Ransacker

by Emmy Laybourne

  * * *

  A SHRIEKING PAIN in Sissel’s shoulder woke her, and she struggled to draw a breath. Her face was pressed into the shirtfront of a cold, heavy mass of man. She knew it must be Baker.

  There was such tremendous weight pressing down on her chest she had to breathe shallowly. Her vision was filled with utter blackness and she heard nothing, not even her own thin breathing.

  Her lips and nostrils and face were covered in a fine, choking grit. It made her cough, and the movement shot her whole body through with pain. Her shoulder and arm were crushed. The way she lay, her bound hands were wrenched to the side, under Baker’s weight and the weight of the stone.

  She fought not to black out again, but she could not hold out against the pain.

  * * *

  THE MINER TO her left loaded a chunk of granite into Hanne’s arms, which were chalky white with rock dust except in patches where she was scraped and bleeding. There was pity in his eyes. His name, someone had said, was Mario. An Italian, come to be a miner in Montana. Now helping them on a fool’s mission, and without complaint.

  Hanne gasped. Her body jerked as if hit by lightning. Sissel couldn’t breathe. Sissel’s shoulder was broken. Sissel was awake, under the body of a dead man.

  “She’s alive!” Hanne cried.

  She dropped the rock in her hands and pushed her way through the chain of men.

  “Move!” she cried. “She’s alive!”

  * * *

  SISSEL BLINKED AWAKE, tried to remain still. She took small sips of air, keeping her lips closed to filter the grit. She mustn’t cough.

  Her heart was beating like mad. She wanted a drink of water. She wanted to be out from under Baker’s dead body. She wanted to draw in a deep breath, and it was all folly.

  Sissel knew she was bound to die there in the mountain.

  * * *

  HANNE MOVED PAST the miners, their candlelit hats showing her a space that grew narrower and narrower the farther they got into the cave.

  She climbed over bigger rocks they had been unable to clear out, scraped her leg on a jagged edge of sandstone. She came to McKray, wearily pulling at the rocks, standing near Knut, who was nearly wedged in. Their hands and feet were bloody. There was a body caught up with the rocks. They were trying to free it.

  Hanne pressed her hands to the mass of rocks to Knut’s left.

  “Here, here, here,” Hanne said. She patted the rocks. “She’s here.”

  “Come, boys,” McKray shouted. “She’s close! All hands up here.”

  Hanne dug furiously at the rocks. Her bleeding palms scraped against the rough rock, but she hardly felt them. Her fingernails tore away.

  Sissel was panicking. Gasping for breath. Near. So near.

  * * *

  BAKER’S BODY MOVED. Like he was pressing down, trying to get up. Was he not dead? Was he now going to die on top of her?

  She was scared. She was so terribly scared in the dark. She let herself weep.

  Then, miraculously, some of the weight was eased. She could take a breath. Baker’s body slid, just an inch, then it was pulled off her.

  She screamed with the pain of it, but could not hear her voice. Light shone on her. So bright she had to squint. She could not bring her arms up to shield her face. She had to shut her eyes to that light.

  Was this death?

  Then a small shadow fell over her face.

  It was a hand. The shadow of a hand.

  Sissel opened her eyes and saw there, crouched above her, Hanne, holding a lamp and speaking to her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Dr. Buell had told them not to move her, not an inch. Once they’d pulled the body of the man off, they saw Sissel’s hands were bound, and wrenched violently to the side of her body. Her left arm lay at an angle that was all wrong. Her hands were swelling below the rope.

  But Dr. Buell said she could not be moved, not yet. He instructed them to clear out the rock around the girl as much as possible but to leave her lying flat and still. He did pass up a pair of thick medical scissors so that Hanne could cut away the bonds binding her wrists. Hanne tried to work carefully, not to jar Sissel’s body, but it was hard to maneuver the scissors between Sissel’s body and the rock ledge she was pressed up underneath. Sissel’s ragged jacket sleeves were in the way—Hanne had to snip the cloth away. Hanne recognized it as the tan dress Alice Oswald had given Sissel.

