Born Rebel and The Guns of Livingston Frost - Two Short Novels

by Ardath Mayhar

  “Find us a good camp site,” he said to Judith. “I’ll come when I’ve talked to the ferryman.”

  The river bank was low, wet, and overgrown with tangles of button willow, yaupon, and blackberry vines. Judith didn’t want to be so near the water anyway, for if it rose, she could see that the levels had, in the past, come higher than the level of the shanty. She’d seen enough dangers so far without courting more.

  Joseph went scouting for a fairly high, dry site, while she and Callie sat on the shaky dock and watched the water swirl and foam around the debris coming downstream. “I think we got a little of Noah’s flood,” she said, when Joseph returned with a triumphant look on his face. “Let’s just hope we can stay above it.”

  “I found us a good place, Miz Judy,” he said, helping her lead the mounts toward a stand of pine trees some distance inland.

  He was right. The low mound was topped with a thick mat of pine needles, and the trees formed almost a roof above it. She wondered, as she shook out bedding and helped tie up the tarp, that a natural hillock should be so regularly shaped, as if some giant had turned a pudding basin upside down there.

  When David came up from the river, he was nodding. “We’ll get a ride across tomorrow. Gaines has been on the other side for a week, trapped because the water was too high to risk. Now it’s going down, and Jock, back there, knows his boss will get here as soon as he can. We need a good night’s sleep anyway.”

  They rested well, despite a chorus of frogs croaking in every conceivable tone and rhythm and a mockingbird in the tree above their shelter that went through its entire repertory a dozen times. Judith was too weary to hear or care. When she opened her eyes, the sky was pink, and she knew the sun might shine today. Perhaps the river would go down enough to allow a crossing.

  BORN REBEL

  CONCLUSION

  Here my story ended, but here also is a summary of what I intended:

  Once across the Sabine River, David and Judith find themselves in thickly grown forest filled with mosquitoes and snakes. The going is very rough, and when they arrive at a cabin that offers shelter and food, David arranges for them to rest there for several days at the Wyler residence. Unfortunately, when he pays for their accommodations, someone in the family glimpses gold.

  When the McCarrans leave, their erstwhile hosts' two grown sons follow, intending to kill them in the forest and take whatever they have. Fortunately, David and Judith are still watchful, keeping their arms ready for any attack, and they manage to take out the two Wyler sons who come after them.

  As they move on westward, Jonas Bluth arrives and manages to get passage across the river. The Wylers are furious at the disappearance of their boys, and Jonas promises to wreak vengeance on the McCarrans when he catches up with them.

  When he does, he finds a terrible surprise waiting for him, as Judith, armed and weary of constant worry, shoots him dead as he crawls into their camp by night.

  Once in Nacogdoches, the administrative center of the area, David arranges for a land grant, 600 acres, and he and his family begin building and cultivating. However, the local alcalde becomes so demanding that the McCarrans relinquish their claim and buy a farm from a widow who is unable to work her remote acreage.

  There they build a new life for themselves, their growing family, and for Joseph and his family, whom they decide to free from slavery and to give a share of the land and the livestock. When David dies of snakebite, Judith continues to work the farm, with the help of her black partners and her children.

  THE GUNS OF LIVINGSTON FROST: A WASHINGTON SHIPP MYSTERY

  This would have been the third novel in a series featuring Washington Shipp, the black Police Chief and later Sheriff of the county. Death in the Square and Body in the Swamp are the two preceding novels in this series. I wish I had been able to complete this one at full novel length as well —Ardath Mayhar.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Washington Shipp

  Amy, his secretary, had stacked the morning’s Texas and out-of-state reports neatly on Wash’s desk, to wait for him to finish reading through the overnight reports from his own deputies. Since running for sheriff and winning, he had learned a new set of duties, for some of which his time as Police Chief of Templeton, Texas, had not prepared him. Before, he had not felt a need to keep up with crimes taking place very far outside of his own jurisdiction. Now he shuddered and picked up the pile of print-outs, which he scanned through quickly. Some were too distant to concern him, he felt sure, but he found among the sheets one that made him pause.

  Some knowledgeable burglar in the Arkansas-Texas-Louisiana region was stealing antique firearms, very selectively. This was the fourth incident of the kind that he had seen cross his desk, and Wash felt sure that this was a sort of steal-to-order ring, fencing to some dealer with nationwide or international connections.

  While some might have thought Templeton too remote and unsophisticated to offer much scope for the attentions of such a group, Washington Shipp knew better. He had known the Frost family since he was a small black boy, growing up in the river bottoms beyond their family home on the outskirts of town.

  Livingston Frost, the grandson of his grandfather’s one-time employer, was presently one of the foremost dealers in antique firearms in the entire country. His stock, which Wash had examined back when he was Police Chief, was amazing. He had added to his own family’s collection by trading, buying, and selling, until it was almost unequaled.

  If this gang was as well informed as it seemed to be, from reading the list of victims and stolen items, one day it was going to target the guns of Livingston Frost. Wash reached for his telephone and punched in the familiar number. The phone rang several times before a hesitant voice said, “Hello?”

