The Outsider

by Penelope Williamson

"How did he die, Rachel?" Cain asked, ruthless.

  "He hanged himself in our father's barn with a halter rope."

  He didn't move or make a sound, but she could feel something change in him. She looked up, into his eyes.

  "What?" she cried. "What is it?"

  He bent over and took her face in his hands, his thumbs lightly tracing the bones in her cheeks. "Before your brothers started in on walloping the bejesus out of me, I told them I would marry you."

  "Oh," she said. She hadn't imagined he would do such a thing, never such a thing. They had both been driven by hunger, but she thought the caring had all been on her side. Tears welled in her eyes. She covered his hand with hers, holding it in place, so that she could turn her head and press her lips into his palm.

  "Be my wife, Rachel."

  She shook her head and the tears splattered. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to hold them back, hold them back. She hated tears, they made her feel weak and frightened, and she knew she had to be strong. Stronger than she'd ever had to be in her life.

  "I love you, Johnny Cain. I will always love you. But a Plain woman must marry Plain, or she will be lost, shunned forever by her friends and family. Even the promise of life beyond death is denied to her. She will be lost."

  He still had her face cupped in his hands. He leaned closer now and brushed his mouth across hers, almost with reverence. He started to pull away but she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him, and she laid her head on his shoulder, and he rested his chin on her head. It was awkward this way, with her half kneeling and him almost out of the chair, but neither of them noticed it.

  She didn't know how long they stayed that way. It was a commotion in the yard that pulled them apart. A commotion so late at night. Wagon wheels rattling over the corduroy bridge, MacDuff barking, and Benjo shouting a name—Mose.

  Mose Weaver, who was supposed to be up on the mountain with their sheep.

  She and Cain hurried out into the yard, snatching up lanterns on their way. Only something dire could have driven Mose to abandon the woollies.

  Mose hauled sharply on the reins, and the light buck-board he was driving slewed to a stop, nearly running over Benjo and raising a whirlwind of dust. At first Rachel thought he was alone, but then she realized someone was lying hurt in the wagon bed. Even in the muted glint of the coal oil light she could see the red wash of blood on brown broadfalls. And a young, bony face beneath a thatch of leaf brown hair.

  She hooked her lantern over the yard pump handle and ran toward the buckboard. "Levi! Oh, merciful heavens, Levi. What have you done?"

  The boy struggled to sit up. "Aw, I'm all right, our Rachel. Don't fuss."

  "He shot himself in the leg," Mose said. "It's not so bad anymore, now that he's quit bleeding. I made a tourniquet with some rope and a stick. It worked slick," he added, pride deepening his voice just a bit.

  His face was pale and his grip on the reins shook a little, but his words as he told what had happened were calm enough. Levi, doing the camp tending, had driven up that afternoon. He'd come across that coyote with the burn leg, the one who'd been feeding regularly off their sheep, along with her pups. Levi had grabbed for his rifle and somehow the thing had gone off before he could aim it and he'd shot himself in the thigh instead.

  "I'm driving him directly to Doc Henry, but someone's got to get back up there pronto to those sheep," Mose said. "As it is, we're going to have woollies scattered from hell to breakfast come morning. And then there's that murdering coyote." His gaze shifted over to Cain, his eyes widening slightly as he took in the man's appearance. "I was wondering if you could, I mean, it's going to take a dead shot to get that coyote. She's wily and man-wise."

  Benjo jerked hard, and a harsh choking erupted from deep in his throat. He ran off, bumping against the outsider as he passed him. He ran so hard his hat flew off, but he left it lying there in the dust.

  Rachel, shivering, gripped her elbows. Benjo's fear of coyotes might be strong, but it wasn't misplaced. Even leaving now, the soonest anyone could get there, riding under night conditions, would be dawn. In the murky light and purple shadows of dawn, coyotes were at their most dangerous to sheep. Whole herds had been known to be savaged by coyotes at dawn.

  "Soon as I drop this clumsy Schussel off at Doc's," Mose said, with a nod and a wink for Levi, "this Schussel who hasn't figured out yet which end of a rifle the bullet comes out of, then I'll hurry on back to the woollies."

