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A Beautiful Place to Die
|
Malla Nunn
|
[
"mystery"
] |
[
"South Africa",
"1950s",
"crime",
"Detective Emmanuel Cooper"
] |
Chapter 17
|
"Crushed gum leaves…" Emmanuel said to the mechanic after he and Shabalala had made their way back to the garage. "What do you use on your hands that has that particular smell?"
Anton rummaged in a wooden bucket and pulled out a tin can stamped with an impression of a slender leaf with jagged thunderbolts spiking out from it. "Degreaser. Us mechanics use it to clean up. It gets the dirt up from around the nails and between the fingers."
"Who would use this particular cleaner?" Emmanuel pried open the top and sniffed the thick white slurry. The gum leaf smell was intense. "Just mechanics, or anyone fixing machinery?"
"Well, it's not cheap, so it wouldn't be used by someone fiddling around with their bicycle or bore pump. The only other place I've seen this stuff in town is at the Pretorius garage."
"Is that where you get your supply?"
Anton laughed. "Good heavens! Can you imagine Erich Pretorius letting me buy anything from his place? No, I get my little sister to bring back two or three cans when she comes home from Mooihoek for the holidays. She's at boarding school there. She was only down this weekend because of the funeral."
"You'd notice if a can was missing?"
"Definitely. I string my supply out over the year. Like I said, it's expensive. December's supply has got to last to Easter, then I have to stretch the next one to August."
"December and August?" Emmanuel gave the can of precious cleaner back to Anton and pulled out his notebook. Something was nudging his memory. "Why those months in particular?"
"School holidays," Shabalala said. "My youngest son comes home also at these times."
The molester was active during two distinct periods: August and December. Emmanuel gave his notes a quick check. That was right. He checked specific dates with Anton. The attacks occurred during the holidays and at no other time of year. The attacker might be partial to schoolgirls. Or on school holidays himself.
"Gentlemen." Zweigman appeared holding a container of his wife's butter cookies as an entrée into the conversation. "My wife will be upset if I do not deliver these as promised."
"The molester? What made you think it was a white man?" Emmanuel asked.
"I have no proof. Just a feeling that the color of his skin is the reason why he was not caught and brought to trial."
"Okay." Emmanuel included all three men in the conversation. "Let's assume the molester was a Dutchman. Are there any white men that you know of who are only here in town for the big school holidays?"
Zweigman, Anton, and Shabalala all shook their heads in the negative. Emmanuel moved on. "Which white boys were at boarding school last year? I'm talking about boys over the age of fourteen."
"The Loubert boys, Jan and Eugene," said Anton. "Then there was Louis Pretorius and, I believe, the Melmons' son, Jacob. I don't know about the Dutch boys out on the farms."
"What about Hansie?" It was a ludicrous thought but Emmanuel had to cover as many bases as he could. Whittling down the suspect list by scraping together pieces of information on white schoolboys was a primitive science at best.
"Training," Shabalala answered. "The constable was at the police college during the last half of the year."
"The boys who were away at school last year? Did any of them ever get caught on the kaffir paths after dark?"
"Louis and the Loubert boys," Anton replied. "They were using the path to obtain…um, things that the captain thought were unhealthy."
"Liquor and dagga from Tiny? Is that right?"
"Ja." Anton lifted his eyebrows in amazement. "I thought only Captain Pretorius and the coloured people knew about that. It was kept pretty quiet."
"Small town," Emmanuel said. "Which of those three boys would have access to the cleaner?"
"Louis for sure," Anton answered again. "The boy is always messing around with engines and fixing things up. He's good with his hands and Erich lets him have whatever he wants from the garage."
"Was Louis home for the August and December holidays?" Emmanuel asked Shabalala.
"Yes," Shabalala said. "He came back for all the holidays. The missus does not like him staying too long away."
That was three out of three for Louis. He knew the kaffir path almost as well as a native, he was home for the holidays, and he had easy access to the gum-scented cleaner. Those facts alone warranted an interview even though the idea of the boy as the molester still seemed ludicrous.
Emmanuel went back to the bit about Louis being good with his hands. On the first day of the investigation Louis had given the distinct impression that his father was the mechanical whiz. He'd said as much.
"I thought the captain was letting Louis help him fix up an old motorbike," Emmanuel said.
"Other way around. The captain was helping Louis. There's not much that boy doesn't know about engines, but the captain was always asking for help after he'd stuffed something up."
"You think Louis is capable of finishing that Indian motorbike without help?"
"Completely." Anton placed his precious supply of antigrease cleaner into the wooden bucket. "Beats me why he went to Bible college when he should have been working at his brother's place. Being a mechanic suits him a hell of a lot better than being a pastor."
"Yes, but it doesn't suit his mother." Mrs. Pretorius had a pretty clear idea about her youngest son's future: a future free of oil stains and overalls.
"The school holiday inquiry is an interesting one," Zweigman broke in politely. "But that does not explain why the attacks stopped in the middle of the Christmas holidays and have not recurred."
"You're right. December twenty-sixth was the last reported attack. That still leaves how much of the holiday?"
"The first week of January," Shabalala replied so softly that Emmanuel turned to him. The Zulu constable looked just as he had on the banks of the river the moment before they pulled Captain Pretorius from the water. His face carried sadness too deep to be expressed with words.
"The Drakensberg." Emmanuel remembered Hansie's drunken ramblings out on the veldt. When had the captain sent Louis "a long way away" after discovering the drinking and dagga smoking? "Is that where he was, Shabalala?"
"Yebo," the Zulu man said. "The young one, Mathandunina, was taken by the captain on the first day of January to a place in the Drakensberg mountains in Natal. I do not know why."
Emmanuel scribbled van Niekerk's name and phone number and a query onto a page in his notebook, tore it out, and handed it to Zweigman.
"Call this number and ask this man, Major van Niekerk, if he has an answer to this question. Constable Shabalala and I will be back within the hour. If not, look for us in the police cells."
It was five past twelve and Miss Byrd was sitting on the back steps of the post office, chewing on a canned-meat sandwich made with thick slices of soft white bread. She was startled to see both the detective sergeant and the Zulu policeman walking toward her.
"The engine part that Louis Pretorius is waiting for? Has it come in yet?" Emmanuel said.
"It came the day before his father passed. Tragic, hey? Captain not getting to ride the motorbike after all the hard work he and Louis put into it. To be so close and not…"
"I thought Louis was coming to the post office every day to check for the part?"
"No." Miss Byrd smiled. "He calls in to collect the mail for his mother. He's very considerate that way, a very sweet young boy."
"Yes, and Lucifer was the most beautiful of all God's angels," Emmanuel said. He and Shabalala walked back onto the kaffir path. They started as one toward the captain's shed. He'd told the Zulu constable about the attack in the stone hut and the mechanical rattle he'd heard just before passing out.
"Looks like he dismantled the bike after he finished it, so no one knew he had transport." Emmanuel took a guess at the sequence of events. "I'm willing to bet that Pretorius didn't know anything about the engine part arriving from Jo'burg."
"He said nothing of it to me."
They picked up the pace and jogged in unison across the stretch of veldt that swung around the back of the police station and curved past the rear fence line of the houses facing onto van Riebeeck street. The noon sun had burned away the clouds to reveal a canopy of blue.
"You don't have to come in," Emmanuel said once they'd stopped outside the shed door. "Right or wrong, this is going to cause big trouble."
"That one inside." Shabalala hadn't even broken a sweat on the run. "He is the only one who knew which kaffir paths the captain was running on. I wish to hear what he has to say to this."
Emmanuel gave the door a shove with his shoulder, expecting resistance, but found none. The door swung open to reveal the darkened interior of the work shed. He stepped inside. Both Louis and the motorcycle were gone. Emmanuel walked over to the spot where the Indian had been resting on blocks and found a large oil stain but nothing else.
"The little bastard's taken off on his motorbike. You have any idea where he could have gone, Shabalala?"
"Detective Sergeant—"
Dickie and two new Security Branch men wrestled the Zulu constable from the open doorway, then shoved him back onto the veldt. Lieutenant Piet Lapping entered wearing a sweat-and ash-stained shirt and rumpled pants. Lack of sleep had made his craggy face look like a bag of marbles stuffed into a white nylon stocking.
"Lieutenant Lapping." Emmanuel smelled the anger and frustration coming directly off Piet's sweat-beaded skin and concentrated on remaining calm. The Security Branch couldn't nail him for anything. Not yet.
"Sit down." Piet indicated the chair in front of the hunting desk. Dickie and his two bulldozer pals followed and took up positions at either side of the door. Emmanuel did as he was told and sat down.
"Dickie." Piet held out his hand and took a thin folder from his second in command, which he held up for closer inspection. "You know what this is, Cooper?"
"A file," Emmanuel said. It was the information folder delivered by special messenger on the day he'd gone to Mozambique.
"A file…" Piet paused and rummaged in his pants pocket for a cigarette. "Sent especially to us by district headquarters. Have you seen this particular file before, Cooper?"
"No, I have not."
Piet lit his cigarette and allowed the flame from his silver lighter to burn longer than necessary before snapping it shut with a hard click. He placed the file gently onto Emmanuel's lap.
"Take a good look at it. Open it up and tell me if you see anything unusual about the contents."
Emmanuel cracked the yellow cover and made a show of checking the inside before closing the file and resting his hands on the folder.
"It's empty."
"Hear that, Dickie? It's empty." Ash from the lieutenant's cigarette fell onto the file but Emmanuel did nothing to remove it. "It's obvious to me now that Cooper was promoted quick smart because he's sharp. He's got it up here, in the kop, where it counts. Isn't that so, Detective Sergeant?"
Emmanuel shrugged. They weren't having a conversation. Lieutenant Lapping was running through the standard textbook interrogation warmup that demanded the interrogator make at least some attempt to extract information via voluntary confession. Beating suspects was hell on the hands and the neck muscles, and from the look of him, Piet was coming off a heavy night in the police cells.
"I'm not angry." The lieutenant went down on his haunches like a hunter checking a spoor trail. "I just want to know how the fuck you managed to extract the contents of a confidential file while it was under lock and key."
Up close, Emmanuel saw the blue smudges of exhaustion under pockmarked Piet's eyes and smelled the gut-churning mix of blood and sweat coming off his person. It was a rank abattoir fug overlaid with the mild lavender perfume of a common brand of soap.
Emmanuel did his best not to pull back from the Security Branch officer. "Maybe district headquarters forgot to include them," he said.
Piet smiled, then took a deep drag of his cigarette. "See, with any other team of police, I'd buy that explanation. But this is my team and my team doesn't make mistakes."
"I'd go back to district headquarters and see who typed the report and posted the file," Emmanuel suggested.
"Done all that," Piet replied almost pleasantly. "And what I found was this. You, Detective Sergeant Cooper, were the person who helped the messenger sign the folder in to the police box when it arrived in town."
"I was being polite. One department of the police is supposed to help another department, isn't it?"
"My first thought is that your close friend van Niekerk tipped you off about what was in the folder. You knew the file was coming and somehow you managed to lift the contents. Did one of those spinsters at the post office let you into the police box? We've been too busy to ask them in person but I think an hour alone with me will get them to open up, so to speak."
The Security Branch operatives laughed at Piet's provocative turn of phrase and Emmanuel sensed the group's anticipation at the possibility of questioning two country maids. Affable and trusting Miss Byrd with her fondness for feather hats. Five minutes in Lieutenant Lapping's company and she'd be broken for good.
"Why are you chasing postal clerks? I thought you had a Communist in the bag, ready to confess. Did something go wrong at the station?"
Piet's dark eyes were dead at the very center. "The first thing you will have to accept, Detective, is that I am smarter than you. I know you took those pages and I will find out how. I will also find out why."
"No confession, then? What a shame. Paul Pretorius was certain it would only take an hour or two for the suspect to open up, so to speak."
Piet smiled and the dark center of his pupils came alive with a bright flash of intent. "I promised Dickie that he could work on you if the time ever came, but I've changed my mind. I'm going to enjoy seeing you crack myself."
"Like you cracked the suspect at the station?" Emmanuel said. A Security Branch officer he might be, but Lieutenant Lapping had superiors to report to, generals and colonels hungry for a victory against enemies of the state.
Lieutenant Lapping blinked hard, twice, then got to his feet and strode to the doorway. He put his hand out and Dickie placed a brown paper envelope in it with a look that sent a chill down Emmanuel's back.
What the hell did they have? It was good. It had to be. Keep calm, he told himself. You've been through a war. You've seen things that killed other men and you survived. What was there to be scared of?
"You know what's in here?" Piet held the envelope at eye level.
"I don't have a clue." Emmanuel found that he sounded calm despite the sick rolling of his stomach. What the hell was in the envelope? Had they somehow gotten a new background report on him in the last fourteen hours?
Piet opened the envelope and extracted two photos, which he held up with schoolmarmish precision. "Tell me, Cooper, have you seen these images before?"
There wasn't time to slip the mask of indifference back into place. He tried to make sense of it, to see all the angles at the same time, but he couldn't get past the stark black-and-white images of Davida Ellis, first with her legs spread-eagled and then stretched out on the bed like a cat waiting to be stroked. His copies were halfway to Jo'burg, safely packed under a layer of pink plastic rollers in Delores Bunton's luggage. Unless…Unless the Security Branch had somehow intercepted his courier.
"So…" Piet ground his cigarette out with the heel of his shoe. "You have seen them before."
"Where did you get them?"
"We found them exactly where you left them. Under your pillow."
Was Piet telling the truth or just trying to catch him out in a lie? He had no idea and that was just the way the Security Branch boys liked it. Until he knew exactly where the photographs came from, he was going to play for time and information.
"What were you doing in my room?" he asked. "You looked through it the other day and didn't find anything."
"Some fresh information came to light." Piet signaled to Dickie, who took the photos, but remained standing by his partner's side. "Information concerning your personal tastes."
Dickie made a tutting sound and leered at the images of the woman: "That's two laws broken right there, Cooper. If it was a white woman or a light-skinned one, we might have turned a blind eye, but this…this is serious business."
"Where did you get the information from?" Emmanuel asked. It seemed that both Dickie and Piet were playing the personal angle. They were tying the photographs to his alleged perversions and not to the homicide investigation. Good. That meant the bundle of photos he'd sent off on the "Intundo Express" bus this morning were safe. The feeling of triumph passed quickly. He was still in hot water: caught in possession of banned materials.
"Who told us about the photos, Dickie?"
"A little bird." Dickie replied as if the expression were something he'd just made up off the top of his head.
Emmanuel glanced at the photos. If his copies were safely on their way to van Niekerk in Jo'burg, then these images must have come from the safe in the captain's stone hut. It was the only logical explanation, and all the connections he'd made this morning pointed to the thief being the captain's youngest son.
"Was it pretty boy Louis who told you where to find the photos?" Emmanuel kept his eye on Dickie to see if the name and the description triggered a reaction. What he got wasn't a subtle clenching of the jawline but a teeth-baring snarl.
"How you can even mention his name after what you—"
"Dickie!" Piet interrupted. "I know this kind of activity upsets you but you must remove your personal feelings from the work. We are miners and it is our job to find the seam of gold in the dirt. You cannot let the dirt bother you."
"Activity"? The word stuck with Emmanuel. What activity would upset Dickie enough to warrant professional counseling from his superior officer in the middle of questioning? The answer made Emmanuel sit up straight. How deep was the hole the angelic-looking boy had dug for him?
"Louis says I molested him?"
"What exactly are you doing here in the shed, Cooper?"
"Gathering evidence." Emmanuel stemmed the rising panic. The blond boy had set a stunning trap baited with banned images and topped it off with an accusation guaranteed to outrage every red-blooded male in Jacob's Rest.
Dickie snorted. "A pervert looking for a pervert. That's a good one."
"Go back and stand with the others," Piet instructed his partner with a flex of his knotted shoulder muscles. "I'm too tired to question Sergeant Cooper and instruct you in the finer points of the work."
"But—"
Piet gave Dickie a look that sent him lumbering back to his corner, from where he glared at Emmanuel as if it were his fault that he'd been dismissed from the action.
"Well, which one is it?" Emmanuel asked. "Do I enjoy looking at dark girls or chasing white boys?"
"They're not mutually exclusive. You could have used the photographs to stimulate the interest of a boy who would otherwise find you unattractive. You get my drift?"
"Why the hell would I choose to show an Afrikaner boy photographs of a coloured woman in order to arouse him? What kind of sense does that make?"
"Maybe those are the only photographs you could get hold of."
"We're policemen. Either one of us could get pictures of a white girl doing everything except fucking a gorilla. The cops and the criminals always have the best stuff, you know that."
"You're right." Piet patted his shirt pocket and extracted a squashed cigarette pack. "But that doesn't take Louis Pretorius's complaint away. A jury won't think about the finer points, like the race of the woman in the photos. The fact that it's a coloured woman will only get you more prison time."
Why had Louis exposed himself so openly? He must have known that planting the photos would finger him as the person who'd stolen the evidence from the stone hut and yet he'd done it anyway.
"Did Louis swear out a formal complaint against me in writing?" Emmanuel asked. How serious was Louis about keeping him hemmed down and out of action?
"Yes."
"Show it to me," Emmanuel said. The Security Branch men were in the middle of breaking the biggest case of their careers. Where did they find the time to pen a formal report on the matter of an English pervert attempting to corrupt an Afrikaner country boy? Small potatoes compared to getting a confession from a Communist Party member tied to the premeditated murder of a police captain married to Frikkie van Brandenburg's daughter.
"You don't get to ask us for anything," Piet said.
"Arrest me and charge me," Emmanuel said clearly, to make sure there was no confusion. He didn't believe they had more than Louis's verbal complaint, and that wasn't enough to hold a fellow white policeman behind bars. Right at this moment he had better things to do than provide a break for the exhausted Security Branch officers.
"You know what I think?" Piet said. "I think the file you stole had the dirt on you and your pal van Niekerk, on your mutual affection and your shared interest in boys. Penny to a pound, that's the reason he tipped you off about it."
"Why don't you call district headquarters and get them to tell you exactly what was in the file, or is it a bad time to admit you lost the pages? No confession and no file. Your superiors will be pleased to hear that."
There was movement at the door and Dickie shuffled aside to let the moonfaced policeman in the badly cut suit into the shed.
"Ja?" Piet gave the newcomer permission to speak.
"It's been an hour, Lieutenant. You said to find you and alert you of the time."
Piet checked his watch with a weary shake of his head. Where had the minutes gone? "You are free to leave, Cooper, but before you go, I should warn you about something."
Emmanuel waited for the threat. He wasn't about to play second fiddle in Piet's grand orchestration of events by asking him to specify the nature of the warning.
"Louis came to the station and complained to his brother about your…attentions. You're lucky we were there to stop Paul Pretorius and the rest from coming after you straightaway. I can't make any promises regarding your safety because we have more important things to attend to at the moment."
The Security Branch officers regained some of their spark. They were letting him go because he was a minor impediment to the smooth running of their investigation. An hour to shake the tree for the information about the missing file contents and Louis's allegations was all they'd allowed while Moonface kept watch on the real prize back at the police cells. God knows what position they'd left the young man from Fort Bennington College in while they took a quick break: strung up by his thumbs or suffocating in a wet post office canvas bag?
"Has it ever occurred to you," Emmanuel said, "that the man at the station hasn't confessed to the murder because he isn't the killer?"
Piet turned on him. "The kaffir was at the river at the same time and the same place as Captain Pretorius. We have the right man and by nightfall we'll have a signed confession. What have you got, Cooper? Some sad pictures of a coloured whore and a whole family of Afrikaner men ready to skin you alive. You were only on the case because Major van Niekerk was desperate for a piece of the action, and now it is time for you to fuck off and let us get on with our jobs. You are way out of your depth. Understand?"
"Perfectly," Emmanuel said. How would he end the day: beaten and kicked to shit by the Pretorius brothers or with the killer behind bars? A betting man would lay two to one on a beating. The only unknown factors were the time and the severity of the punishment.
The shed emptied. The wide stretch of the veldt spread all the way to the horizon. How was he going to find one boy in all that space?
The call, a series of short whistles followed by a soft coo, was nothing Emmanuel had ever heard before. He stepped onto the kaffir path, and the birdcall repeated with a loud insistence that caught and held his attention for a second time. A thick tangle of green scrub stirred and Shabalala materialized from the underbrush like a phantom. The Zulu constable stood to his full height and waved toward the bush with an insistence that seemed to say "run like hell," so Emmanuel did. He ran across grass and dirt, followed now by the sound of male voices in the captain's garden. He was level with the wild hedge when Shabalala grabbed him and threw him down to the ground.
Emmanuel tasted dust and felt his shoulder spasm with pain as he was held down on the ground by the Zulu's powerful hands.
"Shhh…" Shabalala put his finger to his lips and pointed in the direction of the captain's shed.
Emmanuel peered through the slender gap Shabalala had made in the bush cover. The Pretorius brothers were in the empty shed, searching for the English detective who'd tried to corrupt their baby brother. Henrick and Paul were the first ones out onto the kaffir path, rifles slung across their backs in a show of armed strength.
"Fuck." Paul spoke the word with venom, his frustration evident in the hard set of his shoulders.
"He can't have gone far." Henrick was calmer. "Take Johannes and go round the hospital and the coloured houses. Erich and I will go this direction past the shops. We'll meet up behind Kloppers."
"What if he's not on the kaffir path? What if he's gone bush?"
"Englishmen from the city don't go bush." Henrick was dismissive. "He'll be in town, hiding somewhere like a rat."
Johannes, the quiet foot soldier of the Pretorius corps, stepped out of the shed with his hands sunk deep into his pockets. "The motorbike. It's gone but I don't see how. Louis is still waiting for the part to come from Jo'burg."
"We're not looking for the fucking motorbike." Paul turned his frustrations onto his brother. "We're trying to find that detective."
"Well, he's not in the shed." Erich joined the musclebound trio. "He must have heard us coming and taken off into the veldt."
"If he's out there he won't last long," Henrick said. "First we'll check the kaffir path and then The Protea Guesthouse. If we don't find him, we'll have a sit-down and decide which houses to search."
The brothers split up and moved along the grass path in opposite directions. Only Johannes appeared uncertain as to the purpose of their mission. He gave the empty shed one last puzzled glance before following Paul in a quick march toward the Grace of God Hospital.
The hunting party began their first sweep of the town. The Pretorius boys had taken the law into their own hands and no one was going to stop them.
"How am I going to find Louis and dodge his brothers at the same time?" Emmanuel wondered aloud. The smallness of the town made it impossible to escape the Pretorius family, and the unbroken stretch of veldt made it unlikely that the boy could be found without an army of searchers.
"We will find him," Shabalala said.
Emmanuel turned to the Zulu policeman; Shabalala needed to know exactly how deep the water was before he stepped into it. "Louis has told his brothers that I interfered with him. It is not true, but the brothers believe him, and if you are caught with me, they will punish you also."
"Look." The black man shrugged off the warning and pointed to a shallow dip carved into the ground and camouflaged by the thick brush. Inside the hollow was a can wrapped in oilskin cloth. He pulled out the package and handed it over for inspection. Emmanuel unwrapped the can and sniffed at the still-damp oilskin wrapping.
"Petrol," he said. "Louis's?"
"I think the young one kept it here to fill his motorbike. The can is empty."
"Mathandunina is planning to travel," Emmanuel said. The international border was just a few miles away. If Louis slipped across to Mozambique it would take months to track him, and that was if the Mozambican police decided to cooperate. "Can you point the direction Louis is headed in?"
"I can find where the young one has gone," Shabalala said without arrogance. "I will go to the shed and follow the tracks. You must follow me out here on the veldt. It is not good for you to be on the path."
"Agreed," Emmanuel said, and the Zulu constable walked to the deserted shed and stood for a while, examining the prints in the sand. He turned in the direction of the Grace of God Hospital and set off at a measured pace. Louis hadn't taken off across the veldt in a haze of petrol fumes and churned grass like an impulsive teenager blowing off steam. He had stuck close to the outer edge of the town for some reason. And, Emmanuel figured, there had to be one: everything Louis had done so far was planned and thought out. The boy was slippery enough to fool his own father about the motorbike—an impressive task when you considered just how secretive and two-faced the captain had been. Like father, like son.
Emmanuel picked up his pace to catch up with Shabalala, who followed the trail to the edge of the Sports Club playing fields. They crossed from the white side of Jacob's Rest to the rows of coloured houses and then the paths that led north to the black location. Where the hell was Louis headed?
The buildings of the hospital came into view. Emmanuel and Shabalala sidled past the morgue and the nonwhite's wing. It was the same stretch of the kaffir path where the captain had parked when he came to pick up Davida Ellis for their last outdoor frolic—and where Donny Rooke had had the bad luck to be at the same time.
The distinctive line of gum trees that marked Granny Mariah's property was visible up ahead and to the left. A memory stirred and Emmanuel moved faster. He had good reason to know this place as well. It was here, within sight of that back fence, that he'd encountered the watchful human presence breathing in the darkness.
Shabalala stepped off the kaffir path and headed into the veldt at a right angle so that he was almost directly in front of Emmanuel.
"What is it?" Emmanuel asked when he reached the spot where the Zulu constable was crouched down to inspect an area of disturbed earth.
"He has come off the path and parked his motorbike here." Shabalala pointed to markings in the dirt that wouldn't make sense to anyone but a tracker. "The young one has parked and then walked back in that direction."
They looked toward the line of gum trees. The back gate to Granny Mariah's garden swung back and forth on its hinges in the breeze. Thoughts of the Pretorius brothers' vigilante rule vanished and he and Shabalala ran to the kaffir path and the open gate.
One step into the yard and Emmanuel spotted Granny Mariah lying in a furrow of turned earth, the blood from the gash in her forehead feeding the newly planted seeds in a steady red stream. He ran to her side and felt for a pulse. Faint but there. He turned to Shabalala, who was wisely locking the gate behind him.
"Go out the front door and get the old Jew. Tell him to bring his bag and his wife's sewing kit with him."
Shabalala hesitated.
"Go out the front," Emmanuel insisted. The coloureds of Jacob's Rest would just have to deal with the shocking sight of a black man leaving and entering Granny Mariah's house in plain sight. "The Pretorius boys are still on the kaffir paths, so you have to use the main streets. Get back as quickly as you can without causing a commotion."
"Yebo." The Zulu constable disappeared into the house and Emmanuel took off his jacket and rolled it under Granny Mariah's battered head. He felt her pulse again. No change, so he went to search the old servant's quarters, already certain he would find it empty. He put his head in and looked for signs of Davida before checking under the bed to make sure she wasn't hiding there.
"Davida? It's Detective Sergeant Cooper. Are you here?" He opened the wardrobe. A few cotton dresses and one winter coat with fake tortoiseshell buttons. He walked out to the garden, where he soaked his handkerchief in the watering bucket and gently wiped Granny Mariah's bloodied face. This mess was exactly what the information in the molester files pointed to: an escalation of violence leading to deprivation of liberty and God knows what else. The captain had only delayed the inevitable by sending Louis off to a farm in the mountains and then on to theological college, where, it would seem, the Holy Spirit had failed to dampen the fires of sin burning within him.
Granny Mariah groaned in pain but remained unconscious. Just as well. The disappearance of her granddaughter would be a heavy burden for the normally resilient old woman to shoulder in her weakened state. She'd be lucky to get her head off the pillow in the next few days.
Zweigman hurried into the garden with Shabalala trailing close behind. The white-haired German got to work quickly, his expert hands checking vital signs and determining the range and extent of injuries.
"Bad. But, thank God, not fatal."
"How bad?"
"A laceration to the scalp which will require stitching. Severe concussion but the skull is not fractured." Zweigman the surgeon took control. "We will need to move her inside so I can clean her up and begin closing this wound. Please, go into the house and locate towels and sheets while Constable Shabalala and I move her to a bedroom."
Emmanuel followed orders and soon Zweigman was setting up. He snapped open his medical bag and placed bandages, needles, thread and antiseptic on a dresser closest to the double bed where Shabalala had placed the unconscious Granny Mariah.
Emmanuel signaled to Shabalala to move out to the garden. They stood at the back door, looking at the bloodied row of turned earth.
"Davida is gone. The captain's youngest son has taken her. There can be no other explanation," Emmanuel said.
"I will see." Shabalala examined the markings on the ground. He worked his way slowly to the back gate, unlocked it, and continued out onto the veldt. Why, Emmanuel wondered, did he find it necessary to have the Zulu constable confirm the obvious? Was it because he still didn't trust his instinct where Davida was concerned and therefore couldn't rid himself of the niggling feeling that maybe, just maybe, Davida and Louis were somehow in this together? Two star-crossed lovers bound together by the cold-blooded murder of Willem Pretorius. But that conclusion was no more far-fetched than the teenaged boy turning out, in all probability, to be the molester.
Shabalala reentered the garden and locked the gate behind him. His expression was grave. "It is so," he said. "The young one has taken the girl with him and they have gone on the motorbike."
"Did he take her or did she go with him?"
Shabalala pointed to scuffled lines in the dirt. "She ran but he caught her and pulled her back to where the old one was lying in the dirt. After that, the girl went with him quietly."
"Why would Louis show his hand before we'd even questioned him?"
"We must find Mathandunina," Shabalala said with simple eloquence. "Then we will know."
Finding Louis would be a massive task requiring manpower and time—two things Emmanuel didn't have and was unlikely to get anytime soon.
"What direction did he go in?" Emmanuel asked, visualizing the enormous stretch of veldt that surrounded Jacob's Rest and spread out across the border into Mozambique. He brought himself back to the blood-soaked garden. He had to work with what he had: a Zulu-Shangaan tracker and an enigmatic German Jew. Things could be worse; he could have been left with Constable Hansie Hepple.
"Toward the location. It is also the way to Nkosana King's land and the farm of Johannes, the fourth son."
"Where would a white boy on a motorbike go with a brown-skinned girl he's holding against her will?" The whole thing carried the stamp of disaster. Surely Louis saw that?
"Not to the location."
"Or to his brother's farm. Wherever he goes, Louis is going to attract a lot of attention. My guess is he's going to have to keep well hidden until he's—"
"Done with her." Zweigman finished the sentence from where he stood in the dim hallway, his shopkeeper's shirt and trousers stained with blood from the operation. "That is what you were thinking, is it not, Detective?"
"I don't know what to think. As far as I can see, the whole abduction makes no sense."
"Maybe it makes perfect sense to Louis Pretorius." Zweigman reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, which he handed over. "Your major said to pass this on to you as soon as possible."
Emmanuel unfolded the lined sheet and read the information. Deep in the Drakensberg mountains of Natal was a farm, a retreat, known as Suiwer Sprong, or Pure Springs, where highbred and wealthy Afrikaners with close ties to the new ruling party sent their offspring to be "realigned" with the Lord. Shock therapy, drug therapy, and water therapy were some of the ways that "realignment" was delivered from the hands of the Almighty to the suffering few. A Dr. Hans de Klerk, who'd trained under the pioneering German eugenicist Klaus Gunther prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, was head of the setup.
"A nut farm with a religious bent. Is van Niekerk sure of this?"
"Your major sounds like a man who is sure of many things. He is certain that this place in the Drakensberg is the only institution that a family such as the Pretoriuses would use to seek treatment for a psychological illness."
The family should get their money back. Whatever therapy Louis underwent hadn't stuck. A few weeks back in Jacob's Rest and Louis had fallen into his old habits in a more dangerous way than before.
Emmanuel considered all the steps that had led to the abduction and assault. Louis wasn't unbalanced enough to overlook the fact that Davida Ellis was the only one who could tie him to the molester case and to the murder of his father. With Davida out of the way, all that stood between him and freedom was the word of the English detective he'd accused of trying to seduce him. It was a clever plan, well executed. So far.
"This abduction may not be as irrational as it looks." Emmanuel recalled the information from the molester files. Reading them had given him the feeling that the perpetrator was headed for a violent culmination to his fantasy life. "Louis gets to finish what he started in December and he gets to eliminate the only person who can connect him, however vaguely, to the murder of his father."
"If that is the case," Zweigman observed quietly, "he will keep her alive until he has enacted his fantasies."
"I think so." Emmanuel didn't want to delve into the German's statement. He turned to Shabalala. "Where could Louis go and hide out without being found? It has to be a place large enough to hold two people. I don't think he'll go to the captain's hut. It's not secret enough. Is there a cave or maybe an old hunting shack?"
The Zulu constable looked up at the sky for a moment to think. Then he quickly picked up a long stick and drew a crude map in the dirt. He made three crosses at almost opposite ends of each boundary.
"There are three places on Nkosana King's farm that are known to me. The captain and I hid here many times when we were boys. The young one, Louis, has also been to these places with his father when the land was still with the family."
"Can we get to all three in an afternoon?"
"They are far from each other and this one, here, we must go to on foot. It is a cave high on the side of a mountain and the bush is thick around."
"The other two?"
"This one is an old house where an Afrikaner lived by himself. It is falling in but some of the rooms have a roof over them."
"What's it like? The area around the house."
"Flat. The house is sad, like the white man who used to live in it."
"That's not the place." Emmanuel pictured the crime scene at the river, the sweep of land and sky shimmering with a quintessentially African light. It was a beautiful place to die. Louis and his father shared a taste for forbidden flesh and they might have been sufficiently alike to prefer courting women in an outdoor setting. There was nothing like the raw beauty of nature to arouse an Adam and Eve fantasy in which the apple was eaten to the core and the racial segregation laws were nonexistent.
"To which one of these places would you take a girl to show her the view?"
Shabalala pointed to the location of the mountain cavern. "From the ledge in front of the cave you can see the whole country and a watering hole where the animals come to drink. It is a place to stir the heart."
Just the sort of isolated and romantic spot a deranged Dutch boy might take a woman on her final outing. The Afrikaner love of the land was as tenacious as the influenza virus.
The cave was a long shot. But it made sense. The boy hadn't torn out onto the veldt with a captive girl without a specific place to hide already in mind. And Louis wasn't going to hide on a working farm trampled over by laborers and herds of cattle. King's personal fiefdom, once the Pretorius family home, had plenty of open space and very few people to spoil the illusion that South Africa was, in fact, empty when the white man arrived. Louis could hide there for a long while without drawing attention.
"How far on foot to this place?" Emmanuel asked.
"We must park and walk for maybe half an hour to the bottom of the hill and then fifteen minutes to the top."
Emmanuel rounded it up to one hour. The Zulu-Shangaan tracker covered more ground in a shorter period of time than anyone he'd ever met, and that included soldiers running like hell from the fall of mortar shells.
"We should check the cave. An isolated and sheltered place on a deserted piece of land seems right for what Louis most likely has planned. I've got nothing to back up my case. It's just a feeling. That's all."
"Your instinct and Constable Shabalala's knowledge of the land are all you have, Detective, so you must move and move quickly," Zweigman said. "The men at the police station will not drop even one pen to set out in search of a dark-skinned girl."
"Not unless she's a Communist," Emmanuel said, and turned to the towering black man standing at his side. Without Shabalala's help, the wheels were going to fall off the already shaky wagon.
"We'll need to get my car and head out to King's farm. Are you still with me?"
"Until the end," Shabalala said.
|
A Beautiful Place to Die
|
Malla Nunn
|
[
"mystery"
] |
[
"South Africa",
"1950s",
"crime",
"Detective Emmanuel Cooper"
] |
Chapter 18
|
They chanced the main streets in the hope that the Pretorius boys were still prowling the kaffir path. All was clear as they eased onto Piet Retief Street and moved past the white-owned businesses. The garage was open, but under the temporary management of an old coloured mechanic who shouted orders at the black petrol pump attendants from his spot in the shade. No sign of Erich the flamethrower or his big brother Henrick at Pretorius Farm Supply, either.
A Chevy farm truck carting the wide, rusty discs of a plow provided enough cover to get them past the police station and onto the dirt road to The Protea Guesthouse. Emmanuel and Shabalala crossed the raked, tidy yard. Sun sparked off the silver hubcaps of the black Packard. A twig snapped and the Zulu constable tensed, catlike. Another twig snapped and the black policeman released a pent-up breath.
"There is someone behind the big jacaranda tree," he said. "We must leave this place quickly."
The car was parked beyond the jacaranda and there was no way to get to it without one of them being caught in the ambush. He couldn't risk losing Shabalala.
Emmanuel checked their line of retreat. It was clear. He nodded at Shabalala and they ran fast and low toward the whitewashed fence and the dirt street freshly sprinkled with water to keep the dust down.
"Go, go!" Paul Pretorius was in full military mode, calling out orders to his second in command.
Johannes stepped out from behind the fence and took up position in the middle of the driveway. Emmanuel heard the sound of Paul's boots crunching on the loose gravel behind him. Shabalala split off to the right of Johannes. Emmanuel split off to the left and together they ran a full press toward the startled fourth son. The Pretorius boys expected him to be alone and their haphazard ambush reflected the bone-deep belief that an English detective in a clean suit was easy prey.
"Stand your ground," Paul Pretorius called out.
Brutal rounds of boarding school rugby training and bruising matches on forlorn country fields surged from the dark pit of Emmanuel's memory as Johannes moved to block his path. Left hand out, he pushed hard against Johannes's chest and heard the satisfying crunch of the fourth son's body hitting the dirt road. It was the first time that the tutelage he had received at the heavy hands of Masters Strijdom and Voss had amounted to anything.
"This way." Shabalala sprinted toward Piet Retief Street and across the sweating asphalt to the kaffir path opposite. A shout from the direction of Pretorius Farm Supply was enough to push them onto the grass path in record time. Now they had the whole Pretorius clan after them.
"Here." Shabalala pulled back two loose palings in a splinter-faced row of pickets and they crawled into a squat yard with a smokehouse at its center. The garden boy, milky eyed with a bony face and ash white hair, looked up with a start.
Shabalala put his finger to his lips and the old man went back to weeding the flower bed as if nothing unusual were happening.
"Peter?"
"Yes, missus?" the garden boy answered, and Emmanuel and Shabalala moved behind the smokehouse for cover. They leaned against the corrugated iron wall and waited for the appearance of the Pretorius boys or the nosy white missus.
"What's that, Peter? I thought I heard something."
"Just the wind, missus."
"Okay." The voice grew fainter as the missus moved back into the sitting room. "You make sure those weeds are gone, hey?"
"Yes. All gone, missus." Peter's milky eyes darted up to check the position of the white detective and his third cousin by marriage, the police constable Samuel Shabalala.
"Keep going. Down that way." The sound of Henrick Pretorius's voice kept Emmanuel pinned against the smokehouse wall. One call from the gardener or the missus and that would be the end of the rescue mission. Shabalala rested easily against the smokehouse wall. Emmanuel took his cue from the black constable and relaxed his clenched jaw. The pounding of footsteps diminished, then disappeared as the Pretorius boys continued the chase.
