from the construction of the new saloon. Normally, when the pounding of the hammers and the growl of the saws overwhelmed him, he could do his rounds and have a moment of peace. But all morning and afternoon he’d been confined to the office on account of George ‘Two Shot’ Texal.

  When Tracker had arrived that morning, Texal was already in custody and locked in the cell. He was a short, wiry man with a bushy red beard and a foul smell. During the night, Texal had tried to shoot Ben in the back while he was out on his rounds.

  “I didn’t have time to come get you,” Ben said. “It all happened in a wink. Luckily, I had an apple.”

  “An apple?” Tracker said.

  Like most legends, Texal was a no good drunk. When he drew his gun and fired, he shot wide and hit a horse instead. The horse squealed, and Ben reacted. Turning, he plucked an apple from his pocket and threw it like a baseball. It struck ol’ Two Shot between the eyes and dropped him like a sack of flour.

  “Pete Cussel helped me carry him to the office,” Ben said. He looked at Texal, still out cold in the cell. “Wasn’t till I locked the bars did I realize what had happened.” He paused. “I almost died, Sheriff.”

  “That’s right,” Tracker said.

  “But real no fooling dead.”

  “It’s not like a dime novel, is it?”

  Ben shook his head. “No sir.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t look it.

  “Head on home,” Tracker said.

  Ben nodded and stood. He crossed over to the front door and lifted his hat from the hook. He stared into it.

  “Ben,” Tracker said. “Ben?”

  Ben blinked and looked at him. “Yes Sheriff?”

  “I want you to think carefully about what happened tonight. And come this evening, if you don’t want to do this anymore, you let me know.”

  Ben put his hat on. “I’ll be here, Sheriff. You can count on me.”

  That night, he showed up early. Tracker couldn’t help but be impressed. Most folks catch a glimpse of death and run the opposite way. It was a natural reaction. Perhaps that’s why most folks don’t become lawmen.

  “Hurry,”
the Doc said, holding the door open.

  Reaching the side steps, Tracker caught the stench and winced. Obviously, someone else had died. He entered the waiting room and held his coat sleeve to his nose. The Doc shut the door behind him and locked it.

  Inside, the shutters blocked out the light.

  “Follow me,” the Doc whispered.

  They moved into the examination room. Tracker coughed into his sleeve, his eyes watering from the funk of human rot. “Doc, just what in creation is going on?”

  The Doc lit a candle and held it over the examination table. Tracker expected to see a body, but all he saw was the Doc’s washbasin. The basin contained a small amount of thick, brown liquid.

  “What does that smell like, Tom?” the Doc asked.

  “A dead man.”

  Doc nodded. He opened his cabinet and pulled out a wooden tongue depressor. Reaching into the basin, he turned the tongue depressor and scooped up a bit of the liquid. It drizzled back into the bowl, slow and thick like honey. “But do you know what it is?”

  “Of course I don’t,” Tracker said.

  “Berries,” the Doc said. “The berries you found in the creek.”

  Tracker moved closer. “These are rotten berries?”

  “That’s right.”

  Perhaps it was the fatigue of not sleeping properly, or simply that the throbbing in his head was blocking all rational thought, but Tracker didn’t see what the Doc was getting at and told him so.

  “Didn’t you notice how Sally and Hank stunk to high Heaven?” the Doc said. “I surely did, and I’m used to the foul smells of the human body. The stink of a rotting corpse and the stink of these berries are similar, but not identical. Hank and Sally stunk of these berries.”

  “You’re saying they were poisoned?”

  “Yes,” the Doc said, a twin candle flame reflected in his glasses. “I’m afraid I am.”

  Tracker thought back to the moment he entered Sally’s room. He remembered the stink off her—powerful, but not unusual for a dead body. Hank’s body also gave off an ungodly rank, but Tracker had attributed that to both his size and his position under the window.