Betsy carried her daughter into the kitchen and opened the ice chest with one hand, using her hip to prop the door open while she grabbed the bottle. Claire saw the bottle and grabbed for it, clawing at her mother’s hand in the desperate way only a small child can manage.
“Here you go, sweetie pie,” Betsy whispered. “Here you go.” She felt Claire’s rump and realized her diaper cloth was full. Both of Seneca’s moons were still overhead, casting everything in pale blue light, but the sun was coming. One could tell from the way the valley around them began to shimmer with amber hues that reflected the red clay of the wasteland surrounding the settlement. Claire laid her daughter down and unpinned her diaper, smiling down at the baby as she pressed the bottle to her lips and drank greedily.
Betsy found her husband sitting on the porch, staring at the meadow. His rifle was laid across his lap and he had both his guns on. Sam looked up at her and said, “What are you doing up?”
“I needed help with the baby and didn’t know where you were,” she said.
“I’m normally gone by this time anyway.”
“When you were working, you mean.”
“Everybody’s entitled to some time off now and again, Betsy. Tom’s got things well in hand.”
Betsy patted Claire on the back and tried to coax a burp out of her. “Most people take time off to do things besides sulk around the house, Samuel Clayton. All you’ve done for two weeks is sit on my front porch collecting dust. You ain’t shaved in so long you look like a grizzly bear.”
Sam scratched the length of hair on his neck and said, “I keep meaning to. It itches like hell.”
“Why don’t you go wake Jem up and take him fishing? Stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself and go do something with your boy for once.”
He looked up at her in the early dawn light, the way the sun played with the loose curls of her hair and lit their tips aglow. “All right, honey. I will. Just give me a little while.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to go lay her down and get a little more sleep if I can. You two have fun.”
“We will,” he said. Sam looked back to watch his wife go through the door and returned to the place in the meadow he’d been watching. That would be the place Whiskey Pete would emerge, Sam reckoned. That was the place he’d hunker down and try to spy on them, waiting for a second bite at the apple.
Wouldn’t be none this time, Sam thought. He raised his rifle and looked down the sites, seeing nothing but swaying grass and yellow dirt.
I’ll wake Jem up in a little while, he thought.
But he never did.
***
He’d been sitting at the wheel for over an hour. So long that the sparks looked like fiery rain spitting against his chest in the setting sun. Sam took his foot off the pedal and inspected the blade in the dim light, then lightly bounced the edge of the blade across the surface of his thumbnail. “Sum bitch!” he shouted, ripping his hand away and shaking it. The knife bit him too deep, and Sam stuck his thumb in his mouth, tasting blood.
His little boy came up through the meadow and said, “You hurt yourself?”
“Only by being stupid,” Sam grimaced. “Look at this.”
Jem peered down at the injury and said, “Guess the knife’s pretty sharp.”
“You ain’t kidding.”
“Can I see it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“All right.”
Sam looked back at the boy and said, “Here. Come over near me. This knife is not like any other knife you’ve ever held before, so pay special attention and be extra careful.”
Jem rolled his eyes, “Dad, I use knives all the time.”
“That’s true,” Sam said. “You used fruit knives and steak knives. Your little pocket knife sure came in handy the other week, didn’t it?”
Jem nodded and patted his pocket. The knife hadn’t left his side since that day in the meadow.
“All those have their purpose, see, and some can be used for more than one. In the right hands, anything can be dangerous, I suppose.”
“Even a piece of string?” Jem said.
“All right, maybe not everything. Lots of things, though. A pen, a pencil, a wheel spoke, any number of regular items can be disastrous if someone has it in their mind to hurt you with it. I once heard of a prisoner picked his handcuffs with a woman’s hairclip and used it to slit a deputy’s throat.”
“Yuck!”
“That’s right. I think the lesson there is that you can’t ever assume you’re safe just because someone doesn’t have a gun or a knife. On the flip side, don’t ever feel like you’re defenseless because there’s weapons around you everywhere if you know where to look.”
“Okay.”
Sam took Jem’s hand and wrapped it around the handle of his knife. He gave the boy a minute to feel the way the hickory walnut curved in the palm of his hand, keeping the blade’s tip angled forward, ready to strike. “This here knife just has one purpose. It was created by a man named Bo Randall from Fort Scagel. Those boys knew the value of a good knife, I assure you.”
Jem looked at the knife and saw the man’s name etched across the side of the blade.
“Fort Scagel was an outpost for the mining companies about twenty years back. It was overrun by the Beothuk and all their supplies were cut off. The men inside ran out of ammunition, and it was just a matter of time before the savages came busting through the doors. Old Bo, he gathered up all of the men and had them collect any piece of scrap metal he could find. They used everything from iron bedframes to aluminum panels on the transports. In a few days, Bo made every sort of knife, spear, sword and axe you can think of. Crude things, really. Just made for one purpose.” Sam lowered his voice and said, “Only a few men made it out of Fort Scagel alive. Bo was one of them, and he kept making knives up until the day he died.”