"My car's no good," Emmanuel said. "If they have any brains, they've slashed the tires or left someone sitting on the bumper to guard it."
"We must find another car. There is one close by."
"Where?"
"The police station."
"The police station? How are we going to manage that, Constable?"
Shabalala moved to the front of the smokehouse and indicated a brick dwelling with colored glass panels set into the front door and a wagon wheel fence along its wide stoep.
"The young policeman. He lives with his mother and his sisters. That is his house."
"You want Hansie to get the car?"
"I can think of no other person who can get the police van from the front of the station."
"God help us."
Emmanuel crossed the street with Shabalala and knocked on the front door with two clear raps. Through the colored glass panels he saw the young policeman make his way down the corridor.
The door swung open and Hansie peered out with a sullen expression on his face. His blue eyes were rimmed with red and his nose glowed a dull pink from constant blowing.
"I got the necklace." He sniffled. "I got it back just like you said, Detective Sergeant."
"Good work." Emmanuel stepped into the corridor and forced Hansie back a few feet. Shabalala closed the door behind them. "I need you to get me one more thing, Constable."
"What?"
"The police van," Emmanuel said. "I need you to go to the station and collect the police van."
"But Lieutenant Lapping gave me the day off. He said I didn't have to come in till tomorrow."
"I'm putting you back on duty." Emmanuel made it sound like an instant promotion. "You're the best driver on the force. Better than most of the detectives I work with in Jo'burg."
"Honest?" The compliment perked the boy up enough to forget about the necklace and the day off.
"Honest." Emmanuel looked directly at Hansie in order to gauge just how deeply his words were sinking in. "I want you to go to the police station, get the van, and drive it back here. Can you do that?"
"Ja."
"If anyone asks you where you're going with the van, tell them you are looking for a stolen…" His city knowledge hit against the reality of country life. What was there to steal in Jacob's Rest?
"Goat," Shabalala supplied. "You are looking for a stolen goat."
"Have you got that?"
"I'm looking for a stolen goat."
"Go straight to the police station and come straight back here with the van." Emmanuel repeated the instructions, hoping some of the information stuck in Hansie's muddled brain.
"Yes, Detective Sergeant."
The boy straightened his uniform and quick marched toward the front door with wind-up-toy precision. Everything—Louis's apprehension, Davida Ellis's safe return and the service of justice—all rested in the hands of eighteen-year-old Constable Hansie Hepple. A feeling of dread assailed Emmanuel.
A skin-and-bones blond girl, her hands and apron covered in sticky bread dough, appeared. Blue eyes, darker and denser than her brother's, glimmered with a faint internal light.
"That was a pretty necklace," she said in Afrikaans. "Hansie cried when he had to take it back, and his sweetheart was angry with him. Ma's gone to the store to get bicarb of soda to settle Hansie's stomach."
"We have got to find an alternate way out of here. This is no place for men like us to end," Emmanuel said to Shabalala.
They pushed through the rough country, drawn on by the looming mass of towering rock and clouds. In an ancient time, long before the white man, the mountain must have had a spiritual significance. Emmanuel felt the pull of it as he struggled to keep tabs on Shabalala's agile navigation through the monotonous blur of branches, thorns and termite mounds.
Fifty-five minutes and one brief break later, they reached the foot of the mountain and encountered a solid rock wall softened here and there by tufts of grass and stunted trees growing from crevices carved by centuries of wind and rain. As natural formations went, it had a handsome but unfriendly face.
"How do we get up?" Emmanuel leaned back against a sun-warmed boulder that nestled beside the mountainside like a schoolboy's marble. It was good to have a break, to feel the air coming in and out of his lungs without the fiery afterburn caused by lack of oxygen.
"We go around and then up," Shabalala said, and Emmanuel noted with satisfaction that the Zulu constable had broken a sweat on the cross-country trek.
"Is the goat on the mountain?" Hansie asked after drinking deeply from his water canteen. The boy policeman's face had progressed from white to pink and then finally to a coal-fire red that rivaled a split watermelon for sheer depth of color.
"I hope so," Emmanuel said, and followed Shabalala around the base of the massive rock outcrop. They walked for five minutes until they came to a deep crease in the mountainside. Shabalala pointed to a path that wound upward and disappeared behind a windblown tree with branches bleached like bones.
"Up here." Shabalala led them onto the skinny dirt lane, slowing now and then to check a clump of grass or a snapped twig.
"Any sign of them?" Emmanuel asked as he scrambled over loose rocks and exposed roots. Louis and Davida could be a hundred miles in the opposite direction.
"There are three paths to the cave. I can say only that they have not come along this way."
"Maybe they haven't come here at all." The fear that had tugged at him since speeding out of town and heading to the mountain was now lodged like a splinter in his gut. He'd made a meal of the scraps thrown to him throughout the investigation and now he was about to find out if all the hunches and conjecture amounted to anything.
Shabalala stopped at the intersection of three paths that joined up into one and examined the ground and the surrounding loose stones.
"They are here," he said.
A moment of relief washed over Emmanuel and then he moved quickly up the path, his exhausted muscles fed by adrenaline. Louis had a good three-hour lead on them, and God knows what had happened to Davida Ellis in that time.
The grass trail ended at a wide, flat rock ledge that jutted out over the steep fall of the mountainside and offered a breathtaking view of untamed country running to all points of the compass. A martial eagle, white chest feathers flashing starkly against the pale sky, circled on a warm air current in front of them. Far below on the plain, a watering hole sparkled in the late-afternoon sunlight. It was as Shabalala said, a place to stir the heart.
"There." The Zulu constable pointed across the ledge to the dark mouth of the cave hollowed into the rock face.
"Detective Sergeant—"
"Shh…" Emmanuel silenced Hansie. "Wait behind this bush and guard the path. If anyone comes, call out to me. Understand?"
"Ja. Call out."
"Good." Emmanuel unclipped the holster at his hip, the first time he'd done so since arriving in Jacob's Rest, and pulled out his .38 Standard Webley revolver. With Shabalala at his side, he ran low and fast across the rock ledge with his ears straining for the sound of voices or the click of a rifle bolt sliding back. An eerie silence followed them into the cave.
Emmanuel did a visual sweep of the interior. The cave was a scooped-out oval, large enough for a Voortrekker Scout troop to hold an all-night sing-along inside. Diffused afternoon light illuminated an unsettling domestic scene. A thin bedroll made up of a sheet and gray blanket was laid out in the middle of the space and next to it was a lantern and a bucket of water. A container of rusks, strips of dried beef, and two enamel plates and cups lay on a flat stone. An open Bible, a box of candles, and a coil of rope were placed on an empty rucksack that served as an altar. Emmanuel holstered his weapon.
"Where are they?" he said. The cave was set up as a living place, a place to sleep and eat and do who knows what with the Bible and the rope. The teenager had every intention of spending the night and possibly longer holed up in his private chapel.
"I will see." Shabalala checked the tracks on the floor and stepped out of the cave to investigate further. He returned quickly.
"They have gone along the narrow way to a place with a waterfall. It is spring. The water will be flowing."
"Can we follow?"
"It is narrow. There is space for only one person to walk at a time. I can take you."
"Let's go," Emmanuel said. "I don't want to take the chance of finding a second corpse in the water."
Emmanuel swung in behind his colleague and they approached the mouth of the pathway, which disappeared like the tail of a snake into the mountainside. A low, sweet voice singing an Afrikaans hymn stopped them at the entrance. A few swift steps and he and Shabalala were crouched behind a spiked bush with the teenaged constable, who was hot cheeked and flustered.
"What is it?" Hansie asked.
"Whoever steps out from that pathway, you are not to make a sound," Emmanuel said. "Understand? Not even a whisper."
Davida Ellis stumbled onto the flat rock ledge in her bare feet with her arms wrapped protectively around her midriff. She was soaking wet and her pale green dress clung to her brown skin. Drops of water splashed onto the rock surface and formed a small puddle at her feet. She shivered despite the mild spring heat.
Louis Pretorius appeared, stripped naked to the waist with a rifle slung across his shoulder like a native scout. He continued singing and dried his face and hair with a handkerchief, which he returned to the pocket of his damp jeans. The words of the Afrikaans hymn circled high into the clouds, as if on a fast track to the Almighty. Louis had the face and the voice of an angel.
He finished his song and laid his hand lightly on Davida's shoulder. She flinched but he didn't seem to notice her reaction to his touch. He spoke close to her ear. "'I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.' Ezekiel 36:25. It feels good to be cleansed and made new, doesn't it?"
His hand moved to her neck, his fingers brushing the delicate ridges of her trachea. "God hears better if we speak out loud and raise our voices to Him."
Emmanuel made ready to sprint across the rock ledge if the boy's fingers encircled Davida's throat.
"Agghhh…" Hansie released a scandalized breath that traveled across the open space and bounced off the hard rock surfaces. He might as well have thrown a stone. Louis tensed and swung his rifle across his chest so it nestled firmly in his hands. His finger rested on the trigger and he aimed the gun's barrel toward the bush.
"Come out," he called in a voice that was close to friendly. "If you don't, I'll unload this chamber into the bushes. True as I stand here."
"Don't—" Hansie jumped to his feet, his hands raised in surrender. "Don't shoot. It's me. It's Hansie."
"Who's with you?" Louis asked. "You're not clever enough to have made it here on your own."
"Not clever? What—"
Emmanuel and Shabalala stood up. Emmanuel didn't want Louis to panic and send Davida on a shortcut to the Lord God via the sheer drop just two feet to his left. And he sure as hell wasn't going to let Hansie Hepple conduct the negotiations for release of the hostage.
"Detective Sergeant Cooper." Louis greeted him with a nod of his head as he would someone he'd met on the street corner or the church steps. "I see you got out of the jam I fixed for you. And you brought along Constable Shabalala for company. What brings the three of you out to the mountain?"
"We could ask you the same thing." Emmanuel kept his tone friendly and noted the supremely self-confident way the bare-chested boy handled his rifle. He looked born to the ways of the bandit. Davida shivered next to him.
"This is a long way to come for a shower, isn't it, Louis?" he said, and tried to appraise Davida's condition. She stared at him with the mute shock he'd seen many times on the faces of civilians caught in the crush of two warring armies. Her eyes pleaded for rescue and restoration.
"I am acting on God's command. I don't expect you to understand what it is I do here today, Detective."
"Explain it to me. I want to understand."
"And He shall wash away the sins of the world." Louis circled a hand around Davida's arm and jerked her against his hip. "I have purged the dirt from her physical being with pure water and stones and now I will cleanse her soul of the sin that has made her an impure vessel."
"Last time I checked, you weren't the Lord God. You were Louis Pretorius, son of Willem and Ingrid Pretorius of Jacob's Rest. What qualifies you to clean anyone's soul but your own?"
"'And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.'"
In a trade-off of scripture verses, Emmanuel was sure he would lose out to Louis. The young Pretorius boy was so tightly wrapped in his holy vision that he didn't even recognize that what he'd done to Davida and her grandmother was sin itself. For Louis, it was all holy visions backed up by a chorus of angels.
"But…" Hansie was having trouble keeping up with the conversation. "That girl is a darkie. What are you doing up here with one of them?"
The fire in Louis's eyes was bright enough to rival his grandfather Frikkie van Brandenburg's incendiary glare. "When I was a child, I spoke as a child and when I was grown I put away all childish things. You, Hansie, are one of those childish things."
"What are you talking about?" Hansie asked. "You're not supposed to be washing or doing whatnot with one of them. It's against the law, and I know that your ma won't be happy to see you standing so close, either."
"My mission does not concern my earthly family or you. God called me and you are standing in the way of His works."
"Let me get this straight." Emmanuel tried to gauge the depth of Louis's delusion. "God, the redeemer of souls, has called you to the theft of pornographic images, lies, assault, and the kidnapping of unclean women? When did you get this calling, Louis? At Suiwer Sprong or afterward, at the theological college?"
Louis's pretty face seemed to distort. "Everything I do is in the service of the Lord."
"Did the Lord call you to molest those women last year?"
"That was the work of the devil. I broke free of his chains and have been cleansed of all my sins."
"Is this how they drove the sin out of you on the farm? With outdoor showers and fear?" Van Niekerk had listed "water therapy" as one of the cures being offered at the quasi-religious nut farm. What methods had the German-trained Dr. Hans de Klerk used to clean the sin from the Pretorius boy?
Louis blinked hard. "Everything that was done to me was in the service of the Lord. I was lost and now I am found."
Emmanuel felt an unexpected stab of pity. Louis had been brought up by his mother to believe he was the light of the world, but he'd inherited his father's taste for life outside the strict moral code of the volk. He was torn in two, lost, and made more dangerous by a spell of "realignment" deep in the Drakensberg Mountains.
"Was your father an impure vessel, Louis?" Emmanuel asked. He was interested in Louis's attitude to the captain's hypocrisy.
"Pa was led astray by the work of the devil, same as me." The boy looked over at the Zulu constable. "My pa was a good man, hey, Shabalala? A godly man."
"I believe it."
"I'm not disputing your pa's goodness," Emmanuel said. "I'm just wondering how hard he struggled with the devil. You went away to the farm and conquered the devil, but your father stayed on, and, well…he let the devil win a few nights a week. For almost a year."
"Captain Pretorius wasn't in league with the devil!" Hansie's voice rose three octaves. "You didn't know him. He was clean inside and out."
"No man is clean inside and out." Emmanuel returned his attention to Louis and kept his tone even and nonconfrontational. "You know what it is to struggle with the devil, don't you, Louis? You want to be holy and yet here you are on top of a mountain with a terrified woman, a gun, and a piece of rope coiled on your Bible."
"This woman is the root of all the problems." Louis curled his hand tightly around Davida's forearm until she gasped in pain. "She is the one who needs to be cleansed of her carnal nature."
"Like you cleansed your father at the river?" Emmanuel tested the connection between the molester and the murderer. An unbalanced boy with a sighted rifle and delusions of godhead was a dangerous animal. "That's what you did, isn't it? You arranged a face-to-face meeting with the Almighty and then you dragged his body to the water to cleanse him of sin. Is that how it happened?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You killed your father to cleanse him, didn't you, Louis?"
"Of course not."
"You knew he wasn't going to stop sinning, so you helped him break free of Satan's trap. I understand that. I understand how it happened."
Louis loosened his grip on Davida's arm and leveled a damning stare at the English detective. "I loved my father. When the devil had me in his claws, my father prayed with me and together we found a way out. I would never raise a hand to him. He saved me."
"You didn't shoot him at the river?"
"No. Honor your mother and your father so your days may be long on the earth. That's God's promise."
"But you spied on your father when he was alive. That wasn't an honorable thing to do, was it?"
"Witnessing." Louis let go of Davida's arm and pushed the messy blond hair from his forehead. "I had to witness the depth of his wrongdoing to understand just how far he'd strayed from the path of righteousness."
"You didn't enjoy it?" Emmanuel saw Davida slump back against the rock face and draw great mouthfuls of air into her lungs. She was still shivering and probably in shock. "You got no pleasure from watching your father having sex with one of the women you'd messed with the previous December? How many times did you witness your father straying from the path, Louis?"
"I can't remember," the boy muttered.
"Surely once was enough? You see your father with a brown-skinned woman and you know, don't you? You know that a sin is being committed without having to come back a second and a third time."
"I was witnessing. I didn't enjoy what I saw."
"Truly?" Emmanuel had the tiger by the tail and he had every intention of shaking it until it coughed up a lung. "I think you were doing something that began with W, but it wasn't witnessing. You got as much pleasure as your father did, only from a distance."
"Shabalala." The bare-chested boy appealed to the black policeman. "You know my family. We are from pure Afrikaner blood. You are from pure African blood. This business has come about because of those with impure blood among us. Is that not so?"
"Your father was pure. The woman is pure. When they were together, there was no wrong in them."
"You can't believe that." The boy was thrown by Shabalala's calm and forgiving statement. "She's the reason my father went astray and was killed. The fault is in her."
"That one there. She was your father's little wife, and I tell you again, there was no wrong in them. The captain made the arrangement for her in the old way and did not intend any disrespect to come to her during his lifetime and even now after he has gone."
Louis blushed at the Zulu constable's criticism but didn't lower his weapon. "Your native ways are not for the volk to live by. Our God does not permit the tainting of our bodies or our blood with those from a lesser sphere. It is written so."
Davida, still shaking, had inched her way along the rock wall and was now out of arm's reach of the teenage prophet.
Emmanuel stepped forward and drew Louis's attention to him. "Did you ever offer your father the chance to come here and cleanse his sins in the waterfall?" he asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"There was never a good time to bring it up. I didn't know how to tell him that I knew what he was doing."
"Well…" Emmanuel said. "How about after he'd finished and both of you were satisfied and feeling good about the world? You could have met him out on the kaffir path and exchanged notes before praying together."
"You are a foul-minded Englishman. It's a pity my brothers didn't catch you and teach you a lesson."
Emmanuel shrugged and stared over the rock ledge to the vast sweep of country. Davida was inches from the cave mouth and safety. "'By their deeds shall ye know them.'" He dragged out a biblical quote from the deep vaults of memory. "What's a jury going to make of an Afrikaner boy out here with a kidnapped coloured girl? Do you really believe your brethren will understand that you washed her body to cleanse her and spied on your father having sex with her in order to bear witness to the Lord?"
"God is my guide and my staff. It is not for man to pass judgment on what I have done."
"Things are different now, Louis. When you got rid of your father you got rid of the one person who was willing to break the law to protect you."
Louis's finger was tight on the trigger. "I had no hand in what happened to my father. He was struck down before his time and I pray to the Almighty that he sees into Pa's heart and forgives his transgressions."
"Louis…" Hansie's vacant blue eyes brimmed with tears of frustration. "Tell the detective sergeant this is all a mistake. You didn't touch those coloured women and Captain didn't do like what he says…with the sex and the devil and the little wife."
Louis smiled, truly the most beautiful of God's angels. "You know what my pa told me once, Hansie?"
"No."
"That you cannot know God until you have wrestled with the devil and the devil has won." He turned to Davida to illustrate his point and found her gone. The rifle swung easily in the boy's hands and he raised it to his eye and took aim at the cave mouth, where the woman appeared as a dark fleeting shape. His legs were spread in the classic marksman pose that gave stability to the torso and increased the likelihood of hitting the mark.
"Drop the weapon, Louis!" Emmanuel shouted across the rock ledge, handgun squarely on target. "Drop it or I will shoot you."
The shadow disappeared from the cave mouth and Louis slowly lowered his rifle to his hip. His fingers twitched around the barrel but the gun stayed put.
"Do not move." Emmanuel's voice was clear and authoritative as he closed the distance between them. "Drop the gun to the ground and kick it toward me. Now."
Louis loosened his grip and the rifle clattered across the ledge, where Constable Shabalala picked it up and swung it across his back. The captain's youngest son sank down into a crouch and stared out across the miles of brown-and green-speckled veldt. It was midafternoon and the light had a soft and yielding quality that made the scrub appear hand-painted on the canvas of the earth.
"Now," Louis said, "she will never be saved."
Emmanuel signaled to Shabalala to stand guard while he checked the cave.
"Davida." He called out her name and stepped into the interior of Louis's bizarre mountain home. She sat near the cave entrance with her knees drawn up tightly underneath her. Emmanuel crouched next to her but didn't touch her despite the fact that her body shook with a bone-rattling intensity. She'd had enough of white men trying to help her for a lifetime.
"It's okay. You're safe now," he said. Her skin was scratched with fine red lines from the wash-down Louis had given her with rocks and pure spring water. "Did he hurt you anyplace that I can't see, Davida?"
"Not like you think. Not that way."
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"No, not now. Did you find my granny?"
"Zweigman is with her. He says she's injured, but she's going to be all right. You know he'll take good care of her."
"Good. Good." She started to cry and Emmanuel retrieved the gray blanket from the made-up bedroll. He held it out for her to see.
"Can I put this on you? You need to get dry and warm before we make a move."
"Outside. I'll put it on outside. I don't want to stay in here."
They left the cave and she huddled near the entrance, her instincts telling her to stick close to shelter. Emmanuel wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and noticed that she didn't look across to where Louis was under guard.
"It smells of him," she said. "Like flowers on a grave."
"You'll need to keep it on until you're warm, then we'll head back to Jacob's Rest."
"I'll go when you go," she said, and rested her chin on her knees to watch long wisps of white cloud stretch across the sky. Emmanuel walked over to Shabalala and stood by his side. The Zulu constable looked weary, as if this end to things was more terrible than he had imagined.
"What now?" Louis asked over the sound of Hansie's sniveling. "Are you going to arrest me?"
"I've got no choice," Emmanuel said. "You are charged with assault and kidnapping. Both are criminal offenses and you will have to stand trial."
"My mother…" There was a glimmer of fear in Louis's eyes. "She'll know all the ways the devil has led me astray."
"Most likely, yes." Emmanuel checked the position of the sun. It was time to get moving if they wanted to make it back to Jacob's Rest before nightfall. The police station was still out of bounds. They'd have to use Zweigman's store as a holding cell for Louis at least until Davida Ellis was safely returned home. After that he'd have to make a dash for Mooihoek with the captain's youngest son in custody. The Pretorius boys would skin him alive and boil his bones for soup if they caught him in the company of their sweet little brother.
"You're going to put him in prison?" Hansie was shocked.
"That's generally where people accused of assault and kidnapping end up, Hepple. That is the law."
"But it's not right putting a white man in jail over one of them. It's not decent."
"What's decent or not is for a judge to decide. Collect the evidence, complete the docket, and present the case in court. That's my job. And yours, too." Emmanuel checked Davida to see if she'd stopped shivering. The long march back to the car was going to be difficult with Hansie, Louis, and a traumatized woman in tow.
"I'll get her," he said to Shabalala. "You get Mathandunina."
They split off to their separate duties but didn't get far. The distinct sound of a safety catch releasing caught them midstep. Emmanuel turned to see Hansie standing, tearstained and snot-faced, with his Webley revolver aimed right at his midsection. A bullet in the gut administered by a dull-minded Afrikaner boy was a lousy way to die.
"Constable Hepple." He used the title to remind the teenager that he was an officer of the law. "Put the gun down, please."
"No. I won't let you take Louis to jail."
"What should we do with your friend, Constable Hepple?"
"Let him go."
"Okay," Emmanuel said, and left Hansie to fill the sudden power void.
"Go," the boy policeman urged his friend. "Go. Run."
The bare-chested prophet was crouched down, staring out across country, as if mesmerized by the colors of the veldt spread out below him.
"Louis." Hansie's voice was loud and raw in the arena of rock and cloud. "What are you doing? Go."
The teenaged boy stood up and walked to the very edge of the rock platform, where he spread his arms out wide to feel the wind blowing in from the bush lands. He turned back to face the cave, his hair bright as a halo.
"This is a holy place. Can you feel it, Detective? The power of God so close."
"I can," Emmanuel said.
"You're right, Detective. I should have brought my father here and tried to save his soul. If I'd done that he'd be alive today."
"It wasn't your job to save him." Emmanuel could feel the pull of gravity dragging on Louis's heels, threatening to suck him over the edge and into the void. "A man is responsible for the health of his own soul. You did nothing wrong."
Louis smiled. "The sin is that I didn't try. I left him adrift in a sea of iniquity."
"It's hard for sons and fathers to talk. You said yourself that it was difficult to bring up the topic of what your father was doing."
"I didn't want him to stop. You know there were evenings when, right after Pa had finished, I'd lie out on the grass and look up at the stars. What happiness I felt inside, knowing that he and I were alike. I was my father's son, not Mathandunina."
Hansie lowered his revolver so it was now aimed somewhere between Emmanuel's pelvis and his kneecaps. There was still no room to make a sudden move toward Louis, who remained perilously close to the cliff. Constable Hepple was too dull of mind to see that the threat to his boyhood friend came entirely from within.
"Remember, Shabalala?" Louis switched to Zulu. "When I was a child the people would say, 'Look at this one. Whom does he belong to? Can he really belong to that man there?'"
"Your father knew well that you were his son," Shabalala said. "He had you close in his heart."
"That's why it pains me that I did nothing to save him."
"You were not at the river." Shabalala threw out a lifeline in the hope that it reached the boy's hands. "The man who shot your father is the one who is at fault in this matter."
"The wages of sin is death. I knew that and yet I did nothing because what Pa did gave me pleasure also. My mother will hear of this but she will not understand. She will never forgive."
"Your mother loves you also."
"She will be in disgrace because of me. Her family will cast her out if I go to jail."
"You are loved by her." Shabalala walked slowly toward the boy. "She will take you back into her arms. It is so."
The wind rising up from the veldt was cold on Emmanuel's face. Even Shabalala, with his breathtaking physical speed, would not be able to reach the melancholy boy in time to stop him from testing his angel's wings.
"You'll tell her I'm sorry, hey, Shabalala? You'll say to her that I know we will meet one day on the beautiful shore."
"Nkosana…" Shabalala sprinted toward the boy he'd seen stumble and fall as a child. His hands were outstretched with the mute promise: "Hold on to me and I will keep you safe from harm."
"Stay well," Louis said, and stepped backward off the cliff and into the Lord's embrace. There was the dry snap of branches, then the breath of the wind as it stirred the silence.
|
A Beautiful Place to Die
|
Malla Nunn
|
[
"mystery"
] |
[
"South Africa",
"1950s",
"crime",
"Detective Emmanuel Cooper"
] |
Chapter 19
|
Emmanuel stood at the edge of the sheer drop. There was no sign of Louis Pretorius. He wasn't in a crevice with minor injuries or balancing precariously on a tree limb awaiting rescue. The boy had fallen all the way to the veldt floor.
"I must get him," Shabalala said, and headed for the path that led down the mountain. He was breathing hard, his giant chest rising and falling under the starched material of his uniform. "I must find him and return him to his home."
"You are not at fault." Emmanuel felt the black man's pain. It was deep in his flesh like a thorn. "You did all that could be done for Mathandunina in his last moments."
Shabalala nodded but kept his own counsel. It might take years for the thorn to work its way to the surface and fall away.
"We will meet you by the boulder." Emmanuel let the black constable get on with the job of recovering the dead. Nothing he could say would take away the pain that Shabalala felt for failing to save the son of his friend. "We will wait there until you are ready."
The Zulu constable started on his journey without looking back at the cave where he had played for long hours as a boy. He would not return to this place again without a powerful medicine woman, a sangoma, by his side. Ghosts and spirits were so thick in the air, a person could not draw breath without choking. Mathandunina's body and spirit must be picked up and together taken back to his home in order to avoid more bloodshed and misfortune.
Shabalala disappeared into the bush and Emmanuel pulled the bottle of white pills from his pocket. A place to stir the heart or crush it, he thought as he swallowed the painkillers and looked out over the African plains. The light here was completely different from the cool white sunshine that lit the sky during the European winter, but with Louis's death he felt the same: old and tired.
"Dear Jesus." Hansie was on his knees, his hands clasped together in prayer. His words came out between broken sobs of grief. "Help him. Give him strength to overcome the fall. Raise him up, Lord."
"He's dead, Hansie."
"Ja…" The boy made a mournful sound and rocked back onto his heels. "I should have helped take him off the mountain when you said."
Emmanuel didn't have the strength to reprimand Hansie. He waited until the boy's sobs lessened.
"You weren't to know," he said.
Hansie shook his head as if to clear it. "I'm sorry, Sarge. I still don't understand what happened."
"In time. Maybe."
Emmanuel walked to where Davida sat with the blanket draped over her shoulders. She'd stopped shaking and gazed at the breathtaking vista.
"We have to go." Where to exactly, Emmanuel didn't know. Returning Davida to Jacob's Rest was out of the question. As soon as the news of Louis's death spread, she would become kindling for the fire that would engulf the small town. She would be safer with her mother out here on King's farm.
Davida stood up and let the blanket drop to the dirt. She walked to the ledge and stared into the void.
"I hope the lions eat him," she said.
The lights of Elliot King's homestead clustered on the horizon and glowed bright against the night sky. Emmanuel breathed deeply. He felt sick. In the back of the van, Shabalala cradled Louis Pretorius's body: an empty cocoon of flesh and bone now broken beyond repair. The Zulu constable was convinced that Louis's spirit was conjuring a violent revenge against them. The only way to avoid trouble, Shabalala said, was to take the boy's body back to his mother, but Emmanuel couldn't let that happen.
"Park close to the stairs," he said once they'd crossed the cattle grid at the entrance to the drive. They had to deliver Davida to her mother, then drive Louis to the nearest morgue. A police inquiry into the death was certain and a public inquest couldn't be ruled out. The spotlight would illuminate all the secrets of Jacob's Rest.
Hansie pulled in behind the red Jaguar in the driveway and cut the engine.
Elliot King and his picture-perfect nephew, Winston, stood at the top stair to the porch. The world was going to hell while they sipped sundowners and admired their own little piece of paradise.
A black ranger in a Bayete Lodge uniform appeared from nowhere and stood guard at the front of the police van with a nightstick in his hands. Like all chiefs, the rich Englishman had his own private army.
King dismissed the ranger with a wave of his gin and tonic, and Emmanuel reached for the door handle. Davida grabbed hold of his arm. She trembled.
"I don't want to go out there," she said.
"Hepple," he instructed the constable, "go into the house and fetch the housekeeper, Mrs. Ellis. Tell her to come straightaway."
Hansie slid out of the driver's-side door and took the stairs two at a time. He crossed paths with the King men on their way down to the van.
"Your mother's coming," Emmanuel told Davida, and she pressed closer to his side. "I have to talk to King."
"Don't let them near me," she said.
"I won't," Emmanuel promised, and swung the door open and stepped out. King and Winston peered through the front window at Davida's huddled shape.
"Has she been hurt?" King demanded.
"Where's my Davida?" Mrs. Ellis stumbled down the stairs toward the triangle of white men standing between her and her daughter.
Emmanuel waved King and Winston aside so the housekeeper could coax Davida out of the vehicle and into the house.
"Take her inside. I'll take her statement in a little while. Stay with her until I get there."
"Statement?" The housekeeper was dazed and afraid. "Why does my baby need to give a statement?"
"Take her inside," Emmanuel repeated, "and get her a blanket and a cup of tea. Keep her warm."
"Davida? Baby girl?" Mrs. Ellis leaned into the van and put her arms around the balled-up shape hiding there. "It's Mummy. Come on, darling…"
Davida reached up and the two women clung tight to each other. Emmanuel stepped farther away and tried to block out the sobbing.
"Come on, baby…" Mrs. Ellis said, and led Davida toward the stairs.
Emmanuel watched the women disappear into the house. Soon he would talk to Davida about the man at the river.
"Did you do that?" Winston said. "Did you put those bruises and scratches on her, Detective Sergeant?"
"No."
"That was Louis," Hansie cut in. "He's the one who did it."
"Louis Pretorius?" Winston asked.
"Ja. He took her up to the mountain and washed her with stones under the water. He was trying to save her. That's what he said."
"He raped her?" King asked.
"I don't believe so." Emmanuel was sure that something else, possibly just as unpleasant and intrusive, had happened under the waterfall.
Winston seemed stunned and angry.
"I'll know more once I've spoken to her." Emmanuel kept King and Winston back from the van. He didn't like the look in Winston's eye.
"Well," Winston said. "Where is Louis? Is he in custody?"
"He's in the van with Shabalala," Hansie said. "Shabalala wants to take him back home to his ma but we can't. Not yet."
"What?" Winston moved fast toward the back of the van and grappled with the door handle. Emmanuel grabbed him, spun him around by the shoulders and pushed him hard toward the house. Winston turned to face him and stepped toward him again. Emmanuel stopped him cold with two hands on his chest.
"Move away from the van."
"He has to pay for what he did," Winston said.
"He will," Emmanuel said. "Now move away from the van."
Winston stared him down for a moment and Emmanuel recognized something in his look. Where had he seen that look before? Winston broke eye contact and strode in the direction of the house. King reached out a sympathetic hand but Winston pushed him away and climbed the stairs.
Something is going on, Emmanuel thought. Why is Winston this angry about the assault of a housekeeper's daughter?
"You need to move away," Emmanuel told King. "I don't want to see you or Winston within ten feet of this police van. Understood?"
King nodded. "What happens now?"
"I'll take Davida's statement and then we'll transport Louis to Mooihoek."
"You won't take him home?"
"No," Emmanuel said. "Go inside and finish your drink. Constable Hepple will escort you."
Hansie followed the Englishmen up the stairs and took up position between the stoep and the vehicle. Emmanuel unlocked the back doors of the police van and motioned Shabalala out.
The tension in the Zulu constable's face and body was obvious. "Are you all right?" Emmanuel asked.
"This one—" Shabalala pressed a hand against the doors. "He will cause trouble wherever he goes. He will try to take one of us with him to the other side. I feel it is so."
"If we bring him to his house, that will cause trouble also. He won't be easy to handle wherever we go."
"I know this." The Zulu policeman made eye contact with Emmanuel. "You must be careful, nkosana. Mathandunina knows it was you who found out about the mountain and it was you who took the little wife from him. You have touched her and he does not like this."
"I did no such thing."
"You put his blanket around her, that is what I mean, nkosana."
"So—" Emmanuel said after the surge of embarrassment at his denial ebbed. How could a corpse know about the conversation in Davida's room or the quickening of his senses at the sight of her so close to the wrought-iron bed?
"What must we do, Shabalala? I can't see any way to avoid trouble over Louis."
"We must tell his mother where he is. Maybe if we do this, things will not go so badly for us."
"When we get to the place where his body will be examined," Emmanuel said, "I'll call Mrs. Pretorius and let her know where her son is."
"That is good." Shabalala still looked worried. "I will tell him and if he hears it correctly, he will not want more blood to be spilled."
"I'd like that," Emmanuel said. Less blood to be spilled. He'd spent three years hoping for that very thing and yet he'd come home and stepped right back into the company of the dead.
Emmanuel read the handwritten statement a second time and looked across the table at Davida. She was flushed and uncomfortable, as if the heat from the kitchen stove had suddenly gotten to her. Mrs. Ellis hovered close to her daughter's shoulder like a guardian angel afraid of failing a major assignment.
"The man at the river. You sure you didn't see who it was?"
"Yes."
"Did you know the man who shot Captain Pretorius, Davida?"
"No." She was adamant. "I didn't see who it was. I don't know who it was."
"He sounded like the molester, is that right? Like someone putting on a voice?"
"Yes."
"Louis admitted to being the molester," Emmanuel said. "But he denied killing his father."
"You believe that mad Dutchman but you don't believe me?" Her gray eyes sparked with anger. "White men always tell the truth, that's what you policemen believe. It makes catching criminals easy. Just look for the dark skin, don't bother with evidence."
Her accent caught his attention. It was not quite to the manor born, but desperate to get there by any road possible.
"Where did you go to school, Davida?"
"What?"
"Tell me where you went to school."
"Stonebrook Academy." She paused. "Why?"
"Your accent," he said, "it's…elegant."
"So?"
"What are you doing in Jacob's Rest, working for the old Jew and his wife in their little rag factory?"
"My granny and my mother live here," she said. "I came to be with them."
"Surely you were meant for more? An accent like that doesn't come cheap."
"I like cutting patterns."
"Did you fail your matric, Davida?"
She flashed an angry stare at him, then thought better of defending herself against the insult to her intelligence. The dangers hidden in the answers she gave were suddenly clear to her. She shut her mouth tight.
"Tell him, Davida." Mrs. Ellis took up the fight on her daughter's behalf. "She passed with flying colors and got accepted at the University of the Western Cape. Top of her class in four subjects."
"What happened?"
"She came to visit Granny and me for the Christmas holidays and decided to stay on for a year. She'll be going to university next year, hey, Davida?"
Emmanuel sat forward, pulled toward Davida by a thread of understanding. All those days spent in the company of the old Jew and his wife, reading, dreaming of the world out there. He'd done the same thing at boarding school—gazed out over the dusty fields to the world beyond.
"Look at me, Davida," he said, and waited until she did. "You weren't going anywhere, were you?"
"No," she whispered.
"That's why the captain built the hut. A little place out of town for the two of you. A home."
"That's right."
"No…" Mrs. Ellis muttered. "This doesn't make sense."
Emmanuel maintained eye contact and the thread with Davida strengthened. Her breath became shorter.
"Pretorius made the arrangement for you to be his little wife…that's right, isn't it, Davida?"
"What?!" Mrs. Ellis broke from the perfect-servant mold and hit her palm on the tabletop. "You can't come into my house and talk to my daughter like this. My baby's got nothing to do with Captain Pretorius. She delivered some papers to him for Mr. King a couple of times but that was it."
Davida looked older and wiser than her mother by a hundred years when she leaned back against the tiles depicting pretty rural scenes and wrapped her arms around her waist.
"Ma…"
Silence filled the room for a moment.
"No. No." Mrs. Ellis stepped close to her daughter. "That life isn't for you, my baby. You're going to go to university so that you don't have to be that kind of woman. You're going to stand on your own two feet and have a profession."
"What country do you think we live in, Ma?" The question was full of sadness. "A coloured woman doesn't get to choose the life she wants. Not even after she's been to university. This, here, is how things are."
Emmanuel wanted to look away from Mrs. Ellis's face, the death of her dream for her daughter written clear upon it. He watched the tragedy unfold across the kitchen table.
The housekeeper cupped her daughter's cheek with her palm and brushed away a tear that lay there.
"It's okay, my baby," she said, spinning a new vision for the future. "We'll forget this business and go on like before. You're young enough to start again without anyone knowing…That's right, hey?"
"Detective Sergeant!" Hansie called from outside. "Sergeant! Hurry."
Footsteps and the sound of glass smashing came from the front of the house. Emmanuel rushed out of the stifling kitchen and through the hushed luxury of the primitive-themed sitting room to the stoep. Elliot King stumbled against the drinks cabinet, his nose dribbling blood onto the front of his linen suit. Winston stood over him with his fist clenched.
"Fuck." The Englishman found an embroidered serviette and held it to his nostrils to stem the blood. "Christ, that stings."
Emmanuel looked past King and saw the rear lights of the police van fading into the night. He jumped off the steps onto the gravel drive and started to run.
"Shabalala's gone…" Hansie called out.
Emmanuel sprinted across the cattle grid and onto the dark ribbon of dirt road that split the King property in two. He ran for five minutes. The sound of the engine faded and then disappeared ahead of him. He stopped and gasped for breath. He rested his hands on his knees and tried to figure out what had happened.