  Rachel summoned up a smile for Levi's sake, who would surely blame himself for whatever disasters befell their sheep on this night. "In the meantime Mr. Cain'll be on his way," she said, "so don't you boys worry none."

  Tugging at the reins, Mose began to turn the buckboard around. He tipped his hat at Rachel and flashed a sudden, cocky grin that reminded her strangely of Johnny Cain.

  "And don't you go worrying too much about your Levi. He missed the real vital parts by a good six inches."

  Rachel stepped back and watched young Mose drive out of the yard. As they crossed back over the bridge she thought Levi might have raised his hand to her, and so she waved back. Maybe it was only the drama of the moment, but both boys had seemed different somehow. Especially Mose. There was a calm maturity about him that Rachel had never seen before. She thought how Noah would be proud of his son, and she was glad for him.

  The wind whipped through the yard, tattering the cloud of dust stirred up by the wagon. Even without coyotes on the prowl, the sheep would be restless on a night like this. A night like this, they could stampede their woolly-headed selves over a cliff.

  She felt the outsider come up close beside her. "When I first saw them," she said, "when I first saw Levi lying all bloody like that in the wagon, I thought it was the Hunters who had done it. Another persecution for us to endure."

  "If you ask me, y'all could give the Hunter outfit lessons in persecution."

  "Don't, Johnny," she said, but in sadness, not anger.

  "Before I leave, I want you to tell me what they will do to you."

  She turned and started back to the house, walking with fast sure strides. "I'll make you up some sardine sandwiches to eat on the trail. It's lucky there's a full moon rising. You'd never be able to ride all the way up there in the dead of night otherwise."

  He gripped her arms and swung her around to face him. "The coyotes can eat every damned sheep in Montana. I ain't leaving here until I know—"

  She slipped gently out of his grasp. She didn't want him to feel how cold she was. She was shaking with it, she was feeling so cold. "To lie unwed with a man is a grave sin," she said, all calm and matter-of-fact, "but it can be forgiven."

  "What are you going to have to do in order to be forgiven?"

  "I will go on my knees before the church and confess my sin with you. I will beg to be absolved, and then I will vow never to sin in that way again and it will never more be spoken of by any of us."

  "And?"

  The cold, crushing sensation sharpened in her chest. "And you will leave here, never to return."

  He stood there, saying nothing, his eyes and face a black void like the darkness beyond the lantern light. There wasn't anything about him to tell her he was hurting. But she knew him, she was bone of his bones now, flesh of his flesh. She wanted to hold him, hold him tight against the pain, but she didn't dare.

  "Well, then, Mrs. Yoder," he said, the words clipped, hard. "Before I do leave, never to return, I suppose I could go kill that coyote for you. You can call it a parting gift."

  The wind blew hard through the treetops, rattling the leaves and branches. The wind shrilled so loud it sounded like a coyote's howl. Benjo shivered, wishing he had his coat and hat. Even though it was another hot night, the wind made it sound cold.

  He was scared, was what he was, scared spitless and pissless. He'd already thrown up twice, so he supposed you could say he was scared gutless too. He opened his mouth to laugh at the silly thought, but a sob squeaked out instead.


  He had ridden their old draft mare a couple of miles down the road, concealing himself and the horse in the hedge of willows and cottonwoods along the creek. He was about a hundred yards from where the outsider would be turning off the road, taking the track that led into the foothills.

  Benjo had a good-sized rock in the pocket of his sling, and the cords gripped tight in his hand. He'd never tried to bean a person before. The biggest thing he'd ever shot at was a beaver, and all he'd succeeded in doing was making that ol' beaver mad. She'd slapped her tail so hard in the creek, Benjo thought they'd probably felt the splash all the way over to Miawa City.

  And there had been that horse he'd hit on the rump, the day of the stampede. That stock inspector's horse. 'Course the stock inspector was stone dead now, buried with his six-shooter still clutched in his hand. He'd thought himself pretty darn quick, but he hadn't been as quick as Johnny Cain.

  "You can come on out, boy."