  McKray and Stieg and Knut and the miners worked, but Hanne would not leave Sissel’s side. Sissel had passed out, from pain or relief Hanne did not know. The men cleared the rock, hollowing out an area around the rock shelf that had protected Sissel from the collapse. They carried out the body of the man who had shielded Sissel with respect, reverence, even.

  Perhaps outside they were hooting and hollering and slapping one another on the back with joy. Hanne didn’t move. She put her hand on her sister’s chest, above her heart, and stayed there, kneeling on the hard cut rocks, praying. She imagined she could pour her strength into her sister’s body.

  The rock dust made Sissel look, in the dim lamplight, like a dried-up husk of a person, like a ghost. The wretched shape of her distended shoulder and arm made it all the more gruesome.

  Someone passed her a canteen, and she tried to pour a bit of water into Sissel’s mouth, but Sissel didn’t wake, and Hanne only wetted the neck of Sissel’s dress.

  When there was enough rock cleared out for Dr. Buell to work, he came and tapped Hanne on the shoulder.

  “You’ll have to back out, Miss Hemstad, so I can examine the girl.”

  Hanne did so, reluctantly. But she hovered behind him. He had brought his black leather bag into the cave, and he opened it, removing several instruments as well as a syringe and a vial of clear liquid.

  Then the doctor began to touch Sissel’s limbs, delicately feeling for breaks. He reached over Sissel’s body and laid a hand on her left shoulder, and Sissel woke. She cried out, withdrawing from his touch. Her eyes popped open, wild with pain. Hanne felt the pain, like a lightning strike.

  “Hanne!” Sissel said.

  “Sissel, you’re alive. You’re all right!”

  “There, there,” the doctor said. “Don’t get too excited, Sissel. You mustn’t move until we know if your back and neck are all right.”

  Sissel’s eyes fluttered closed, but the doctor touched her shoulder.

  “No! Don’t sleep,” he said. “Not yet.”

  Hanne released a breath. It came out a bit like a sob.

  “… thirsty,” Sissel said.

  Dr. Buell reached back to Hanne, and she passed him the canteen. He tilted a sip into Sissel’s mouth. She sputtered, and asked for more.

  The doctor then examined her as best he could, asking if her skull, neck, and spine felt all right.

  “It’s just my shoulder,” Sissel said.

  Tears began to course from the corners of Sissel’s eyes, cutting paths through the grit.

  “All right, don’t fret. We’ll get you out.”

  Dr. Buell turned away from Sissel and began to prepare the syringe, opening the vial and drawing the fluid into the barrel.

  “What are you doing?” Sissel asked.

  “I’m giving you morphine,” Dr. Buell said. “I can’t set your shoulder in here, and getting you out is going to hurt.”

  “No, don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to sleep again. Hanne, don’t let him. Hanne!”

  Hanne felt Sissel’s panic as if it were her own.

  “It’s all right,” Hanne said, reaching to Sissel, touching her foot, her leg. “The doctor knows best.”

  “No!” Sissel shouted. “I will take the pain. Don’t do it.”

  Dr. Byers paused. “It’ll hurt.”

  “That’s all right,” Sissel said.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked Hanne, turning his head to her.

  “Don’t ask her!” Sissel said. She coughed and blanched and kept on speaking. “It’s my body and I say what happens to it.”
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  “She’s right,” Hanne said. “Don’t give her the drugs, not if she doesn’t want them.”

  The doctor shook his head and put a cap on the needle, returning the syringe to his bag. “She’ll be begging for it by the time we’ve got her out,” he said.

  But Sissel didn’t beg for the morphine.

  Hanne worked with the doctor and Mario, the smallest of the miners, best able to fit into the small space they had hollowed out. They loaded her onto a sturdy woolen blanket and carefully, slowly maneuvered backward, out of the claustrophobic tunnel. Sissel moaned and vomited several times. Hanne could see her clinging to consciousness, fighting to stay awake.

  She felt Sissel’s pain, but not shrilly—she was not in danger, just hurting.

  When at last they got her outside and laid her on the ground, Stieg and Owen and Knut crowded around her, kneeling down on the ground or bending over her.