After a minute he straightened up and glanced at the stars puncturing the night sky. The one person he trusted to stay by him had driven off with Louis's body because of a native superstition. Black policemen weren't even allowed to drive official vehicles. Emmanuel turned and walked slowly back toward King's house. Is this how it ends? he wondered. Abandoned and empty-handed on a deserted country road?
The silent landscape absorbed the crunch of his footsteps and the hiss of his ragged breath. He'd had worse days struggling across winter-hardened fields, but today was the peacetime equivalent. The moment Shabalala delivered Louis's body to his mother, the Pretorius family would explode. King's farm and Davida were going to be the targets of extreme vengeance.
He broke into a steady run, then heard a faint sound behind him. He checked over his shoulder. Red taillights blinked in the darkness as the police van reversed down the dirt road toward him. He met the van halfway and pulled the driver's door open once the vehicle had stopped.
"What happened?"
"The young man." Shabalala's top lip was swollen from a recent hit. "He fought with Nkosi King and then he came to the van and he fought with me. He said he wanted Louis but I would not let him in, so he said he was going to get a gun and 'bang' shoot me and shoot the van also. He ran to the house and Nkosi King said to drive because the young man, he was serious."
"Did Winston give you that fat lip?"
"Yebo," the constable said. "I let him hit me many times, but I do not wish to be hit with a bullet many times."
"You did well." Emmanuel looked back at the lights of the homestead. Something had come loose in Winston. "Stay here. I'll send Hansie for you when things have settled."
"I will return when you say so."
"Thank you," Emmanuel said. Shabalala had gone against his instincts and given up the opportunity to take Louis back to his mother. Winston's violent threats were reason enough not to return to the homestead, but the Zulu constable held the course.
Emmanuel raced back to the house and found Hansie waiting for him at the cattle grid. The teenager's uniform was streaked with dust and embedded with pieces of loose gravel.
"That Winston pushed me down the stairs," Hansie said. "Then he went after Shabalala."
Emmanuel tried to make sense of Winston's actions. What fool goes after the police? For what reason? He leapt up the stairs, thinking of Shabalala's swollen lip and Hansie's disheveled appearance.
"Stay out here and make sure no one comes in or out of the house, Hepple."
"Yes, sir."
The stoep was empty and Emmanuel went inside. The sound of voices drew him across the sitting room to the kitchen, where he paused at the open door. Mrs. Ellis leaned over King and wiped his bloody nose with a wet face towel while Winston stood in a corner looking at the floor. Davida sat at the table and twisted a spoon in her hands.
"Careful," King groaned. "You have to be more careful with me, Lolly."
"Shhh…" The housekeeper whispered close to King's ear, "It's not so bad, you silly man."
Emmanuel entered the room.
"You're a family," he said, stunned by the revelation. "Mother, father, sister and brother."
"Don't be ridiculous." King gave each member of his illegitimate family a warning glance. "You have no proof of your allegations, and if you repeat that slander again, my lawyers will deal with you, Detective Sergeant."
"Shabalala was right." Emmanuel ignored King and spoke directly to Davida. The undervalued sale of the Pretorius farm suddenly made sense. "The captain did pay a bride-price, but it wasn't in cattle or money, it was in land. The land we're standing on."
Davida glanced at her father, waiting for a cue.
"King was the one who cleaned the hut up after the captain died." Emmanuel went on. "He sent you to get any evidence he'd missed when he wiped the place down. That's right, isn't it?"
"Davida." King used her name like a blunt instrument. "The detective sergeant is wearing a suit but he's a police officer and his job is to enforce the law. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
"Yes, Mr. King."
"You don't have to protect him anymore, Davida. Tell me what happened."
She silenced herself behind her shy-brown-mouse mask and Emmanuel wondered how he would break through.
"Bride-price?" Mrs. Ellis placed the wet face towel down on the table. "What does that mean?"
"The detective is playing games, Lolly," King said.
Winston snorted in disbelief and the housekeeper took a half step back. She glared at the injured Englishman.
"You knew what was going on," she said.
"No." King sounded calm but his thumb drummed against his thigh. "Pretorius was someone I did business with, that's all."
"You say you don't like the Afrikaner, yet you talked with that one for hours about how you both loved Africa. Why did you spend so much time with him?"
"Business," King said. "It pays to have interests in common with whoever you're dealing with. If something happened between Davida and that Dutchman, it was her choice, nothing to do with me."
The slap came from nowhere. An arc of crimson blood sprayed from King's wounded nose and landed on Mrs. Ellis's starched uniform and the hand-painted tiles. Emmanuel caught the housekeeper's hand before she went in for a second hit.
"Liar!" Mrs. Ellis was in a cold rage. "You said this one belonged to me but you broke your promise. You stole her and you sold her."
"Lolly—" Red bubbles flew from King's nostrils as he tried to stem the bleeding and talk at the same time. "Don't. Not in front of the police, for God's sake."
Years of hard work had made her strong and Emmanuel struggled to keep her away from King. If he let her go, she'd scratch King's eyes out.
"How could you do this to her? She was going to study to become a teacher, or even a doctor—"
"Christ above, Lolly. How long do you think it would take a dark-skinned girl like her to earn even close to what we made on the land deal? Fifteen, twenty years if she was lucky? Pretorius was willing to give me far more than she was worth—"
Emmanuel loosened his grip and let Mrs. Ellis fly. Elliot King didn't know when to shut up.
"Lolly—" King tried to fend off the blows but the housekeeper slapped him down and tore into the suntanned skin of his neck and chin with her nails. His chair tipped over and King went with it, landing on the floor with a thud.
Mrs. Ellis followed him down and began to rip his hair. Emmanuel gave her another moment and when she showed no signs of slowing, he pulled her away; he already had one dead body to deal with.
"Okay—" He lifted the vengeful woman up and held her arms loosely by her sides until her muscles relaxed and she fell against him, fighting for breath. "It's okay now," he said.
Winston stepped toward his mother and she surged violently toward him. Emmanuel held her back.
"You knew," she cried. "The two of you knew about it."
"No," Winston said. "I was supervising the lodge on Saint Lucia for the last six months. I didn't know anything about the land deal until it was done. I would never have let that Dutchman touch her."
"You're lying—"
"I will not take the blame for setting up that deal," Winston said.
"Stop." Davida pushed her chair back and sprang to her feet. "Stop it!"
King struggled to stand, holding on to the back of a chair for support. His hair resembled an abandoned bird's nest. Mrs. Ellis began to weep quietly and Emmanuel released her into Davida's arms.
The name Saint Lucia rang a bell for Emmanuel. He dug around in his memory and came up with the sign at the jetty in Lorenzo Marques and the beautiful wooden sailboat moored in the berth behind it.
"What's Saint Lucia?" he asked.
"An island." King was happy to shift the focus away from the land deal. "We opened a lodge there at the beginning of this year."
"What do you do on the island, Winston?"
"I run it," Winston said.
Emmanuel took that information onboard. The captain's killer had slipped into Mozambique. What if the killer had simply gone home?
"What did you think of Captain Pretorius?" he asked Winston.
"Die Afrikaner Polisie Kaptein"—Winston mimicked the rough-edged Afrikaans tongue perfectly—"meant nothing to me."
Davida gasped and Emmanuel turned to her. The blood had drained from her face.
"If I closed my eyes," Emmanuel said, "I'd think you were a proper Afrikaner. An Afrikaner used to giving orders."
Winston went very still. "Plenty of people can put on that accent."
"Did Davida ever tell you about the man who molested the coloured women last year?"
Winston shrugged. "We all heard about it."
"He put on an accent," Emmanuel said, "to cover up his own voice."
"And?"
"Did Davida ever tell you that the man had an accent?"
"I don't remember," Winston said.
"Did you tell him, Davida?"
"No…" Her fingers twisted together. "I don't remember."
Emmanuel held his gaze steady on her. "Was it Winston's voice you heard at the river?"
"It wasn't him." She spoke in a rush. "It was someone else. I swear it."
"Where were you last Wednesday night, Winston?"
Mrs. Ellis stopped crying and the room went quiet. Davida's face was pinched tight with shock. A horrified realization had just begun to register on King's bloodied face.
"Were you on the South African side of Watchman's Ford last Wednesday night, Winston?" Emmanuel asked, and a phone began to ring in another part of the house.
"He was in Lorenzo Marques collecting supplies for the island." King wedged himself into the conversation. "I can have a dozen signed witness statements attesting to that fact on your desk by tomorrow afternoon."
"I'm sure you can," Emmanuel said. The telephone continued its insistent ring. He walked to the door and called out. "Constable Hepple! Come in, please."
Hansie poked his head around the doorframe.
"Could you please answer the phone and tell the caller that Mr. King and Winston are busy."
"Yes, sir."
"Now, where were you last Wednesday night, Winston?" He asked the question again as the ringing fell silent. "Take your time and try to remember."
"I told you. He was buying supplies—"
"Everyone out of the room," Emmanuel said. "Winston. You stay."
"Sergeant—" Hansie stood fidgeting in the doorway. "It's for you. The telephone."
"Who is it?"
"It's the old Jew. He says it's urgent and I must get you now now. Straightaway."
Davida hurried to him and whispered "Granny Mariah" so that her mother didn't hear it.
"I'll check," Emmanuel said, then spoke to Hansie. "Stand guard and don't let anyone leave until I get back. You understand? No one."
"No one," Hansie repeated, and took up position in the middle of the doorway, hands on his hips in a direct imitation of a police recruitment poster printed in the English and Afrikaans newspapers. "Why stay on the farm or serve in a shop?" the advertisment seemed to say. Why indeed, when a few months' training translated into instant authority over ninety percent of the population?
Emmanuel walked into the office where King had shown him the native spells kept by Pretorius senior and picked up the telephone on the desk.
"Detective Cooper?" Zweigman sounded like he'd run a mile in wooden shoes.
"Is it Granny Mariah?"
"No, she is recovering. Davida?"
"Recovering also."
"And the boy?"
"In custody," Emmanuel said. "We'll be transporting him to Mooihoek in a few hours."
"Good." Zweigman dropped his voice to a whisper. "Do not come near the town and be careful on the roads also."
"What's happened?"
"The brothers searched my house and Anton's. Nothing serious. Torn books, overturned furniture. Amateur theatrics…" The old Jew was unfazed by the thuggish actions of the Pretorius boys. No doubt he'd seen several libraries' worth of books burned on Nazi bonfires and watched a continent bombed to rubble. He didn't scare easily.
"They are still searching for you," Zweigman added.
Emmanuel listened carefully. There was no possibility of returning to town, not after what had happened to Louis on the mountain.
"What did you mean about the roads?" he asked. If he couldn't get to Mooihoek this evening he needed to make alternate plans. On the King farm he was a sitting duck for the Pretorius brothers and the Security Branch.
"The Security Branch has sent four teams of men out to set up roadblocks leading to and from the town."
"Why?"
"This I do not know. Tiny was ordered to take his finest liquor to the police station and it was he who passed this news to me."
"Any idea where the roadblocks are? Or what they're looking for?"
"No idea."
Emmanuel paused to consider his position. If the roadblocks were set up between King's farm and Mooihoek, then he was trapped until daybreak.
"Doc," he said after a pause. "What's the best way to store a dead body overnight?"
Emmanuel sat down opposite Winston at the kitchen table and studied him for a moment. The rest of the family were in the sitting room under Hansie's guard. Winston appeared composed. Zweigman's phone call had given him time to collect his thoughts.
"Let's talk about Captain Pretorius," Emmanuel began. He kept his tone friendly and relaxed.
"I only met him a few times," Winston said.
"Funny, the way history repeats itself. Your mother must have been about Davida's age when she took up with your father. Maybe a little younger."
"I've never done the maths," Winston said.
"I think you have. You know better than most people the kind of life Davida was headed for."
"My mother's been very comfortable."
"One child taken away and dressed up to pass as white, the other traded for a piece of land. That's 'comfortable'?"
Winston got up abruptly and walked to the stove, where he warmed his hands despite the heat in the kitchen.
"I made a mistake," he said. "I realize that now."
"Explain that to me, Winston."
"I should have gone after my father instead."
Emmanuel asked slowly and deliberately: "Did you kill Captain Pretorius at Watchman's Ford last Wednesday night?"
Winston looked him in the eye. "He took Davida's chances away when she had so few to begin with. That was unforgivable."
"Did you kill him, Winston?"
"I was in Lorenzo Marques on Wednesday night. I bought supplies for the Saint Lucia Lodge. I have five witnesses who will testify to that in court."
"Only five? Surely your father can afford more."
"He can. But five will do."
"I'm curious. Captain Pretorius was pulled into the water," Emmanuel said. "Why?"
"Maybe the killer didn't want to leave him on the sand with his fly open and reeking of sex. Maybe the killer felt sorry for him in the end."
"You have some regrets, then, about shooting Captain Pretorius last Wednesday night?"
A hardness showed itself beneath the surface of Winston's face. Surviving as a fake in the white man's world had taught him how to protect himself and his family at all costs. He smiled but said nothing.
Emmanuel wondered what kind of world Winston King lived in. His whole life was a lie. Even his fair skin and blue eyes were a lie. It didn't help that he lived in a time when the term "immorality" was applied to interracial sex and not to the raft of laws that took away the freedom of so many people.
"What about Davida?" Emmanuel asked. "Do you have any idea what will happen to her?"
"She didn't kill Pretorius. She has no case to answer."
Emmanuel wanted to slap Winston across the face. He showed no remorse for Captain Pretorius's murder and no understanding of how his actions would affect his darker-skinned sister.
"Davida gets to walk into the sunset? Is that what you think?" Emmanuel said. "All thanks to you?"
"She'll go to Western Cape University and she'll get to live her own life. Surely that's worth something?"
"Davida's a key witness in the murder of a white policeman. She'll be put through the wringer. In court. In the newspapers. The dirt will stick to her for the rest of her life. Do you really think she'll go to university?"
"I didn't think that far ahead," Winston muttered. "I didn't think about it."
"You didn't have to," Emmanuel said. "You're a white man. Remember?"
Emmanuel sat down next to Shabalala and considered the health of the case. Sick but not fatal. He had a written statement from Davida for the docket and a five-sentence lie from Winston claiming to be in Lorenzo Marques buying supplies on the night Captain Pretorius was murdered. No confession, but enough to haul Winston in for formal questioning in the near future. That was the end of the good news.
"A couple of miles along the main road?" Emmanuel repeated the information the Zulu constable had given him, hoping he'd gotten some part of it wrong. The men from the Security Branch were smack between them and Mooihoek.
"Yebo. A car and two men are at the roadblock, waiting."
"Any chance of getting by them?"
"Across many farms and through many fences, but not at night. Not in the dark."
The police van was now parked in the circular driveway in front of King's homestead. Van Niekerk didn't have the power to call off a Security Branch roadblock, and Emmanuel wasn't inclined to let the major know about the mess he was in.
"They won't let us through without searching the vehicle," Emmanuel said. "We'll have to spend the night here and check the roads at dawn."
"What shall we do with him? The young one?"
"King's icehouse out beyond the back stoep. Zweigman said that's the best place for him."
"Home," Shabalala said. "That is the only place for him."
"Not much of a home after the lies his father told."
"To live in this country a man, he must be a liar. You tell the truth"—Shabalala clapped his hands together to make a hard sound—"they break you."
|
A Beautiful Place to Die
|
Malla Nunn
|
[
"mystery"
] |
[
"South Africa",
"1950s",
"crime",
"Detective Emmanuel Cooper"
] |
Chapter 20
|
He fell through the sky, and his body twisted and arched in the air like a leaf on the wind. He smelled wild sage grass and heard the sweet, high voice of Louis Pretorius singing an Afrikaans hymn. A tree branch snapped and he continued to drop at incredible speed toward the hard crust of the earth. He called out for help and felt a gust of cold wind tear across his face as he plummeted without stopping.
Emmanuel sat up gasping for breath in the darkness. He felt around him; his fingers brushed a blanket and the hard edges of a wrought-iron bedstead. He had no idea where he was. No memory of lying down in a wide bed with soft sheets in a room that smelled of fresh thatch and mud.
To the right of the bed he found a box of matches and, in the weak light cast by the flame, found an unused candle with a fresh wick. He lit the candle and tried slowing his breath to normal. The naive tribal designs painted onto the bare concrete floor helped place him. He knew where he was. A just completed guest bedroom attached to the back of Elliot King's homestead.
The quiet rustle of the reed mat at the foot of the bed alerted him to her presence and he held up the candle to cast light farther into the room. She sat on the floor with her chin on her drawn-up knees like a pensive child.
"Did your father send you?" he asked. "Or your brother?"
"Were you dreaming about the mountain?" She shuffled forward and placed her elbows on the mattress. He was sweat stained and shaky, but she showed no fear of him.
"Yes." Emmanuel saw no point in lying and it was a relief to tell the truth to someone who had been there. "I was."
"Was he in the dream?"
"Just his voice. Singing," Emmanuel said. "I fell off the side of the mountain and went down like a stone. You?"
"He was washing me under the waterfall and when I looked down, the skin on my arms was torn to ribbons. I saw the white of my bones through the flesh."
"He's gone. The dreams will stop but it might take a while," Emmanuel said. After the ordeal on the mountain, he knew he represented a safe haven from all the terrible things Louis had done to her in the name of purity. All victims of war and violence felt a bond with those who save them. The bond was fragile, however, and should not be encouraged. Now was the time to tell her to disconnect. Life would resume and they would be strangers to each other again. That was as it should be.
She moved closer and Emmanuel didn't stop her.
"Do you think I'm a bad person?" she asked.
"Why would I think that?"
"Because of the captain and what I did with him."
"You had good reasons for everything you did," he said, and realized, with a sense of discomfort, that this was the first personal conversation he'd held with a nonwhite person since his return from Europe. Interviews, witness statements, formal and informal questioning: he came into contact with every race group in the course of his work but this was different. She was talking with him. One human being to another. Her skin shone velvet brown in the candlelight.
"Do you think God knows everything?"
"If there is a God, he'll understand the position you were put in. That's as close to philosophy as I come in the middle of the night."
"Hmmm…"
The sound was low and thoughtful. She tasted the idea of an understanding God. She reached out and touched the scar on his shoulder. He glimpsed sanctuary in her eyes and felt the warmth of her skin and her breath. Easy now, Emmanuel told himself. This is a police operation: a murder investigation in which she figures centrally. This was no time to give in like a vice cop at the end of the shift.
"You're hurt," she said.
The sleeve of her nightdress fell back to her elbow and he touched the long red scars along her arm.
"So are you."
She leaned forward and kissed him. Her mouth felt lush and warm and yielded to his. Her tongue tasted him. She climbed onto the bed and slid herself between his legs, then rested her hands on his knees as the kiss continued, an endless dance.
He pulled back. Not far enough to convince himself or her of his intention to disengage.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked.
"I want to be in charge this time." Her hands slid over his thighs to his wrists, which she held in place with a firm grip. "Will you let me be in charge, Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper?"
She gave him power and asked for it back in the same breath. It was exciting and shaming: that raw appeal to his rank.
"Yes," he said.
Sleep pulled him under, past riptides and eddies to a place of safety. He slept like the dead but the dead did not bother him. He was in the burned-out cellar of his dreams with the woman curled against his back for warmth.
"Get up!" The command was barked loud and clear into his ear. "That is an order, soldier!"
Emmanuel pushed his face deep into the pillow. He wasn't ready to leave the cocoon. The war could go on without him.
"Up. Now!" the sergeant major said. "Put your shorts on. You don't want them to find you bare-arsed, laddie."
The bottle of white pills, still almost half full, stood next to the spent candle stub. Emmanuel reached for it and saw, through half-open eyes, the pale pre-dawn light that crept through the curtains.
"Forget the pills," the sergeant major said. "Shorts first and then wash your face, for God's sake. You smell like a Frenchman."
Emmanuel sat up, alert to the rumble of voices on the other side of the bedroom door. He reached for his shorts and pulled them on, then touched Davida on the shoulder.
"Get up," he whispered. "Put your nightgown on."
"Why?" She was sleepy and warm, the crumpled sheets wrapped around her body.
"Company," he said, and lifted her up by her shoulders so he could drop her cotton shift over her head.
"Whatever happens, stay low and don't say anything." She was now wide awake and alert to the footsteps outside the door. She slid off the bed and sprang into the corner like a cat.
Outside, King's voice was raised in protest. "There's no need for this—"
Emmanuel stood up and the door smashed inward. Silver hinges flew into the air and Dickie and Piet appeared as solid black silhouettes against the gray dawn light in the open doorway.
"Down! Down!" Piet's handgun was drawn, hammer cocked, finger on the trigger. "Get down."
Emmanuel sat on the edge of the bed, conscious of Davida hidden in the dark corner behind him. She was low to the ground and silent, but it was inevitable that Piet and his partner would find her.
"Get the curtains, Dickie."
Two more Security Branch men pushed King back toward the main rooms of the house.
"That's my property!" King fumed. The Security Branch officers pressed him into the kitchen. One of the men remained on guard in the corridor while the other returned to the destroyed doorway. Piet and Dickie had come with backup. Thank God the mad Scottish sergeant had woken him up. He had his shorts on and Davida had her nightdress on. That was something.
"You're in a world of trouble," Piet said. "The Pretorius brothers are opening the icehouse now. What are they going to find, Cooper?"
Emmanuel tried to absorb that information. Did Shabalala leave his lonely vigil outside the icehouse and walk to Jacob's Rest with the news? No. Shabalala would never leave Louis alone, not for a second.
The sound, half scream, half howl, was terrible to hear. The Pretorius boys had found their baby brother lying cold and blue among the bottles of fizzy soft drinks and ice cube trays. Emmanuel got to his feet, thinking of Shabalala facing the rage of the grieving Pretorius family alone.
"Sit down." Piet clipped his gun back into the holster and began to walk a slow circuit of the room. He kicked a pile of discarded clothing with his foot and randomly lifted artifacts and books. He stopped at the foot of the bed and peered into the corner.
"Well, well, Cooper," he said, "this explains why this room smells like a whorehouse."
A cold finger of fear touched Emmanuel's spine. He had to get Piet away from Davida, even if it spared her only a few minutes of his special attentions.
"Is that the only place you get to be with a woman?" Emmanuel said. "In a whorehouse? Makes sense with a face like yours. I hope you leave a decent tip."
"Secure this package, Dickie." Piet indicated Davida's hiding place and lurched toward the bed where Emmanuel remained standing.
"You are in my world now, Detective Sergeant Cooper." Piet was unnaturally calm. "You should show some respect."
In Piet's world, fear and respect were the same and Emmanuel wasn't going to show either without a fight. Davida cowered in Dickie's shadow and he went on the offensive.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. There were rules about how white policemen dealt with each other and Piet was walking a thin line.
"I was invited." Piet fumbled in his grubby jacket and pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes. The stench of stale beer, sweat, and blood wafted from him. "King sent one of his kaffirs to the police station to ask for our help. A hell of thing, the old kaffir making it there on a bicycle in the dark."
"Why would King need you?" He already knew the answer. Why wait for a team of Hebrew lawyers to get to work when it was possible to play one branch of the police force against the other and muddy the waters even further? King had smelled his separation from the main task force and used it against him: basic warfare tactics. There was only one flaw in the plan. The rich Englishman hadn't planned on the Security Branch finding Davida in the room with him, and against all reason Emmanuel was glad of the knowledge. Davida had come to him of her own accord.
Piet lit a cigarette and inhaled.
"We got a confession last night," he said. "The colonel is on his way from Pretoria to pose for photos. It's going to be a big case. Everyone wants a piece of the action."
"He signed?" Emmanuel asked. Nobody, but nobody, in government was going to look too closely at the confession of a known Communist, least of all van Niekerk, whose ambition was to rise on the political tide. Piet and Dickie were bulletproof and Emmanuel himself was half naked.
"Of course," Piet said. "So you can imagine my surprise when I heard you had someone else in line for the murder. A murder that I have a written and signed confession for."
If he dropped it now and said he made a mistake about Winston King's involvement, then apologized for the inconvenience he'd caused, maybe he'd get to fight another day. The Security Branch had outmaneuvered him and now a black man from Fort Bennington College was going to hang for crossing the river on a Wednesday instead of a Saturday.
Piet smoked the rest of his cigarette in silence and blew smoke rings into the air schoolboy style. A bad sign. He walked over to the pile of clothes, picked up Emmanuel's discarded jacket, and rifled through the pockets until he found what he was looking for.
He held up Davida's statement between thumb and forefinger.
"Your evidence?" he said.
"A statement." Emmanuel didn't give him any more. Nothing was going to stop Lieutenant Lapping from reading over the long list of damning allegations leveled at Captain Pretorius: adultery, manufacture of pornography, physical assault, and criminal misconduct as defined under the Immorality Act.
Piet unfolded the paper and read the handwritten statement. He finished and looked to the corner where Davida huddled at Dickie's feet.
"You write this?" he asked.
Davida pressed deeper into the corner, afraid to look up, afraid to answer. Dickie reached down and slapped her across the face with an open hand, drawing blood from the corner of her mouth. Fear kept her silent.
"Answer," Dickie said.
"Yes." She pressed her hand against her throbbing cheek.
"Look—" Emmanuel got Piet's attention. "You have your confession. This is nothing compared to what's going on at the station."
Piet smiled. "I'll leave after you have been punished for disobeying orders and for getting on my fucking nerves and not a moment before, Cooper."
The pockmarked lieutenant stepped away to reveal Henrick and Paul Pretorius standing side by side in the smashed doorway. He held the piece of paper up for them to see.
"Know what this is?" Piet asked. "It's a statement claiming that your father was a deviant and a liar who defiled himself by blood mixing. What do you have to say to that?"
The Pretorius brothers moved toward Emmanuel in a rage. He blocked a punch from Paul and ducked under Henrick's sledgehammer blow before a jab to the stomach sent him reeling back onto the bed. The wooden beams of the ceiling tilted at a crazy angle above him. Paul breathed down on him.
"You're going to pay," he said. "For Louis and for the lies you're telling about my pa."
"Every word, true," Emmanuel said, and tried not to tense when the punches hit him from every direction. He tasted bile and blood and heard the wet smack of his flesh yielding to fists. So, this is what Donny Rooke felt like out on the kaffir path: a punching bag in the Pretorius family's private gymnasium.
"Stop, stop, stop," Piet ordered. "You can't take it out of him all at once like that. It's dangerous. You have to slow down. Consider where you're delivering the message and how."
Emmanuel struggled to sit up. If Piet was calling the shots, he was in deep, deep trouble. The Security Branch officer could keep him alive and in pain for days. Piet took off his jacket and rolled his sleeves up to the biceps.
"Henrick. Hold him down and keep him down," Piet instructed.
"I'm a police officer," Emmanuel groaned. "What you're doing is against the law."
"I'm not doing anything," Piet said. "This is a private beating carried out by two men whose brother you killed and hid in an icehouse."
That did sound bad. Inaccurate, but a jury would think twice about punishing the Pretorius boys for taking out their anger on the man who Louis had said tried to molest him.
"Now," Piet continued. "Start with a slap. Openhanded. Not soft and not hard. Just enough to get his attention."
"You have my attention," Emmanuel said, and Paul delivered a stinging hit across his cheek. Not too hard and not soft, either. The tin soldier was a natural.
"Good." Piet was impressed. "Now pose a question and wait for the answer."
"Why did you tell those lies about my pa?"
"No lies," Emmanuel said. "Your pa liked to fuck dark girls. Outdoors and from behind."
Paul hit him hard across the face and sent the blood and spit flying from his mouth. The skin above his left eye burned and he focused on the enraged Paul Pretorius, who was struggling against Piet Lapping's hold.
"Calm down," Piet said. "That was too hard too early."
"He said—"
"Cooper is testing you," Piet pointed out with a scholarly fussiness. "The stronger prisoners will do that. Your job is to remain calm."
"I almost forgot—" Emmanuel blinked away the blood that ran from a cut in his eyebrow. "Louis was the one molesting those coloured women last year. Your pa sent him off to a crazy farm. Check if you don't believe me."
"For Christ's sake, shut up," the sergeant major whispered as Henrick rose off the bed and hammered his fists indiscriminately into whatever patch of flesh he could find. Piet's little talk on remaining calm clearly had no impact on Henrick.
"Get him off," Piet instructed Paul. "We don't want a dead policeman on our hands."
Henrick's weight lifted off him, but the pain remained and surged in waves from his toes to his cranium. His mouth was puffed and cut, which made taunting the Pretorius boys a linguistic challenge. He heard his own breath, ragged and defeated. An hour more and he'd be sausage meat.
"You understand now, don't you?" Piet said. "You are in shit up to your elbows."
Emmanuel shrugged. He knew he was in trouble: he could feel it in his face, his chest, and his stomach.
"Bring the girl," Piet instructed his partner, and Emmanuel sat up straight. He was scared: for himself and for Davida, who appeared slight and nymphlike in her white cotton nightdress. This morning was going to be bad for everyone. What was Mrs. Ellis going through, knowing her girl was locked away with armed and violent men? Even King must know that he'd opened his door to a force he could not control. "Don't be frightened," Piet said to Emmanuel when Davida was pushed roughly around the foot of the bed. "The physical work is done and now we move to a longer-term punishment. One that you have kindly handed to me in the form of this girl."
Emmanuel tried to stand but Henrick slammed him down. Davida's face was streaked with tears but she didn't make a sound.
"Was she was worth it?" Piet asked. "I hope so, because you're going to spend the next couple of years in jail wondering why you flushed your life and your career down the toilet for one night between the sheets."
Emmanuel worked his swollen tongue against the roof of his mouth until a semblance of feeling returned. He wanted Davida out of the room and out of harm's way even if it meant going against van Niekerk's orders about keeping the past hidden.
"No law broken." Emmanuel managed to get the three words out, slurred but recognizable.
Dickie sniggered. "Have you forgotten what country you're in? You've been caught with a nonwhite. You're going to jail."
"Not white," Emmanuel said, even as he thought about van Niekerk's response to what he was doing.
"I know she's not white," Piet said. "That's why you're going down."
"Not white," Emmanuel repeated.
Piet stared at him, dumbfounded. "Fuck off." He grabbed a hand and checked the skin underneath Emmanuel's fingernails for dark pigment. It was an old wives' skin color test passing as science. He dropped the hand with a grunt. "You're as white as me and Dickie here."
Emmanuel reached down and lifted one of his leather shoes onto his knee. He slid a finger under the inner sole and pulled out a single piece of paper.
"The missing intelligence report…" Piet smiled. Most interrogations were intensely boring: the repetitive questions, the strangled denials, the hour-long beatings. There were no real surprises left on the job anymore.
Piet opened the page and whistled low in response to the information.
"Little Emmanuel Kuyper," he muttered. "I remember the photographs of you in the newspaper. You and your little sister. You had the whole country crying."
"What are you talking about?" Dickie tried to keep up with the conversation. He didn't read much, not even the lowbrow daily papers that carried more pictures than print.
"Emmanuel Kuyper. That was his name before he changed it, probably to avoid the connection with his famous parents," Piet explained. "Cooper here is the boy whose father was acquitted of manslaughter after the jury found he had good reason to believe a half-caste shopkeeper had fathered his children. A part-Malay, if I remember."
"Bullshit," Dickie said. "There's not a drop of Malay blood in him. Look at him. He's white, white."
"That's what caused the scandal." Piet lit up again, lost in memory. "Half the country thought the father's story was a pack of lies, while the other half thought the mother was a whore. During the trial, the father's side of the family put the children up for adoption. An Afrikaner family who didn't want them turned over to a coloured orphanage took in Cooper and his sister. You were brought up in a proper Afrikaner home till you left school, hey, Cooper? Probably threw a torch onto the bonfire with all the other Voortrekker Scouts at the Great Trek celebration."
The feeling in Emmanuel's mouth returned. He was going to burn a couple of bridges in the next few moments but he didn't care about the consequences. So long as Davida walked out unharmed and he could follow her.
Piet squinted hard and flicked the intelligence report to the floor. "Your mother may have been fucking the Malay," Piet said, "but there's not a drop of brown blood in you."
"Prove it," Emmanuel said.
There was a pause while Lapping examined the problem from every angle.
"Interesting," he said. "We can't charge you under the Immorality Act if you're mixed race, but that doesn't mean your life isn't about to go down the drain if I pursue this claim and get you reclassified."
"Go ahead," Emmanuel said.
"You'll lose your job," Paul Pretorius joined in. "You'll lose your home and your friends. Everything."
"He's going to lose all that anyway once he's charged under the act." Lieutenant Lapping circled Davida, thinking aloud all the while. "This way he saves himself and the girl from a public court appearance and makes them both innocent parties, as they've committed no offense. Clever."
"He's trying to weasel out of it." Dickie was furious. "He's changing the rules on us. Look at him. He's white."
"I think he is," Piet said mildly. "But there's no way to prove it, which is why Cooper has chosen to give us this report. Claiming to be nonwhite is his easiest way out. No prison term and as much black snatch as he can poke. Right, Cooper?"
Emmanuel shrugged. His life was spinning down the drain while Piet imagined him living it up in a shebeen full of black women. It didn't surprise him. Blacks and coloureds laughed louder and longer…or so it seemed to whites. He was going to miss the job, his sister, and his life.
"He gets to walk away." Paul Pretorius couldn't believe it. "Reclassification isn't enough to pay him back for Louis."
Piet ground his cigarette butt under his heel and immediately lit another, as if it were oxygen and not nicotine that was poisoning his bloodstream. He sucked deep until the tip of the cigarette glowed hot and red.
"Cooper is forgetting that a nonwhite man has little protection from the law." The lieutenant handed the cigarette to Paul. "We will now be forced to make the punishment for what happened to Louis immediate and physical in the extreme."
Shit, Emmanuel thought. Was there no way out of Piet Lapping's carnival of perpetual pain? The Security Branch officer in the doorway swung around and faced into the house, hand on his gun holster.
"Speak—" The officer barked the command down the corridor.
"Lieutenant Lapping?" Mrs. Ellis's voice, sharp with fear, called out from the sitting room. "Lieutenant Lapping?"
"Mummy—" Davida whispered before Dickie cupped his hand over her mouth.
"Ja?" Piet pursed his bulbous lips. The sound of a female voice put a damper on the high he experienced during physical questioning: like having your mother walk in on you just before the climax.
"Phone call," the housekeeper said quickly, aware on a base, instinctual level that the men in the room were unused to a woman interrupting their dark business.
"What?" Piet moved to the destroyed doorway and listened. He was ready to leap and strangle the housekeeper if she made a wrong move.
"There's a man on the phone. He asked to talk to a Lieutenant Lapping right away."
"The colonel?" Dickie asked.
"No," Piet said, and unrolled his sleeves and buttoned them, careful of appearances outside the room. "He doesn't know we're here."
So—Emmanuel's brain formed the thought with sluggish determination—Piet was keeping this excursion secret. He was determined to clear any obstacles that could throw doubts over the confession he'd extracted from the Communist last night.
"Put the cigarette out and don't do anything until I get back," Piet said, and left the room to answer the phone.
"Take a break." Dickie stepped into the boss's shoes and found them quite comfortable. "Cooper and his friend aren't going anywhere."
The Pretorius brothers retreated to the window and fell into a whispered conversation while Dickie pushed Davida into a chair and stood over her. Emmanuel sank his throbbing head into his hands. It was his fault that Davida was here, in this room with men who stank of violence and hate. Their pleasure had come at a high price.
"Look up." Piet Lapping was back in the bedroom and he was not calm. "Look at me, Cooper."
Piet paced back and forth in front of the bed, his fingers flicking the flame of his cigarette lighter off and on like a lighthouse beacon. Something had set him off and destroyed the mystic calm he insisted was a mainstay of the "work."
"You're really something," Piet said through tight lips. "You and your sissy friend van Niekerk."
Emmanuel had no idea what he was talking about. Van Niekerk was in Jo'burg and unaware of the disaster with Louis or that the Security Branch interrogation was taking place at Elliot King's game ranch. How the hell had van Niekerk tracked him down?
"What happened?" Dickie asked.
Piet ignored him and bent down in front of Emmanuel, his pebble eyes wet with rage.
"Mozambique. That's where you got them. Am I right?"
Emmanuel lifted an eyebrow in response. Piet could go fish.
"What?" Dickie walked to his partner's side but kept plenty of space between them in case he needed to duck out of the way in a hurry. Lieutenant Lapping was unpredictable when he was angry and he was rarely this angry.
"I should have known," Piet mused aloud. "That day you left for Lorenzo Marques to question the underwear salesman. I smelled something was wrong…"
"What underwear salesman?" Dickie was trying his best to get involved and be a genuine partner, not just a muscleman.
"Shut up, Dickie," Piet said. "I need to get this straight so we don't do anything foolish. I need to think."
Piet flicked the lighter on and off, the sound of it like gunfire in the tense atmosphere. A muscle jumped in the cratered skin of his cheek and Emmanuel held his breath.
"He's going to release the photos if we touch another hair on your pretty head," Piet said after a long while. "He wants you to call him in ten minutes to verify that you're safe, like a fucking virgin at her first dance."
Emmanuel stood up, his body stiff from the beating he'd taken. He didn't care what the Security Branch threw at him. Van Niekerk had the photos and their power couldn't be pissed away by slinging childish insults. He glanced over at Davida and saw that she understood. They were going to walk out of the room and then they were going to run.
"You're going to let him go?" Paul Pretorius pointed an accusing finger at the pockmarked lieutenant. "You promised us he'd get what was coming to him."
Piet caught Paul's finger and twisted hard until the finger snapped out of its socket.
"Ahhgg—" Paul Pretorius groaned, and sweat broke out on his forehead.
"We are letting him go because your pa couldn't keep his pants buttoned up and that slippery fuck van Niekerk has proof of it."
"That's a lie." Paul was red faced with pain. "He's lying."
Piet let go of Paul's dislocated finger and said, "I did consider the possibility that he was lying, but he has something, this van Niekerk. It was in his voice. I could hear it: the pleasure he takes in having power over us. Over me."
Dickie marshaled a decent thought and threw it into the ring. "Maybe he's just a good liar."
"Consider the facts," Piet said patiently. "Van Niekerk knows my fucking name, he knows where I am when even the colonel has no idea. This is not someone to be taken lightly and that is why I cannot take the risk that he is just playing with us."
Emmanuel limped past the bickering Security Branch men and held out his hand to Davida, who was perched at the edge of her chair, ready to make a run for it.
"Let's go," he said.
She stood up and took his hand. Her fingers curled around his and squeezed tight. Emmanuel turned to the door and noticed pockmarked Piet staring at them with evil intent. Not good. Emmanuel started walking. Please, God. The shattered doorway was so close now. Just four more steps.