Sam tapped the hilt of the knife with the tip of his finger, “This right here’s a special guard to keep your hand from slipping up over the blade. An up close knife fight is slipperier than a rattlesnake in a bucket of lard, so you need that to keep from slicing off your own fingers. See how the steel is curved? It goes right through a man like he was made of hot pudding and opens him up from stem to sternum. This knife has no other reason for being except for one purpose.”
“To kill him,” Jem said solemnly. His eyes flashed as he thrust the blade forward.
Sam watched the little boy and his heart broke. He gently took the knife from Jem’s hands and set it aside, suddenly regretting the entire conversation. “No, not to kill,” he said. "To protect yourself if someone's trying to kill you, or somebody you love." He picked Jem up and set him on his knee, wrapping his arms around him. “Pretty soon, you’ll be too big to sit on my knee like this.”
“Can you sharpen my knife?” Jem said.
“You mean that little toothpick you carry around? Here, let me see it.”
Jem dropped the knife into his father’s hand and said, “Did you catch Whiskey Pete yet?”
Sam pumped the pedal until the wheel began to turn and said, “No. He’s gone. I’ve got a warrant out for him some of the businesses in town even put up a reward, though.”
“And still nothing?”
“Nope.”
“Sum bitch.”
The wheel stopped suddenly and Sam turned to look at his son. “What did you say?”
Jem shrugged silently. Sam shook his head and said, “Boy, you talk like that in front of your mother and she’ll break half the spoons in the kitchen across your backside. She’ll save the other half for me.”
Jem leaned forward and whispered, “Sometimes she says bad words too.”
Sam smiled, “That won’t matter even a little bit.”
***
Royce Halladay made his way across the dark meadow, running his hands along the tall stalks of wheat grass. Loud voices carried up from the property below, and in the dim light of the Clayton’s porch, he could make out one man sitting
on a destrier and the other perched on the front steps. Sam Clayton jabbed his finger at his deputy and said, “I didn’t ask if you wanted to go check, Tom. I told you to.”
“We did, Sam! Every bar, every night now for the past two weeks. It’s got so that everybody knows we’re coming and they make jokes about it the second we walk in. If Whiskey Pete were in town, they’d hogtie him up and hold him for us, just so we’d stop sticking our noses into their business!”
Betsy Clayton opened the door behind her husband and said, “Both of you need to take this conversation down off my porch. My baby’s finally asleep and if you wake her up, I’ll be madder than hornets.”
Tom Masters tipped his hat and said, “I’m sorry, Betsy. I didn’t mean to holler, darlin'.”
She turned to her husband and said, “At least some people around here know how to act like gentlemen.”
Sam opened his mouth to respond, but Betsy cocked an eyebrow at him that made him think otherwise. “We’re done,” he said. Sam looked back at Tom and sighed, “What about the teletypes? Is somebody checking to see if he popped up yet?”
“Tilt Junger checks them the second they come in, even the ones from the PNDA for all the surrounding systems. I think it’s time to consider that he’s gone, Sam. If I was him, I’d have hot-stepped it off this rock and never looked back. He knows what’s waitin' for him if he does.”
“What about his kin here? They might be putting him up.”
“I searched every single one of their houses personally. They opened the front door for me the second I showed up. They hate that bastard more than we do.”
Sam smacked the side of the porch with his fist and clenched his eyes shut in frustration. “I’ve been sitting around here long enough. Betsy can handle it. I’ll be back to work tomorrow and we’ll start looking. For real this time. My way.”
Tom Masters sighed and said, “Okay, Sheriff. See you then.” The deputy turned his destrier around and headed up the trail, nodding at Halladay as he passed. “Evening, Doctor.”
“Hello, Tom,” Halladay said. He looked up at Sam, sitting on the porch and said, “My, my, what a pleasant evening for a stroll. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?”
Sam folded his fingers in front of his face and stared into the distance. He realized Halladay had said something to him and was waiting for an answer. “Yeah. Whatever you say, doc.”
The doctor came up the steps and sat down beside Sam. He pulled out a thin cigarette from a metal case inside his coat and offered Sam one, but Sam shook his head and pulled out a flask from inside of his. “Never did like to mix the taste of tobacco and whiskey. Makes me think I’m drinking liquor out of an ashtray. You want some?”
“After that poetic analogy I think I must decline, but go right ahead.” Halladay lit his cigarette and took a deep drag, then said, “I admired the way you reminded your subordinate of his place. I never could tolerate uppity underlings in my own office.”
“You work alone, Doc,” Sam said.
“Completely beside the point, sir. If I had any subordinates, I would strive to demean them with such complete commitment as you demonstrated tonight. What is the point of having them if you cannot abuse them, I say.”