  “Stieg!” Sissel croaked. “Knut!”

  “You saved us,” Stieg said, tears spilling down his face. “You destroyed that big gun somehow, didn’t you?”

  Knut had lowered his big head to Sissel’s hip and was weeping into the grimy fabric of her skirt. McKray hung back, his hat in his hands. Behind him stood his miners and Collier.

  “All right, give her space,” the doctor groused. “I’ve got to set her shoulder”

  Sissel’s eyes took in her family members, the miners, the massive quantity of rock they had all moved, and, back against a boulder, the dead bodies bleeding out. They were only partially covered by the tarp, a Pinkerton’s crushed leg sticking out from the gristly pile.

  Knut moved, to position himself between Sissel and the sight of the bodies.

  “Dear God, what did I do?” Sissel sobbed.

  Her siblings tried to comfort her, shushing her, telling her she had saved them.

  Isaiah McKray pushed through to her side. He dropped to his knees and took her hand. Sissel’s hand in his looked tiny and fragile.

  “They deserved it,” he said. “You only did they forced you to do. You’re alive. That’s what’s important. None of us dared to hope it.”

  “Yes, yes! She’s alive, and I must set the shoulder so if you will all please step back!” Dr. Buell said. The strain of the night was showing on him. His eyes were red and his hair stringy, laced with rock dust.

  Sissel would not let go of McKray’s hand, so he was the one to help the doctor hold her down.

  Hanne had thought she would do it. She had no intention of leaving her sister’s side, but she could see Sissel had changed during their separation. This Sissel knew what she wanted.

  * * *

  ON THE ROCKY LEDGE, as the sun rose higher in the sky and the flies began to collect on the stiffening corpses of Russell Peavy and the other detectives, the group began to plan. The miners had set off with Collier and the doctor. Collier was to pay them all handsomely, once for their work, and once again for their silence.

  Sissel was lying on a blanket and had another wrapped around her. They felt like the same blankets from the Pinkertons’ camp, though it seemed like eons ago that she’d been bound in the cot.

  Her siblings were standing off a few feet, looking out over the valley. Hanne was keeping a keen eye on the trails leading up to the cave.

  “We should get on the train,” Stieg said. “The Baron will be here any day. Bringing Nytteson! We can’t fight them.”

  “I think you all need to make a decision quickly, that’s for sure,” McKray said. “This Baron could be in town now, waiting, or headed here at this very moment.”

  “With more Pinkertons,” Owen contributed.

  “We abandon our land, then,” Stieg said. “Abandon our belongings and flee south. To Mexico?”

  “I brought a good chunk of cash,” McKray said. “Just in case … in case I could bribe the Pinkertons. I wish I could have … Anyway, the money’s yours. There’s enough for tickets and probably a little house somewhere down there.”

  “You offered to buy our land. Take it,” Stieg said.

  “No, I won’t. I can sell it for you, if you like.”

  “Can Sissel travel? She’s very weak,” Hanne interrupted.

  “Sissel’s stronger than you remember—”

  “I’m right here, actually,” Sissel said. “And I don’t want to go to Mexico.”

  She sat up. Her shoulder was tightly bound, but it screamed at her.

  “Lie down!” Stieg said.

  “Be careful,” Hanne said at the same time.

  “We must stay here and fight,” Sissel said. “We can’t run from the Baron anymore.”

  “What if he brings Nytteson?” Knut said.

  “So what? We’ll fight them.”

  “We appreciate your spirit, Sissel, but that’s not an option,” Stieg said. “He’ll have more Pinkertons with him, or Nytteson, or both.”

  “We thought we were safe, all this time, all these years, and all along, we’ve been living under his shadow.”

  Sissel cast her eyes across the faces of her siblings.

  “No,” she said. “We will run no more.”

  Sissel saw Hanne look to Owen. Some question passed between them and was answered silently, then Hanne nodded.

  “I have a place where we can go,” Owen said. “We could make a stand there, if it came to that.”