"So sweet," Piet muttered. "The way you looked at her just then. It's as if you actually like her."
Emmanuel felt Davida's fingers slip from his. Piet pulled her back into the room with a yank and held her in the tight band of his arms. Davida twisted and kicked but remained imprisoned against the foul-smelling white man with the cratered face.
"Don't do this." Emmanuel heard the pleading tone in his voice and tried again, stronger this time. "Let her go, Lieutenant."
"The deal," Piet said, "was for your release. We keep her."
"No!" Davida arched her back and tried to wriggle free but she was no match for Piet's bullish strength coupled with his experience in subduing troublesome prisoners. "Let me go!"
Piet lifted her in the air, as easily as he'd lift an empty laundry basket, and threw her back on the bed. The springs groaned and he straddled her in one quick move and pinned her arms above her head.
Emmanuel was close behind. His battered body found a sputter of speed from a reserve located behind his damaged kidneys. He smacked Piet hard in the side of the head and got no reaction. He went in for a second hit and connected with air. Dickie and Paul pulled him back and threw him into the chair. The dark fear from the dream consumed him and grew stronger.
"Good," Piet said as Davida's body strained and pressed against his inner thighs. "I like spirit in a woman: a bit of fight."
"You have everything you want," Emmanuel said. "She's of no use to you."
"I want the photos. The photos for the girl, that's the trade."
"If van Niekerk won't give them up?" Emmanuel asked. That was a real possibility. "What then?"
"Well…" Piet pressed a thumb against Davida's mouth and forced her lips apart. "You can fuck off out of here or you can stay and watch me work on her. Your choice, Cooper."
"No." Emmanuel struggled against the mother lode of Boer muscle holding him in the chair but couldn't break free. "Don't do this."
"You cannot imagine"—Piet's breath was coming hard as the body underneath him continued to buck and grind—"how beautiful my work can be. I will get to know this woman in ways that are beyond you. I will break her open and touch her soul."
"Please—" Davida arched away from the evil man leaning close to her. "Emmanuel—help me—"
"Wait," Emmanuel said. He needed Piet to stop and listen. "Wait. I'll talk to van Niekerk and try to make a deal."
"The girl for the photos. That's the only deal I'm interested in. I'm not going to let your major hang on to evidence that might spoil my case further down the track."
"Okay," Emmanuel said. "Let her off the bed and sit her in the chair. I'll make the call."
Piet shifted his weight and considered the request. He was reluctant to break away from the bruising and intimate tango that prisoner and interrogator danced together in the dark of the holding cells. He lifted his body and let the girl wriggle from under him. If he didn't get the photos, he had this to look forward to. The task of breaking the woman to his will.
Emmanuel sat Davida down in the chair and let her feel his touch, gentle and unforced. It hurt to look in her eyes and see the stark terror flickering in the dark circle of her pupils.
"Don't leave me," she whispered. "Please don't go."
"I have to," he said. "I'll come back in a few minutes. I promise."
"You promise?"
"Yes." He didn't know if he was coming back with the keys to her release or with nothing at all. He had to roll the dice.
"Go with him," Piet said to Dickie. "Make sure he doesn't start trouble."
"I'm going alone," Emmanuel said. "Van Niekerk won't talk if someone else is listening in. Or is that what you're hoping for, Lieutenant? A no from van Niekerk so you can get back to work on the girl?"
"Piss off," Piet said, and fumbled for his cigarettes. "You have ten minutes."
"Fifteen," Emmanuel said, and shuffled out of the room past the guard in the hallway.
|
A Beautiful Place to Die
|
Malla Nunn
|
[
"mystery"
] |
[
"South Africa",
"1950s",
"crime",
"Detective Emmanuel Cooper"
] |
Chapter 21
|
He made slow progress toward the office, his bruised muscles twitching with five different kinds of pain. The cut on his eyebrow had opened again and he stopped to wipe away the trickle of blood obscuring his vision. Through the red haze he saw Mrs. Ellis standing in the doorway to the kitchen, neat and trim.
"My God… my God…" she whispered. "Did they do this to you?"
Emmanuel nodded. He was still in his undershorts: a sorry, beaten man with skin pulsing red, yellow, and bright purple.
"My baby—" Mrs. Ellis gave voice to her worst fears. "My baby is alone with those men?"
"Yes," Emmanuel said, and limped to the office. He had fifteen, twenty minutes tops to turn things around. "I'm trying to get her out."
"Trying?" Elliot King appeared in front of him, his face pinched tight with impotent rage. "You lured her into that room. It's your fault she's in this position."
Emmanuel slammed Elliot King hard in the chest and sent him flying back into a wall. He leaned to within an inch of King's suntanned face. "Your daughter came of her own accord and she would have left of her own accord but for you and your half-baked attempt to manipulate events. This has been your doing right from the start."
"I sent for the police, not a gang of Afrikaner thugs. I should have known not to trust the Dutch."
"You entrusted Davida, body and soul, to a Dutchman in exchange for a piece of land," Emmanuel said. "Now you're not even in charge of your own house. How does it feel, Mr. King?" Emmanuel turned his back on him and limped to the office.
Winston King was inside with the phone to his ear and a crossed-out list of names balanced on his knees. He hung up and rubbed the flat of his palms over his eyes.
"No takers," Winston said. "Botha will try to contact the commissioner of police in an hour or so to see what can be done. No promises, though. Nobody wants to mess with these Security Branch fuckers. For once the size of your donations isn't big enough."
"The commissioner won't take the call," Emmanuel said. "A member of the Communist Party confessed to Captain Pretorius's murder last night. The Security Branch has a signed confession. Nobody is going to go up against them."
"Shit." Winston looked sick. "Fucking hell."
"I'll take that as an expression of genuine regret for your actions," Emmanuel said, and signaled him out of the office. "It comes a little too late for the poor bastard who was beaten into a confession and it comes too late for Davida. Two other people are going to pay the price for you, but you're used to that, aren't you, Winston? Someone else picking up the bill."
"Davida doesn't mean anything to those men," Winston protested. "Why hold her?"
"She's currency," Emmanuel said. "They want to exchange her for a piece of evidence that could derail their case in the future."
"I'll tell them—" Winston was ashen. "I'll confess to everything if they let Davida go. I'll put it in writing."
"Wait—" King said from the doorway. "I'll give them a good price to walk away. How much do you think they'll take?"
"This might be hard for you to understand," Emmanuel said, and sank into the office chair. "But this situation is above money. Those men believe they are guarding the future of South Africa. Your cash means nothing to them. Not with a Communist ready for trial."
"No one is above money," King stated with certainty.
"Fine." Emmanuel lifted the phone. "You and Winston go in and offer them a bribe, see what happens."
The King men eyed the blood dripping off his chin onto the beaten flesh of his torso.
"You'll make the deal for her?" Winston blushed at his own cowardice.
"I'll try," Emmanuel said, and placed the phone to his ear. "Now get out. Both of you."
Emmanuel pushed the casement window up and leaned out to take a deep breath of fresh air. The sun was over the horizon and a golden light shone onto the meandering river and squat hills. It was going to be another fine day, full of wildflowers and newborn springbok. The office door opened behind him but he didn't turn around. He didn't have the heart or the stomach to face anyone right now.
"He won't exchange the evidence for my girl, will he?" Mrs. Ellis said.
"No," Emmanuel replied. "He won't."
Van Niekerk had been blunt to the point of insult. There was nothing in the proposal for him. No reason to exchange the ultimate blackmail tool for a frightened girl. He already had a maid and a cook. He had no use for another nonwhite female.
"They're not going to kill her." The major had been brutal in his summation. "I've seen the photographs and there's nothing those men can do to her that hasn't already been done. Disengage and walk away, for Christ's sake."
He could imagine van Niekerk doing just that. Walking away from a helpless human being without a second thought. That was his strength, and it would take him to the very top.
"What can I do?" The housekeeper was humble in her powerlessness. "What must I do to help my baby?"
Emmanuel heard the clink of cutlery and smelled the freshly brewed coffee. He checked his watch: 6:50 AM. He had three minutes left to make a decision. Go with van Niekerk and rise to the top of the pyramid of evil. Or stay here and go down fighting in defense of what was right.
He turned to Mrs. Ellis. She'd brought him a mug of coffee and a buttered ham sandwich cut on the diagonal. It was enough to light a spark.
"What's in the pantry?" he asked.
"Everything," she said. "We're very well stocked. Mr. King insists on it."
God bless the greedy rich, Emmanuel thought as the spark struggled to become a workable idea.
"Meat?" he asked.
"Bacon. Boerewors sausages and wild game steaks."
"Sweet things?"
"I have some jam biscuits made up and a sponge cake for afternoon tea. Also some dried fruit and store-bought sweets."
"Is Constable Hepple still here?"
"He's out on the veranda waiting for you. He told Johannes and Shabalala that he couldn't go back to town with them. He couldn't desert his post."
"Bring Hansie, Elliot King, and Winston in here," he said. "We have to move fast."
Emmanuel limped back to the guest bedroom with the mug of coffee in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other. He stood in the doorway and sipped at the drink. The hot liquid singed the cut inside his mouth, slid over the lump in his throat, and continued down to the aching knot of fear in his stomach.
Sunlight filtered into the room but the Security Branch officers and the Pretorius brothers retained a grayish cast, the result of too little sleep, too little food, and too much beer.
"Well?" Piet was lounging on the bed, no doubt keeping the space warm in preparation for the woman's return. Cigarette butts littered the floor around him.
Emmanuel forced more coffee into his bruised mouth and went to check on Davida: scared stiff but holding up. He handed her the coffee, which she drank down in a few thirsty gulps. She reached for the sandwich but he kept that firmly in his hand. It was a long shot. Relying on a plain ham sandwich to save Davida's skin. He saw Dickie out of the corner of his eye. The big man was looking at the sandwich and at nothing else.
"Major van Niekerk wants more time to think about it. He's going to call back in half an hour with an answer." Emmanuel took a bite of the homemade bread and chewed it before continuing. "Can you wait that long?"
Piet stood up and flicked ash from his pants. "The answer is yes or no."
"What do you want most, Lieutenant? The photographs or the chance to drop your pants for your country?"
Piet flushed. "And what the fuck are we supposed to do while your major prances around?"
Emmanuel shrugged, and checked his watch. Any minute now, Mrs. Ellis was going to fire the opening salvo of the battle. He took a bite of the sandwich and felt the hungry gazes of Dickie and the Pretorius brothers follow the movement of his hands. He licked butter from his fingers.
"Where did you get that food?" Dickie blurted. "And the coffee?"
"This?" Emmanuel held the sandwich up. "Housekeeper gave it to me from the braai plate."
"What braai?" Dickie said, and sniffed the air like a hound dog. The smell of woodsmoke began to rise and mix with the aroma of bacon, onions, and fried sausage.
"That bastard, King." Emmanuel shook his head. "He's got enough food in the kitchen to feed an army. Although I never had anything like that when I was marching through France. No boerewors or sponge cake in my ration pack."
Dickie's stomach gurgled and the Pretorius brothers stepped toward the smashed doorway. The sizzle of oil and meat called all men.
"Wait," Piet ordered. "This is a setup. Why would anyone light a braai at this time of morning?"
The lieutenant was a pure freak of nature, always on the lookout for danger. He didn't need food or sleep so long as the "work" remained unfinished.
"Practice…" Davida leaned forward in the chair with the empty coffee mug held close to her chest. "Mr. King is going to have a breakfast braai for the guests when the lodge opens. He likes to test the food and pick what he wants."
"What happens to the food he doesn't eat?" Dickie asked.
"He gives it to the workers," Davida said. "The ones building the huts."
Dickie groaned at the thought of all that white man's food going into the mouths of black workmen who were happy with a cob of roast corn and a piece of dried bread twice a day. He sniffed and thought he smelled brewed coffee amid the aroma of roast meat.
"Lieutenant…" Dickie begged. He was a big man. He liked six-egg breakfasts wiped up with a loaf of bread and washed down with a pot of black coffee. His stomach started to eat itself from inside. "Please…"
Piet eyed his men and saw the beginning of mutiny stirring. He'd been negligent; they hadn't had a real meal in forty-eight hours. He pulled the woman over to the bed and secured her to the frame with his handcuffs.
"Half an hour," Piet said.
Emmanuel handed Hansie a plate piled high with three kinds of meat and a fat slice of bread on top. The Security Branch crew hoed into the feast served up by Mrs. Ellis and King himself, who'd donned a servant's apron for the occasion. Winston served coffee and tea with the oily charm that melted the knickers off English girls and made men dig deeper into their pockets for a tip.
"Take this to the man guarding the bedroom," Emmanuel told Hansie. "Tell him the lieutenant said to eat it in the kitchen while you stand guard."
Hansie went off and Emmanuel waited. Everything was going according to plan but for Piet's restlessness. He ate and drank with his men but stopped every few minutes to check his watch and scan the area.
Emmanuel waited until Piet did his security check, then slipped into the house and bolted for the bedroom. He estimated he had two minutes. He pulled a set of keys out of his wrinkled pants and handed them to Hansie, who now stood guard outside the bedroom.
"You know what to do?"
"Of course," Hansie said, and grabbed the keys.
"Good…" Emmanuel checked the corridor. Empty. "Remember, don't stop until you get to Mozambique."
"Yes, Sarge." Hansie took off; the car keys jangled happily in his hands.
Emmanuel unlocked Davida's cuffs and set her free. Her wrists were marked with blood, but that was child's play compared to what Piet Lapping would take out of her if she was still here when he got back.
"We have to be quick. Go out the window and run straight to the night watchman's hut. Fast as you can."
She had to be out of the room and sprinting before Hansie fired up the sports car and drew the men to the front of the house. The window creaked open and Emmanuel lifted her in his arms.
"You?" she said.
"I'll be fine." He slid her out of the window. "Run—" he said.
She bolted across a patch of bush in her white cotton shift. She ran hard and did not look back. A memory surfaced as her form flew away from the house…
Emmanuel's little sister ran fast down the alley, barefoot in her nightgown with the blue forget-me-nots embroidered on the collar. Emmanuel ran alongside her. He smelled wood fires in the air as they raced toward the light of the hotel on the corner. Fear blocked out the cold of the winter night. Anger burned in him at not being strong enough to stop the blade. When he was older, bigger, he'd stand and fight. Behind them, the screams of their dying mother chased them farther and farther into the darkness…
The sports car fired up with a roar and a spray of loose gravel as Hansie sped out onto the road. Emmanuel imagined the grin on Hansie's face as he revved the sleek Jag across the veldt. He heard the blast of a horn, then footsteps and voices raised in surprise. The Security Branch was taking the bait. Car engines turned over and wheels spun. The pursuit had begun.
He listened for Davida, but with luck she'd made it to the night watchman's hut and escaped. The plan was to transport her to a safe place known only to King and his faithful servants.
Emmanuel turned to leave. By all conventional standards this case was a failure. The wrong man beaten into a confession, the Security Branch triumphant, and van Niekerk set to blackmail his way up the ladder. Rescuing Davida would have to be the saving grace. It would have to be enough for him.
"You think you know pain?" Piet stood in the doorway, calm as a cobra eyeing a field mouse. "A bullet wound and a few bruises? They are nothing. The scribbling of a child on your body."
Emmanuel swiveled and jumped for the open window. He was getting out with his liver, lungs and spleen intact. Iron hands pulled him back into the room and Lieutenant Piet Lapping began the lesson in earnest.
Emmanuel tasted blood. It was dark. It was painful to breathe. He drifted in and out of consciousness on a tide controlled by pockmarked Piet. Piet's blurred outline hovered over him and he thought: the Pretorius boys know nothing about administering a proper beating. Piet is right to give lessons.
There was a dark smudge of movement behind Piet's head and the smash of glass. The lieutenant went down. A splash of whiskey landed on Emmanuel's cut lip and he struggled to sit up and concentrate.
"You?" he wheezed.
Johannes, the foot soldier in the Pretorius army, pulled him up and dragged him to the open window. Emmanuel's muscles quivered and he tried to stand. No dice. He had the strength of a bowl of jelly.
"Why?" Emmanuel grunted as the hulking Boer lifted him up and stuffed him out through the window like a sack of smuggled animal hides.
"Found the photos under Louis's bed when we took him home," Johannes said. "Burnt them. Everything you said about Louis and my pa is true. Got to make things right."
"Oh…" Emmanuel slid over the sill and onto the strong width of a shoulder. A solid khaki uniform blocked his vision for a moment, then he caught flashes of bright yellow wildflowers, red dirt, and green tufts of veldt grass. He heard the singing of the trees and smelled the promise of spring rise up from the wet ground. He was moving across country on the shoulders of a giant. His eyes closed.
Constable Samuel Shabalala and Daniel Zweigman sat side by side and watched the first light of day appear on the horizon. Shabalala pointed a finger at the sliver of pale pink that pushed through the curtain of night.
"God's light," he said.
"Yes," Zweigman agreed. "I'd forgotten what it looked like."
Emmanuel forced his eyelids apart. The muddy outline of the two men filled the space at either side of him. He focused all of his energy on keeping his eyes open for one second longer.
"Ahh…you are back with us, Detective."
Blurred faces, one white and the other black, leaned in close to examine him. He tasted a bitter liquid in his mouth and struggled to swallow it. Everything hurt.
"A half dose of crushed pills mixed with wild herbs gathered by Constable Shabalala from the veldt," the white face explained. "You are my first patient to be treated with this miraculous combination of German and Zulu medicine. You are a lucky man."
Zweigman. The name stuck with Emmanuel. Zweigman the shopkeeper and Shabalala the policeman. The two men who'd tipped van Niekerk off to his location and saved his skin.
"How long?" Patches of sky winked through the branches of a thick-limbed tree. He was on the veldt somewhere, wrapped in blankets and lying on a thin bedroll.
"Three days," Constable Shabalala replied. "You went a long way away, but now you are back."
"Davida?"
"Gone." Zweigman pressed his fingers against the bruised muscles of Emmanuel's torso. "Soon you will be well enough to travel. You have a fierce will to live."
"The lieutenant and his men are gone also," Shabalala said. "They left in many cars with the Communist man in wrist irons. Many newspaper cameras followed after them. They are the indunas now."
Emmanuel felt himself gently lifted into a sitting position and tasted cool water in his mouth. He looked out from swollen lids. Veldt surrounded him on all sides in wide ribbons of green and brown. A dove cooed and the grass swayed in the early morning light. The landscape was golden and it hurt to look at, so he closed his eyes.
"I came back…" Emmanuel mumbled. He could have stayed in England with his new wife and learned to tolerate the rain and the cold. But he'd come back, knowing how cruel the country was and how hard the God that ruled over it.
"You love this fucking place, laddie." The sergeant major put forward his opinion. "This is the country where you chose to stand and fight. Simple as that."
"Got my backside kicked. Lost the match," Emmanuel said, thinking of the innocent man about to stand trial for Pretorius's murder.
"Delirium," Zweigman said, and laid him down again on the thin mattress.
"What about you?" Emmanuel continued his conversation with the Scotsman. "What are you doing here?"
"You invited me," the sergeant major said. "But I don't think you need me anymore. You've got the German and the African, so rest easy, laddie. Rest awhile."
Zweigman took the detective's pulse, then wrapped the blankets tightly around his bruised body. How Emmanuel survived the beating was a mystery but he would carry the scars, some visible and others hidden, to his grave.
"One day," the German shopkeeper said, "I will tell you how I came to be hiding in Jacob's Rest. For now I will tell you this: my wife and I are leaving and that is a very good thing. I will open a practice and start again. I have decided to stand up and see if I am knocked down."
"Why?"
"Feel the sorrow, yet let good prevail. What else can men like us do, Detective?"
Emmanuel felt the rough ground underneath him and heard Shabalala's deep baritone voice singing a Zulu song. His life was saved by a black man and a Jew, his physical being reawakened by a mixed-race woman, and his crushed body lifted to safety by a proper Afrikaner. It was a jigsaw of people that fit against each other despite the new National Party laws.
He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. Shabalala's voice carried him out of the dark cellar of his dreams and into the sunlight. He saw himself lying on the open veldt, beaten but not defeated. Zweigman was right. What else was there to do but get up again and take another swing at the world?
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Montana, 1947
|
The roar of gunshots seemed to hammer against the old man's ears. Alexander Cantrell couldn't hear well anymore. Time had taken its toll on him, as it does on everyone. But he could plainly hear—or at least thought he could—the dull boom of pistols going off and the ear-splitting crack of rifle fire. The smell of burned powder was strong in his nose.
Likewise his vision wasn't what it once had been, but that didn't stop his bleary eyes from making out the sight of dozens of Indians charging toward him, their faces painted for war and contorted with hate as they attacked, yelling and whooping at the top of their lungs. Some people might say he was imagining them, but at this moment, they were as real to him as they had ever been.
Behind them leaped giant flames, as if the old man were looking straight into the mouth of Hell itself....
"Blast it," the old woman standing beside him said. "Have you gone to sleep on your feet again?"
"What? No. No, I'm not asleep." The old man shook his head and smiled at his sister Abigail. They were twins, and even at their advanced age, the resemblance between them was obvious. "Just remembering how things used to be."
"Good memories, I hope."
Alexander thought about the violence that had wracked this land and the blood that had been spilled. "Well, I don't know."
But in a way she was right, he mused. There were plenty of good memories to go along with the bad. In the end, the good outweighed the bad. The violence was the price that had to be paid for the long, happy life that followed.
Brought back to the present by the exchange with Abigail, he looked around. They stood side by side at the top of a slight rise. The grassy slope in front of them led gently down into a broad, lush valley bordered by wooded hills on the far side. A crooked line of trees in the middle of the valley marked the meandering course of the stream that watered the range and made it such fine grazing land. There was no more beautiful place in all the world, the old man thought, than this vast ranch where he and his sister had spent much of their childhood.
About fifty yards down the slope was a level stretch of ground surrounded by a wrought iron fence. Inside the enclosed area, the grass was cut short and carefully tended. Here and there were bright spots of color where wildflowers had grown up and been left to bloom. The place had a serene beauty about it, surrounded as it was by rangeland and roofed by the huge, arching vault of the blue Montana sky.
Big sky country, they called it, and there was no truer description than that. The Montana sky was the biggest and bluest to be found anywhere, and the rich cobalt shade was made even more striking by the white clouds that sailed in it like ships. As a young man he had lain on grassy hills like this one and looked at the clouds and actually seen ships in them, and every other shape under the sun as well.
"There you go drifting off again," Abigail said. "If you're not careful the young folks will start thinking you're a senile old man who ought to be stuck in a home somewhere."
Alexander snorted. "I'd like to see 'em try."
He was tall and spare, with crisp white hair under his Stetson and a white mustache that stood out in sharp contrast against his lean face that the elements had tanned permanently to the color of old saddle leather. He wore a Western-cut suit and boots and looked like he could still leap onto a horse and gallop across the rolling landscape.
He was just as glad he didn't have to, though. He knew it would hurt like blazes if he did.
The small, birdlike old woman beside him had white hair, too. When it was loose it hung down her back to her waist, but she wore it in long braids that were wound around her head. A stylish hat perched on those braids. She wore a wool dress and jacket that helped keep her warm, even though the day wasn't really cold. Old blood didn't flow as well as young.
Alexander glanced over his shoulder at the group of men, women, and children who were waiting a respectful distance away beside the dirt road that led to the ranch and the two big Packards that had brought all of them, his children and grandchildren in one vehicle and Abigail's in the other. He linked arms with his sister and said gruffly, "Come on, we might as well get this done."
"You don't have to make it sound so much like a chore. I enjoy coming here to see Ma and Pa."
"I do, too," the old man admitted in a quiet voice. Soon enough, he would be coming and staying, like the others laid under the good Montana soil, their final resting places marked by weathered stone monuments.
Stiff-kneed, they started down the slope to the small private cemetery. The afternoon was achingly quiet, so quiet he could hear the faint rumble of trucks on the highway more than a mile in the distance. Overhead an airplane cut a trail through the sky.
The world had changed so much in the time that he'd been alive, the old man thought. Now you could hop in a car and drive clear across the country, and if you wanted to get where you were going even faster, you could get on an airplane and be at your destination in a matter of hours.
People didn't appreciate how lucky they were. It hadn't been like that when he was young, that was for sure. In those days, if you wanted to move across the country, you loaded your belongings in a covered wagon, hitched up a team of horses or mules or oxen, and set off on a journey that would take months. Months of hardship and danger...
Those journeys had been filled with courage and honor and love. Heroes strode through those days like warrior gods of ancient mythology, towering men who protected the weak and innocent, who stood up for what was right, who brought justice and peace to a lawless land with hard fists and fast guns.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Kansas City, Missouri, 1873
|
People stood aside from Jamie Ian MacCallister. His sheer size alone would have prompted most folks to get out of his way. He was a head taller than most men and had shoulders as wide as an ax handle was long. Despite the fact that he was getting on in years, the comfortable old buckskins he wore bulged with muscles. Strength and power radiated from him.
Anybody who wasn't intimidated by how big he was might take a look at the weapons he carried and conclude that he was a man to step lightly around. Holstered on his hips were a pair of Colt .44 Army revolvers, the Model 60 conversion. Tucked under his left arm was a Winchester "Yellow Boy" rifle, also in .44 caliber. A hunting knife with a long, heavy blade rode in a fringed sheath behind the right-hand gun. Jamie was, in the parlance of the time, armed for bear, and those weapons would kill a man even quicker and easier than they would a big old silvertip grizzly.
But size and weaponry aside, the real reason most folks naturally left Jamie alone was the intensity of the gaze that came from his deep-set, eagle-like eyes. Those piercing orbs peered out from under shaggy brows and dominated his craggy, unhandsome, but powerful face. They had seen everything, the eyes seemed to say. Seen the elephant and then some. When angered, they could turn dark and threatening as a thunderstorm rolling across the prairie.
The thing of it was, when folks got to know him, Jamie's eyes could twinkle with humor or shine with compassion. He was every bit as big and rugged and dangerous as he looked, but his greatest strength was the magnificent frontiersman's heart that beat in his massive chest.
At the moment, he was striding down one of the streets in Kansas City, taking a look around on a beautiful, crisp autumn afternoon. He had visited the town before, but it had been awhile. The place had grown quite a bit from the rude frontier settlement that had started life as a fur trading post known as Chouteau's Landing. It was an honest-to-God city and even had a railroad bridge that had opened a few years earlier spanning the Missouri River.
Civilization, Jamie thought. He didn't mind it as much as some of the old-time mountain men did, but despite its advantages it would never be able to hold a candle to the prairies, the mountains, and the deserts of the West where he had grown up and lived his life.
He had left his rangy, sand-colored stallion Sundown and his pack horse tied in front of a general store to take his pasear along the street. He passed a big open area where dozens of covered wagons were parked. The teams were gathered in a large corral nearby.
Men worked on the vehicles, making repairs on things that had broken during the first part of their journey. Women stirred cook pots simmering on campfires. Soon it would be time for supper. Kids ran here and there, playing and enjoying not having to be in school like their peers who were tied down to one place.
A lot of immigrants traveled by train these days, since the completion of the transcontinental railroad a few years earlier, but there was still plenty of country where the trains didn't go. If somebody wanted to settle in one of those places, they had to travel by wagon, the same way other pioneers had done for decades.
Jamie supposed these pilgrims were on their way somewhere, although he hoped for their sake that their destination wasn't too far off. It was awfully late in the year to be starting a long trek anywhere. Travelers shouldn't cross the plains after winter settled in.
A group of riders jogged past him in the street. He glanced over at them, the longstanding habit making him take note of everything that happened around him. A man who had made as many enemies as he had over the years needed to keep a close eye out for trouble. That was one reason he'd stayed alive as long as he had.
The riders looked like they might be trouble for somebody, all right. There were about twenty of them, all roughly dressed and well armed. Even though Jamie had never seen any of them before, he recognized the sort of hard-planed, beard-stubbled faces they bore. Drifters, hardcases, maybe out-and-out owlhoots.
He felt an instinctive dislike for the men, fueled by the damage similar hombres had done to his family, but as long as they steered clear of him, he wouldn't bother them.
One of the men said, "My mouth's so dry I'm spittin' cotton, Eldon. How many saloons are we gonna ride past before we get to one that suits your fancy?"
The man riding slightly in the lead of the group turned in the saddle to frown at the one who had spoken. He was a tall, rawboned man with a lantern-jawed face and tufts of straw-colored hair sticking out from under a black, flat-crowned hat with a concho-studded band.
"Just keep your shirt on, Jake," he snapped. "We'll stop when I'm good and ready, and if that don't suit your fancy, you know what you can do about it."
The man called Jake grinned and held up a hand, palm out. "Whoa. Didn't mean any offense. You know I'm fine with you callin' the shots."
"You better be. It's worked out pretty good so far."
"That it has," Jake agreed, but Eldon had already turned back around and was ignoring him.
The group rode on down the street.
Jamie continued on his way, too, forgetting about the hardcases. In the next block, he paused to tip his head back and study the big fancy sign that stretched along the front of the building where he had paused. In gilt letters, it read CHANNING'S VARIETY THEATER. The building was fancy, too, with two stories and a lot of elaborate scrollwork and trim on its front. It had double doors with a lot of glass in them and a window where people could buy tickets to go inside.
Posters had been tacked up next to the ticket window announcing that a troupe of actors and entertainers headed by that noted thespian Cyrus O'Hanlon would be performing at the theater. Troubadours and terpsichoreans would put on a show, according to the poster, and after a moment Jamie figured out that was a highfalutin' way of saying singers and dancers. The troupe would also perform excerpts from famous plays through the ages, ranging from Sophocles and Aristophanes to the immortal bard of Avon, William Shakespeare himself.
There were pictures of the various players, including several women. Jamie knew that most people considered actresses to be little better than whores, an attitude that had always irritated him because one of his daughters was an actress and she was as fine a young woman as anybody would ever want to meet.
He might take in the show while he was in Kansas City, he told himself. If he stayed around long enough. Never could tell when he might take the notion to just up and go.
That was what he'd been doing for a while.
Drifting.
Ever since he had finished the grim chore of avenging his wife Kate's murder.
Over the course of several years he had tracked down and killed forty-four members of the gang of outlaws responsible for Kate's death. It had been a long, hard, bloody road he had followed, and the taking of it had drained something from him.
When his quest had come to an end, he could have returned to MacCallister's Valley in Colorado and settled down to live out his life on the ranch there, surrounded by his and Kate's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It would have been a quiet, comfortable life.
But that wasn't Jamie Ian MacCallister's way.
He had stayed home for a while, long enough to visit with all the young ones, then he'd slapped a saddle on Sundown, the horse he'd gotten from his son Falcon. Some folks considered Sundown a killer horse, but he and Jamie had come to an understanding and the stallion had served the big man well.
From Colorado, he had set out on a journey of memory, determined to revisit many of the places where he had been in his long life, places that were important to him. He'd started out by riding all the way down into East Texas, to the place where he and Kate had been married, where their first child, a daughter named Karen who hadn't survived infancy, was buried. Knowing that he might never get back there, he had found the grave site, carved a new marker for it, and said his final farewell to his little girl.
Then he'd turned Sundown's nose west, an appropriate direction considering the horse's name.
On across the Southwest he'd gone, adventuring a mite along the way. Then a great loop to the north and back down the Great Plains. Jamie had considered going all the way to St. Louis, then decided that Kansas City was far enough east for him. He could resupply there and he and Sundown could rest for a few days, then they would head back to Colorado.
Assuming something more interesting didn't come along first.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 3
|
Dusk was settling down over Kansas City and lights were being lit in most of the buildings. None were brighter than those in the Bella Royale Saloon. The place was so big it took up an entire block, with its entrance situated on one of the corners. Gaily colored lamps hung along the boardwalks on both streets that flanked the double doors.
As Jamie paused to watch, a fellow in a swamper's apron went along lighting those lamps with a long match. Even though the doors were closed, Jamie could hear music and laughter coming from inside the place. Obviously, folks had a good time in the Bella Royale.
He had planned to return to the store where he had left his horses, put in an order with the proprietor for a load of supplies, and then ask the man for recommendations of good places to eat and sleep, as well as a livery stable where his animals would be cared for properly.
As he looked at the gaudy saloon, though, he realized that he had a thirst. It wouldn't hurt anything to wash some of the trail dust out of his throat before he got around to those other things, he decided.
Once Jamie had made up his mind, he didn't wait around. He strode across the street, opened one of the doors, and stepped into the Bella Royale.
Noise and smoke filled the air, along with the odors of beer, whiskey, bay rum, unwashed flesh, and human waste. The sawdust sprinkled liberally on the floor couldn't soak up all of that typical saloon smell.
Jamie's nose wrinkled slightly. Anybody who had ever taken a deep breath of early morning, high country air like he had thousands of times in his life could never be satisfied with this... stench. But he could put up with it long enough to down a mug of beer. Then he'd go on about his business.
He had seen a lot of horses tied up at the hitch rails outside the saloon, so he wasn't surprised that the place was doing a brisk business. He recognized some of the men lined up along the bar as the ones who had ridden past him in the street a few minutes earlier.
The one called Eldon, who seemed to be their leader, stood with his back to the bar, his elbows resting on it as his eyes scanned the room. His gaze lighted on Jamie, but stayed there for only a second. Evidently he didn't consider the big man in buckskins all that interesting.
That was fine with Jamie. He walked to the bar, found an empty spot where he could belly up to the hardwood, and nodded to the apron-wearing bartender who came along to take his order. The man had a pleasant, round face that seemed even rounder because he parted his thinning brown hair in the middle and slicked it down.
"What can I do for you, mister?" the bartender asked as Jamie laid the Winchester on the bar. The man looked at the rifle, but didn't say anything about it.
"If your beer's cold I'll take a mug of it."
"Coldest in Kansas City," the bartender replied with a grin. "At least that's what they tell me. I can't say as I've sampled all of it to know for sure. That'd make a good hobby for a man, wouldn't it?"
"If he didn't have anything better to do," Jamie said with a grunt. He had always been plainspoken and didn't plan to change his ways.
The bartender raised his eyebrows and then shrugged. "Whatever you say, my friend." He filled a mug with beer from a tap and slid it in front of Jamie. "That'll be six bits."
"Think mighty highly of the stuff, don't you?"
"I don't set the prices," the bartender said as he spread his hands and shrugged. "I just work here."
Jamie took a couple coins from the buckskin poke he carried and dropped them on the bar. Then he picked up the mug and took a long swallow of the beer. It was cold and had a good flavor to it, to boot. Maybe it was worth six bits, after all.
"Are you callin' me a liar?" The loud, angry voice came from one of the tables where men were sitting and drinking, as opposed to the gambling layouts in the rear half of the big room.
Jamie barely glanced over his shoulder at the disturbance. Men got their dander up in saloons all the time. It went hand in hand with guzzling down cheap liquor. As long as the ruckus didn't have anything to do with him, he made it a habit to mind his own business.
Another man at the table said, "I didn't call you a liar, Ralston. I just said you'd have a hard time gettin' those wagons to Montana before winter sets in."
The man called Ralston smacked a big fist down on the table so hard it made the glasses on it jump. "And I'm sayin' I'll do it!" he insisted. "I'll have those pilgrims in their new homes by Christmas, by Godfrey! An' if you say I can't do it, then you're callin' me a liar!"
Judging by the loud, slurred quality of Ralston's voice, he was drunk. Jamie watched in the bar mirror as Ralston leaned over the table and made his point by jabbing a blunt finger against his fellow drinker's chest. That man swatted Ralston's hand away impatiently, and Ralston seized that as an excuse to start the trouble he obviously wanted to. He lunged out of his chair, fist cocked to throw a punch.
Jamie sighed, set his half-finished beer on the bar, and turned around. "Hold it!" he snapped.
Ralston stopped with his fist poised. He was a thick-bodied man with a round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat tilted back on a thatch of sandy hair. A soup-strainer mustache of the same shade drooped over his mouth. His face was red, the nose swollen from habitual drunken binges. "Who in tarnation are you?" he demanded as he glared at Jamie.
Good intentions to avoid trouble notwithstanding, Jamie didn't like the conversation he had just overheard. He stepped toward the table.
Sensing a possible ruckus in the offing, a lot of the saloon's patrons had quieted down to see what was going to happen. The girls who worked there, dressed in short, spangled dresses, moved well clear of the table where Ralston stood glowering at the big stranger.
Jamie didn't answer Ralston's question about who he was. Instead, he asked one of his own. "Did I hear you say that you're taking that wagon train to Montana?"
"That's right. What business is it of yours?"
"You're the wagon master?" Jamie's tone of voice clearly registered his disbelief and disapproval.
"Damn right I am! Jeb Ralston, finest wagon master on the frontier!"
Jamie's skeptical grunt made it plain how he felt about that claim.
From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the saloon's front doors swing open. A slender man stepped inside quickly and closed it behind him. He wore a black suit and hat and a collarless white shirt, and a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. He looked utterly harmless, and Jamie barely took note of him since nearly all of his attention was focused on Jeb Ralston.
"Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight," Jamie told Ralston. "But it's too late in the year to be starting out to Montana from here. You won't make it before winter, and you don't want to be up there on those plains when the northers start sweeping down from Canada."
Ralston sneered at him. "How do you know so much about it?"
"Because I've been there myself," Jamie said harshly. "I nearly died in a few of those blizzards."
"This doesn't concern you, old man. You'd better shut up and go back to your beer."
Jamie wasn't in the habit of backing down when he knew he was right. "If you start to Montana now, you'll be risking the lives of every one of those pilgrims."
"They paid me to do the job, and by Godfrey, I'm gonna do it!"
"Then they made a bad mistake by hiring a drunken fool like you."
He knew Ralston wouldn't stand for that insult. He didn't care. It was true, and Jamie Ian MacCallister was a man who spoke the truth.
Ralston's face flushed darker. His eyes widened with outrage. He drew in a deep breath, bellowed in anger, and charged Jamie like a maddened bull.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 4
|
Jamie expected the attack. Ralston was big—although not as big as Jamie—and probably plenty strong. More than likely he had plenty of experience brawling in saloons.
But Jamie had fought for his life in desperate battles hundreds of times. He stepped aside, grabbed Ralston, and used the man's own momentum to heave him up and over the bar.
Ralston let out a startled yell as he sailed through the air. The crash as he landed against the back bar cut off that yell and replaced it with the sound of bottles shattering. Ralston bounced off and landed in the floor behind the bar.
