Betsy rocked the baby back and forth and hushed her but Claire shoved her hands away and wailed in protest. Betsy tried sitting with her, standing with her, bouncing her. Nothing worked. She felt herself getting angry and knew it was time to put the child down and walk away. She laid her back down in the crib and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and counted to ten.
“Everything all right?”
She looked up to see her husband leaning against the doorframe. “No, not really.”
“I’ll take over.”
Betsy snorted in contempt, “Oh really? Since when?”
“Since right now. Since I saw you sitting there looking so tired.”
“Sure. Go for it.”
Sam walked over to the crib and picked up his little girl. His hands were bigger than the back of her head. “What’s the matter, baby girl? You cutting some teeth?” he said. “I know that’s no fun. When your daddy was a baby, grandpa would rub whiskey on his gums. Worked like a charm.”
“You put whiskey in my child’s mouth and I will personally shoot you, Samuel Clayton,” Betsy said.
Sam smiled and bounced Claire up and down in his arms. She stopped wailing and played with his face, sticking wet fingers in his mouth and talking in soft, high-pitched gurgles. “See that?” Sam said. “She’s a Clayton all right. One talk of whiskey and she’s happy as a clam.”
Betsy sighed and stood up from the rocking chair. “If you don’t mind, I’m gonna go lay down. Hopefully she stays quiet long enough for me to actually fall asleep.” She made it as far as the bedroom door when Claire threw back her head and started screaming again. Betsy whimpered and dropped her head in defeat. “Here. Give her back to me.”
“Nope. I’ve got a better idea. You go on and lay down. I’ll handle this.”
She looked at him skeptically. “You're serious?”
“Absolutely.” He carried Claire past her and said, “Come on, you. Daddy’s gonna show you something.” Sam pushed the front door open and walked out onto the porch, looking up at the glittering sky in the clear expanse beyond the mountain peaks. He bounced Claire against his chest as he hurried down the steps and went around the side of the house. “You want to see the ponies?” he said.
He walked over to the barn and Claire stared at his massive destrier. He patted the animal on the side and said, “Be nice now. Feel how soft he is.” He took her tiny fingers and stroked the animal’s fur. Claire laughed in wonder as she patted and pulled. Sam grabbed his saddle horn and in one swift movement swung himself up onto the animal’s back. He clicked his teeth and they backed out of the stall and started to walk.
Sam turned Claire around and sat her face forward in the saddle, keeping his arm around her small chest as they gently rocked side to side. She played with the destrier’s mane and cooed softly as the cool evening breeze blew through her golden hair. Sam looked up at the twin moons and said, “I wasn’t much older than your brother when we came here. I spent my early years on a freighter where my daddy worked in the furnace room. He hired on with the mining company and off we went. I’d never seen a skyline before. Couldn’t believe how big it was. Sometimes I’d just sit on the porch look up at it, watching it change from day to night.”
He picked Claire back up and she laid her head against his chest and grew still. “Guess I bored you back to sleep, huh?”
He kissed the top of her head and guided the destrier back to its stall. He kept Claire tight to his chest as he lowered himself down and headed for the house. He knew it wouldn’t always be so easy to make her content. Knew it wouldn’t always be so easy to keep her safe. But for right now, it was, and he took a deep breath of her fine, soft hair and locked the door behind him.
He put Claire down in her crib and checked the windows in her room. Locked. He shut her door and looked into his own bedroom. Betsy lay on top of the covers, sound asleep. He covered her up and walked around in the dark, inspecting the windows and the yard outside. All silent. All safe. Sam unholstered his Colt Defender and laid it on the nightstand next to his pillow. He stopped suddenly and lowered his head to listen.
Someone else was awake in the house.
He walked over to Jem’s door and pushed it open quietly, hearing the crickets singing through the open bedroom window. Dual moonlight filled the room up with pale blue. Jem’s eyes were clenched shut. A little too clenched. “What are you doing up so late?” Sam said.
“I couldn’t sleep cause you and Claire were outside.”
The boy’s pocketknife was laying on the nightstand next to him with the blade open, at the ready. “What’s that for?” Sam said.
“Nothing. I was just listening to make sure you were both okay. In case he came back.”
“Oh,” Sam said softly. He walked over to the nightstand and picked the knife up. “What were you gonna do with this? Whittle him to death?”
Jem grunted in protest, “You’re the one who told me anything could be a weapon.”
Sam nodded, “You’re right. So what’s the matter, you don’t think the old man has what it takes to protect the family anymore?”
“No, I didn’t say that. I just thought, you know, what if?”
“What if,” Sam whispered. “Let me tell you about what if. When I first hired on as a deputy sheriff I was greener than the grass in a rainforest. I didn’t know how to talk to anyone. I thought yelling at them was the only way to get them to listen to me. I was mean, because I thought it made me sound tough. But you know what it made me sound instead? Stupid.” He closed Jem’s knife and put it back on the nightstand, making sure it was out of the boy’s reach. “Anyways, Lyle says to me one day—”
“Who’s Lyle?”