Sam chuckled and said, “I didn’t abuse Tom. He can take it. He’s worked with me long enough to know when I’m just blowing off steam.”
“Of course he does,” Halladay said.
“What brings you out here this time of night, Doc?”
“My wife sent me.”
“Why?”
“To check on you. She said you’re making Betsy miserable with all your skulking around and told me to come check on you as your doctor and as your friend.”
Sam shook his head, “These women, they sure are busybodies, ain’t they?”
“Amen to that, sir. Amen to that.”
“Well, you can tell her not to worry. I’m going back to work tomorrow and won’t be…what was it? Sulking?”
“Skulking. Although now that you mention it, that is what she probably meant.”
“Anyway, tell her I’m going back to work tomorrow so I won’t be bothering anybody anymore.”
“Excellent,” Halladay said. He took a long drag and blew the smoke up into the air so that it stung his eyes, “To start searching anew for the wily Mr. Phillips, correct? But this time, for real, as you said. It’s about time we had someone push his weight around here and frighten the townspeople into giving up what they know. Nothing like a little fear and bullying to get the locals in line.”
Sam swished the whiskey around his mouth and said, “Now, you know I’m not like that.”
Halladay nodded and said, “Do you remember when Erasamus Willow’s wife died?”
Sam nodded and drank again.
“Now, bear in mind that as the funeral director, Erasamus has seen more death than anyone in the settlement. He has stuck his hands inside of more dead bodies and molded the mask of decomposition back into a thing of beauty more times than I could count. Mrs. Willow had been sick for years when she finally passed, but Erasamus did such a fine job on her that she looked like an eighteen year old beauty queen lying within the confines of that casket.”
“I remember,” Sam said. “That always did make the hair stand up on the back of my neck, him wanting to work on his own wife like that.”
Halladay shrugged, “Regardless, that is a man who possesses a keep familiarity with death. On the day after his wife’s funeral, I visited the Willows and saw young Anna standing on the front porch. The child was rocking back and forth violently, holding herself tight with both arms. There was an enormous column of smoke coming up from the back of the house, and as I ran around the side, I saw Erasamus standing over a massive fire. He was chopping his own furniture to pieces and tossing it into the flames.
‘What in the world are you doing, Erasamus?’ I asked him.
‘Burning up the past,’ he told me.
He took a hatchet to his bedframe and started to hack up the headboard when I ran over to him and snatched the hatchet out of his hands. He tried to fight me, but I managed to knock him down and I said, ‘Erasamus Willow! When little Anna was first learning to walk and she fell down, did she cry immediately or did she look at you and your wife first?’
And he looked up at me in complete confusion and said, ‘I reckon she looked at us first.’
‘Why is that, do you think?’
‘To see what we would do.’
I held out my hand to him and helped him to his feet. ‘She looked at you because she was using your reaction to determine how badly she’d been hurt.’ I handed him back his axe and said, ‘And she still is, you damn fool.’” Halladay stubbed out his cigarette on the porch step and said, “Well, time for me to be getting back to the missus. I’ll tell her what you said, minus the part about being a busybody. Goodnight, Sam.”
Sam watched his friend walk down the steps and into the meadow. “Goodnight, Doc,” he said. He went to take another sip but stopped and looked at the bottle for a moment. He walked over to the edge of the porch and dumped the rest of his liquor into the dirt, then screwed the cap back on and went inside.
Chapter 7: Men in Masks
They put her in a cage. A hollowed out wagon with barred windows and no seats. Filthy, bug-infested straw littered the bare floorboards. Ruth’s voice was nothing but a bloody scratch on the inside of her throat, worn out from shrieking at the sight of Willard Davis’s body flopping violently on the ground as the savage sliced through his forehead. Willard lived throughout the ordeal, even as the Beothuk grabbed the last handful of loose skin and ripped it free then held it up in the air like some kind of trophy. Willard screamed until finally one of the other natives walked over and put a bullet through his forehead.
Ruth wished she could cut the image out of her eyes. It was like they’d become camera lenses and stayed open too long gawking at the sight of Willard’s agony until it was burned into them like photographs. She wrapped her hands around the
rusted bars covering the wagon’s windows and looked out at the natives on destriers surrounding them. All of the women were packed inside of the caged wagon with her. Elizabeth Hall had vomited all over her shirt and the stench made Ruth’s eyes water.
She tried to see what had happened to the men from their church but could not see anything past the bare-chested riders. They must be alive, she thought grimly. I haven’t heard any more screaming.
Elizabeth shoved Ruth out of the way and pressed her face against the iron bars, “Let us out!” She yanked and pulled on the bars feverishly but it did little more than knock the rust off the bars until specks of it glittered in the sunlight.
Magnificent Guns of Seneca 6 Page 5