The slick-haired bartender stood a few feet away, his eyes bugging out as he stared at Jamie. The man babbled, "You... you just picked him up... and threw him!"
"Yeah," Jamie said. "Sorry about all the damage. I'll pay for it."
He could well afford to. During his wanderings over the past five decades, he had cached small fortunes in gold and silver in numerous places across the West. In addition, he had an entire cave full of Spanish treasure that had been hidden there a couple of centuries earlier. All of that didn't include the money he had made from his ranch and the other successful businesses in which he had invested, many of them operated by family members. The MacCallisters were a dynasty, and a mighty wealthy one, at that.
Jamie was aware that the room was completely silent as he took out his poke and counted five double eagles onto the bar. That was more than enough to cover the cost of the spilled liquor. He glanced at his still half-full mug of beer and decided he was in no mood to finish it.
"When that fella wakes up"—he nodded toward the area behind the bar where Ralston had fallen—"somebody ought to try to talk some sense into him about starting for Montana this late in the year. If he won't listen to reason, somebody needs to warn those pilgrims he plans to lead them right into trouble."
"Nobody talks sense to Jeb Ralston, mister," the bartender said. "He has his own ideas, and he's not shy about using his fists to defend them."
"Well, it backfired on him this time, didn't it?" Jamie turned away from the bar to leave the saloon.
He had taken only a couple of steps when somebody yelled, "Look out!"
Jamie whirled around, and saw that Ralston had regained his senses and climbed to the top of the bar. He leaped from it in a diving tackle aimed at Jamie.
Unable to get out of the way in time, Ralston's weight slammed into Jamie's left shoulder, the collision's impact making Jamie stagger. He stayed on his feet, though, planted his left hand in the middle of Ralston's chest, and shoved him back a step. With enough room, Jamie swung a right-hand punch that landed on Ralston's jaw like a pile driver.
The blow jerked Ralston's head to the side but didn't put him down. Drunk he might be, but it surely wasn't the first fight he'd had when he was full of booze. He hooked a right fist of his own into Jamie's midsection. The punch landed with considerable power. Ralston could hit.
Jamie sent a short, sharp left into the wagon master's face. Ralston came back with a left of his own that tagged Jamie on the chin. For several long moments as the saloon filled with cheers and shouts of encouragement on both sides, the two men stood toe to toe and slugged it out.
They were pretty evenly matched, but Jamie was a little taller and heavier and had a slightly longer reach. Those things gave him an advantage.
The wagon master fought with the intensity of a crazed animal, though, and for one of the few times in his life, Jamie found himself being forced to give ground a little.
His back came up against the bar. Bracing himself against it, he hunched his shoulders to protect his head and snapped two quick lefts into Ralston's face. Ralston's nose was redder and more swollen, but it was from being hit, not drinking. Jamie whipped a right into Ralston's solar plexus.
The wagon master leaned forward, his face going gray from the shock of the blow. He lowered his head and plowed forward. The top of his head rammed Jamie's chin, forcing his head back.
Jamie grabbed hold of Ralston and pulled him in closer, grappling with him. He got his arms around Ralston's waist and swung him into the air again. The muscles of Jamie's arms, back, and shoulders swelled so much from the effort it looked almost like they were about to burst through the buckskin shirt he wore.
Once Ralston was off his feet, he couldn't get his balance to fight anymore. Jamie turned him upside-down and then lifted the wagon master into the air above his head. It was an amazing feat of strength, the stuff of which legends were made. As he supported that massive burden, Jamie took a couple of stiff-legged steps and then smashed Ralston down onto one of the empty tables. Wood splintered and cracked as the table collapsed under the impact.
Ralston lay there senseless among the wreckage of the table.
He wouldn't be getting up any time soon, Jamie thought.
A frown creased his forehead as he saw just how true that was. Ralston's right leg was twisted at an odd, unnatural angle. Something white stuck out through a bloody rip in his trousers.
Jamie drew in a deep breath as he realized it was the jagged end of a bone. He had broken the wagon master's leg.
He wasn't the only one to notice that. A man in the crowd yelled, "Holy cow! Look at Ralston's leg!"
"Somebody better fetch a doctor!" another man added excitedly.
Jamie scowled. He had set plenty of broken bones in his time and had no doubt that he could do a passable job on Ralston's leg, but he reminded himself that he was in the middle of a good-sized city where there were probably a number of doctors practicing medicine. It would be better to leave the job to one of them.
He noticed the fellow who had come into the Bella Royale just as the fight was starting. The man edged forward to stare at Ralston's unconscious form. His eyes were big with horror behind the spectacles he wore.
One of the saloon's patrons nudged the man with an elbow and asked, "What's the matter, mister? Ain't you never seen somebody with a busted leg before?"
"Yes, but... but..." the man stammered. "That... that's a piece of bone sticking out!"
He suddenly clamped a hand over his mouth, whirled around, and sprinted for the door as several of the customers guffawed at him.
The door was still open from the man's hasty departure when another man stepped in, this one a burly, middle-aged individual with a badge pinned to his coat lapel. He had a revolver on his hip and a shotgun tucked under his arm. He strode toward the bar and said in a loud voice, "All right, all right, everybody just settle down. What happened here?" He stopped and frowned at Ralston. "Good Lord, that man's leg is broken!"
One thing you could say about folks in Kansas City, Jamie thought. They seemed to have a firm grasp of the obvious.
The constable or deputy or whatever he was glared around the room and demanded, "Somebody tell me what happened here. Who busted this man's leg?"
Jamie saved everybody the trouble of pointing him out by saying, "That was me."
The lawman looked him up and down, still frowning darkly. "And who might you be?"
"Name's Jamie Ian MacCallister."
Despite the lawman having told them to be quiet, that announcement brought a stir from the crowd. Probably not everyone in the Bella Royale recognized the name, but a lot of them did. Jamie was one of the most famous men on the frontier, and his recent campaign of vengeance against the Miles Nelson gang had added to his already staggering reputation.
"MacCallister, eh?" the lawman said after a moment. "What did Ralston do, look crossways at you?"
The bartender spoke up. "That's not fair, Deputy. Ralston started the fight. He was drunk and obnoxious, as usual, and he attacked Mr. MacCallister. Mr. MacCallister was just defending himself."
"I suppose Ralston should be glad you didn't defend yourself with those Colts," the deputy muttered. "How many men is it you've killed now?"
"I don't keep count," Jamie replied curtly. "But I never killed a single one that didn't need killing."
The deputy looked like he wanted to say something in response to that, but he didn't. He looked around at the crowd. "Has anybody gone for a doctor?"
The saloon's customers looked back at him mutely.
"Well, what in blazes is wrong with you?" the deputy roared. "Somebody go and do that!"
Several men hurried out of the saloon.
The lawman went on. "Anybody here want to argue with the claim that MacCallister acted in self-defense? No?" He blew out an exasperated breath and turned back to Jamie. "I reckon there's no point in arresting you. Under the circumstances, a judge would just dismiss any charges against you."
"And justifiably so," the bartender put in. "Nobody's gonna shed any tears over what happened to Ralston. This wasn't the first fight he's caused in here over the past few years, since he showed up and started guiding those wagon trains west. He just picked the wrong fella to try to buffalo this time."
The lawman looked at Jamie through narrowed eyes. "Just try to stay out of trouble the rest of the time you're in town, MacCallister. I know your reputation. Anywhere you go, all hell seems to break loose."
"That's hell's choice, not mine," Jamie said.
The deputy stomped out.
As the customers returned to their drinking and gambling and flirting with the saloon girls, the bartender said, "Let me set you up with a real drink, Mr. MacCallister. On the house, of course."
"I'm obliged, but what I'd really like is a good meal. Where's the best place to eat in this town?"
"Herbert's Steak House, three blocks up and one to the right, is mighty good," the bartender said. "Tell 'em Clancy sent you. That's me."
"I'll do that," Jamie promised. He took one more look at Ralston, who was still sprawled on the floor, shook his head, picked up his rifle, and walked out.
The room buzzed behind him as people talked about having seen the famous Jamie Ian MacCallister in action.
He had never thought of himself as being any sort of famous personage, even though he was. He just went about his business and did what had to be done.
As he stepped out onto the boardwalk in front of the saloon, movement to his left caught his attention. He stopped and turned that way, his right hand going to the Colt on his hip. His fingers closed around the gun's grips, but he didn't draw it.
The bespectacled man who had run out of the saloon a few minutes earlier stood there. His face was pale and drawn, and he looked scared. He took an involuntary step back and held out his hands, palms toward Jamie. "Please, Mr. MacCallister! Don't shoot me!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 5
|
Jamie frowned at the stranger for a second, then took his hand away from his gun and said sharply, "Take it easy, mister. I'm not in the habit of going around shooting people unless they shoot at me first."
"That... that's good to know. I mean you no harm, Mr. MacCallister."
Jamie grunted. The fellow was about half his size and didn't look like any sort of gunslinger or knife artist. The chances of him being able to do any harm were about zero.
Jamie wasn't rude enough to point that out, however. "How you do know my name? You ran out of there before I said what it was."
"The deputy left the door open some when he went in. I listened to what was going on inside after I..." He looked toward the alley. "Well, after my... my digestion settled down. From the way people in there were acting, they seemed to recognize your name."
"You don't?"
"No. I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't."
A grin split Jamie's rugged face. "Nothing to be sorry about. I don't know your name, either."
"Oh. That's right. It's Moses. Moses Danzig."
Jamie extended his right hand. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Danzig." His big paw pretty much swallowed up the other man's hand.
Moses Danzig looked nervous, like he was afraid that Jamie would crush his fingers, but Jamie took it easy on him.
After they'd shook, Moses said, "Obviously, you're some sort of frontiersman."
"Some sort, yeah," Jamie agreed.
"Would you happen to be looking for work?"
Jamie rubbed his chin. "Not really. But what did you have in mind?"
Moses took a deep breath and went on. "I'm traveling with the wagon train that's supposed to pull out tomorrow. We're going to have to find a new wagon master and guide." He paused, then added dryly, "Somebody broke the leg of the one we had."
Jamie looked at the smaller man for a moment, then burst out laughing. Moses Danzig might not be very big and his stomach might be a little delicate at the sight of blood, but he had some sand in his craw, that was for sure.
"Well, Mr. Danzig, that is a problem, but I can't help you. In fact, I was thinking as I left the saloon just now that it was a good thing Ralston jumped me the way he did. I didn't want trouble with him, but at least with him laid up, that wagon train will be stuck here until spring."
"But we can't wait until spring," Moses insisted. "We have to get started to Montana now."
Jamie shook his head. "It's too late in the year. You can't get there before winter sets in. Ralston ought to have known that. It's too dangerous."
"Mr. Ralston promised he could get us to our destination by Christmas."
Jamie snorted and shook his head. "Even if he managed to do that, it's still five or six weeks too late. You might be able to travel up until the end of November, but even that's mighty chancy."
"He said winter was going to be late this year. He'd studied the almanac and all the signs and that if we made it by Christmas we would be all right."
"And you'd trust your life to some drunk saying that?" Jamie asked. "Because that's what you'd be doing."
"It doesn't matter," Moses said, his voice growing hollow with despair. "We can't stay here, you see. There's no money. Everyone with the wagon train... spent everything they had to get this far and buy supplies for the rest of the trip."
"You've got those supplies," Jamie pointed out. "Live on them until spring."
Moses shook his head. "They won't last that long, and even if they did, we couldn't afford to buy more for the rest of the journey."
"Sure you could. Some of the folks could get jobs and work over the winter."
"Most of the families saved for years to afford to come out here, Mr. MacCallister. They couldn't make enough in a few months. No, they have to reach those homesteads waiting for them in Montana or give up their dreams."
"Then maybe that's just what they should do," Jamie said bluntly.
"Would you?" Moses asked. "I don't know you, Mr. MacCallister, but you don't strike me as the sort of man who would give up on much of anything you wanted."
That was true enough, Jamie thought. When the Good Lord made him, He'd put in a few extra pinches of stubbornness. Sheer muleheadedness, Kate would have called it. And she had, on more than one occasion.
"What is it you want me to do?"
"You're a frontiersman," Moses said. "Evidently quite an accomplished one, from the way the people in the saloon were acting when they found out who you are. It seems to me that the answer is simple."
"I'm listening," Jamie said.
"You can take us to Montana."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 6
|
Jamie didn't know whether to laugh or let out a disgusted snort, but he did neither. "I told you, Moses, I'm not looking for work."
"I'll wager that you've guided wagon trains before, though, haven't you?"
Jamie's broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. As a matter of fact, he had guided several wagon trains to where they were going, but that didn't mean he wanted to do it again, especially under these circumstances.
"And you know the country," Moses went on. "You told Mr. Ralston you'd been up there."
"I've been to Montana Territory," Jamie admitted. "Where are the homesteads you people are claiming?"
"They're in a place called Eagle Valley. Do you know it?"
Jamie frowned slightly. "I know it, all right. It's a beautiful little valley with plenty of decent land for farms and ranches. The last time I was there, though, it was covered with buffalo. The Sioux and the Blackfeet considered it part of their hunting grounds and fought over it now and then."
"Mr. Hendricks was assured that the Indians in the area had been pacified."
Jamie snorted disgustedly. "Who's this fella Hendricks?"
"The captain of the wagon train. His name is Lamar Hendricks."
Jamie knew that wagon train captain was an elected position, making Hendricks the leader of the immigrants, but it was a title without much real power. The wagon master was really the one in charge.
And this bunch didn't have one, since, as Moses had correctly pointed out, Jamie had broken the son of a gun's leg.
"Who told Hendricks the Indians weren't a threat?"
"Someone with the government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, I believe. I don't really know the details."
That answer didn't surprise Jamie. There must be something in the water in Washington, D.C., that made all those bureaucrats think they knew better about everything than everybody else. Darned fools was what they really were.
"I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Indians are pacified. From what I hear, there hasn't been much trouble up there lately, but that's because the big buffalo herds have moved north into Canada and most of the bands have followed them. They could come back any time, and then it's liable to start all over again."
"Captain Hendricks and his people just want to live peacefully. I'm sure they'll make every effort to get along with the Indians."
Jamie didn't say anything in response to that. All across the frontier, settlers had risked their lives moving into areas where the Indians didn't want them. Running such risks was just part of being a pioneer. The choice was up to them.
He was curious about something else, though. "You mentioned Hendricks and his people. Aren't you one of 'em?"
Moses smiled and pushed his spectacles up on his nose. "Not really. I'm just traveling with their wagon train, and they agreed to let me stay with them in Eagle Valley until the spring. But when winter's done I'll be moving on to Oregon. I'm supposed to take over a synagogue in Portland."
"That's like a Hebrew church, isn't it?"
"That's right. I'm a rabbi."
Jamie grunted. "First one I've ever met, I reckon. I figured you were a farmer like most homesteaders are."
"I am. It's just the crop I help to cultivate consists of people's souls. It's a calling that I've followed all the way from my home in Poland."
"From Poland all the way to the American frontier. That's quite a journey."
"And it's not finished yet," Moses said quietly. "But I need your help to get where I'm going, Mr. MacCallister. All of us with the wagon train do."
"Eagle Valley, eh?" Jamie mused.
"Yes. If you could find it in your heart to at least talk to Mr. Hendricks and meet the others..."
"Well, I suppose that wouldn't hurt anything." Even as he said it, Jamie wondered if he was making a big mistake. He wasn't the sort of man to brood over such things, though, so he put that uncertainty out of his mind. All he'd agreed to do was talk to Lamar Hendricks. He could try to convince Hendricks that it would be best to lay over in Kansas City until the spring. By then, they ought to be able to find another wagon master.
Shoot, if it came right down to it, he could help those pilgrims out with enough money to tide them over. He'd never miss it. As long as he had enough for food and ammunition and a few other supplies, that was all he needed while he was on the drift.
Moses had a big grin on his face. "That's wonderful, Mr. MacCallister. Come with me and I'll introduce you. You'll stay for supper and get to know everyone. You'll see what a fine group it is."
"I need to fetch my horses first and find a livery stable for them."
"Bring them with you," Moses suggested. "You can put them in with our livestock. I'm sure you'd all be welcome to spend the night."
"You're bound and determined to rope me into this, aren't you?"
"It just seems like such a fitting solution. I mean, since you're the one responsible for Mr. Ralston's injury—"
"He brought that on himself," Jamie said.
"I know, I know. I'm just saying that everything works out for a reason. Like tonight, when Captain Hendricks asked me to look for Mr. Ralston and I had a feeling I'd find him in that saloon—"
"I was wondering what you were doing there."
"I was looking for the man who's going to lead us to the promised land." Moses chuckled. "And I think I found him, just not the one I intended."
As they started walking along the street, Jamie scowled. "If I remember right from reading the Good Book, it was an hombre named Moses who led the Israelites to the promised land. Maybe your name is the Lord's way of saying that you should have the job."
"Me?" Moses said with a squeak in his voice. "The biblical Moses took the Israelites to Canaan, all right, but he never set foot in it himself. All he could do was look across the River Jordan at it and see that it was good." A worried note came into his voice. "Do you think that's a bad omen for me, Mr. MacCallister? That I'll make it to Montana but never set foot in Eagle Valley?"
Jamie didn't know how to answer that. His ideas of faith and spirituality came more from the Indians than from any of the so-called organized religions.
He slapped a big hand against Moses's back hard enough to make the smaller man stumble a little. "Don't worry about that. For now, let's try to figure out the best way to get there."
"Does that mean—"
Jamie shrugged. "It means I'll talk to those folks and think about it."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 7
|
Inside the Bella Royale Saloon, people were still talking about the brutal fight between Jeb Ralston and Jamie Ian MacCallister. It wasn't every day folks got to see a brawl involving a legendary frontiersman like MacCallister who was known from one end of the West to the other. It was something many of them would tell their grandchildren about.
Eldon Swint didn't seem too impressed. He sat at one of the tables with several of his men, a bottle and glass in front of him. He filled his glass again, then leaned back in a chair and stretched out his long legs. "People talk about that fella MacCallister like he was Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and Kit Carson all rolled into one. He didn't look so dang special to me. Just another old man who ain't had the sense to die yet." Swint downed the drink and licked his lips.
"You must be joshin', boss," Three-Finger Jake Lucas said. He was a handsome young man with a quick, cocky grin and a full head of brown hair under his tipped back hat. The last two fingers of his left hand were gone, pinched off cleanly when he got them trapped between his rope and saddle horn as he took a dally to stop a runaway steer during a drive up the trail from Texas. It was a mistake many cowboys had made, which was why many of them were missing a finger or two.
Jake had taken the accident hard. It had embittered him, and when the herd he was with reached Abilene and the Texas crew started home, Jake hadn't gone with them. He had stayed in Abilene, spent all his wages on a monumental drunk, and vowed never to return home in his mutilated state.
In the four years since then, he had fallen in with bad company, as they say. His best friend Bodie Cantrell knew that... because he was a member of that so-called bad company himself.
Bodie was sitting at the table with Swint, Jake, and three other men, all of them drinking heavily. Bodie had a pretty fuzzy glow going from the liquor. He didn't like to get drunk as much as some of his companions did, but from time to time he gave in to the urge, anyway. The whiskey usually helped him forget what had happened in Kansas a couple weeks earlier.
It wasn't helping so much that night.
"It's just a little flag stop out in the middle of nowhere," Eldon Swint said. "There's only one man on duty at night. He's the telegrapher, ticket agent, and baggage clerk, all in one. When we throw down on him, he'll put that flag up, you can bet a hat on that."
"Yeah, but will the train stop?" one of the men asked.
"It's not an express. It'll stop," Swint said confidently. "That's what it's supposed to do."
"Why would they ship all that money from the mint on a train that's not an express?" Bodie asked. "That doesn't make sense to me."
"Because they're tryin' to be tricky. They don't think anybody'll suspect the shipment's on a local like that. They got a whole series of 'em set up to get the money from Denver to St. Louis."
The outlaws sat their horses on a slight rise looking north toward a small settlement on the rolling Kansas plains. The railroad tracks ran straight as a string east and west, disappearing in the distance in both directions.
A small depot sat next to the tracks on the north side, and behind it was the settlement's short, single street with half a dozen businesses on each side. At the far end of the street stood a whitewashed church that doubled as a schoolhouse during the week. Maybe two dozen residences were scattered around haphazardly.
Bodie didn't know the name of the place. It was so small it didn't really deserve one, although he was sure it had some sort of official designation on railroad maps since there was a station there.
One of the men said to Swint, "You're sure you can trust the fella who told you about all this, boss?"
"I'm sure," Swint said with an ugly grin. "He thought he was sellin' out the government for a share of the loot, so he didn't have any reason to lie. He sure was surprised when he found out that his share was a bullet!"
Swint's haw-haw of laughter made Bodie's guts clench. He was well aware that he wasn't riding with a bunch of choir boys, but Eldon Swint making a joke out of cold-blooded murder rubbed him the wrong way.
Bodie had done plenty of things he wasn't proud of in his life. He had been on his own since he was nine years old, when both his parents had died of a fever while the family was on its way west. The only way he had survived the fifteen years since was by doing whatever it took, even if that meant breaking a few laws. He had stolen money and food plenty of times, and after he got older he had stuck a gun in men's faces and made them hand over their valuables.
But he had never killed anybody while committing his crimes, or any other time, either. Maybe he'd just been lucky that things had worked out that way, but he liked to think it was more than that. He hoped he still had a shred of decency left in him.
Nobody would ever say that about Eldon Swint. The man had a reputation for being cunning and ruthless, and it was well deserved. The gang he led had been growing for several years, its latest recruits being Bodie Cantrell and Jake Lucas.
The two young men had quickly become good friends. Jake had opened up a little to him during long nights standing guard while the gang was on the run from the law. It was how Bodie knew about the bitterness hidden behind Jake's easygoing grin.
They were on the verge of pulling their biggest job yet. According to the information Swint had gotten, almost $80,000 in new gold coins would be on the train coming through Kansas tonight, on their way to several banks in St. Louis. Even divided among the almost two dozen men in the gang, that was more than three grand apiece. Bodie could hardly conceive of having that much money.
Once he had his share of the loot, he could quit the gang, head farther west, maybe even start a little spread somewhere. After a decade and a half of drifting around, struggling to survive, getting in and out of trouble, the idea of settling down and trying to forge a real life for himself held a powerful appeal.
"The east bound's due to come through a little after eight o'clock tonight," Swint went on. "If we all ride in there before that, it's bound to raise some suspicions. So here's what we'll do. Four of us will ride in. Me, of course"—he looked around the gang—"and Charley."
Charley Green was one of Swint's top lieutenants. He had been in the gang for a couple years.
Swint pointed to another man. "You, too, Hinkley, and... Cantrell. You'll be the fourth man."
Bodie nodded. He wasn't sure what Swint had in mind for the four of them to do, and he would have just as soon not been picked by the boss outlaw, but he would go along with whatever he needed to do. He wanted that stake.
"We'll ride in as soon as it gets dark," Swint continued. "Maybe have a drink in the saloon and size the place up. Then we'll drift over to the depot one by one and get the drop on the fella working there. Once he's raised the flag to get the eastbound to stop, we'll signal the rest of you. You'll be waitin' up here. As soon as the train pulls in, all of you charge down to the station and make sure nobody interferes with us while we're gettin' that loot out of the express car."
Bodie had to admit, the plan sounded like it would work. If everything broke their way, they would ride off into the night $80,000 richer, without a shot being fired.
It would be a good way to end his career as a desperado, he thought.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 8
|
Later that afternoon, while they were waiting in a small grove of cottonwoods for night to fall, Jake came over to Bodie. "I wish the boss had picked me as one of the four to go into town tonight."
"It doesn't really matter," Bodie said. "You'll get your share either way."
"Yeah, I know, but you boys get to have a drink first, maybe even pat some calico cat on the rump while you're waitin'. I get to hang around out here with a bunch of stinkin', whiskery ol' owlhoots."
"I'll be sure to drink a shot of whiskey and flirt with a soiled dove for you," Bodie said with a grin.
"Yeah, you do that." Jake grew more serious. "Just keep your eyes open, Bodie. Could be you'll have a chance to slip a few of those double eagles in your pocket without Eldon noticin'. I'll expect you to share your good fortune if you do."
Bodie frowned. "I'm not sure I'd risk that, even if I did have a chance. Eldon would put a bullet through a man's head, sure as sin, if he tried to help himself to more than his fair share."
"Maybe," Jake said with a shrug. "And maybe it'd be worth the risk."
Bodie didn't say anything else about that, and neither did Jake. Bodie worried, though, that sooner or later his friend would give in to temptation and try to double-cross Swint. That could lead to bad trouble.
Bodie felt himself getting tense as night approached. The time seemed to go by fast.
Too soon, Swint was calling out, "All right, boys, mount up. Time for us to go."
The three men he had picked to accompany him swung into their saddles. They circled west of the settlement, crossed the railroad tracks, and came in from that direction.
The saloon didn't have a sign on it, just the word SALOON painted in big letters on the upper part of the false front. Swint, Bodie, Hinkley, and Green tied their horses at the hitch rail in front of it and went inside.
The place wasn't very busy. Four men were playing poker at a table; three more stood at the bar drinking while a single bartender lazily polished glasses with a grimy rag. Bodie didn't see a woman in the place, so if he told Jake any stories about flirting with one, he'd have to lie.
The bartender wasn't talkative like a lot of drink jugglers were. He brought their beers and left them alone, which was fine with Bodie. He'd hoped the beer would calm his nerves a little, but that didn't seem to be the case.
He would be glad when the robbery was over and done with. Despite all the things he had done, maybe he wasn't cut out to be an outlaw.
When it was good and dark, Swint downed what was left of the beer he'd been nursing and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "See you later, boys."
The other three knew what that meant. Swint was on his way to the depot. The rest of them would follow at short intervals. Green would go first, then Hinkley, and finally Bodie.
Soon he was the last of the quartet in the saloon, and it occurred to him that he could go outside, get on his horse, and ride away. The other three were all waiting down at the train station. They wouldn't be able to stop him. He didn't have to go through with it. He could put this life of banditry behind him right here and now.
But where would he go and what would he do? Not nearly as far or as much as he could with $3,000, he told himself.
No, he would do what he'd said he would do, he decided. He wasn't going to run out on his partners.
He left the saloon and strolled toward the station in apparent innocence. As he neared it, a hiss came from the thick shadows beside the building. Bodie darted into the gloom and found the other three men waiting there for him.
"All right," Swint whispered. "Cantrell, you go in and ask the fella if the train's on time. That'll distract him while we come in the platform door."
Bodie nodded, realized that Swint couldn't see him in the darkness, and said, "I understand."
He left them there and stepped back into the dim glow of the lantern that hung over the depot's entrance. Trying not to look as nervous as he felt, he went inside and found himself in a small, dusty waiting room with a ticket window to the left and a storage room to the right. A door on the other side of the waiting room led out onto the platform. The night was warm, and the platform door was open to allow some cross-ventilation.
If the agent was behind the ticket window, Bodie would have to lure him into the waiting room some way. Luck was with him, though, and the man emerged from the storeroom, dusting his hands off from moving something around in there. He was a middle-aged, balding man wearing a green eyeshade. With a friendly smile, he asked Bodie, "Something I can do for you, young fella?"
"Is the eastbound train on time?"
The agent scratched at his jaw. "Yeah, I reckon. Haven't heard anything saying otherwise. You need to buy a ticket? I can flag it down for you if you do. Ought to be here in another fifteen, twenty minutes."
While the man was talking, Swint and the other two cat-footed into the depot from the platform behind him. Bodie had to use all his willpower not to look directly at them and give the game away.
Of course, it wouldn't really matter if he did. They outnumbered the agent four to one, and he didn't even appear to be armed.
Swint put the barrel of his revolver against the back of the man's neck and eared back the hammer. The metallic ratcheting echoed sinisterly in the small room. "Oh, you'll flag down the train, all right, friend. Now don't you move."
The agent stiffened and his eyes widened in fear.
Bodie felt sorry for the man. He drew his gun and told him, "You just do what we tell you and you'll be all right."
The agent's mouth opened and closed, but he didn't say anything.
Swint prodded him with the gun again. "You understand, friend?"
"S-Sure," the agent stammered. "Just don't kill me."
"I won't shoot you," Swint promised. "Not as long as you cooperate."
"What is it you fellas want? That train's not carrying anything except freight and a few passengers. There's nothing special in the express car."
Swint laughed. "That shows how much you know, amigo. The railroad don't tell you little fellas about the deals it makes with the government. They probably figure it's safer that way, keepin' you in the dark. Might have been, too, if somebody hadn't sold 'em out."
"Mister, I don't have the slightest idea what you're talkin' about."
"That don't matter. Just come with me and raise that flag so the engineer'll know to stop. You be sure to give him the right signal, too. No mistakes or you'll be mighty sorry." As Swint started to take the agent out onto the platform, he glanced back at Bodie and added, "Go get the horses."
Bodie nodded, pouched his iron, and hurried out of the depot.
He was back in less than five minutes, leading all four horses. He tied them outside the station and went back in. Hinkley and Green were standing watch just inside the door, in case any of the townspeople should show up, but Bodie saw right away that wasn't the case. The depot was just as empty as he'd left it.
Swint waited on the far side of the waiting room by the platform door. Bodie frowned as he realized he didn't see the agent. Then he glanced toward the storeroom door, which was still partially open, and stiffened as he saw a pair of legs on the floor.
"What in blazes?" Bodie muttered. He pushed the door open farther and drew in a startled breath as light from the waiting room spilled over the man's motionless body. A dark pool of blood was spreading slowly around his head. Bodie could see the gaping wound where the man's throat had been cut.
He turned his shocked gaze toward Swint. "You told him you weren't going to kill him."
"I said I wouldn't shoot him," Swint replied with a leering grin. "I didn't. That trusty knife of mine did the trick and made sure he wouldn't try to warn anybody."
A ball of sickness rolled around Bodie's guts. He had seen violent death before, more times than he liked to think about, but this was cold-blooded murder and he didn't like it. "They hang men for things like this."
"Only when they catch 'em," Swint said. "And nobody's gonna catch us, Bodie."
In the distance, a train whistle sounded, a long, wailing cry that seemed to Bodie like the howl of a lost soul....
The noise faded from his memory and blended in with the racket from a piano in a corner of the Bella Royale that a sleeve-gartered entertainer had started pounding. Bodie was back in Kansas City again, sitting at the table with Swint, Jake Lucas, and several other members of the gang.
The rest of the robbery had gone off without a hitch, a couple weeks earlier. The train had rolled in and stopped just like it was supposed to, and the rest of the gang had swarmed over it, taking control of the engineer and the fireman in the locomotive cab, the conductor in the caboose, and the travelers in the two passenger cars.
Swint, Bodie, Green, and Hinkley got the drop on the messenger in the express car. The man had thought about putting up a fight, but with four guns staring him in the face, he had thought better of it.
And so they had ridden away just as Bodie had hoped, without firing a shot.
Even so, they had left a dead man behind them, a dead man whose face still haunted Bodie's dreams from time to time.
What made it even worse was that he hadn't been able to leave the gang like he'd planned. Swint was dragging his feet on divvying up the loot. He had said they would do it once they got to Kansas City.
Bodie hoped that was true. He wanted to get away from these men. He hoped he could persuade Jake to take his share and come with him. If they partnered up, they could start a fine ranch somewhere with the money they'd have.
"I sure wouldn't want to tangle with MacCallister," Jake was saying. "No telling how many badmen he's sent over the divide in his time."
"Stories like that always get blown up bigger than they really are," Swint insisted. "I ain't afraid of that old man, or anybody else for that matter. He'll get his comeuppance one o' these days, and if he ever crosses me, I'll give it to him myself. I'll blow his lights out, I will."
Part of Bodie would have liked to witness such an encounter. He thought Swint was completely wrong about Jamie Ian MacCallister, and it might be satisfying to watch the results.
Swint changed the subject. "Did you boys notice that theater when we were comin' into town? Posters out front said there was gonna be a show. I hope we haven't missed it."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 9
|
"Hark! What light through yonder window—Dadblast it! Who put that board there? I almost tripped and broke my bloody neck! We open tomorrow night, my friends. We can't have things like this happening!"
Savannah McCoy put a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter she felt trying to bubble up her throat. The sight of Cyrus O'Hanlon's portly figure in tights and doublet was pretty ridiculous to start with, and the way he had stumbled as he crossed the stage and nearly fallen on his face made him seem even more like a comedian. He would have made a good one, Savannah thought, if he hadn't considered himself the greatest dramatic actor of his generation.
Of course, great dramatic actors didn't head up troupes that played in second-rate variety theaters and opera houses across the Midwest, occasionally venturing as far out on the frontier as Kansas City, which seemed like the Wild West of penny dreadful fame to Savannah.
She pushed back the rich brown ringlets of hair that kept trying to fall in front of her face when she leaned through Juliet's "window," which was part of the set the troupe had erected on the stage of Mr. Channing's theater. She pulled up the neckline of her dress. Cyrus had designed the costumes, of course. He had a hand in everything the troupe did. He'd had the neckline cut low enough to display what Savannah considered a scandalous amount of cleavage, especially when she leaned forward to say her lines.
"Give the rubes in the front row what they want to see," he always said.
Savannah didn't like it. Most people already considered actresses to be little better than harlots. They didn't see that it was a true calling, like any other artistic endeavor. She didn't think it was a good idea to reinforce their prejudice by dressing like a saloon girl.
So she pulled the dress up as much as she could, but in the end, Cyrus was the boss. That was why, at the age of fifty-five, he was playing the stripling youth, Romeo. Savannah, though six or seven years older than Juliet was supposed to be in the play, was at least a lot closer to the right age.
Cyrus took off the hat with a tired-looking feather plume that he wore, ran his fingers through his mostly gray hair as he recovered his composure, and pulled the hat back on. "We'll begin again," he said in a loud, ringing voice. He was so accustomed to projecting to the back of the house that he talked that way all the time.
He launched once again into Romeo's balcony speech, and Savannah tried to concentrate on what he was saying so that she couldn't miss her cues. It was difficult to keep her mind from wandering. She had been doing this scene for months, ever since the platform behind the "window" had collapsed during a performance in Chicago, dumping Cyrus's wife Dollie, the previous Juliet, on her amply padded rear end.
Even though she hadn't been injured in the fall, following that accident Dollie had declared that she was too old to be clambering around on scenery and told Cyrus to find himself a new Juliet. The role had fallen to Savannah, who had been with the troupe for about a year.
After Cyrus had made that announcement, Dollie had taken Savannah aside and told her, "Cyrus sometimes gets carried away and thinks his love scenes with his leading ladies ought to continue offstage. In fact, that's how the two of us wound up married."
"Oh, I'm sure that won't ever happen," Savannah had said. "Mr. O'Hanlon is much too professional."
"It had better not," Dollie had warned her. "If it does, you're liable to find yourself stranded in some backwater with more livestock than people. Don't think your acting talents would help you then."
Since that day, Savannah had learned that there was some truth to what Dollie had told her. Cyrus had made some advances—subtle ones, to be sure—but unmistakable in their intention. Savannah had gotten quite skilled in fending them off without seeming to do so.
She realized that Cyrus had paused and knew it was her line. For a split second, she couldn't think of where they were in the scene, but then it came back to her. Her acting instincts were good and hardly ever let her down. She leaned out the window and delivered her line, and below her on the stage Cyrus started emoting once more.
Savannah's mind strayed again, back to the stately white mansion in the Georgia city that had given her name to her. At least, the name she was currently using...
"No daughter of mine is going to be an actress!" William Thorpe thundered as he stalked back and forth in his study.
Her father was good at thundering, Gillian Thorpe thought as she steeled herself against his rage. He preferred to shout rather than discuss anything in a calm, rational manner. He seemed to think that whoever was the loudest in any argument was going to prevail. And to be fair, that was usually what happened when William Thorpe was involved. Goodness knew his wife Helen, Gillian's mother, had long since given up ever trying to convince her husband of anything. He would just shout her down.
Arguing with a man who was always right, at least in his own head, was just a waste of time and energy.
"Of course, Father," Gillian said. "I understand."
He stopped short and frowned at her in surprise. "You understand? Does that mean you're going to give up this mad idea of parading yourself on a stage like a painted woman in a house of ill repute?"
For a second Gillian wanted to ask her father how he knew so much about painted women and what went on in houses of ill repute, but she decided not to, probably wisely.
"No, Father, I understand why you feel the way you do, but I haven't changed my mind. I still believe that it's my destiny to become an actress."
"Destiny!" he snorted. "Romantic claptrap! I realize you're just a female, Gillian, and as such it's your nature to bury yourself in folderol and foolishness, but good Lord, girl, I thought better of you than this! I thought I'd raised you better!"
Again Gillian had to restrain an impulse, the urge to pick up one of the paperweights on his desk and throw it at him. Just a female, indeed!
"You're not the only one who raised me, Father," she pointed out.
"I know," he said with a scathing sneer. "And I'm not really surprised that your mother filled your head with so many foolish notions."
"She taught me to do what I believe to be right."
"You have no business believing anything except what I tell you to believe."
That summed it up, all right, Gillian thought. She had a brain in her head, a good brain, but her father didn't want her to use it. As long as she lived under his roof, he wouldn't allow her to use it. So the solution was simple.
Terence had been right. If she wanted to do anything worthwhile with her life, she had to get out of there. She had to run away.
With him.
Terence Flanagan was an actor, a breathtakingly handsome man. Gillian had met him backstage after a performance of a play she and her mother had attended. She had been impressed with him right away and very pleased that he took an interest in her. From that moment on, a friendship had developed between them... a friendship that Gillian sensed Terence wanted to turn into something more. She hadn't yet made up her mind about that, but the two of them had gotten close enough that she had confided her ambitions to him.
He had been receptive to the idea right away. "There's a spot for you in the company to which I belong, Gillian dear. All you have to do is say the word and I'll speak to the director. We'll soon be leaving on an extended tour, and I'm sure he'd be willing to take you along."
"I don't know, Terence. Leaving home seems like such an extreme step...."
They were sitting on a bench in one of Savannah's lovely, gracious parks. The city hadn't suffered as much damage in the Late Unpleasantness as Atlanta and Richmond, for example, and these days it looked much the way it had before the war.
With so many people around on the bright, beautiful day, Terence had to be discreet, but he reached over and rested his hand on Gillian's. "I want you to have a chance to fulfill your dreams, my dear. How about this? Perhaps a small role in one of our productions while we're performing here in Savannah? That would allow you to see what the theater is really like, firsthand."
The idea held great appeal for Gillian. And the thrill that went through her when Terence's hand pressed warmly against hers made her long for the opportunity to get to know him better.