  Benjo's heart thrust like a fist against his chest, so hard he was nearly knocked from the saddle. Judas Iscariot! How had he done that, how had Johnny Cain gotten down the road on horseback without making a sound? And how had he known Benjo would be lying here in ambush? The man was uncanny; he could see you coming even before the thought entered your own head to move.

  He also acted like he had all night to wait for Benjo to emerge from his hiding place. Benjo let the rock drop out of the pocket of his sling, and he tucked the sling out of sight before he nudged the mare out from behind the trees.

  He was glad it was dark, but it probably wasn't dark enough to keep the outsider from seeing on his face exactly what he'd been up to. He would have given anything to be able to talk without stammering, although he doubted the words existed that would get him out of this trouble.

  "I reckon," the outsider said, "you thought I could use some expert advice on how to chouse down a band of wandering woollies after they've been left alone to themselves for most of a day and a night."

  The breath came whistling out of Benjo's tight throat in a mouselike squeak. "Yessir," he said. He wasn't sure what the outsider was about, but he wasn't behaving like he was angry. But then he had been smiling and talking all polite to that stock inspector right before he smashed a sarsaparilla bottle in the man's face.

  "So, does you ma know about your good deed?" Cain said, still as casual as you please.

  "I wr-wrote it d-d-down fuh... fuh... fuh..." For her. He'd sort of written it down. He'd scrawled gone with Cain in charcoal on the draft mare's stall door. And he'd shut poor MacDuff up in the lambing sheds to keep him from following.

  The outsider laid his reins against his horse's neck, turning her head, and setting her back along the road, and Benjo realized with shock and a frisson of excitement that the man expected Benjo to follow him.

  The outsider didn't say anything as they turned off the road and onto the sheep trail, climbing already, and there were hours left of climbing ahead. It was strange to ride this trail at night, Benjo thought, when you couldn't see much of where you were going, or where you'd been. They would never have been able to do it at all without the brilliant moon that was riding the sky. The moon was so big and white you could see the pocks and ridges in it.

  The outsider was revealed to him in quick pulses as they rode in and out of tree shadows and blue-shot moonlit patches. As his da would've said, Johnny Cain's face "looked like he'd crawled through a bob-wire fence to fight a bobcat in a briar patch."

  Benjo would have thought picking a fight with a man like the outsider would have been like kicking at that bobcat. But he had just stood there and taken it. The memory of the fight had left Benjo with a shaky, betrayed feeling inside, as if Johnny Cain had somehow failed to deliver on a promise he had made.

  And his uncles, who all of his life had taught Benjo to behave in one way, the Plain way—they had behaved worse than any outsiders he'd ever seen, except maybe for that stock inspector.

  He sure enough had never seen his uncles that mad, not even his uncle Samuel, who had a temper on him. Benjo wasn't sure what had gotten them all so riled, except they thought the outsider had done something nasty to his mem. He knew what that nasty something was, only he didn't quite understand why it was nasty. It was only what Ezekiel the ram did to the ewes every fall when he covered them. As far as Benjo had always been able to tell, the ewes liked what Ezekiel did.

  He didn't understand any of it, and just thinking about it had him feeling so full up inside that his eyes got all itchy. The words burst out of him before he even knew they were in his mouth. He didn't even stutter. "You just stood there. You just stood there and let them hit you."

  Johnny Cain cocked his gaze around to him. "You would have had me shoot them?"

  "You could've f-fought back. Only a cuh—cuh—coward wuh... wuh..." Wouldn't fight back.

  "That don't sound much like a Plain boy talkin'."

  "B-but you're not Plain."

  He felt more than saw the outsider's shrug. "I would never hurt anyone she loved."

  Benjo contemplated that for a while, and he found it eased those sick feelings of disappointment some.

  They rode into a spell of silence after that. The wind still blew strong, thick with the summer smells of hot dirt and sun-ripened grass and yellow jack pines. With the way shreds of cloud were blowing across the moon, it looked as if the moon were skimming like a skipping stone across the sky.

  "It's going to be a long night," the outsider said from out of the dark beside him, "and we got some hard riding ahead of us. Why don't we pass some of the time by you telling me how you came to be particular friends with a coyote?"