“The old sheriff. So anyway, Lyle says to me one day, ‘Boy, you ain’t gonna last long around here yelling at folks like that. One day, you gonna need help and won’t nobody be around. Plenty a’ lawmen got their lives saved by townsfolk who jumped in. So always remember this here. Treat everybody you meet like they was a million bucks. And no matter what, always have a plan to kill `em.’”
Jem laughed sharply and Sam chuckled with him but told him to keep his voice down. “Old Lyle sure was a character. But I always remembered what he said and that, plus a little of your 'what if' is the reason I’m sitting here talking to you right now.”
Jem sat up in his bed. “What happened?”
“I was riding in one morning, getting the lay of the land like I do. Making sure nobody stole the town overnight, you know? The sun was just coming up and it made the whole valley sparkle like…like…I don’t know. Rubies, or something. Real peaceful. Then some woman comes running up on me, shouting, ‘Mister Clayton! Mister Clayton! Hal Bellows is killing his wife! She’s screaming for help!’ So I ride over there and go in real slow, right? Only an idiot rushes headfirst into uncertainty. I stop and listen, and I don’t hear a damn thing. It’s totally quiet.”
“Were they dead?” Jem whispered.
“Hush,” Sam said. “First off, if they was dead, you just ruined the story. Second, why you gotta always be so morbid?”
Jem shrugged and asked him to go on.
“So I go up to the front door, creeping up real quiet. It’s silent as a graveyard in the house. I look through the windows and don’t see nothing. Finally, I knock on the door and Hal Bellows opens it up.
"‘Morning, Sheriff. Everything all right?’
"I says, ‘I was about to ask you the same thing, Hal.’
"He gets all puzzled and taken aback then. ‘What do you mean?’
"I say, ‘I mean one of your neighbors told me you were having a knockdown fight with the missus.’”
“No she didn’t,” Jem said. “She said he was killing her.”
“Boy, you are the worst story-listener I ever met. Worse than your mother, even. How about I leave and you can tell it to yourself without me here to bother you?”
“I’m sorry! I’ll be quiet,” Jem said. He covered his mouth with both his hands and said, �
�Go on.”
Sam waited a moment to see if the boy was going to stay quiet. “So he tells me his wife has been sick in bed all morning with the flu. ‘I’ll bring her down here if you need me to, Sheriff, but she might throw up on your shoes,’ he says. Real slick. Not a hint of the shakes.
"‘No, that’s certainly not necessary,” I say. And for a moment, it’s just me standing there looking at him and him doing the same to me. Imagine what each one of us was thinking, but all the time we’re just smiling and nodding and meanwhile the gears of both are brains are grinding themselves to pieces.
So I was about to go. I figured the old lady who ran up on me was crazy, or maybe she heard Mrs. Bellows getting sick and thought it was something else. I took a step back to leave when this tiny little voice in the back of my head said, what if? Now, this whole time I’m talking to Hal, I can’t see his hands. They’re inside the doorway, up against the frame. I laid my hand on the grip of my pistol like I was resting it there and I said, ‘You know, Hal. I sure could use a drink.’
And that’s the first time I saw it in Hal’s face. He didn’t flinch, but he didn’t move either. It was like the smile he was wearing got stuck in place. ‘We’re all out of coffee, Sheriff,’ he says.
‘Water will do just fine. How about you let me in?’
He looked over his shoulder at the kitchen, then back at me, and everything about him changed. His shoulders slumped. His face sagged down and he looked like he was about to fall down. But he didn’t. He come back up and there was red in his eyes. He spat out something that didn’t make no sense, except the parts about his wife and a few curse words. That was when he pulled the double-barrel Winchester from around the side of the door to blow a hole in my chest.”
“But he didn’t, because you were too fast for him,” Jem said quickly.
“He almost did,” Sam said. “Almost. Except I was ready, you see? I had my plan and I had my 'what if,' and when old Hal whipped that shotgun around I already had my gun out.”
“So what happened next? Did you arrest him?”
“No,” Sam said.
“Did you buffalo his head with the butt of your pistol?”
“No,” Sam said. “I shot him.”
Jem laid back down and let out a deep breath. “I thought maybe you found some other way.”
Sam grunted and nodded. “Anyway, Mrs. Bellows body was in the kitchen. Turns out that crazy old lady was right. Hal had killed her.” He got up and stretched out his back, “I reckon it’s time for bed. If your mother asks, I told you a story about Wallop the Pony, all right?”
“All right,” Jem said. “Goodnight, pop.”
Sam said goodnight and went to leave, when he looked back at Jem’s open window. “I’ll sleep better if you close it and lock it, but it’s up to you.”
Jem threw the covers off and got up to go for the window. “Never hurts to wonder 'what if,' right?”