All she had to do was convince her father....
Bringing up the idea led to a war on a much smaller scale, but no less passionate. The two of them had gone around and around about it for more than a week, and finally it was too late. The troupe had left the day before, continuing on to the next stop on their tour—Nashville.
But Gillian had a plan, and the final confrontation with her father convinced her that she had no choice but to go through with it. She wished that she could tell her mother she was leaving, but she knew if she did, the older woman would just try to talk her out of it.
Gillian couldn't blame her for that. She wouldn't have wanted to be left alone with William Thorpe, either.
Her father always retired early. He had very lucrative interests in a shipping concern, a bank, and a number of warehouses, and he liked to be at his office before anyone else in the morning. That way he could see when all the employees arrived... and the ones who made a habit of being later than William Thorpe thought appropriate would pay for their tardiness.
Gillian knew that if she waited until her father was asleep, he wouldn't be aware of what was going on until it was too late to stop her. She had already checked the railroad schedule and knew there was a train for Nashville leaving at ten o'clock.
She packed a bag, taking as little as she thought she could get by with, then slipped stealthily down the rear stairs and out of the house.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 10
|
It was frightening to walk to the train station in the darkness. Her heart was in her throat the whole way. But people who never took risks never accomplished anything worthwhile in life, she told herself, and she clung to that thought for strength as she made her way to the depot.
Once she was there, she ran into an unexpected obstacle. She had plenty of money, but there were no compartments available on the train. She had to purchase a ticket that allowed her to sit up in one of the regular passenger cars.
It was a frightening ordeal, and it lasted a lot longer than the walk to the station had. Several of the male passengers leered at her as she made her way to her seat, and she knew what they were thinking. An attractive young woman, traveling alone... well, there was only one sort of woman she could be, as far as they were concerned. She sat stiffly and avoided their eyes, hoping that her chilly demeanor would be enough to keep any of them from approaching her.
Atlanta, Chattanooga, the whole trip was just a blur to her. She didn't dare let herself go to sleep so she was utterly exhausted by the time the train pulled into Nashville in the middle of the next day. But she had made it, and all she had to do was find the hotel where she knew the acting troupe was staying.
Hansom cabs were lined up outside the station, and she had brought enough money with her to afford one. The driver knew the hotel, and when they got there Gillian was surprised to see that it was rather rundown. She would have thought the troupe would stay somewhere better.
She went inside and inquired at the desk for the number of Mr. Flanagan's room. The clerk gave her a smug, knowing smile that irritated her, but he told her the number. Gillian climbed to the third floor and knocked on the door.
At first she thought Terence must be out, perhaps at the theater, because no one answered. But then a thick voice said, "Whass... who... hold on."
That was Terence, or at least she thought it was. She heard him muttering curses under his breath as he approached the door.
Then abruptly he jerked it open and stood there wearing only the bottom half of a pair of long underwear. His hair was in disarray, his face was puffy and flushed, and his eyes were bleary. Obviously, he had been sleeping, and before that he'd been drinking... a lot.
But he recognized her and exclaimed, "Gillian! My God. I'd given up on you. Finally worked up the gumption to run away from the old goat, eh?"
Before Gillian could answer, a woman's voice said, "Terence? Who is it?"
He half turned, so Gillian could see past him into the hotel room. A woman with tousled blond hair was sitting up in the bed, holding the sheet around what was apparently her nude body.
"Look who's here, darling," Terence said to her. "That young ingénue I was telling you about. Come on in, Gillian, and I'll introduce you to our leading lady. I'm sure the two of you will enjoy getting to know each other."
Gillian was too shocked and stunned to move. It was like her feet were nailed to the floor. What had happened to Terence? All his charm and sophistication had disappeared, leaving only crudeness behind. She couldn't believe she had left her home and come all this way, only to find that he... he...
"Come on, Gillian," Terence said, sounding a little impatient. "It'll be all right. We'll take good care of you."
Gillian turned and ran down the dingy hotel corridor, her bag bumping against her leg. Terence stepped into the hall and called out behind her, but she ignored him. The blond woman said something else, and he went back into the room and closed the door.
If the trip from Savannah had been a blur, the next few minutes were even worse. Gillian wasn't sure how she made it back downstairs and out of the hotel. She had no idea what she was going to do. She could go home, of course, but if she did she would have to listen to her father browbeat her about her foolishness for the rest of his life. She knew he would never let her forget it.
But what else could she do? She was hundreds of miles from home, in a city where she didn't know anyone, and she was scared and desperate....
She didn't see the well-dressed older man until she bumped right into him on the sidewalk outside the hotel. She might have fallen if he hadn't reached out and caught hold of her arm to steady her.
The elegant-looking woman with the man said worriedly, "Are you all right, dearie? You look like you've had quite a fright."
"No, I just... I was going to join an acting troupe..."
The man wrinkled his nose. "Not Flanagan's Players, I hope. They're a sorry lot, if I do say so myself. Den of iniquity and all that. Not the least bit professional, like O'Hanlon's Traveling Company."
Gillian shook her head. "I... I'm afraid I'm not familiar with them."
"Are you an actress?"
"Well... I want to be."
The man was wearing a top hat, which he swept off and held in front of him as he performed a half-bow. "Cyrus O'Hanlon, at your service, miss."
The woman with him laughed.
"This is my wife, Dollie. If you'd care to discuss joining our troupe, we'd be glad to talk to you. We can always use another player. If you're truly devoted to your craft, that is."
"I hope I would be. I think it would be wonderful to be an actress."
"Well, you've got a lot to learn," Dollie O'Hanlon said. "But if you throw in with us, at least you'd be learning around decent folks. Not like that lecher Flanagan."
Gillian swallowed hard. Her father was right about one thing. She really did believe in destiny and other romantic notions like that. "I think I might like that."
"What's your name, dear?"
Gillian had thought about that. When her father found out that she was gone, he might hire detectives to look for her. She didn't want to be found, didn't want to return home until it was on her own terms. She had decided that she ought to use a different name to make it harder to find her. But she hadn't settled on a name.
She had no time to ponder the question further. She glanced across the street at McCoy's Hardware Store, thought about her hometown, and put a smile on her face as she told the O'Hanlons, "Savannah McCoy. My name is Savannah McCoy."
And so it had been ever since, until even she thought of herself by that name, through performances in countless towns and in Kansas City as the troupe ran through its dress rehearsal before the opening performance, which was the next night.
She had been lucky. That hotel in Nashville had catered to the theatrical trade, and the O'Hanlon Traveling Company was staying there, too. Cyrus and Dollie had gone out to eat and had been returning to the hotel when she literally ran into them.
She'd gone with them to the troupe's performance that night and been welcomed by all the members of the company. Cyrus liked to say that they were like a family and he was the paterfamilias, and it was true. Romantic notion or not, Savannah felt like she had found a home with them.
She couldn't imagine anything changing that, at least not any time soon.
It would take a new twist of fate, a new rendezvous with destiny, to do that.
She figured she was through with such things.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 11
|
Jamie went back to the hardware store where he had left Sundown and the pack horse tied to the hitch rack. Nobody had bothered the animals, which came as no surprise to him. When anybody but Jamie approached the big sand-colored stallion, Sundown got proddy. Any time he bared his teeth and started moving around skittishly, folks tended to make a wide circle around him.
"That's an impressive-looking horse," Moses Danzig said as he looked at Sundown with admiration.
"He's mean as all get out," Jamie said bluntly. "But he'll run all day if he has to. Run until his heart busts if that's what it takes. He's got as much grit as any horse I've ever seen." He handed the pack horse's reins to Moses. "Here, you can lead this one. He won't give you any trouble."
They headed for the open area where the immigrants were camped. As they approached, Jamie heard loud, boisterous music. It sounded like several fiddlers were scraping their bows across the strings of their instruments with great enthusiasm, if not a great deal of talent, and the lively tune made Jamie's blood perk up. He had always enjoyed dancing, although he hadn't done any in quite some time.
Not since before Kate died, actually.
He put that thought out of his mind and watched the couples spinning and whirling around near the big campfire in the center of the area between the circled wagons. People who weren't dancing had gathered around to watch, too. They clapped in time to the music and called out encouragement to the dancers.
Not everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, though. Jamie noticed one man standing off to the side with a glare of disapproval on his stern face. He was tall and heavily built, with a barrel chest and prematurely white hair that grew in a tangle on his head. He wore a sober black suit, and his big hands rested on the shoulders of two children who stood with him—a boy and a girl about ten years old. Jamie looked closer at the resemblance between the youngsters and realized they were twins.
Jamie turned to Moses and nodded toward the glowering man. "Who's that? Not your wagon captain, I hope."
"No, certainly not. That's Reverend Bradford. He's on his way to Montana, too, with his children. I'm afraid he doesn't approve of the dancing and has made that clear to Captain Hendricks. He says it's sinful for men and women to cavort around together like heathens. But the captain thinks it's good for the group's spirits to have these little celebrations of life from time to time."
"Is that what they're celebrating? Just life in general, nothing in particular?"
"Well, in this case," Moses explained, "there's another reason. There was a wedding earlier today. R.G. Hamilton married Alice Dennison. R.G. is one of the single men traveling west—or at least he was—and Alice is the daughter of one of the immigrant families. They're a fine couple and an excellent match, and everyone is happy about it."
"Except that fella Bradford," Jamie said with another nod toward the preacher.
"Oh, he doesn't mind the marriage. Actually, he performed the wedding ceremony. He just doesn't like dancing... among other things."
From the sound of that comment, Jamie thought that Moses didn't get along very well with Reverend Bradford. He didn't pursue that question, however, since it was none of his business.
As the three fiddlers—two whiskery old-timers and a skinny, gangling man who was much younger—came to the end of the merry tune they had been playing, people laughed and applauded. One couple seemed to be at the center of the dancers, and Jamie ventured a guess that they were the ones who'd gotten hitched earlier.
Moses confirmed it, then pointed out the wagon train captain. "There's Captain Hendricks." As the musicians took a break and the immigrants began to mill around and talk he nodded in Hendricks's direction. "Come on, I'll introduce you."
Lamar Hendricks was a tall, fair-haired man with a rawboned, middle-aged face under a broad-brimmed brown hat. He wore a brown leather vest over a homespun shirt. As the two men approached him, he said, "There you are, Moses. I was starting to wonder what had happened to you. Where's Mr. Ralston?"
"That's an, um, interesting story, Captain," Moses replied. "By the way, this is Jamie Ian MacCallister. He's quite a famous frontiersman."
Hendricks grunted. "Is that so?" Obviously, he hadn't heard of Jamie. He held out a hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. MacCallister."
"You, too, Captain," Jamie replied with a nod as they shook hands.
Hendricks turned back to Moses. "Were you not able to find Mr. Ralston?"
"Oh, I found him, all right. But there's been... an accident. Mr. Ralston is injured."
A look of alarm instantly appeared on Hendricks's face. "An accident? What sort of accident?"
Moses looked pretty uncomfortable at the prospect of answering that question, so Jamie saved him the trouble. "I broke the varmint's leg."
Hendricks's eyes widened in surprise. "Why in the world would you do something like that?"
"Because he was trying to do the same or worse to me."
Moses said, "Mr. Ralston attacked Mr. MacCallister, Captain. I found him in that saloon he frequented, just as I feared I might. He had been drinking heavily. When Mr. MacCallister disagreed with him about something, Mr. Ralston started a fight. I saw the whole thing. Mr. MacCallister was only defending himself. He didn't do anything wrong."
"Well, maybe not," Hendricks said with a frown, "but don't expect me to be happy about what you did, MacCallister. We were counting on Jeb Ralston to get us to our new homes in Montana."
"Then you were counting on a drunken bully," Jamie said, not mincing words.
Hendricks controlled his anger with a visible effort. "You'll have to excuse me. I need to start figuring out what we're going to do now. We have to find another wagon master as quickly as possible."
"You see, that's just it, Captain," Moses told him. "I've asked Mr. MacCallister if he would consider guiding us to Montana Territory."
Hendricks looked surprised again, and still angry. "You had no right to do that, Moses. I'm the captain of this wagon train. We need an experienced guide—"
"Ask around town," Moses suggested. "Mr. MacCallister is a famous frontiersman, much more well known and respected than Mr. Ralston. And probably much more capable of leading the wagon train to Montana, I suspect."
"No offense, MacCallister," Hendricks said grudgingly. "I'm not aware of your reputation."
"I never asked for a reputation," Jamie said. "Just to be left alone to live my life. But I don't control what folks say about me. I can tell you one thing—setting out for Montana this late in the year is a mighty foolish thing to do, and I'd bet this old hat of mine on that."
"We have no choice." Hendricks's voice was as stiff as his back seemed to be. "We can't afford to wait for spring. Besides... I promised everyone that we'd be in our new homes in Eagle Valley by Christmas."
"Maybe you shouldn't make promises you can't deliver."
The air of tension between the two men was thick. Moses stepped in. "In your opinion, Mr. MacCallister, what would it take for us to reach our destination in time?"
"Well, you'd have to leave pretty quick," Jamie said. "First thing tomorrow morning, if you can."
Hendricks shook his head. "That's impossible. It'll take at least another day to finish making repairs on our wagons."
"Day after tomorrow, then," Jamie said. "And you may wish later on you had that extra day back."
"What else?" Moses asked.
Jamie's eyes narrowed in thought. "You'd have to push hard, and I'm talking about livestock and human folks as well. The days on the trail would be mighty long ones, from as soon as it's light enough to see in the morning until it's too dark to go on. Under normal circumstances, you could afford to stop and lay over for a few days every now and then, mainly to give the stock some time to rest. If you leave now, you can't risk doing that. You'll have to push on every day without any breaks. By the time you get there, your teams will be worn down to a nub... and so will most of your people."
"But we could do all that if we have to," Moses insisted. "Couldn't we, Captain Hendricks?"
"We'll do whatever's necessary," Hendricks said with a curt nod. "We all knew when we started out that there would be hardships along the way."
Jamie said, "You'd need plenty of luck, too. Luck that you don't run into any Indian trouble, and that the weather cooperates. That last is the main thing. Winter would have to hold off, at least the worst of it. Where you're going, nothing will kill you quicker than a Great Plains blizzard."
"We have faith," Hendricks said. "The Good Lord watches over us."
"He'd have to, for you to have a chance of getting there."
Moses turned to Jamie. "But you could do it," he insisted. "With God's help, of course. You could make all those things happen and lead us to Montana."
"I can't do anything about the weather," Jamie said.
"But if it did get bad, you could tell us what we need to do to survive. And then when conditions improved, we could move on again."
"It would depend on how bad things got"—Jamie's brawny shoulders rose and fell—"but yeah, maybe. If anybody could get you through, I reckon I can."
"Then it's settled, right?" Moses said eagerly. "Mr. MacCallister has the job, Captain?"
Hendricks peered at Jamie. "Do you want the job, MacCallister?"
"Not particularly," Jamie replied, being honest as always. "But this young fella tells me that you'll be setting out for Montana Territory anyway, whether I go with you or not."
"That's true. We don't have any choice."
"And I can't stand by and wind up with the lives of... how many in your bunch?"
"Two hundred and seventeen souls, Mr. MacCallister. Men, women, and children."
"I won't have the lives of that many people thrown away if there's anything I can do about it. I'll take you to Montana."
There. It was done. His earlier idea of paying for them to stay in Kansas City until spring and then set out on their journey was forgotten, and he had a pretty good idea why he had discarded it. Jamie Ian MacCallister wasn't a vain man, but he was a proud one, and Moses had played on his pride in a shrewd manner. That one was plenty smart.
"It's settled, then," Moses said again. "You can put your horses with our stock, since you're one of us now. Isn't that right, Captain?"
"Yeah, I reckon," Hendricks said, still not completely convinced it was a good idea. Apparently he was going to make the best of it, though. "Then I'll introduce you around. People will need to know what's happened."
After taking that short break, the musicians were starting up again. The strains of their new tune filled the night air. Jamie felt one of his booted toes begin to tap slightly in time to the music. It would be a long, hard trail to Montana, he thought, and these pilgrims had no real idea of what they were facing.
Let them enjoy what time they had left, before they set out on what might be a trail to disaster.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 12
|
Moses Danzig invited Jamie to share his wagon, but Jamie told the young rabbi that he would just spread his bedroll underneath the vehicle. "I'm pretty sure it's not going to rain, and I've spent many a night sleeping on the ground. Maybe that's not as comfortable for these old bones as it once was, but it doesn't bother me all that much."
"Suit yourself, Mr. MacCallister," Moses said.
"Call me Jamie."
"All right, Jamie. Since we didn't get around to meeting everybody, I'll introduce you to the rest of the group in the morning."
"You're acquainted with everybody in the wagon train, are you?" Jamie asked.
"Well, most of them, anyway. Once you get to know me, you'll see that I'm the gregarious sort."
"Does that mean friendly and talkative?" Jamie asked, even though he knew that was exactly what the word meant.
"Yes, it does."
"Reckon I'd sort of figured that out already," Jamie said dryly.
He had put his horses in the corral after unsaddling Sundown and moving his supplies from the pack horse to the back of Moses's wagon. He would use the pack animal as an extra saddle mount if he needed one and eventually press it into service again as a beast of burden once he parted ways with the immigrants after they reached Montana Territory... although he might not be leaving Eagle Valley right away, he realized. That would depend on the weather. If snowstorms closed the passes, it was possible he might have to remain with the pilgrims until spring, unable to reach his home in Colorado until winter was over.
He spent the night under the wagon, and as he had predicted, he slept just fine. His muscles creaked a little and his joints popped when he crawled out of his bedroll the next morning, but there was nothing uncommon about that.
As usual, he was up well before dawn, had a fire going and his coffeepot boiling by the time Moses crawled out of the wagon with his hair rumpled and a sleepy expression on his face.
"What time is it?" Moses asked.
"Time for folks to be up and stirring around," Jamie told him. "Most of them already are."
It was true. The women had cook fires blazing, and the men were tending to the animals. Jamie had already checked on his horses and knew they were all right.
Moses dropped from the tailgate to the ground and ran his fingers through his tangled hair. He put his hat on and hunkered next to the fire. The days were still pleasant some of the time but the nights were almost always cold. His breath fogged a little in front of his face as he held his hands out toward the fire's heat.
Jamie handed him a tin cup of Arbuckle's. "That'll warm you up."
Moses sipped the strong black brew gratefully.
"Once we're on the trail, we'll be moving by this time of the morning every day." Jamie waved a big hand toward the arching gray vault of the eastern sky. "There's enough light for the men handling the teams to see where they're going. That's all we really need."
"You weren't joking when you said that the days would be long ones, were you?"
"Not one blasted bit. What do you usually do for meals?"
"I, uh, prevail upon the generosity of some of my fellow pilgrims, and in return I provide them with some supplies. I'm afraid that I'm not much of a cook myself."
"Well, no need for you to do that anymore. I'll fix us some flapjacks and fry up a mess of bacon."
"Uh, Jamie... I don't exactly eat bacon... You know, because of my religion..."
Jamie vaguely recalled hearing something like that about the Hebrew religion. He wasn't sure how anybody could live without eating bacon or salt jowl, but he supposed that was Moses's business, not his. "We'll just stick with the flapjacks, then, if they're all right for you to eat."
"Sure," Moses said with a smile. "Actually, that sounds really good."
After they had finished breakfast, Moses offered to clean up.
Jamie thanked him. "While you're doing that I'll go talk to Cap'n Hendricks. Point me to his wagon."
"Of course." Moses told him how to find the captain's wagon, and he began to walk around the big circle that formed the camp.
He had passed about a dozen of the covered vehicles when a figure stepped out from behind one of them and confronted him. Jamie recognized the man Moses had identified as Reverend Bradford. He and the two children with him had disappeared by the time Moses had started introducing Jamie to the rest of the group the previous night.
It appeared that Bradford was intent on meeting him. He planted his feet and stood with a stern expression on his face.
Jamie could have moved him out of the way if necessary, but it would have taken a little work.
"You're MacCallister," the big man said bluntly. "The new wagon master and guide."
"That's right." Jamie didn't feel any instinctive liking for the reverend, but he was willing to wait and see what the man had to say, so long as Bradford didn't waste too much of his time. He held out his hand to see if Bradford would shake.
"You've befriended the Israelite," Bradford went on, ignoring Jamie's hand and making the words sound like an accusation of some sort.
"If you're talking about Moses, I believe he's from Poland," Jamie said as he lowered his hand. His eyes narrowed. It seemed that his initial dislike of Bradford had been right on the money.
"I don't care where he's from, he's a Hebrew, and someone like that has no place among decent, God-fearing folks like the ones with this wagon train."
"Now hold on a minute," Jamie snapped. "He's got a right to be here, same as anybody else—"
Before Jamie could go on, rapid footsteps sounded behind him. He whirled around, instinct making his hand flash to the butts of the .44s holstered at his hips.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 13
|
He stopped before he made the draw, as two youngsters skidded to a halt in front of him. Their eyes widened at the sight of the big frontiersman looming over them in a slight crouch, clearly ready to jerk his Colts from leather and set those deadly smokepoles to work.
"Good Lord!" Bradford exclaimed. "MacCallister, no! Those are my children."
Jamie straightened, took his hands away from his revolvers, and willed the snarl off his face. He drew in a deep breath and smiled as he nodded to the children. "Sorry, younkers. I didn't mean to spook you. It's not a good idea to come running up behind an old-timer like me, though. We spook easy."
The boy swallowed. "That's all right, mister. We didn't mean to scare you."
That brought a genuine chuckle from Jamie. "That's all right. Just don't do it again."
"This is a perfect example of why we don't need some gunman accompanying this wagon train," Bradford said from behind him. "Guns never bring anything but trouble."
Jamie glanced over his shoulder at the reverend. "If you ever get set upon by Indians or road agents, you'll be mighty happy to have somebody around who knows how to handle a shooting iron. Now, why don't you introduce me to these young'uns of yours?"
Grudgingly, Bradford performed the introductions. "This is my son Alexander and my daughter Abigail."
"We're twins," Alexander told Jamie.
Jamie nodded. "I can see that. How old are you?"
"We're ten," Alexander replied.
"And our mama's dead," Abigail added.
Jamie looked at Bradford again. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's true that I'm a widower," the preacher said. "My dear wife, rest her soul, went to be with our Lord more than a year ago."
"So you've been raising these little ones by yourself since then?"
"That's right," Bradford said. "Bringing them up in the way they should be raised."
Alexander said, "We're not so little."
"That's right," Abigail said. "We're just the right size for our age."
Jamie grinned down at her. "I reckon that's true, missy. I didn't mean any offense."
"That's all right," Abigail said graciously. "You're pretty big for your age, aren't you?"
"I reckon you could say that."
Bradford asked, "What do you children want? I thought you were going to play with the Harper youngsters today."
"We were," Alexander said, "but we saw you talking to Mr. MacCallister. Billy Harper says that he's a famous gunman and Indian fighter. We wanted to get a look at him close up."
"Do you think the Indians will scalp us, Mr. MacCallister?" Abigail asked.
"Don't you worry about that," Jamie told her. "It's my job to see to it that nobody hurts you, Indians or anybody else."
"You'll take care of us, then?"
"Well... that's really your pa's job. But I'll help him any way I can."
"All right," Alexander said, evidently satisfied by Jamie's answer. "Let's go, Abby. Billy said he knew where there was a dead frog we can look at."
The two children turned and ran off. Jamie watched them go, then looked at Bradford. "That's a couple of fine youngsters you got there. I've got quite a few children myself, and a passel of grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
"You and your wife must be proud of them," Bradford said stiffly.
"My wife's dead, too," Jamie said, his voice hard and flat. "So I reckon we got that in common, Reverend. Because of that I won't take any offense about what you had to say about my friend Moses... this time."
Bradford glared, but he didn't say anything else. He just turned and stalked off.
Jamie shook his head as he watched Bradford walk away. He hadn't known many Jewish fellas in his life, but Moses Danzig seemed like a decent hombre and Jamie was willing to give any man the benefit of the doubt.
Bradford, on the other hand, rubbed him the wrong way. Jamie would try to keep things civil between them because he liked the man's kids. Bradford must not be all bad, he told himself, if he'd had a hand in raising Alexander and Abigail.
Jamie started toward Lamar Hendricks's wagon again, but he hadn't gone very far before he was intercepted again. Three men stepped up and barred his path. They wore belligerent expressions and planted their feet as if they didn't intend to move until they'd had their say, whatever that was.
Jamie stopped and studied them. The one on his left was tall and lean, but the ropy muscles of his arms and shoulders testified to his strength. His hands were clenched into knobby-knuckled fists. The one on the right was tall, but broad-shouldered and powerful-looking. He sported a bristly black beard, while the other two were clean shaven.
The man in the middle probably looked shorter than he really was, since he was standing between the two tall men. He seemed almost as broad as he was tall, and small, piggy eyes were buried in deep pits of gristle above a prominent nose in his round, sunburned face.
He was the one who spoke. "You're MacCallister."
"That's right."
"The man who attacked Jeb Ralston for no good reason and broke his leg."
"Well, you've got that half right," Jamie drawled. "Ralston started the fight. As for breaking his leg, that wasn't my intention. It just sort of happened in the heat of battle." Jamie's voice hardened. "But I didn't lose any sleep over it last night."
"Jeb is a good man and a top-notch wagon master. He deserves better."
"I don't plan on wasting my time arguing with you," Jamie said. "Step aside."
"No, sir," the piggish man snapped. "We hired on with Jeb as scouts. We've worked with him before. Now we hear you figure on waltzin' in here and takin' over."
"Agreeing to take this train to Montana wasn't exactly my idea. But I've said that I'll do it, and that's what I plan to do, with you men or without you. It makes no never mind to me. We'll get there either way."
"One of us should've got that job, blast it! It's not right that you cripple Jeb and then take his job!"
"You've seen Ralston?" Jamie was mildly curious about the man's condition. "How's he doing?"
"The sawbones says it'll be months before he can walk normal again, if he ever does. He may not ever get over what you done to him."
Jamie shrugged. "He should've let it go after I threw him over that bar, instead of coming after me again." In a voice like flint, he added, "He's lucky I didn't kill him."
"Mister... by the time we get through with you, you're gonna wish it was the other way around!"
All three men attacked at the same time, charging at Jamie with fists swinging.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 14
|
That didn't surprise Jamie. He'd been able to tell as soon as the men got in his way that they were on the prod. They'd just taken a few minutes to talk themselves up into doing something about it.
At least they hadn't come after him with guns or knives. Maybe he wouldn't have to kill the stupid varmints.
That thought flashed through his brain as he planted his feet and hit the short man first, since he was the closest of the three hombres. Jamie's fist crashed into that prominent nose and flattened it. Blood spurted hotly across his knuckles. The blow rocked the man's head back and stopped him as abruptly as if he'd run into a stone wall.
The lanky man with the malletlike fists darted in quickly. Jamie didn't have time to block the punch he threw. All he could do was lean his head to the side and let the man's bony fist scrape along the side of his head. That hurt his ear a little but didn't do any real damage.
Jamie hooked a hard left high into the man's midsection, just under the heart. The man hunched over and his face turned a sick shade of gray. He tried to throw another punch, but it was wide and flailing.
After dealing with the first two, Jamie couldn't hope to avoid taking a punch from the third man. His fist landed solidly against Jamie's jaw, sending him staggering to the side as his hat flew off his head. The bearded man was the biggest of the three, and he hit hard.
Still on his feet, Jamie's head and eyesight were clear. He grinned at his opponent. "That the best you got, son? Can't even put an old, old man like me on the ground?"
That gibe had the desired result. The man roared angrily and charged. Jamie twisted out of the way, grabbed the man's shoulder, and slung him up against the nearest wagon. The man crashed headfirst into the heavy side boards and bounced off. He fell on the ground and rolled over, stunned.
"Look out, Mr. MacCallister!" a little girl's voice cried.
Jamie wheeled around in time to meet another charge from the short, broad man who had recovered his wits after the painful blow that had broken his nose. Blood streamed from his nostrils, smearing the bottom half of his face and giving him a fearsome look. He threw punch after punch as he bored in at Jamie, landing some of them.
The big frontiersman shrugged off the blows, and threw a couple of his own, a left-right combination that landed on the attacker's gut and chin. Jamie would have hit him again, but a couple arms like thick cables wrapped around him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.
"I got him, Keeler!" a harsh voice yelled in Jamie's ear. It belonged to the tall, lanky man recovered from Jamie's initial blow. "Teach the old codger a lesson!"
A vicious grin split the bloody face of the short, piggish Keeler. He laughed, clenched his fists, and rushed at Jamie, obviously intent on dealing out a lot of damage.
Jamie let him get fairly close, then lifted his right leg and planted his boot heel in Keeler's belly. The collision made Jamie's leg bend, but his muscles caught the weight and straightened his leg.
That sent Keeler flying away from him, and drove him and his lanky captor backward. The man tripped and lost his balance. When he fell, Jamie's massive form came crashing down on top of him.
Jamie rolled away, came up on hands and knees, and surged to his feet. All three of his opponents were still on the ground, stunned. A lot of the immigrants had gathered around to watch the battle, although he hadn't been aware of that while he was fighting. All his attention had been focused on his opponents.
Some of the people looked excited, as if the brawl were a welcome break from the monotony of their journey. Others appeared to be shocked and upset by the violence.
Reverend Bradford stood to one side, the usual frown of disapproval on his face. Jamie picked up his hat and slapped it against his leg to get some of the dust off of it. "What's the matter, Reverend? Fighting bother you just as much as dancing does?"
Bradford snorted. "To tell the truth, Mr. MacCallister, I didn't really expect any better of you."
Before Jamie could respond to that, Lamar Hendricks hurried up and demanded, "What's going on here? Someone told me there was a fight."
"If you can call it that, Captain," one of the immigrants said. He waved a hand at the men on the ground. "Mr. MacCallister just whipped all three of these fellows!"
"Is that right?" Hendricks asked Jamie.
"Seems they hold a grudge against me because of what happened to Ralston. They ran their mouths some, then jumped me." Jamie shrugged and nodded toward Keeler. "Well, that fella there is really the one who did all the talking."
"Keeler," Hendricks said, making a little face as if the name tasted bad in his mouth. "I'm not surprised. He's a hothead and too fond of drink, just like Ralston. It's no wonder they're friends. But Ralston swore these men were good scouts."
"Maybe they are. You can be good at your job and still be a polecat."
Hendricks frowned. "Do you want me to discharge them? I'd assumed they would work for you the same way they were going to work for Ralston, but if there's going to be trouble between you all the way..."
"That's up to them," Jamie said. "I don't hold a grudge against any man over a little ruckus like this."
He didn't say it, but he reserved his grudges—and his vengeance—for animals like the outlaws who had murdered his wife.
The three men were groaning and moving around on the ground. Hendricks strode over to them and said sharply, "Keeler! Holcomb! Gilworth! Get up."
The three men gradually climbed to their feet and shook their heads as they tried to get their wits back about them. Keeler and Holcomb, the tall, lanky one, glared murderously at Jamie, but big, bearded Gilworth looked sort of confused as he stood there shaking his head slowly.
"What's the meaning of this?" Hendricks snapped at them. "You had no call to attack Mr. MacCallister."
"Ain't you even gonna listen to our side of the story, Cap'n?" Keeler asked in a whining tone.
"That's what I'm doing. Why did you attack our wagon master?"
"Because he hadn't ought to be the wagon master!" Holcomb said. "Jeb's the rightful wagon master, and we're his scouts."
"Not anymore. Mr. MacCallister has the job now, and you'll work for him and take his orders."
"Damned if I will!" Holcomb said.
"The same goes for me," Keeler rumbled in his gravelly voice.
"Then you can gather your gear and get out of here," Hendricks said with a curt nod. "And since we haven't left Kansas City yet, you won't have any wages coming to you."
"That ain't right," Keeler insisted. "It's been four days since Jeb hired us. That's four days we could've been workin' at some other job."
"No, it's more likely four more days you would have spent lying around whatever saloon or house of ill repute Ralston found you in. Get out of this camp or I'll summon the authorities."
With surly, hate-filled glares, Keeler and Holcomb stumbled off. The crowd parted to let them through. Several of the women looked repulsed by the two men.
Hendricks looked at the third man. "Well, how about you, Gilworth? Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
"Yeah, I do."
Gilworth took a step toward Jamie.
The crowd drew back a little, and a mutter of anticipation went through the group of immigrants. They expected to see more fighting.
Gilworth stuck out his big paw of a hand. "Sorry, Mr. MacCallister. I went along with the others 'cause they got so worked up about what happened to Ralston, but to tell you the truth I was never that fond of the fella myself." He grinned sheepishly. "I reckon I like a good fight, too. From what I'd heard of you, I figured we'd get one." He grunted. "Never figured you'd whip all of us, though. I mean, one—"
"One old man?" Jamie finished for him when Gilworth stopped short in his sentence.
"Well, yeah. No offense, but you ain't no spring chicken, that's for sure."
Jamie snorted. "I'm not ready to be put out to pasture yet, either." Gilworth's hand was still out, so he gripped it. "Jamie Ian MacCallister."
"Hector Gilworth. I've heard a heap about you, Mr. MacCallister, and I'm mighty pleased to make your acquaintance."
"You want to scout for this wagon train and work with me, Hector?"
"Yes, sir. I'd plumb admire to," Hector said with a decisive nod. "That is, if you'll have me."
"You don't make a habit of getting liquored up, do you?"
"Not when there's a job to do. Don't get me wrong, Mr. MacCallister. I like to blow off steam just as much as the next man, but I reckon there's a time and place for it."
Jamie clapped a hand on Hector's shoulder. "You'll do—at least until you give me reason to think otherwise. And you can call me Jamie."
"That'd be an honor. I've heard a whole heap about you, Mister—I mean, Jamie. I won't let you down."
Jamie looked over at Hendricks. "There's still a problem. We'll need a couple more scouts, since those two quit."
"If you know anyone..." the captain began.
"That's just it, I don't," Jamie said. "I didn't know a soul in Kansas City until yesterday, and I've been a mite too busy to make any acquaintances except here among your bunch."
Hector said, "I might know somebody."
"Friend of yours?"
"My cousin. Name of Jess Neville. I don't think he ever worked as a wagon train scout before, but he's been a fur trapper and a prospector and a bullwhacker and done plenty of wanderin' around. Reckon he probably knows the ground between here and Montana about as well as anybody else would."
"He's here in Kansas City?"
"Yes, sir, and he's at loose ends. He just quit workin' for a freight outfit not long ago."
Hendricks said, "He wasn't fired for drinking or causing trouble, was he?"
"No, Jess is the one who up and quit. He never did like stayin' in the same job for too long. When we were growin' up, folks said he was shiftless, but I think it's more like he gets tired of doin' the same thing."
Jamie said, "If you can hunt him up, I'll talk to him. If I like the look of him, we'll give him a job, but he'll have to stay with it until the wagons get where they're going. He can't just go wandering off if he feels like it."
"Yes, sir. I'll make sure he understands that."
"Even if you hire this fellow Neville, you'll still need at least one more scout, won't you?" Hendricks asked.
"That's right," Jamie said with a nod. "Hector, let's go see that cousin of yours, and while we're at it we'll see if we can't come up with somebody else."
"I really appreciate you puttin' so much faith in me, Jamie."
Jamie grinned. "I like to think I can size up a fella's character pretty good, especially after I've swapped punches with him. You'll do. At least, like I said, until you prove different."
"You don't have to worry about that," Hector said fervently. "If you want to go hunt up Jess right now, I know where he's been stayin'."
As the two big men, one young and one old, were leaving the wagon camp, they passed a group of children who stopped playing to gaze up at them in awe-struck admiration. Jamie spotted the Bradford twins among them and paused to say, "Abigail, that was you who called out that warning to me a little while ago, wasn't it?"
The little girl looked embarrassed and didn't say anything, but Alexander replied, "It sure was, Mr. MacCallister. She just beat me to it, though. I was about to yell for you to look out when Abby did it."
"I appreciate the two of you looking out for me," Jamie told them. "How about we make the two of you honorary wagon train scouts?"
Their faces lit up with grins. Abigail said, "You mean it, Mr. MacCallister?"
"I'm not in the habit of saying things I don't mean," Jamie said. "But that's a serious job I'm giving you. You've got to keep your eyes open for trouble, and if you see anything that doesn't look right, you come find me or Mr. Gilworth or Captain Hendricks and tell us about it, all right?"
They nodded solemnly in unison, and Alexander promised, "We sure will."
Jamie lifted a hand in farewell, and he and Hector walked on.
Hector said, "Those are cute kids. The preacher's young'uns, ain't they?"
"That's right."
Hector made a face. "I probably shouldn't say it, but I'm not all that fond of their pa."
"Can't argue with you there," Jamie said. "Come on, let's find your cousin."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 15
|
Hector Gilworth led Jamie to a rundown hotel on one of the side streets. "I know the place has seen better days, but I reckon it's all Jess can afford right now."
"There's no shame in a man being poor," Jamie said. "There's been plenty of times in my life when I didn't have two pennies to rub together." He didn't mention that these days he had more than two pennies to his name... a lot more. This was one of many situations in which he'd found himself where how rich he was didn't matter one blasted bit.
They went up stairs that sagged a little under their weight and down a dusty hallway to the door of Jess Neville's room. Hector banged a fist against the panel and called, "Jess? You awake in there? It's me, Hector."
Jamie heard shuffling footsteps on the other side of the door. It swung open, and a man slightly below medium height peered out at them with bleary, confused eyes. He had thinning brown hair, a couple day's worth of beard stubble, and looked thoroughly unimpressive.
Jamie didn't smell liquor, though, so he was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt and figure that his bleary eyes came from being sleepy, not hungover.
"What time is it, Hector?" the man asked as he dragged fingers through his hair.
"Sun's been up a couple hours," Hector replied.
"Well, the sun may have been up, but I ain't." The man frowned at Jamie. "Who's this big old galoot?"
"Jamie Ian MacCallister," Jamie introduced himself.
Vague recognition stirred in Jess Neville's eyes. "I think I heard of you, mister. Can't rightly recollect what it was that I heard, though."
"He's the new wagon master for that bunch of immigrants I signed on with," Hector explained.
"What happened to that fella Ralston?" Neville asked.
Hector pointed at Jamie with a thumb and grinned. "Mr. MacCallister—I mean, Jamie—happened to him. Ralston started a ruckus with him in the Bella Royale, and he wound up with a broken leg."
"Ralston did?"
"Yep. You don't see Mr. MacCallister hobblin' around with a broken leg, do you?"