  * * *

  AFTER ONE LAST conversation about the regrettable necessity of leaving the dead men unburied, they began the descent, heading for the clearing where Hanne and the others had left their horses the day before.

  Everyone was tired and hungry, and the descent steep—they moved slowly. Sissel tried to hide how exhausted she was, and how her shoulder pained her. Edging down the tight crevasses of stone was difficult, especially with only one good arm. At times the pain made stars swarm up before her eyes.

  It occurred to her that gold might help her heal, and so she asked if anyone had any. McKray had a gold pocket watch, and he was happy for her to have it. Hanne slipped the watch carefully into the bandage, near Sissel’s shoulder. The gold throbbed, warming the area like a hot water bottle.

  It made her sleepy and a bit dizzy, so it was decided Knut would carry her. He picked her up carefully, cradling her in his arms.

  “I missed you,” she said to her brother.

  “I missed you, too. I did not like to be at the Lilliedahls, though I did not want to complain. I don’t want to be away from my family again.”

  “Me either,” she said. The gold throbbed with warmth, acting almost like a sedative. She allowed herself to relax into Knut’s strong arms and rest.

  When they passed through the Pinkerton campsite, which was tossed and trampled, Owen, McKray, and Stieg gathered up any items they felt would be of use on the trail. They found several bedrolls, a coffeepot, some coffee, and some food in a pantry box. All that was loaded into sacks.

  When finally they reached the horses, they found them agitated and anxious. They’d not been properly watered or cared for in the horrific events of the night before.

  Owen insisted they water the animals straightaway, so they led the horses through the sparse pine forest. It was cool, and the dim light was soothing after the bright, bouncing sunlight on the mountainside.

  Knut set Sissel down on a boulder when they reached a grassy little pond in a field. The horses plunged knee deep into the water and drank heavily.

  Stieg, Owen, and Hanne began to talk about the journey ahead. Sissel was going to call them to her when McKray came to her side.

  “Miss Hemstad,” he said, looking out over the little pond.

  “Mr. McKray.”

  “I credit myself that before all this I grasped how … singular and unique you are among young ladies. But I couldn’t have known how tough you are. What you’ve endured … it’s flat-out astonishing.”

  Sissel studied him. His jacket was missing, his shirt sleeves rolled up and stained with sweat. His trousers were rumpled and torn. He’d been cut on the cheek
, by rock, no doubt; the blood had dried where it ran.

  His face was drawn and tired, but his hazel eyes shone with emotion.

  “When I thought … when we all thought you were dead…”

  He coughed. Shook his head. Fell back to silence.

  “I am so thankful for the assistance you gave us, Mr. McKray,” she said. “You are a good friend. A true friend. If it hadn’t been for you, and the men you brought, I would be dead now.”

  He shook his head. Sissel looked away, allowing him privacy by which to wipe his eyes.

  “Your brother told me that you all want me to go back to Carter,” he said. “To keep an eye out for the Baron and to watch what happens at the store. To throw the law off you, when they ask questions … but I’d rather come with you, if there’s going to be a fight. I’m a good shot and I’m strong—”

  Sissel laid her slight, pale hand on top of one of McKray’s.

  “We will deal with the Baron.”

  “You know, if the Pinkertons have been spying on you for so long, he probably knows where Owen’s family’s ranch is. They may have someone watching it even now…”

  “It’s time for us to meet the Baron Fjelstad. If you can keep the town safe, and look in on the Oswalds, please, that would be a gift.”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “And after … may I come to call? I’ll do it right this time. I’ll do everything right.”

  McKray moved his hand, revolving it so that Sissel’s hand dropped into his. The physical warmth of his hand enveloped hers. She remembered how his touch made her feel—safe and grounded and whole.

  “Yes,” she told him, the word itself making her shy to speak aloud.

  “Could I ask a favor of you, then?” he said.

  She looked up and met his eyes.

  “Would you call me Isaiah?”

  “All right,” she said. “Then, Isaiah, you must call me Sissel.”

  “I will, Sissel.” He was smiling at her now, a grin that infected her with its happiness, bleak circumstances notwithstanding. “Sissel, I will.”