Chapter 10: And Have a Plan to Kill 'Em
Nell Baker was waiting by the Sheriff's door before it even opened. She was tapping her thick foot impatiently and looking like she'd accidently sipped sour milk when she saw the man riding up. "I was here at quarter of seven. You weren't here," she said. When there was no answer but a 'Good morning, Miss Baker,' she followed him through the door, talking non-stop. "My sister and I inherited our mother's house when she passed on, and we agreed to not sell anything unless the other person was present. Well, she went and gave a pair of antique severian earrings to her oldest daughter, and I want you to arrest her."
Phil Wallows heard Nell yelling from inside the sheriff's office as he walked up. He reached for the door and yanked his hand back as she ripped it open and came storming past. "Of all the lazy, no-good law this town has had, now we get stuck with the worst one. You ain't nothin' like your daddy was, I'll tell you that!" she hollered over her shoulder.
Wallows took off his floppy hat and stepped inside, smiling crookedly at the man sitting behind the desk. "Morning, Sheriff. I know you're kind of new to things around here…well, okay, fair enough. But you were away a long, long time. Anyway, the reason I come by today is to ask for your assistance with a theft of which I was the victimized party. Mr. Meadows who runs the roof repair business over yonder took a deposit from me to do work for which he has not yet completed."
He nodded several times as the other man spoke, "Yeah, I know he's sick. I heard all about it, but that ain't no excuse to not honor a contract, now I want the man charged with thievery." Wallows' face contorted in confusion, "When Walt Junger was in this office, it wouldn't have even been a discussion. He understood the value of a contract, sir." Wallows threw the sheriff's door open and glared out at the half-dozen people gathered on the porch and steps, waiting for their turn to go inside. "I hope none of you are looking for any kind of satisfaction in here. This is what happens when you hire an outsider!"
Wallows shouldered his way past the rest of them to get down the steps, and they all stood there looking at one another when the Sheriff's voice called out, "Send in the next unhappy customer!"
***
Two rusted Colt Defenders inside a long, rectangular glass shadow box, hung on the sheriff's wall. There were twelve corroded bullets set up around the guns like small soldiers standing guard. The guns were crossed at the barrels just beneath an ancient-looking gunbelt. The rot had been scraped off and the leather rubbed down and cleaned, but it was never oiled. It looks better like this, he thought.
On either side of the guns were two small portraits. A handsome, serious-looking man with a mustache at one end and a young, pretty woman in a Sunday dress on the other. Jem Clayton put his hand against the wall and leaned forward to study the woman's face. He wondered if the only reason he remembered what she looked like was because of that portrait. He couldn't picture her laughing or crying or looking any other way except she did in this one instant that some photographer had captured for all time.
The other one was easy. Jem saw that man at every turn. Every time he sat down at the desk in the Sheriff's Office, it was like he had to excuse the ghost of Sam Clayton out of the chair first. Sam's boots creaking on the floorboards. Sam in the smell of the cell door's iron bars and the cedar-lined walls. Sam sitting on the desk looking down at him saying, "Don't you look fancy? I guess today was dress-up day?"
He jumped out of the chair and went for the door, shaking his arms and legs like he was trying to shrug off imaginary cobwebs and dust. The settlement's security gate beeped and the electricity field shimmered in the harsh noon sun before deactivating. Fred Walters came out of the gatehouse holding his clipboard and waved a two-destrier wagon inside. "Come right to me," he said, waving them in. "All right, stop."
When Walters walked he hunched over at the waist, but he glared up at the driver and said, "What brings you back to Seneca 6?"
The driver laid his steering straps across his waist and said, "I come to see about work and to attend to some affairs."
"It says you ain't got no passengers?"
"No, sir."
"Why you got this big ol' wagon then?"
The driver lifted his hat and swept his sweaty hair back, then smeared down his thick mustache with his wet fingers. "I won it in a bet and was going to see if I could sell it. Ain't got no use for a wagon, but it's mine all the same."
Fred Walters frowned at the closed passenger door and then looked back at where Jem stood on the Sheriff's Office porch. Jem propped his foot up on the railing and nodded silently at the old man. Walters nodded back and said, "Open her up."
"If you say so." The driver jumped down and went around the side of the wagon. He opened up the side door and the rear hatch, showing that they were empty. "You satisfied?"
"So I am," Fred Walters said. He jotted a note down on his clipboard and said, "Carry on, Mr. Doolin."
The driver got back up into the wagon's forward carry and snapped the reins, going slow as he passed where Jem stood. "How you doing this morning, Sheriff?" he called out.<
br />
"I'm doing all right. Yourself?"
"Pretty good so far," Doolin said. "You look a little younger and more fit than that last time I was here."
"That's probably not the only thing different about me," Jem said.
"Is that right?" Doolin said. He smiled quickly and turned back to check the road, "You all certainly seem a bit less friendly than the last time, I'll give you that."
"We're plenty friendly," Jem said. "Normally."
"I'm gonna go down here to the bank if that's all right with you. You wanna come watch me to make sure I behave?"
Jem stepped forward to respond when he saw something from the corner of his eye that stopped him. A dirty-looking little boy looked up at him from the street, staring up at the porch while he smeared his mouth all over a honey-stick. "Hi, lawman," the boy said.
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