Neville shook his head. "This early in the mornin', I don't trust my eyes not to be playin' tricks on me, so it don't matter what I see. What is it you want?"
"The other two fellas who were supposed to be scouts up and quit because of what happened to Ralston. I thought maybe you'd be interested in one of the jobs."
Neville hadn't invited them into the room, but that was all right with Jamie. He could look past the man's shoulder and see that the room was sparsely furnished with a chair, a rickety table, and a bed with grimy sheets that were so tangled they resembled a rat's nest.
Neville put a hand on the door like he was about to shut it and said, "Dadgum it, Hector. You know I just quit that bullwhackin' job a few days ago. I ain't ready to go back to work yet."
"You mean you ain't completely out of money yet."
"Same thing, ain't it?" Neville tried to swing the door closed.
Hector wedged a big, booted foot between the door and the jamb. "Here's the thing, Jess. We're in sort of a bind. We need a couple scouts, and like I told Jamie, you know the country."
Neville frowned. "Where is it those pilgrims are goin' again?"
"Montana Territory. A place called Eagle Valley."
Neville scratched at his patchy beard as his forehead furrowed in thought. "I think I've heard of it. Wouldn't rightly know how to find it, though."
"Cap'n Hendricks has a map. He's the fella the rest of the immigrants elected to be in charge."
"I know where it is," Jamie said. "I can get the wagons there. It'd be a lot easier with some good help to scout out the trail, though."
"Well, you could get an argument about whether or not I fall into that category, mister." Neville squinted up at him. "Did this big ol' grizzly of a Gilworth tell you that I'm just about the laziest human bein' on the face of the earth."
Jamie glanced at Hector and said dryly, "No, I don't reckon he mentioned that."
"Well, he should have. It ain't that I don't do my work. I do, and you can ask anybody I ever drew wages from about that. But when I ain't workin', I'm not of a mind to do much of anything except take it easy. That seems to rub most people the wrong way."
"You do your job and I don't care how much you sleep," Jamie declared. "That's not any of my business."
"Now, see, that's a reasonable attitude. Most folks I work for, they just ain't reasonable."
"I'm not most folks," Jamie said flatly.
Neville glanced up and down Jamie's tall, rugged frame. "Yeah, I can see that."
"You want the job or not?" Hector asked.
"Now, don't rush me, don't rush me. That's another problem folks have these days. They're in too much of an all-fired hurry all the time. It don't hurt to just slow down and ponder things for awhile 'fore you make up your mind."
"The wagon train's leaving at first light tomorrow," Jamie said. "We don't have any time to waste. If you're not coming with us, Neville, we'll need to find somebody else."
"Well, if you're gonna put it that way... I promised my aunt Sadie, his mama—Neville nodded at his cousin—that I'd look after ol' Hector here. He's big as an ox, but he ain't much more'n a babe in the woods, you know what I mean?"
"Blast it," Hector said. "I been around. You make it sound like I'm some sort of tenderfoot, Jess."
Neville ignored that outburst and went on. "I reckon I can come along. Can't stay here in Kansas City, that's for sure. If I did, I might have to take a job clerkin' in a store or something else that's inside. I can't hardly abide havin' walls and a roof around me all the time."
"You won't find many walls and roofs on the prairie between here and Montana Territory," Jamie said.
Neville grinned. "No, that's sure enough true." He put out his hand. "Count me in, I reckon, Mr. MacCallister."
"Call me Jamie." As they shook hands, Jamie went on. "I don't suppose you know somebody else we can hire as a scout."
"I surely don't. Sorry."
Hector said, "Get your possibles together and come on over to the wagon camp today. You can stay there tonight. Might as well save the cost of this hotel room, and that way there's no chance you'll sleep too late."
"Leavin' at first light, you said?" Neville winced a little. "I sure do hate to hear that, but I'll be there. And my word is good."
As they were headed back downstairs, Jamie asked Hector, "Is he telling the truth about his word being good?"
"Yeah. Jess has got his faults, no doubt about that, but he's honest as the day is long. If he tells you he'll do something, you can count on it." With a note of worry in his voice, Hector asked, "What are we gonna do about findin' another scout?"
"We'll just have to look around, maybe check in some of the saloons and hash houses. If we don't find anybody"—Jamie's brawny shoulders rose and fell—"I reckon we'll start out with three scouts, counting me, instead of four. Maybe somebody who's already part of the wagon train would take the job. Some youngster, eighteen or so, who's traveling with his folks."
"Scoutin' on the plains is pretty dangerous for somebody who's inexperienced."
"Setting out for Montana at this time of year is pretty dangerous for everybody involved," Jamie pointed out. "They all seem bound and determined to do it, though."
They left the hotel and turned back toward the main business district. Jamie figured they would have a look in the Bella Royale first. It was early in the day, but there might be somebody already in there who'd be interested in a scouting job.
As they passed the variety theater, he glanced at two young men who were looking at the posters for the show that was starting that night. They were dressed like cowboys, which meant they probably had experience with long days in the saddle, and he thought about asking them if they'd like to sign on with the wagon train.
They turned away before he could say anything, though, and he didn't go after them. There was bound to be somebody else in Kansas City who wanted to go to Montana.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 16
|
Now that the gang was in Kansas City, Bodie thought Edwin Swint would go ahead and divide up the loot from the train robbery, as he had said he would. But Swint seemed to be in no hurry to do so.
The money, in the form of twenty dollar gold pieces, had been packed in a chest in the express car. He had split the loot between five sets of saddlebags so it could be carried away. All those saddlebags were safely cached in Swint's hotel room, and a couple men guarded them around the clock, everybody in the gang taking a turn at that duty.
The night before, Swint had kicked the guards out of the room when he came back to the hotel from the Bella Royale with one of the soiled doves who worked there. He'd told the guards to stay right outside in the hall, just to make sure nobody bothered him and his lady friend... and the money.
Bodie heard about that from his friend Three-Finger Jake Lucas, who'd heard the story from one of the guards Swint had booted out of the room. The two young men were sitting at a table in a nearby café over a late breakfast.
Jake sipped his coffee. "I'm startin' to wonder if the boss plans to double-cross us and just keep all that loot for himself. Otherwise why don't he go ahead and divvy it up like he promised he would?"
"I guess he's got his reasons," Bodie said.
Jake grunted skeptically. "Yeah, like bein' a dang crook. Think about who you're talkin' about, Bodie. A man like Eldon Swint can't be trusted." Jake's eyes narrowed in thought. "If a man was smart, he might try to get his hands on those double eagles himself and not wait for somebody to just hand him his share."
Bodie frowned and put down his coffee cup. "You'd better not be thinking what it sounds like, Jake. Swint would kill anybody who tried that. We've talked about things like this before."
"Yeah, and I haven't changed my way of thinkin' about it, either." An easy grin flashed across Jake's face. "But shoot, don't worry about it. I'm just talkin', is all. I'd never go against a pard." He paused. "The thing of it is, Eldon ain't really a pard. He's the boss."
Bodie changed the subject. "Are you going to that show tonight?"
"To see some singin' and dancin' girls? You bet I am! We've been out on the trail long enough I'm ready for some entertainment."
They had stopped by the theater on their way to the café. The place was closed, but Bodie and Jake had stood on the boardwalk in front of the building, looking at the posters tacked up next to the ticket window. The posters had drawings of the members of the troupe on them, and Bodie had been particularly intrigued by one of them, a young woman with a mass of dark, curly hair.
Miss Savannah McCoy, her name was, according to the poster.
He didn't know which parts she played in the show, but he was looking forward to finding out. Thinking about her and the performance they were going to watch that night made him forget all about the fortune in double eagles for the time being.
Even though she had been a member of the troupe for more than a year, Savannah still got nervous before each performance. The butterflies, as Cyrus called them, weren't as bad as they had been starting out, but they were still potent enough to force her to stand backstage with one hand pressed to her stomach while she made herself take deep breaths. She closed her eyes and imagined how the night's performance would go, letting it all play out inside her head.
Perfectly, of course.
After awhile, the routine began to calm her. She was ready.
When Dollie bustled past and smiled at her, Savannah was able to return that smile and mean it.
"I just snuck a glance at the crowd," Dollie said. "Looks like we're going to have a full house."
"That's good," Savannah said.
"You bet it is. We need to do well here."
Savannah thought she heard a trace of worry in the older woman's voice. The troupe hadn't been doing as well financially in recent months. Quite a few of the performances in various cities hadn't sold out, and it seemed like the expenses of traveling and staying on the road just kept going up. She didn't think the troupe was in any real danger of folding, but that unwelcome possibility lurked in the back of her head, anyway. If that ever happened, she didn't know what she would do.
She had a little money saved up; she could always return to her home in Georgia. But if she did that, it would mean admitting defeat. Worse, there was the chance that her father wouldn't allow her to come home. For all she knew, William Thorpe might have disowned her. She hadn't had any contact with him in more than a year.
With a little shake of her head, Savannah put all that out of her thoughts. Concentrate on the thing that was at hand, she told herself, and that was tonight's show. That was the only thing she could do anything about at the moment.
A minute later, Cyrus parted the curtain and walked out on stage to loud applause, dressed in his Shakespearean costume. He swept his plumed hat off his head and gave the audience his usual welcoming spiel, then launched into Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" speech.
The crowd listened politely, but as she waited behind the curtain Savannah could hear them growing slightly restless toward the end. She knew that some of the men in the audience had come mostly for the singing and dancing, and to look at her and the other female members of the troupe.
Cyrus concluded the famous passage and said, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, a beautiful rendition of one of your favorite melodies by our lovely songbird of the South, Miss Savannah McCoy!"
Savannah stepped through the curtains and out onto the stage. She smiled as she walked forward, letting her eyes sweep over the audience. As she began to sing Stephen Foster's "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," her gaze settled on a man about four rows back, in the middle of the theater.
She had learned that her performances were always better when she pretended to be singing directly to a member of the audience. It was largely a matter of luck who that person happened to be. As long as they were in a good place, that was all Savannah cared about.
The person on the receiving end of her song happened to be a young man who looked a few years older than her, with dark hair and a hard-planed face. He was dressed like a cowboy, as was the young man who sat beside him. The other man was more handsome, but there was something compelling about the man Savannah had selected.
Singing to him was no trouble at all.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 17
|
"I swear, she's lookin' right at you." Three-Finger Jake dug an enthusiastic elbow into Bodie's ribs. "She must be sweet on you!"
"I don't even know the girl," Bodie protested. "I mean, I know she's Miss Savannah McCoy, but that's all."
"That's what the fella said when he introduced her."
"I would have known it anyway. I would have recognized her from her picture on the poster."
It was true. The artist had done a good job of capturing Savannah McCoy's likeness. If anything, she was even prettier in person than she was on the poster, although before he saw her Bodie wouldn't have thought that was possible.
She sang beautifully, too. Cyrus O'Hanlon had been right to describe her as a songbird. Savannah was lovely and talented, and if Bodie hadn't known better, he might have said that he was smitten with her.
But that was loco, of course. He could tell just by looking at her that she was a real lady, despite the immoral reputation that actresses and entertainers sometimes had. She wouldn't ever have anything to do with a lawless ruffian like him. For all he knew, she might already be married to one of the other members of the troupe.
Just sit back and enjoy the show, he told himself, and stop thinking about things that could never be.
The show was certainly enjoyable. After Savannah's song, a couple jugglers came out and entertained the crowd for several minutes while the curtains were closed behind them. Bodie heard people moving around back there and figured they were getting ready for something else.
He was right. When the jugglers finished and the curtains were pulled back, several fellows with what looked like bed sheets wrapped around them were standing on steps with white-painted columns at the top. One of them stood a little apart from the others and started talking, but as he did so, several of his companions took out knives and began to sneak up behind him with evil expressions on their faces.
"What the Sam Hill!" Jake exclaimed. "They're gonna stab that hombre like they was red Injuns!" He reached for the gun on his hip. "I'll stop 'em!"
Bodie's hand shot out and closed around Jake's wrist before Jake could draw the revolver. "Hold on!" Bodie whispered. "I think it's all part of the show."
Not everybody in the audience figured that out as quickly as he did. Several men shouted warnings, which the sheet-wrapped figures on stage ignored. A nervous tingle ran through Bodie's brain. What if he was wrong? What if they were about to commit cold-blooded murder right there on the stage?
That was loco, of course, and a moment later he saw proof of that as the men with knives pretended to stab the fellow who was spouting words. They didn't even do a very good job of pretending, but it was enough to make the audience hoot and holler in enthusiasm. The supposed victim of the assault staggered around and made a real production of dying.
Once he had slumped onto the steps and wasn't moving anymore—except for a twitch every now and then that Bodie could see—Cyrus O'Hanlon came out again, dressed in a sheet like the others, and started making another long speech about burying Caesar. Bodie couldn't follow all of what O'Hanlon said, but the whole thing was stirring, no doubt about that.
O'Hanlon finally shut up and the curtains closed again. An older but still attractive woman came out and sang a song. She was good, Bodie thought, but not as good as Savannah. Then she danced with a young man while another man with a walrus mustache played a piano at the edge of the stage. She was pretty light on her feet, despite her hefty build.
After that, everything started to run together a little for Bodie. There were more dramatic scenes, more singing, more dancing, even some acrobats, one of whom was a gal in a scandalously scanty costume that exposed her knees. But he was waiting to see Savannah McCoy again, and when she didn't appear he began to get a little impatient.
Cyrus O'Hanlon came out in that silly hat with the feather on it again. "Finally, ladies and gentlemen, to conclude our performance tonight we are proud to present one of the most famous scenes in the illustrious history of the theater... the balcony scene from the great tragedy Romeo and Juliet, as written by Mr. William Shakespeare. It will be performed by yours truly and Miss Savannah McCoy."
Bodie sat up straighter in his seat and thought that it was about time.
Jake elbowed him again. "She's the only one you like, ain't she?"
"Shhh," Bodie said. "They're about to start."
The curtains parted and went back. Some fake bushes had been placed around the stage to represent a garden of sorts, and to one side rose a wall with a window in it. Bodie edged forward in his seat as Savannah appeared in that window and leaned through it so the audience could get a good look at her.
She was worth looking at, wearing a thin gown that was cut almost sinfully low in front. Bodie felt vaguely embarrassed for her having to wear such a getup, but at the same time he couldn't take his eyes off her. She was so attractive that just looking at her felt almost like a punch in the gut to him.
Cyrus O'Hanlon strode onto the stage, wandered through the fake bushes toward the wall, and stopped to throw out an arm and bellow, "Hark! What light through yonder window breaks? 'Tis the east, and Juliet is the sun!"
Savannah was as bright and pretty as the sun, that was for sure, Bodie thought. He could have sat there and watched her all night, but the scene was over all too quickly as far as he was concerned. The curtains swept across the stage again. Bodie sighed. He didn't want the performance to be finished, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The whole troupe came out for a curtain call as the audience cheered, whistled, and applauded, so he got to see Savannah again, if only for a moment.
Finally, the audience began to file out of the theater.
As they left, Jake said, "Now, ain't you glad we came to Kansas City? If we hadn't, you never would've seen that brown-haired gal. You were practically droolin' over her all night like a dog with a big ol' soup bone."
"No, I wasn't," Bodie said. "I think she's pretty, but—"
Jake's snort interrupted him. "I reckon you'd marry her if you got the chance—which is a durned fool way to feel, if you ask me. You know what actresses are like. You might as well marry a—"
Jake stopped short as Bodie stiffened. He had seen enough gunfights to recognize Bodie's stance as that of a man who was ready to hook and draw.
"Sorry," Jake muttered quickly. "I reckon I was all wrong about Miss McCoy."
"I reckon you were," Bodie snapped. He forced himself to relax. Jake Lucas was his only real friend in the gang, and he didn't want to lose that friendship. He put a smile on his face, even though he was still a little irritated.
As they reached the sidewalk in front of the theater, a very well-dressed man with dark blond hair under his black hat and a neatly trimmed mustache of the same shade bumped hard into Bodie's shoulder. "Watch where you're going, cowboy," the man snapped as he brushed past.
"Hey," Jake said angrily. "You're the one who ran into my pard, mister."
A couple of larger men in cheap suits were trailing the well-dressed gent. Bodie noticed them and realized they were probably bodyguards. Bulges under their coats told him they were carrying guns.
The blond dandy glared at Jake and demanded, "What did you say, Tex?"
"I'm not from Texas," Jake shot back as he squared himself up for trouble.
Bodie put a hand on his friend's arm. "Let it go, Jake."
"But this galoot ran into you and then acted like it was your fault," Jake protested.
"It's not worth causing a ruckus over." Bodie steered Jake away from the dandy.
The man gave them a sneering smile as they turned to leave. "That's right. I'm an important man in this city. Trifle with me and you'll regret it."
Jake looked back over his shoulder and said hotly, "Oh, yeah? Well, you'll regret—"
"Come on." Bodie lowered his voice and added, "We don't want the law talking to us, now do we?"
"Oh," Jake said in sudden understanding. "No, I reckon we don't."
Bodie glanced back at the dandy. The man's arrogant attitude rubbed him the wrong way. If it came down to a fight, Bodie figured he and Jake could have held their own against the bodyguards, whether with fists or guns.
But that would have almost certainly landed them in trouble with the law, and they sure didn't need that. If they were arrested, somebody might figure out they were part of the gang that had held up the train in Kansas. At the very least, Eldon Swint might take it as an excuse to split their shares among the rest of the outlaws... or just keep that money for himself.
Bodie wouldn't forget the blond man's face, though. Maybe one of these days their trails would cross again under different circumstances. If that ever happened, Bodie figured he would give Mr. High-and-Mighty a little lesson in manners. If that meant gunplay, then so be it.
In the meantime, he told himself to forget about that hombre and think about Savannah. He just wished there was some way he could let her know how much he had enjoyed her performance.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 18
|
Since there were only a few female members of the troupe, they used the same dressing room, with the exception of Dollie who shared a dressing room with Cyrus. Savannah was sitting at one of the tables in front of a mirror, removing the makeup she had worn as Juliet, when Cyrus knocked on the door and poked his head into the room.
"Ah, ladies, you're all decently attired," he said.
As usual, Savannah couldn't tell if he was relieved or faintly disappointed by that.
"Savannah, a word with you, my dear?"
"Of course. Was there something wrong with my performance tonight?"
Cyrus shook his head. "Not at all, not at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. There's a gentleman out here who was in the audience. He wishes to convey his compliments to you in person."
Savannah frowned slightly. That was unusual but not unheard of. Sometimes members of the audience—usually middle-aged or even older men—came backstage and tried to approach the women in the troupe, probably because of the reputation that stubbornly clung to actresses.
Cyrus fended them off most of the time, but now and then—when he judged that the would-be suitor had plenty of money and might be persuaded to make a donation to the troupe—he allowed them to talk to the women.
That bothered Savannah, but she recognized it as a part of her job. She had to be nice to the people who bought tickets. That didn't mean she had to go beyond politeness and surface friendliness, and she never did. "Would you like for me to talk to this man, Cyrus?"
"I think it would be a good thing if you did. It shouldn't be too terrible an ordeal. He's rather attractive, you know, and much younger than some of your, ah, admirers."
She supposed it wouldn't hurt anything. She nodded. "All right."
"The rest of you ladies, let's give Savannah some privacy, shall we?" Cyrus ushered the other female performers out of the dressing room, leaving Savannah alone.
She picked up a dressing gown and shrugged into it. She was still wearing the costume she wore as Juliet, which was daring enough onstage. In close quarters, it definitely would be immodest.
A moment later a man appeared in the open doorway, holding his hat in one hand. Savannah could tell that the suit he wore was very expensive. He had the unmistakable look of wealth about him, from his carefully barbered dark blond hair to the soft hands to the shoes on his feet that probably cost as much as Cyrus paid her in a year.
"Miss McCoy," he said, his lips smiling under the neatly trimmed mustache, "I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed your performance tonight."
She returned the smile. "I believe you just did, Mister...?"
"Kane. Gideon Kane."
He moved closer to her and put out his hand, and without thinking she reached to take it. Instead of shaking hands with her, he turned her hand, held it, lifted it, and pressed his lips to the back of it.
She had played scenes where a man kissed the back of a woman's hand, but she had never seen it happen in real life, only on the stage of a theater. Certainly she had never had it happen to her. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or be touched by the melodramatic gesture.
She settled for saying, "I'm Savannah McCoy."
"I know. Just as I knew when I saw your picture on that poster outside the theater that I had to attend tonight's performance. Kansas City is a rather squalid place, Miss McCoy. I'm not sure a sight as lovely as you has ever been seen here before."
Savannah forced a laugh. "You're flattering me, Mr. Kane—"
"Call me Gideon," he suggested. "It's not flattery when it's true."
She tried to change the subject. "You're in business here?"
His smile twisted a little. "My family is. We own stockyards and slaughterhouses and have interests in the railroad as well as other enterprises. All quite successful, of course. None of it particularly interests me, though. I'm more fond of the arts, such as the theater."
"It's my calling," Savannah said.
"Anyone can tell that by watching you perform. You bring such life and passion to your roles, and you sing wonderfully. I plan to be in the audience every night while your troupe is in Kansas City."
"Oh, you wouldn't want to do that. The show doesn't really change. Of course, there are minor differences in every performance, but really, if you've seen one of them—"
"Seeing you once is not nearly enough," he broke in. "I don't care about the rest of the performance. I want to see you. Every night."
She was starting to get uncomfortable. She had been looked at by men often enough to recognize lust when she saw it. In Gideon Kane's eyes it bordered on obsession. It was time to ease him out of the dressing room....
Using the heel of one of those expensive shoes, he closed the door behind him.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 19
|
Savannah felt a tingle of alarm as the latch clicked shut. "Please, Mr. Kane—"
"Gideon."
"Please, Mr. Kane," she repeated, "it's inappropriate enough for the two of us to be alone in here. To have the door closed is simply unacceptable."
"Not to me. However, I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I'll step out into the hall if you'll agree to have a late supper with me."
"I didn't know any restaurants were still open."
Kane shook his head. "I'm not talking about going to a restaurant. My carriage is right outside the theater. We'll go to my house. I've already sent one of my men with word for my cook to prepare a meal—"
Savannah was shaking her head. "No, I simply couldn't do that. It wouldn't be proper. We just met tonight."
She saw the fingers of his hand holding the hat tighten a little on the expensive material.
"When I see something I want, it doesn't take me long to make up my mind to have it. Besides, I'm willing to purchase a large block of tickets for every performance, and from the way O'Hanlon talked when I asked him about you, the troupe can use the money. You won't have to do anything... unpleasant... to insure those sales, Miss McCoy, I can promise you that. Actually, I think you'd thoroughly enjoy spending time with me."
He stepped closer to her, and if his blatant lechery hadn't been enough to start her heart pounding with anger and fear already, that would have done it.
Once again the wild thought that this was like something out of a melodrama crossed her mind as she said coldly, "I think you've mistaken the sort of woman I am, Mr. Kane."
He smiled. "I doubt it. What can I do to get you to call me Gideon?"
"Nothing. The only thing I want you to do for me is to leave this dressing room."
"Not until I get what I came here for. At least part of it, anyway." He tossed the hat onto the dressing table and reached for her. "A kiss, at the very least—"
Savannah had dealt with persistent, unwanted suitors before. She supposed every woman in the theater had at one time or another. Somehow, though, she sensed that Gideon Kane was more dangerous than most.
She didn't hesitate. She still wore Juliet's slippers, but that didn't stop her from kicking him in the groin.
The blow seemed to take him completely by surprise. As her heel sunk into his flesh, he grunted in pain and bent forward. His hand shot out, grabbed the dressing gown, and ripped it open. Some of the costume came with it, exposing even more of Savannah's skin. She jerked back and pulled free from him, and while he was off-balance she gave him a hard shove that sent him falling back toward the door. He landed against it with a heavy thud.
Close by in the backstage corridor, Cyrus called worriedly, "Savannah, are you all right?"
Kane held one hand to his painful nether region while the other pressed against the wall to hold himself up. He glared at her and grated, "You little bi...."
"Cyrus!" Savannah called.
He flung the door open and stood in the doorway with several members of the troupe crowding up behind him, including a couple burly stagehands. "Are you all right, lass?" Still wearing Romeo's costume, he put his hand on the hilt of the prop sword that hung sheathed at his waist.
"I'm fine," Savannah said as she pulled her garments closed again, calling on her skills as an actress to sound a lot more calm than she really felt. "Mr. Kane was just leaving."
Kane said, "You'll—"
"Regret this?" Savannah interrupted him. She shook her head. "I don't think so."
"Good night, Mr. Kane," Cyrus said. "The time for backstage visits is over."
Kane glared murderously at both of them, then straightened with a visible effort and stepped unsteadily toward the door. Cyrus moved aside to let him out.
"Oh, wait!" Savannah picked up Kane's hat from the dressing table, and when he turned back toward her, she tossed it to him. "You wouldn't want to forget your hat."
He caught it awkwardly, and his glare grew even darker. He put the hat on and moved slowly past the members of the troupe in the hallway, all of whom frowned menacingly at him.
Dollie looked like she would have cheerfully taken a knife to him and carved him up like a turkey.
When Kane was gone, Savannah said, "I'm sorry about the tickets he promised to buy, Cyrus. I know the troupe could use the money."
Before Cyrus could reply, Dollie said briskly, "Nonsense. We don't need the money of scoundrels like that. Did he hurt you, dear?"
"He never laid a finger on me," Savannah replied honestly. "Well, except when he kissed the back of my hand."
"He what?" Cyrus exclaimed. "What does he think this is, some French farce?"
"Never mind about that." Dollie took her husband's arm. "Come on, everyone. Let's let Savannah get dressed. We'll see you back at the hotel, dear."
"Of course," Savannah said with a nod.
The others left, and she closed the door and quickly got dressed in her regular clothes. As she did, she worried about what Gideon Kane might do. He hadn't struck her as the sort of man to just forget about what had happened tonight.
Even though she had no proof that he was as rich and powerful as he'd said, she didn't doubt it for a second. It took real wealth for a man to display the sort of cruel, careless arrogance that he had. As usual, when the will of someone like that was thwarted, he had started to bluster and threaten.
It was possible that Kane might go to the owner of the theater and pressure the man to cancel the rest of the troupe's engagement and refuse to pay them. She had seen men employ tactics like that before when they held a grudge.
Actually, it was the sort of thing her father might have done if someone angered him, although William Thorpe would never make improper advances toward a young woman.
Savannah stepped out of the dressing room and looked for the others. She didn't see anyone backstage, so she supposed they were waiting for her out front.
But Dollie had said they would see her back at the hotel, Savannah recalled. They could have gone on, figuring that she would catch up with them. The hotel was less than two blocks away, after all.
Even so, she felt nervous as she walked through the darkened theater. Her footsteps echoed from the cavernous ceiling. Lamps still burned here and there, casting enough light for her to see her way without any trouble.
An old man was sweeping up. He nodded to her as she passed. "Good night, miss."
"Good night," Savannah told him. For a second she thought about asking him if he would walk her back to the hotel, but then she discarded that idea. That wasn't his job, and she didn't want to inconvenience him.
She went out through the theater lobby, past the box office, and stepped onto the sidewalk. The street was fairly dark, but again, she could see well enough to get where she was going. From where she stood, the hotel was even visible a short distance up the street, a warm yellow glow coming from its lobby windows.
There was also enough light for her to see the carriage that suddenly pulled up beside her and stopped on the cobblestone street. Two men, large and threatening in the gloom, stepped out of it, and one of them rumbled, "You're comin' with us, Miss McCoy."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 20
|
Bodie couldn't get Savannah McCoy out of his mind. From the theater he and Jake had gone to the Bella Royale for a drink and to see if any of the other boys were there. The saloon had become the gang's unofficial headquarters while they were in Kansas City waiting for Eldon Swint to divide the loot.
Bodie nursed a beer at a table with Jake and a couple other outlaws, Clete Mahaffey and Dave Pearsoll. They were playing a desultory game of poker, but Bodie couldn't concentrate on his cards. His thoughts kept straying to Savannah.
Jake grinned as he raked in another pot after winning a hand from Bodie. "You know why our pard here keeps losin', boys?" Without waiting for an answer he went on. "It's because he's distracted. He's too busy moonin' over a gal to think about playin' poker."
"What gal's that?" Mahaffey asked. "That redheaded soiled dove called Dora who works here, maybe? She knows some tricks that'd sure keep a man's mind occupied... among other things." He guffawed with laughter.
Pearsoll joined in, and Bodie wished Jake would just shut up about the subject.
But Jake wasn't going to do that. "Naw, it's an actress we saw at the theater tonight. We took in the show, and it was a good one. But Bodie here didn't have eyes for nobody but this brown-haired Southern belle named Savannah."
The other two men hooted even more.
Glaring across the table at his friend, Bodie scraped his chair back. "I don't reckon I feel like playing anymore. Deal me out."
"You're gonna quit just because I was hoo-rawin' you a little?" Jake asked. "That ain't like you, Bodie."
"I'm just tired, that's all," Bodie said with a shake of his head. "Think I'll head for the hotel and turn in."
Jake shrugged. "Suit yourself." He seemed a little insulted.
But Bodie didn't really care. He didn't appreciate being made sport of. As he turned to walk away from the table, he heard Jake say to Mahaffey and Pearsoll, "There's somethin' I've been wantin' to talk to you boys about."
Bodie didn't hear any more. The hubbub in the saloon swallowed up the rest of Jake's words. Whatever the conversation was, Bodie didn't know or care anything about it.
He drew in a deep breath of night air as he stepped out of the saloon. Kansas City wasn't the most fragrant place in the world; the vast stockyards on the edge of town took care of that. The pungent smells that came from there drifted over the whole town.
But even so, the air outside seemed cleaner to Bodie than that inside the Bella Royale. After pausing on the sidewalk for a moment, he turned toward the hotel.
When he reached the next corner, his steps carried him in a different direction. He realized he was heading toward Channing's Variety Theater.
No point in going there, he told himself. The show had been over for a while. All the performers, including Savannah, would have left already and gone back to wherever they were staying or to get something to eat. All he could do was stand in front of the darkened theater and gaze at it, remembering what he had seen inside earlier.
It would have to be enough, he decided, and walked a little faster. It wasn't far to the theater.
As he approached, he saw the carriage that had pulled up in front of it. Several shadowy forms were moving around on the sidewalk between the street and the theater. Something about the situation made the hackles rise on the back of Bodie's neck.
A second later, a woman's voice rang out clearly. "Gideon Kane sent you, didn't he?"
"Never you mind about who sent us, gal," a rough male voice answered. "You just come on with us, and there won't have to be no trouble."
"Get away from me. I'll scream!"
"Look out. She's gonna run! Grab her!"
Bodie was already moving. He'd recognized Savannah's voice when the woman first spoke.
She lunged away from the two men, but they were too fast for her and had her hemmed in against the building.
Bodie left his feet in a diving tackle. His shoulder rammed into the back of the nearest man. The impact drove the man toward his companion. They crashed together, and their feet got tangled up. All three men fell to the sidewalk.
Bodie scrambled to his feet first. Savannah stood a few feet away, gaping at him in surprise. His hat had come off when he tackled the first man, so he snatched it off the sidewalk and grabbed Savannah's arm with his other hand. "Come on, Miss McCoy! I'll get you out of here!"
He didn't know who the two bruisers were, except that Savannah thought they worked for Gideon Kane, whoever that was. It didn't matter. They had threatened her, and he had to get her away from them.
But as they turned to run, one of the men regained his feet and shot out a hand to snag Bodie's shirt collar. Bodie felt himself being jerked backward, away from Savannah. He was whirled around, and a punch exploded against his jaw, knocking him back against the carriage.
The big man bored in, obviously intent on keeping Bodie pinned against the carriage with his bulk while he hammered the young outlaw with his fists. Bodie sensed as much as he saw another powerful blow rocketing at his face and dropped desperately out of its path.
The punch went over his head and smashed into the side of the carriage. The man howled in pain and danced back, shaking his injured hand.
Bodie looked around for Savannah but couldn't locate her. The second man blocked his view, looming up to throw a roundhouse punch that would take Bodie's head off if it landed.
Once again, Bodie avoided the blow at the last second, weaving aside so that the man's fist barely scraped the side of his head. He buried the toe of his boot in the man's belly, doubling him over. Moving fast, he clapped his hat back on his head, clubbed his fists together, and brought them down on the back of the man's neck, driving him to the ground.
Bodie took a step away from the carriage but didn't even have time to think about finding Savannah and hustling her to safety. Something crashed down on his back from above, knocking him off his feet.
The small part of his brain that was still working realized the carriage must have a driver, and that man had leaped from the high seat onto him. The next instant, the man's weight came down hard enough on Bodie to force all the air from his lungs. The world spun crazily and the night turned red in front of his eyes for a second, and he knew he was close to passing out.
If he lost consciousness, the three men might stomp him to death. Even worse, they might succeed in kidnapping Savannah.
With that thought fueling his efforts, he forced himself to ram an elbow up and back, into the midsection of the man who had tackled him. At the same time, he heaved up with his other arm and his legs.
Bodie wasn't big, but he had the lean, muscular build of a panther and had spent years taking care of himself and learning how to survive. He was stronger than he looked, and he was able to throw his opponent off to the side.
He surged to his feet, but the other two men had recovered enough to attack him again. He was trapped between them as their fists crashed into him. He couldn't block all the blows, couldn't get set to throw some punches of his own.
One man screamed suddenly and reeled backward, pawing frantically at the side of his neck, startling his companion enough to give Bodie an opening. He jabbed a stinging left into the man's face and followed it with a right cross that landed solidly on the hombre's jaw, sending him spinning to the sidewalk.
The one who had started yelling staggered into a slanting ray of light coming from a window in a nearby building, and for the first time, Bodie got a good look at his face. A second later, he realized where he had seen the man before.
Earlier, the big bruiser had been with the rich, blond gent who had bumped into Bodie outside the theater. That meant the second man was probably the other bodyguard.
Based on what Savannah had said, the rich, arrogant son of a gun would be Gideon Kane, Bodie supposed. Not that it mattered. Anybody who wanted to hurt Savannah McCoy, for whatever reason, was his enemy.
The yelling man finally plucked whatever was bothering him from his neck and shouted, "Shoot him! Shoot that cowboy!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 21
|
For a second, Bodie didn't know who the man was talking to, then from the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the driver fumbling under his coat, trying to pull a gun.
Nobody would ever mistake Bodie Cantrell for a real gunfighter like Wild Bill Hickok, but he could get his Colt out of its holster fairly fast, and he usually hit what he aimed at. He drew the revolver and smoothly eared back the hammer as the barrel came up. He had beaten the carriage driver cleanly to the draw, so he expected the man to give up.
But the driver fumbled out a pistol and thrust it toward Bodie.
That took the decision out of Bodie's hands. He squeezed off a shot before the man could pull the trigger. The Colt roared and bucked against his palm.
The bullet smashed into the man's shoulder and slewed him around. He yelled as the pistol flew from his fingers.
Savannah grabbed Bodie's arm and tugged on it. "Come on!" she urged. "Maybe they won't chase us as long as you've got that gun!"
Bodie didn't figure they could count on that. He fired again, aiming low so that the bullet hit the sidewalk near the two men who were still on their feet. The one going after the driver's pistol forgot about it for the moment as they both leaped for cover.
Bodie wheeled around and started to run. He took Savannah's arm and pulled her along, making sure he didn't outdistance her with his long-legged strides.
He was a little surprised she was still there. He had hoped she would take off running as soon as she got the chance. But she had waited for him and they needed to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the three men.
Bodie didn't know where he was going. He wasn't familiar with any of Kansas City except the area around the hotel, the Bella Royale Saloon, and the theater. But as an open stretch of ground loomed up to his right, he saw the wagons parked there and steered Savannah in that direction.
"We'll hide among those wagons," he told her in a whisper. "They won't be able to find us."
She didn't say anything, but she went with him willingly. Even though he knew perfectly well who she was, she wouldn't have any idea as to his identity. All she knew was that he was trying to help her, and he supposed that was enough for the time being.
They ducked around the closest of the big, canvas-covered vehicles. The wagons were arranged in a rough circle, the same formation the immigrants would use when they were traveling out on the prairie. The difference was that away from town, the livestock would be kept inside the circled wagons, not in a corral adjacent to the lot where the wagons were parked.
The big campfire in the center of the circle had burned down to mostly embers and a few faintly flickering flames that didn't cast much light. The wagons were dark and quiet. Everybody in the camp seemed to be asleep.
Bodie led Savannah farther away from the street. When he thought they were deep enough in the camp, he dropped to a knee beside one of the big wheels and urged Savannah to kneel beside him. He didn't like the idea of her getting her dress dirty, but they needed to hide in the shadows in case the three men came looking for them.
He leaned closer to her, and suddenly felt a little lightheaded from the fight or from the clean, tantalizing scent of her thick brown hair. He didn't know which.
"Are you all right?" he asked in a whisper. "Did those varmints hurt you?"
"No, I'm fine," she replied, keeping her voice as quiet as his. "Just scared."
"You don't have to be scared, Miss McCoy. I won't let them get you."
"You know who I am?" She sounded a little surprised.
"Why, sure I do. I was in the audience at the theater tonight. Right in the center on the fourth row."
Their shoulders were touching as they knelt beside the wagon. He felt her tiny start of surprise and wondered what it was about.
She whispered, "I saw you while I was singing my first number."
"It was a mighty pretty song. My name's Bodie, by the way. Bodie Cantrell."
"I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Cantrell. Under the circumstances, very pleased indeed."
They crouched there for a moment in silence, catching their breath. Then Bodie asked, "Why were those fellas trying to grab you?"
"To take me back to their employer's mansion, I expect. They work for a man named Gideon Kane."
"Fancy dressed fella with blond hair and a mustache?" Once again he felt Savannah react slightly.
With a note of worry in her voice, she said, "That's him, all right. He's not a friend of yours, is he?"
"Not hardly. Me and a pard of mine had a run-in with him earlier this evening. I didn't like him then, and now that I know he likes to have girls kidnapped, I don't cotton to him that much more."
"I think he's probably a bad man to have for an enemy."
"I've heard it said you can judge a man by his enemies. In this fella's case, I reckon it says some pretty good things about us."
She was quiet for a second, then she laughed softly. Bodie had seldom heard a nicer sound.
"I think you're right about that, Mr. Cantrell."
They were quiet again, and Bodie listened intently, searching the night for any indication that Kane's men were coming after them. When he didn't hear anything that seemed unusual, he asked, "Do you know how come that fella started screaming and grabbing at his neck?"
"I certainly do. I stuck a hat pin in the side of his neck as hard as I could."