  His words caught Benjo as if he'd flicked him with a whip. The boy jerked so hard on the reins, even the old draft mare shied. He wondered if he would have to answer; the outsider wasn't like Mem for making a fellow spill his guts. Yet he found he wanted those guts spilled. The dread and fear and guilt—most of all, the guilt—had been churning around inside his belly for so long, it would be a relief to spew it all out.

  Even choking and stammering over almost every word, he was able to tell the outsider everything. He told about the Sharp's rifle in the barn and how in the end he'd lacked the courage to use it. How instead he'd slid the ramp he'd made down into that pit and set her and her pups free. Free to feed off the poor helpless woollies.

  All the while he was telling his story, he kept slanting looks at the outsider. He saw nothing beyond mild interest on the man's face, but he felt something was going on inside Johnny Cain. There was a tautness, a tension inside of him that was a vibrating hum in the air, like blowing on a piece of river grass.

  "I g-guess I shouldn't've d-done it, huh?" Benjo said when he was finally done with his long tale. "I g-guess I should've left her to d-die. Or used the Sh-Sharp's on her."

  The breath eased out of the outsider in an odd sigh. He sounded almost sad. "You weren't ever going to change her nature, Benjo."

  Something inside Benjo twisted hard. "I d-don't w-want you to kuh... kuh... kuh..." Kill her.

  "Somebody's got to do it. If it can't be me, then it's got to be you. Or you can just let her and her pups go on killing your lambs until there's none left, and you and your mem go hungry yourselves next winter. I'll leave it up to you to decide which it will be."

  Benjo slowly nodded his head. He thought he might have to cry, that he might have to start bawling like a big baby, but he swallowed hard a few times. Only a few tears trickled out the corners of his eyes, and he surreptitiously wiped those away with his sleeve.

  He was surprised to realize the trail ahead of them had been getting lighter. They were nearly at the sheep camp, and no sooner did he have that thought than the wind obliged by quieting down enough for them to hear the silver tinkle of the wether's bell. Which meant at least some of the herd were still where Mose Weaver had left them.

  The sky had bled to the color of birch bark when they rode into the clearing. Benjo let out a relieved breath to see sheep. They w
ere nervous sheep, though, bleating and bunching and milling in the wind-riffled grass. His eye caught the flap of a buzzard's wing.

  And then he saw the bodies of the lambs.

  There were four of them. Mangled piles of blood-soaked wool and white bones. As they got closer to the carcasses, he heard a mewling sound, and he realized one of the lambs was still alive, just barely. Her throat had been chewed open.

  Johnny Cain knelt beside her, took the knife out of his boot sheath, and finished her off.

  Benjo made himself watch, he made himself look at every one of the slaughtered lambs. He felt shivery cold and strangely light-headed. His chest ached with a longing—no, a need, to make things right.

  He ran his tongue over his cracked lips. "I wuh—wuh— wuh!" He sucked in a deep breath, swallowed. "I want you to kill her."

  Johnny Cain said nothing, but then there was nothing to say. He'd left the choice up to Benjo, and Benjo had made it.

  They made a bone pile some distance from the camp. Then they walked the sheep and found there were about two dozen missing. Mose had shut his collie up in the sheepwagon so that it wouldn't try to follow him down the mountain. They let the dog loose now, to help them search for the nomadic sheep.

  They never found them, although they spent the whole day looking.

  Benjo came awake in that quiet time just before dawn when the wind dies and the whole earth seems to be waiting breathless for the sun's arrival. He listened, ears straining, afraid it was a coyote's howl that had awakened him. He heard a bird rustling in the tree overhead, but nothing more. Neither he nor Cain had chosen to sleep inside the sheepwagon, but as his eyes got used to the night, he saw that the outsider's bedroll was empty.

  Benjo found him sitting by the rock cairn, his rifle cradled in his arms. He didn't need to ask the man what he was doing. It would be dawn soon.

  Benjo's legs suddenly seemed to turn to cornmeal mush. He sat down next to the outsider, Indian fashion. Now that the moment had come, he'd lost some of the day's assuredness. His heart felt like it was clubbing his chest, and he kept having to blink back tears.