  “Miss Frost, is your brother at home? This is Sheriff Shipp, and I really do need to speak to him, if possible.” The timid voice grew a bit stronger.

  “Oh, Wash! I was afraid it might be...some stranger. No, Stony is away at a gun show. He won’t be home until the end of the week, he said when he called last night.”

  Wash sighed. He certainly couldn’t alarm poor Lily, who had problems of her own, with this rather nebulous concern he felt. The best he could do was to ask her to have her brother call him when he returned. A nebulous hunch wasn’t enough to justify getting his number at his hotel and calling him at the show.

  After he hung up the phone, he sat for a moment, wondering about the woman who waited alone in the old family home. Always shy and insecure, she was now a recluse. Yet Lily, of all people, had engaged in a wild and adventurous escapade that few recalled now. She had been gone from Templeton for almost two years, and when she returned she was damaged both mentally and physically. Wash still wondered about that, though he had not asked any questions. He and Stony were friends, but not as close as all that.

  Yet Washington Shipp felt a closeness to that family, as he did to all those under his care. Other sheriffs might have been corrupt or unwise or uncaring, but he had determined, when he ran for office, to be the caretaker of his county. Now he felt a small shiver of apprehension, but he shook it away. He could not allow his hunches to control his work.

  Then the phone rang, and the sheriff returned to his job, forgetting his concerns in the complex problems that even a relatively small county seemed to generate constantly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Livingston Frost

  It was raining. That wasn’t unusual in East Texas in the winter, but Livingston Frost hated dampness and chill. His warped body ached worse in such weather. That, he thought, was what made him feel so apprehensive and ill-at-ease as he drove into his garage.

  The weather set his bones to twinging, sending stabs of agony through his small frame. The polio that withered his left leg and twisted his back when he was nine years old had left a legacy of pain that had been his constant companion for most of his forty-odd years.

  He leaned heavily on his cane, as he hurried from the garage toward the big dark ho
use, whose dour face reminded him of the Scots grandfather who had built it: it looked disapproving. In the rain it all but scowled at anyone bold enough to venture into its curving porch. But now he had no time for whimsy, even though he leavened his limited and joyless life with such wry humor.

  Lily would have the coffeepot on and a supper of soup and salad and homemade bread waiting. He had been gone for a week, this time, attending a particularly promising showing of antique firearms, which led to a visit to the home of an important customer.

  She always missed him dreadfully. He was to his sister what she was to him, the sole companion of a lonely life. He never allowed himself to wonder what would happen to her if he should die. Their only relative was very elderly, unlikely to survive for long.

  His key turned in the stiff lock, and the door moved open, the hall breathing into his face its usual smell of furniture polish and mildew. But there was something else—something subtly wrong with the feel of the house. His illness had left Frost painfully aware of atmosphere, and tonight his home was filled with something forbidding.

  “Lily! Are you here?” he called. The place was entirely too still. She should have been in the hall as soon as his feet thumped unevenly across the porch, her gawky shape hurrying to greet him, her long braid flapping behind her. She endured his business trips with impatience tinged with misery.

  There was no answer from the depths of the house. The twilight outside did nothing to lessen the darkness within, and he touched the switch for the lamps. Nothing happened. Had the storm caused a power outage? He had noticed the street lamps were burning in the early darkness outside. Whatever the problem was, it had to be the house’s own system.

  Grumbling a bit, he fumbled blindly in the drawer of the breakfront beside the parlor door and found a candle. Matches waited beside it, and he struck a light and looked about.

  It seemed the storm must have gone through the interior of the house. Furniture was overturned or pushed out of place, though the mahogany Victorian pieces were too heavy to damage much. A ruby glass vase that had been his grandmother’s lay shattered on the Persian carpet, blood-colored shards picking up the faint glimmers from his candle. Frost’s heart thumped uncomfortably in his throat. His sister was his only close companion. Even with her mental problems, left over from her brief flirtation with LSD, she kept his house clean and comfortable.

  Her infrequent lapses into delusion were a small price to pay for her company. While he had never thought to wonder if he loved her, he knew that he needed her, even as she did him, to help give him some semblance of normal life.

  “Lily?” he croaked again, holding his stick now as a weapon, instead of a prop.

  He moved into the hall leading to the dining room and the kitchen. There was no sound from upstairs or down. Listening intently, he went along haltingly, trying to see into the many rooms along the crowded corridor. The candle’s frail flame did little to help his search.

  Now his stomach had curled into a tight knot, and the hand holding the candle was shaking. He had always been frail, without physical strength. Now he wondered if he might be a coward as well. He dreaded going into the kitchen at the end of the corridor; it took all his will-power to push open the swinging door. For a moment, he thought the room was empty of anyone. There was little that could be disturbed there. He had modernized the place with built-ins, for the convenience of his sister, once his business had become really profitable.

  As he stared about, he could see a drift of flour over the floor. The trail led into a shadow beyond the marble-topped work table that Lily had insisted upon keeping for making pastry and kneading bread. She lay there, a cracked bowl by her hand and the flour sifter on its side beyond her. There was blood on her forehead.

  He went down onto one knee, awkward and unsure about his ability to cope with this calamity. “Lily, oh, Lily,” he mourned, lifting her head into a more comfortable position and trying to wipe away the drying blood with his immaculate handkerchief.

  She sighed and groaned, and something inside him relaxed a bit. She was alive. He had not been left entirely alone in the dark confines of their home, to be comforted only by the chilly presence of his antique weapons. And that thought brought him up short.

  The house did not promise wealth by its appearance. It looked, instead, like a place filled with the preserved aura of Victorianism, as it was, preserving the long family traditions and most of its possessions. Only his guns were valuable—and they were extremely valuable, though most of those in the house were renovated ones that he used for display. His most valuable stock was kept in the vault at the Templeton Bank. This break-in might have been made to look like the work of vandals, but he wondered why random kids would pick such a secluded neighborhood and such an unpromising house for their activities. Seldom, he understood, did the rascals choose to violate a home where someone was present.

  On the other hand, professional thieves after his rather famous firearms collection might try to make this look like pointless violence. It would make a certain amount of sense.

  Lily groaned. “Martin?” she murmured, her voice thick and unfamiliar. “Don’t hit me again, Martin!”

  Frost gritted his teeth. That name had not passed her lips in twenty years, since the day she appeared on the steps of this house, all her possessions in a knapsack on her back. It was instinct—the inbuilt ability to find home again—that had brought her through the fog of drugs, out of her unstable, hippy-style existence, and back into the family home and his life.

  Then, too, she had been bruised and bloody. If he had been able to find Martin Fewell, he would have shot him, being quite incapable of doing anything more actively physical, like beating the brute to a pulp.

  She opened her eyes, staring up from the hazed depths of her confusion “Stony? It’s you? They came to the door. They kicked it in. Stony, they took your guns!”

  Frost helped her to sit up, fury building inside him until he was afraid his fragile body couldn’t hold it. “Who were they?” he asked.

  She might not be able to come up with a clear and usable description. She was sharp, now that her past had receded, but she had periods of being spaced out and incoherent, usually following an emotional upset. She seemed to be pulling her thoughts together as she sat for a moment, then stood, with some difficulty.

  She was taller than he, heavier, and uncrippled. She helped him up, rather than the reverse, but she did it absently, her gaze seeming to be fixed on some point out of the normal range. Frost tugged at her elbow and got her into the rocking chair that their mother had insisted on keeping in her kitchen, long past the days when she rocked her infants in it.

  “You sit here, and I’ll make coffee—or maybe tea would be better for you. Who was it, Lily? Can you identify them?” He took the kettle from beneath the sink.

  “They got your guns. The ones on the wall in the den. The ones in the glass case in the living room. I couldn’t get up, but I saw them come back with them. Will this ruin us, Stony?” Her eyes were foggy, still, but he thought she seemed to be gaining control.

  “I keep the most valuable guns in the vault at the bank,” he reminded her.

  She nodded slowly, but he thought she wasn’t really hearing what he said. “The big one was mean,” she murmured. “Just like Martin, with a black beard like his. I bit him on the arm.”

  Frost looked down at her in surprise. In all the time she had lived with Martin, she had never stood up to him, she’d told him. Had something in their quiet life together finally given her the backbone to fight back?

  “And how many were there?” he asked, afraid he might distract her from her unstable concentration.

  “Four. Two were little blond fellows, just alike. But one had a scar on his hand. I saw it when he hit me. It looked like a W, across the back of his right hand. The other one didn’t come close enough for me to see. He was just a big man in a raincoat and a wide hat.” She closed her eyes and sighed deeply, as the cut over her eye bega
n to ooze blood again.

  Frost filled the teakettle. Then he wet his handkerchief. As he dabbed at the cut, he thought furiously. She was lucid. That was wonderful. She could describe these villains, and she might even be able to testify, if the police ever caught them. Lily was definitely getting better. She held the wet cloth to her head, as he dialed the sheriff’s department. But the phone was dead—they must have cut the wires before breaking into the house, probably when they pulled the circuit breaker.

  “You sit still,” he told his sister. “I’m going to drive to the corner and call Wash Shipp.”

  She stared at him as if trying to recall something. Then she said, “He called you, the other day. Said for you to get in touch...but he didn’t say why....” Her voice trailed off.

  Again he went through the rain into a darkness studded by dazzling droplets lit by the street lamps, to reach the car. Even furious and worried as he was, he wondered if this shock and her ability to resist might be the very thing Lily had needed to bring her out of her twenty-year-long daze. And yet he had a bad feeling about the entire matter. Those were dangerous men, he felt. Too dangerous to meddle with.

  He backed into the empty street and headed toward the convenience store, chewing at his lower lip. He had marked those relatively valueless rebuilt guns he displayed in the house, etching his Social Security number in hidden places. He could identify all of them or any part of them, from barrel to grip strap.

  If, by some fluke, the police caught the men with their loot, he could nail them. If Lily could stand up to a trial, she could identify three of them. He intended to hang the bastards out to dry, no matter what it took to accomplish it.