It was all Bodie could do not to burst out laughing. He held it in check and chuckled softly. "I didn't notice you wearing a hat."
"I wasn't. But I always carry a hatpin in my bag, anyway, just in case. Tonight it came in handy."
"It sure did," Bodie agreed. "That was pretty brave of you, jumping in like that. They had me in a pretty bad spot. I might not have been able to get away from them if you hadn't given me a hand."
"You were risking your life to help me. It was the least I could do."
Bodie was about to tell her that he would have given his life to save her, but he didn't get a chance to say anything else. At that moment, an arm looped around his neck from behind, closed on his throat like an iron bar, and jerked him to his feet. He felt the cold, hard ring of a gun muzzle pressed to the side of his head.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 22
|
One thing about growing older, Jamie had discovered, was that he didn't seem to need as much sleep as he once had. He found himself awake at night fairly often, and he wasn't the sort to just lie there in his bunk or bedroll and stare at the darkness. He felt better getting up and moving around. He liked to stay busy, always had.
Besides, even though the wagon train was camped in a city and surrounded by civilization, it didn't mean there were no dangers lurking in the darkness. In some ways, the situation was more precarious than if the immigrants had been out on the prairie. The threats were just different, that's all.
For those reasons, Jamie was up and taking a pasear around the camp when he spotted a couple figures skulking beside one of the wagons.
They might be two of the immigrants, he told himself. Maybe a boy and a girl who weren't supposed to be courting had slipped out of their families' wagons for a midnight rendezvous. In that case, it wouldn't be any of his business. Young love could run its course—or not—without any meddling from him.
However, in one way of looking at it, anything that happened involving the wagon train was the wagon master's business, he thought. Anyway, something about those two struck Jamie as suspicious, and he had long since learned to trust what his gut was telling him.
With the same stealth that had allowed him to sneak up unnoticed on countless enemies over the past five decades, he approached the two shadowy forms. One of his Colts came smoothly out of its holster with only the faintest brushing of steel against leather.
The two people were whispering to each other and seemed to have no idea he was right behind them. Jamie's eyes, still keen despite his years, made out the fact that one of the figures was male and the other female, but they didn't sound like a couple of love struck kids.
Actually, they were talking like they were in some sort of trouble, maybe with the law. Regardless, they were strangers and didn't belong there. Since Jamie had taken the job of getting the pilgrims safely to Montana Territory, his first responsibility was to protect the wagon train.
Because the man was armed, Jamie decided the best thing to do was make sure he couldn't yank that gun out and start blazing away. With so many folks around, flying lead could tear through the canvas covers on the wagons and would be a real danger.
When Jamie made his move, it was swift and sure, grabbing the man from behind, hauling him to his feet, and pressing the Colt to his head. "Take it easy, mister," he rasped into the man's ear. "It wouldn't take much to make this gun go off and splatter your brains all over that canvas."
The woman sprang to her feet, and for a second Jamie thought she was going to bolt.
But she didn't. She said urgently, "Please don't kill him! He doesn't really have anything to do with this. Just let him go and... and I'll go with you to Mr. Kane's house."
The fella Jamie had hold of made a squawking sound, like he was trying to object to what the woman had just said, but he couldn't get any words past Jamie's iron grip on his throat.
"Miss, I don't have any idea what you're talking about," Jamie told her. "I don't know anybody named Kane. I just want to know why you're sneaking around these wagons. You plan on robbing some of them?"
"No!" the woman exclaimed. "We're not thieves, I swear. We're just trying to hide from some men who... who wanted to kidnap me."
The story came pouring out of her in disjointed fashion, some wild yarn about her being an actress and a rich fellow who had taken a fancy to her and was used to getting what he wanted, even if that meant taking it by force.
Jamie could believe the part about the woman being an actress, because the story she told sounded like something out of a play penned by some crazy scribbler. When the flow of words from her finally ran down, he asked, "So who's this hombre I've got hold of?"
"His name is Bodie Cantrell. He risked his life to help me get away from those terrible men. That's all I really know about him."
Despite being a little lurid, the woman's story had the ring of truth about it. Jamie had a hunch she wasn't lying to him, and since he was in the habit of following his hunches, he let go of Bodie.
There was nothing wrong with being careful. Now that he had a hand free, Jamie reached down and plucked the man's revolver from its holster before Bodie had a chance to stop him. The man was too busy at the moment dragging air back into his lungs after being choked for a couple minutes.
Jamie had been careful not to squeeze hard enough to kill him or even make him pass out, so he recovered quickly. Still a little breathless, he asked, "Who... who are you?"
"Jamie Ian MacCallister. Wagon master for this bunch that's headed to Montana."
"You didn't have to try to kill me," Bodie complained.
Jamie chuckled coldly. "Mister, if I wanted you dead, you wouldn't be standing there right now. You'd already be shaking hands with St. Peter."
He was about to say something else when one of the numerous dogs that belonged with the wagon train started to bark. None of the curs had raised a ruckus when Cantrell and the woman, whatever her name was, had sneaked into the camp a few minutes earlier, but several of them began to carry on.
A shaft of light played around the camp from the direction of the street. Somebody had a bull's-eye lantern, Jamie realized. The light darted toward them like a searching finger in the night.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 23
|
"Get under the wagon," Jamie told the two strangers in a low, urgent voice.
"What?" Bodie said.
"Under the wagon," Jamie repeated. "That's probably the varmints who were after the gal."
They didn't need any more urging. Bodie took hold of Savannah's arm and helped her crawl underneath the wagon. Jamie moved so that his buckskin-clad legs would help shield them and planted his feet solidly on the ground as several men approached. One of them carried the lantern.
The Colt .44 was still in Jamie's hand. He raised the weapon, pointed it at the intruders, and called softly, "Lower that light, by God, or I'll shoot it out!"
The light played over him, but only for a second before it dipped toward the ground. It was long enough for the men to have seen that he had the drop on them.
"Take it easy, mister," one of them said. "We're not lookin' for any trouble."
"You may have found it anyway," Jamie snapped. "I'm the boss of this wagon camp. Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
"We're looking for a woman," another man said. "She's a thief. She stole something from our boss, and we're just tryin' to get it back."
"That's right," the first man added. "She's got this cowboy with her. I think he's an outlaw. He must be in on it with her."
Once again Jamie's instincts passed judgment on what he was hearing... and he didn't like it. These men were lying—which meant Cantrell and the woman were probably telling the truth.
"Well, there's nobody like that around here," Jamie told the three men. "I've been standing guard all night, and I'd know."
The man with the lantern came closer, but he kept the light pointed toward the ground.
"No offense, old-timer, but we're not going to just take your word for it. We'll have a look around—"
"I don't think so." Jamie's voice was hard, flat, and dangerous as he interrupted.
"Look, you may have a gun, but there are three of us—"
"Which means I'll have two bullets left over in this old Colt of mine when I get through with you, since I carry the hammer on an empty chamber." There was no mistaking the threat in Jamie's voice. He wasn't bluffing. The men were strangers, and they had bullied their way into the wagon camp uninvited. As far as he was concerned, he would be well within his rights to ventilate all three of them.
The moment stretched out tensely until one of the men muttered, "That old coot sounds crazy enough to do it. I've already been shot at once tonight, and I ain't in the mood to have it happen again."
The man with the lantern argued. "The boss won't like it if we come back without—"
"He's smart. He can figure out what to do about it. Come on," interrupted the other man who had spoken.
Two men started backing away, and the one with the lantern wasn't going to stay there and take on Jamie by himself. He blustered, "You don't know how much trouble you're getting yourself into, mister," then turned and followed his companions out of the camp.
After a few moments, Jamie said quietly to the couple under the wagon, "You two stay right where you are until I get back."
He walked to the edge of the camp where he could look along the street and make sure the three intruders were gone. He saw them walking quickly away from the camp, already more than a block away. He supposed they were on their way to report to the man who had ordered them to kidnap the young woman. If she had told him her name, he had missed it.
He pouched the iron and turned back to the wagon where he had left her and her rescuer. He knew it was possible they might have crawled out and lit a shuck without waiting for him, as he had told them to do. However, when he reached the right wagon and said, "Come on out of there," they emerged from under the vehicle.
Bodie stood up first, then helped the woman to her feet. "Are they gone?"
"Yeah. I made sure of that. Of course, they might circle back and try to slip into the camp again, so why don't the two of you come with me?"
"Where are you taking us?" the woman asked nervously. If what she had told him earlier was true, Jamie didn't blame her for not being very trusting.
"I want to get the two of you out of sight while we hash this out. We'll go to my friend Moses's wagon. He won't mind us disturbing him. He's a preacher, sort of, so he ought to be used to folks waking him up and needing his help in the middle of the night." Jamie led them across the camp and stopped beside one of the wagons. It was a little hard to tell them apart in the dark, so he hoped he had the right one as he hissed Moses's name through the opening above the tailgate.
A moment later, he heard a sleepy mutter from inside the wagon, then Moses stuck his head through the opening. "Jamie? What's going on? It's awfully late."
"Yeah, I know. I've got a couple people here who need a place to get out of sight for a little while. Reckon you can let them stay here?"
"Well... sure, I guess so. Climb on in, folks. These are hardly luxury accommodations, though."
"We don't care about that," Bodie said.
Jamie lowered the tailgate, and Bodie helped the woman climb into the wagon. Moses gave her a hand, too.
When the younger people were inside, Jamie perched a hip on the tailgate. "All right, Cantrell, introduce the lady to Moses and me."
"We really just met tonight, too, Mr. MacCallister, but this is Miss Savannah McCoy. She's part of the troupe of entertainers that's performing at Channing's Variety Theater, down the street."
"I remember seeing the place," Jamie said with a nod. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss McCoy."
"Indeed it is," Moses added. "May I offer you something to drink?"
"No, but thank you," Savannah said. "I just want to get back to the hotel where my friends are staying."
"We'll see that you get there safely," Jamie promised. "First, though, I want to hear more about those three hombres who were after you."
"I'm afraid it's very simple. Their employer, like too many other people, believes that actresses are the same as prostitutes."
"My daughter's an actress," Jamie said curtly. "I don't cotton to people who think like that."
Bodie shook his head. "Neither do I. Once you're safe, Miss McCoy, I think I might have to look up this Gideon Kane and teach him a lesson."
"Oh, no," Savannah said quickly. "You've already done enough for me tonight, Mr. Cantrell. More than enough. You risked your life by fighting those men. And you saved me from being dragged off by them and turned over to that... that..."
"No-good polecat will do," Jamie finished for her. "I reckon I can say that even though I never met Gideon Kane."
"You got that right, Mr. MacCallister," Bodie said. "If anything, you're not being fair to the polecats of the world."
Jamie laughed. He felt an instinctive liking for this young man. If he had seen the same thing going on, a young woman being threatened, he would have jumped right into the middle of the fracas just like Cantrell had. "What are you doing here in Kansas City? You wouldn't happen to be looking for a job, would you?"
Jamie and Hector Gilworth had spent all day trying to find someone else who was willing to sign on with the wagon train as a scout, but they hadn't had any luck. Jamie was prepared to set out with just him, Hector, and Jess Neville to handle the scouting chores, but it would be better if they had at least one more good man.
Cantrell hesitated, then said in reply to Jamie's question, "No, I reckon not. I'm not working at anything right now, but I've got some possibilities coming up soon."
"Well, if you change your mind between now and first light, let me know," Jamie told him. "I'm looking for another scout to help me get these wagons to Montana."
Brodie let out a low whistle of surprise. "Montana's a long way off. You're setting out this late in the year?"
"It's their idea," Jamie said. "I've warned 'em about it. Seems like we're going, though, one way or the other."
"There's really no choice," Moses put in.
Jamie let that pass. There was at least a chance they would make it, and if anybody could get those immigrants where they were going, he knew it was him. That wasn't boastful on his part, just a realistic acknowledgment of his abilities.
Savannah said, "I hate to inconvenience you even more, Mr. Cantrell, but do you think you could accompany me back to my hotel?"
"Sure," Bodie answered without hesitation. "I planned to all along."
"And I'm coming, too," Jamie said. "With both of us along, I don't reckon anybody's liable to bother you. How about you, Moses?"
"Well, I wouldn't be any good in a fight, but I'll come along," the young rabbi said. "Strength in numbers, eh?" He fingered the nightshirt he was wearing. "Just let me put some pants on."
Bodie and Savannah climbed out of the wagon. Moses joined them a couple minutes later. Together, the four of them left the wagon camp and walked toward the hotel where the O'Hanlon troupe was staying.
Jamie kept his right hand on the butt of the Colt on that side, but he didn't need the gun. No one bothered them. When they reached the hotel, he was about to turn back when Savannah said, "If you could just come into the lobby with me. Those men might be waiting."
That was true, Jamie thought. It would be a shame to get Savannah this close to safety and then have Gideon Kane's men grab her after all.
The lamps in the lobby were turned low, and no clerk was on duty at the desk. It was bright enough in the room for Jamie to get his first good look at Bodie and Savannah. The young woman was a beauty, all right, even with her dress disheveled and dirty from crawling around under a covered wagon. Bodie Cantrell was a medium-sized young man in range clothes, with black hair under his tipped-back hat.
The four of them had just entered the lobby when a man stood up from a chair next to a potted plant where he'd obviously been waiting. He started toward them, but clearly he was no threat. Middle-aged and portly, he sported a black eye, and there was dried blood around his mouth. "Savannah!" he exclaimed. "Thank God! We didn't know what had happened to you or if you were all right."
Savannah caught hold of his extended hands and gaped at him in surprise. "Cyrus, what happened to you? You look like you've been in a fight!"
"I have," Cyrus O'Hanlon said grimly. "Gideon Kane and his men have been here, Savannah... and they were looking for you."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 24
|
The news hit Savannah hard. She gasped as if she'd been punched in the stomach. Beside her, Bodie put a hand on her arm to steady her.
"Oh, Cyrus, I'm so sorry," she was able to say after a moment. "Are you hurt badly? Was anyone else hurt?"
Cyrus waved a hand. "Don't worry about me, child. This isn't the first time I've been roughed up. I'll be fine. Harry Sennett has a broken arm, but no one else suffered anything except bumps and bruises."
Bodie asked, "Why would they do something like that?"
"Because they were looking for me," Savannah answered before Cyrus could say anything. "Isn't that right?"
"Aye," Cyrus answered with a shrug. The gesture made him wince. "Kane demanded to know if you were here, and when I told him you weren't, he said that I was lying. One of his men hit me, and Harry jumped into the fight. He wasn't any match for them, though. The commotion drew the rest of the troupe. We tried to give a good account of ourselves, but"—he shrugged again—"we're performers, not brawlers."
"Wish I'd been here to lend you a hand," Jamie MacCallister growled.
Cyrus looked him up and down. "My, you're big as a mountain, aren't you, friend? I wish you'd been here, too. Who's this, Savannah?"
"This is Mr. MacCallister. He's the wagon master for that wagon train camped down the street. He helped us after Mr. Cantrell got me away from Kane's men to start with."
"I'm afraid I'm not acquainted with young Mr. Cantrell, either... although you do look a bit familiar, sir."
"I was in the audience at the show tonight."
"Ah! That explains it." Cyrus still looked puzzled, though. "You're a friend of Savannah's?"
"He is now," she said. "He risked his life fighting Kane's men when they tried to kidnap me. We got away and hid among Mr. MacCallister's wagons."
"I'm starting to get the players straight," Cyrus said with a nod. He turned to Moses Danzig. "And you are...?"
Moses introduced himself, then added, "I'm going to Montana Territory with Jamie and the rest of the wagon train."
Jamie asked, "Did anybody send for the law while that ruckus with Kane's men was going on?"
Cyrus nodded. "One of our people did. But that just made things worse. When the police came in—" He had to stop and draw a deep breath. "When the police came in, Kane and his men claimed that we had attacked them. He accused us of being criminals. He said we had pickpockets working the crowd and that we were no better than gypsies."
"Let me guess," Jamie said with a frown. "The law believed them."
Cyrus spread his hands helplessly. "Kane and his family are rich. Of course the authorities believed him. The officers threatened to run us out of town... but Kane said he didn't want to cause trouble for us and told them he didn't want to press charges. After the police left, though, he said he would see to it that we were all thrown in jail unless we turned Savannah over to him. Then he told us we had until morning to find her and take her to his house."
Savannah felt sick and light-headed. If not for Bodie's hand on her arm, she might have collapsed. How could things have taken such a bad turn, so quickly? She hadn't done anything to cause it. She'd just been going about her job, following her calling, practicing her art. Then suddenly, without any warning, Gideon Kane had walked into her dressing room, and with him had come pure evil.
That was just the way things were in life, she told herself. Bad things happened for no apparent reason.
But understanding that and being able to accept it were two different things. It wasn't fair for Cyrus and the other members of the troupe to suffer just because Gideon Kane had decided he had to have her.
"Listen," she said, speaking quickly so she wouldn't back out on going through with the idea that had just occurred to her. "I have to leave the troupe."
"What?" Cyrus said with a confused frown. "No! You don't need to do that. We'll figure some way out of this—"
"There isn't any other way out of it," she told him. "Kane will use the law against you, and you know he'll get away with it, too. At the very least, he'll have you run out of town. At worst, you'll all be locked up. I can't stand to have that on my conscience, Cyrus. I just can't."
"We'll fight him," Cyrus insisted. "I'll hire a lawyer and fight him in court."
Savannah shook her head. "No lawyer worth anything will want to go up against the Kane family. There's just no other answer, Cyrus, and you know it."
He looked miserable as he tried to come up with something else to say and couldn't. Finally he managed to ask, "But where will you go?"
Savannah turned to look at Jamie MacCallister. "To Montana Territory. You can find a place for me in your wagon train, can't you, Mr. MacCallister?"
"It's not really my wagon train," Jamie replied. "I don't have any say over who stays and who goes, as long as they follow my orders once we're on the trail."
"I can follow orders. I'm good at taking direction, aren't I, Cyrus?"
"You're a quick study," Cyrus admitted. "You won't be playing a part, though, Savannah. You'd really be an immigrant."
With a faint smile, she said, "Isn't all life just playing a part, at least to a certain extent? We know what we're supposed to do because we've read it in books and seen it onstage. And then as we live it, it becomes real."
"I suppose you could look at it like that," Cyrus said grudgingly. "But I don't want to lose you. Neither will the others."
"It's for their own good. The troupe has to come first." Still smiling, she added, "The show must go on."
Cyrus winced again. "To have such a hoary old chestnut used against me." He sighed. "Very well. You'll probably be safer with a behemoth such as Mr. MacCallister rather than with a bunch of actors. No offense intended by that behemoth comment, sir."
"None taken," Jamie said with a grin. "I know I'm a big galoot." He grew more serious. "I'm not sure about you being any safer, though, Miss McCoy. We're talking about going all the way to Montana, not on some picnic lunch. Hundreds of miles of riding in a wagon that's not very comfortable, miserable weather, maybe hostile Indians and outlaws. Lots of bad things can happen."
"Something bad will happen if I stay here," Savannah pointed out. "Gideon Kane has seen to that. Besides, maybe I wouldn't have to go all the way to Montana. The troupe's next stop is Des Moines, isn't that right, Cyrus?"
"Yes, we'll be there in a couple weeks."
"I could travel with the wagon train for a week or so, long enough for Kane to give up on finding me, then leave and join the troupe again in Des Moines."
"You can't go gallivanting across the prairie by yourself." Bodie looked at Jamie. "You still interested in hiring another scout, Mr. MacCallister?"
Jamie regarded him with narrowed eyes. "A temporary scout? Just for a week? I don't know about that. But I don't reckon I can stop you from coming along, if that's what you want. You'll have to talk to Captain Hendricks about it, though. He's in charge of the bunch."
Savannah frowned. "Mr. Cantrell, I can't ask you to—"
"You're not asking me to do anything," Bodie interrupted. "I'm volunteering." He paused. "I'll have to talk to some friends of mine, though, and let them know that I'm leaving."
"It's very thoughtful of you to want to help me. I really appreciate it."
"Hey, I don't like that fella Kane, either," Bodie said. "Anything I can do to put a burr under his saddle, I'm all for it."
Moses spoke up. "I don't want to throw cold water on these plans, but how are you going to convince Kane that you're gone, Miss McCoy? He's liable to think that the troupe is just hiding you."
Savannah frowned again. "I hadn't thought about that. I know. I'll write him a letter telling him that I'm leaving Kansas City and leaving the troupe. You can give it to him, Cyrus."
"Even if you do that, there's no guarantee that he'll believe it."
"He can search the hotel and the theater. He can come to all the performances. I really will be gone, so when he can't find me he'll have no choice but to believe it."
Cyrus rubbed his chin and frowned in thought. After a moment he said, "Hmm. It might work...."
"It's the only chance we have to keep him from causing more trouble for the troupe."
"You won't tell him where you're going, just that you're leaving town?"
Savannah glanced at Jamie and Bodie. "That's right. I don't want to cause trouble for those immigrants, either."
"I'm not worried too much about some rich young wastrel like that, miss," Jamie told her. "I reckon I've dealt with a lot worse in my time."
"All right, it's settled then. I'm starting to Montana with the wagon train. That is, if I can find someone to let me travel with them..."
Moses said, "That shouldn't be a problem. There are plenty of families who ought to be willing to make room for you. These are good people, Miss McCoy."
"I'm sure they are." She put a hand on Cyrus's arm. "And if I don't show up in Des Moines, you'll know not to wait for me. Just go on with the tour."
"What are you talking about?" he asked. "Why wouldn't you join us?"
"Well, something might happen. As Mr. MacCallister pointed out, a trip like this could be dangerous." Savannah smiled. "Or you never know... once I'm on the way, I might decide that I want to be a pioneer woman!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 25
|
"We'd better go out the back way," Bodie suggested before they left the hotel. Savannah had gone upstairs and quickly packed her carpetbag. Luckily, the troupe's nomadic existence had taught her the art of traveling light. "Kane could've posted somebody outside to keep an eye on the place."
Jamie said, "I thought of the same thing. That's why I had a good look around when we came up. I didn't see anybody skulking around, but it's possible I missed something. We'll go out the back just to be sure."
Bodie had a hunch it would be hard to out-think Jamie MacCallister, and it was mighty unlikely that he would miss anything, too. He had heard of the big frontiersman. Anybody who had been around as long as Jamie had, leading that sort of adventurous life, was bound to be pretty cunning, not to mention experienced in all kinds of trouble.
Savannah had found pen and ink and paper behind the registration desk and quickly written a note for Gideon Kane, telling him that she was quitting the troupe and leaving Kansas City, to boot. She didn't tell him where she was going, but she warned him not to try to find her. She read the message out loud to the others, then sealed it and gave it to Cyrus O'Hanlon to have it delivered to Kane.
Cyrus insisted on calling the rest of the troupe down to the lobby so they could say good-bye to Savannah. It was an emotional farewell, full of hugs and tears, and it bothered Bodie that she had to abandon the life she enjoyed just because of some worthless skunk like Gideon Kane.
Finally Savannah was able to tear herself away from her friends and colleagues. She and Bodie, along with Jamie and Moses, went to the hotel's back door.
Jamie said, "Better let me go out first and have a look around, just to make sure Kane's men haven't set up an ambush for us."
"I'll come with you," Bodie said.
"No, you stay here. In case anything happens to me, you'll have to look out for Miss McCoy."
"What about me?" Moses asked.
"Have you got a gun?"
"Well... no."
"Ever fired a gun?"
"Actually, I haven't."
"Then you'd best stay here with Cantrell and Miss McCoy," Jamie said. "Stick to doing whatever it is rabbis do and let me burn any powder that needs burning."
"When you put it like that, I see your point," Moses said.
Jamie slipped out the door, moving with unusual grace for such a big man, and returned after a few tense minutes to report that the coast seemed to be clear. "Kane's probably convinced that he spooked your friends so bad they won't have any choice but to turn you over to him, Miss McCoy."
"Since we're all going to be traveling together, why don't you call me Savannah?" she suggested. "And the three of you will be Bodie and Moses and... Mr. MacCallister."
That brought a chuckle from Jamie.
Savannah smiled. "It's just that you're old enough to be my, well, my father."
"I'm older than that, girl," Jamie said. "I could be your grandpa. But I've never cared much what folks call me, as long as they don't call me late for supper."
Bodie grinned. "I figured you were going to say that."
Savannah changed the subject. "Kane is underestimating just how tough Cyrus and the others are. They'd never help him."
"They wouldn't as long as he didn't box 'em in where they didn't have any choice. Maybe that letter of yours will keep that from happening."
They went into the alley behind the hotel. It was pitch black, but Jamie led them through it as if it were bright as day. A short time later, they were back at the wagon train camp, which was still dark and peaceful.
Jamie went to one of the wagons, knocked softly on the tailgate, and called, "Cap'n Hendricks."
A man with tousled hair stuck his head out of the wagon. "Who's there?" He thrust the twin barrels of a shotgun over the tailgate.
Jamie grasped the barrels and shoved them skyward. "Take it easy with that greener," he snapped. "It's MacCallister and Moses Danzig. We've got a couple more pilgrims for your expedition, and one of 'em's going to be my third scout, at least for the time being."
Wearing a long nightshirt much like the one Moses had been sporting earlier, Captain Hendricks climbed out of his wagon and listened as Jamie introduced Bodie and Savannah and explained the situation.
When Jamie was finished with the story, Hendricks said, "Normally when a person joins a wagon train, they have to contribute something—"
"I can pay," Savannah broke in. "I have a little money saved up."
Hendricks smiled and shook his head. "I was about to say that under the circumstances, I think we can forget about that, at least for now. Since it's possible you may not be with us for long, there's even less reason to worry about it." The wagon train captain scratched his angular jaw. "Now, there's the matter of finding you a place...."
"What about with the Binghams?" Moses suggested. "There's just the two of them, so they'd probably have room in their wagon."
"Yes, that might work." Hendricks turned to Savannah. "They're a couple getting on in age, really probably too old to have pulled up stakes and started west like they did, but their children are all grown and Edward Bingham wanted to see some new country. Can't say as I blame him. I feel sort of the same way myself."
"Once a man's feet get restless, there's not much he can do about it except move on," Jamie said. "I know that feeling mighty well."
So did Bodie. He had been pretty fiddle-footed himself since his parents' deaths had left him alone, but it was from necessity, not choice. As filled with trouble as his life had been, he'd had to stay on the move.
That thought reminded him that he still had something to do before morning, something pretty important. He had to see about getting his share of the train robbery loot from Eldon Swint.
Now that they had obtained Captain Hendricks's approval for joining the wagon train, Moses took Savannah to the wagon belonging to the elderly couple. Before they left, Bodie said to her, "I'll see you later."
"I really hate to disrupt whatever plans you had," she said.
"Trust me, I didn't have any real plans, and you're not disrupting a thing."
That was true. For her sake, he hated what Savannah was having to go through, but it was a good excuse to leave the gang. He had never been that comfortable riding with Swint and the others, and after the cold-blooded murder of that station agent, Bodie wanted more than ever to get away from them.
As Savannah and Moses walked off, Bodie hung back with Jamie. "There's something I have to do before I can leave in the morning."
"Yeah, you said something about that before. You need a hand with whatever it is?"
That was just the sort of man Jamie MacCallister was, thought Bodie. Jamie had to at least suspect that Bodie's business might involve some degree of danger, but he'd volunteered to come along anyway, without the slightest hesitation. By that, Bodie could tell that Jamie already considered him a friend, and it was a good feeling.
He shook his head. "No, I can handle it. But I'm obliged to you for the offer."
"We're pulling out at first light. You'll need to be back here by then."
"I will be," Bodie promised.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 26
|
He left the wagon camp and headed back to the hotel where the gang was staying, which was seedier than the one being used by the troupe of performers. Swint might be there, or he might be at the Bella Royale. Bodie thought the odds were good that he would find the gang leader at one place or the other.
On the second floor of the hotel, he found Clete Mahaffey and Dave Pearsoll sitting on ladder-back chairs in the hallway outside Swint's room. "I didn't know you fellas had first shift on guard duty tonight."
"Yeah, that's us—just sittin' here while the rest of the boys are out havin' fun," Mahaffey groused.
"You need something, Cantrell?" Pearsoll asked.
Bodie nodded. "I'm looking for the boss. Is he in his room?"
"Nah, we haven't seen Swint for a couple hours. Check the saloon."
"That was going to be my next stop. Much obliged."
"Wait a minute," Mahaffey said. "Is something wrong, Cantrell?"
"No, not at all," Bodie lied. "I just need to talk to him for a few minutes."
Clearly, both men were curious what was going on, but they weren't going to poke their noses in another man's business. They just grunted as Bodie lifted a hand in farewell and headed back downstairs.
He should have asked them where Jake was, he thought as he left the hotel. Jake was the only member of the gang he considered a friend—one that he wanted to say good-bye to before pulling out with the wagon train.
He could find Jake later, he decided. It was more important to settle things with Swint.
The hour was getting really late, but the Bella Royale was still busy. Bodie entered the saloon but didn't see Swint anywhere, so he went to the bar and asked the bartender if he'd seen the boss outlaw.
The apron nodded toward a closed door. "There's a poker game going on in that private room back there. Swint and some of his boys are sitting in on it. Say, aren't you one of his bunch?"
"I was," Bodie said. All that had changed tonight.
He hadn't known it at the time, but it had changed the moment he first laid eyes on Savannah McCoy.
With that thought in mind, Bodie went to the door and knocked on it. A voice he didn't recognize told him to come in.
When he stepped into the room he saw that it was windowless and dark except for a lamp that cast a cone of light over a round table topped with green baize, the cards and money scattered on it, and to a lesser extent, the men who sat around it. Swint sat on the far side of the table, facing the door.
That came as no surprise to Bodie; Swint wouldn't want anybody coming in behind him where he couldn't see them. That was just common sense for someone with a lot of enemies and a price on his head.
To Swint's right was a frock-coated man Bodie didn't know, probably a professional gambler. To the gambler's right was another man Bodie didn't know who had the well-fed look of a successful businessman. The other three men at the table were members of the gang: Charley Green, who was usually Swint's second in command when the gang pulled a job, a gunman from Arizona named Jack Perkins, and Joe Guerra, a 'breed from the border country down in Texas.
It appeared that a hand had just concluded and the frock-coated gambler had won. He finished pulling in the pot, then glanced up at Bodie. "We don't have a chair open right now, but you're welcome to stay and watch in case one of these gents drops out."
"I'm not goin' anywhere," Swint said irritably. "Not until I've had a chance to win back that money I lost."
The gambler took a slender black cigarillo from his vest pocket, put it between his lips, left it unlit, and rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other. "That's the sort of talk I like to hear. It shows you're passionate about the game, my friend... and it tells me I'm going to have a chance to take even more of your money."
Swint scowled, and Bodie thought that the gambler didn't really know what sort of loco hombre he was dealing with. Swint was quick to take offense, quick to reach for the gun on his hip.
The boss outlaw's reaction lasted only for a second before he controlled it and forced a grin. "You just go ahead and think that way, amigo. We'll see who's rakin' in the pot next time." He glanced up at Bodie. "Did you want somethin', Cantrell, or do you plan to just stand there?"
"I need to talk to you for a minute," Bodie said. "In private."
Swint's scowl came back. "You got somethin' you can't say in front of these fellas? I'm not sure I like the sound of that."
"It's just business, that's all."
Swint drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table. "My luck's due to change. I can feel it in my bones. If I sit out this next hand, that luck's liable to pass right over me."
"Why don't we take a short break?" the gambler suggested. "That way you can talk to your friend, I'll go get another bottle from Horace, and we can all stretch our legs."
"All right," Swint said as he scraped back his chair. "But don't start again without me, you hear? Cantrell, this isn't gonna take very long, is it?"
"It shouldn't," Bodie said. Just long enough for you to go upstairs, get the money that you owe me, and hand it over, he thought.
Swint stood up. "Come on. We'll step out into the alley."
They left the private room and went out through a side door into the narrow passage between the Bella Royale and the building next to it. Swint left the door open so that a rectangle of light slanted through it and the glow lit up most of the alley.
"All right," Swint said. "What is it you want?"
"My share of the money," Bodie replied bluntly.
Swint's scowl got even more fierce. "You know we'll divvy up that loot when the time is right. And I'm the one who decides when that is, Cantrell, not you."
"I'm not saying you have to divvy up with everybody."
"That wouldn't be fair to the others. What makes you so dang special, anyway?"
"I'm leaving the gang," Bodie said.
Swint stared at him for a second as if he couldn't comprehend what Bodie had just said. Finally he repeated, "Leaving the gang?"
"That's right."
Swint's eyes narrowed, and his face began to flush with anger. "What's the matter, we ain't good enough for you anymore? You gonna go out and start your own gang, show ol' Eldon what it's like to be a famous owlhoot?"
"It's not like that." It wasn't going as smoothly as Bodie had hoped, but to tell the truth he hadn't really expected Swint to take the news very well. "In fact, I plan to give up being an outlaw altogether."
"So you really do think you're too good for the likes of us. But when it comes to the money the rest of us took off that train, you ain't so high and mighty that you'll turn your back on it, are you? You're just as greedy as the rest of us where that loot's concerned."
Bodie felt a flash of anger of his own. "Listen here, I did everything you told me to do during that holdup. If there had been trouble, my neck would have been on the line just like yours. So I think I've got a right to my share."
Swint hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and sneered. "Only members of the gang get shares. You walk away now and you won't have a damn dime comin' to you."
"Now hold on! You never said anything about that before."
"Never figured I'd have to explain it. It's just common sense."
Actually, it was a chance for Swint to get his hands on an extra share, Bodie realized... assuming that the leader of the gang didn't mean to hang on to all the loot. Chances were, Swint didn't really care whether Bodie stayed or went. He had never been any great shakes as an outlaw. Swint could replace him with any of a hundred drifting hardcases.
Swint had his pride, though, and he felt insulted. For that reason alone, he was willing to make it an issue.
Both men stood tensely in the mixture of dim light and shadows in the alley. It was bright enough for Bodie to see the anticipation of violence in Swint's stance. He knew that if he made even the slightest move toward his gun, Swint would slap leather, too. The killing lust burned in the man's eyes.
Suddenly, Bodie felt sick. His guts clenched. But it wasn't from fear. He and Swint were pretty evenly matched when it came to gun speed, he thought.
What gripped him was revulsion. He was ready to kill or be killed over money stained with the blood of that murdered station agent. The whole thing was loco.
Besides, Savannah McCoy needed his help to stay safe. Sure, if he got himself killed over a pile of ill-gotten loot, Jamie MacCallister, Captain Hendricks, and Moses Danzig would still do their best to look after her. Bodie had a feeling that Jamie would be more than a match for any threat the wagon train might run up against.
But even so, there might come a time when he was all that stood between Savannah and disaster, like when Kane's men had tried to grab her earlier. He couldn't afford to run the risk of not being there.
He drew in a deep breath. "You know what, Eldon? Keep my share. I don't care."
Swint's eyes narrowed with suspicion. Obviously he couldn't comprehend such a decision. "Is this some sort of trick?"
Bodie shook his head. "No trick. There are other things I need to do, and they're more important than any stack of gold eagles. You keep my share and divide it up among the other men. Or just keep it for yourself. It doesn't matter to me either way, as long as you're all right with letting me walk away from the gang."
"I don't give a damn whether you're in the gang or not," Swint snapped, confirming what Bodie had thought a few moments earlier. "I still think you're tryin' to put somethin' over on me, though."
"I'm not. I give you my word." Bodie stuck out his hand. "I'll even shake on it."
Swint hesitated, but finally he clasped Bodie's hand. "What is it you've got to do?"
Bodie opened his mouth to explain about Savannah, Gideon Kane, and the wagon train, then thought better of it. Swint didn't have any reason to know about any of that. "Just some personal business to take care of."
"Fine. It ain't like I care. You remember one thing, though, Cantrell. You walk away from me, and we're done. We ain't partners no more, and if you ever cross me in the future, I'll kill you just as quick as I would a total stranger."
Bodie wouldn't have expected anything less from the man. He didn't see any reason his trail ought to cross that of Eldon Swint any time in the future, though. It would be perfectly fine with him if he never saw the lantern-jawed outlaw again. "I understand. You won't have any trouble from me, Eldon."
Swint snorted contemptuously. "I'd better not, or you'll wind up filled full of lead, you got that?"
Bodie thought back and realized that he had never seen Swint engage in an actual gunfight. The outlaw had killed several men, but always from ambush or when he already had the drop on them. Maybe Swint wasn't quite the deadly pistoleer he always bragged about being.
None of that mattered, Bodie told himself. He was going with Savannah, and he would never see Swint again.
"You know where Three-Finger Jake is?" he murmured. He still hadn't given up on the idea of saying good-bye to his friend.
"I ain't got the slightest idea. It's not my job to keep up with the whereabouts of a bunch of no-account road agents when they're not pullin' a job for me."
"All right. If you see him—" Bodie stopped and shook his head. He didn't want to tell Swint that he was going to be traveling with the wagon train. Even though it was unlikely, that might somehow put Kane on Savannah's trail. Bodie wasn't going to take the chance.
"So long, Eldon. That's all."
"You're loco, you know that?" Swint growled as Bodie turned away. "Givin' up that loot just don't make sense."
"It does if maybe you've found something more valuable," Bodie said, thinking about Savannah McCoy.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 27
|
Jamie was up long before dawn the next morning, making sure people were awake and getting ready to depart from Kansas City. He had said that he meant for the wagons to roll at first light, and he meant it. As far as he was concerned, the eastern sky barely had to turn gray for it to count as first light.
As he was making the rounds of the camp, he came up to one of the cook fires and found Moses Danzig and Bodie Cantrell hunkered beside the flames, sipping coffee from tin cups. The pot was sitting at the edge of the fire, keeping warm.
"Some coffee, Mr. MacCallister?" Moses asked.
"Don't mind if I do," Jamie said. He'd already had a cup with Captain Hendricks, but a man couldn't have too much coffee when he planned to spend a long, long day in the saddle.
Moses went to his nearby wagon and brought another cup, filled it from the pot, and handed it to Jamie.
He sipped gratefully at the strong black brew. "Did you get your business taken care of last night, Cantrell?"
"Yes, sir, I did," the young man replied.
Jamie nodded. "Glad to hear it." He didn't press for any more information. He felt an instinctive liking for Bodie Cantrell, but the young man's affairs were his own and Jamie didn't intend to interfere in them. "Seen Miss McCoy this morning?"
Bodie shook his head. "No, but I'm sure she's fine with the Binghams. I wouldn't want to intrude on her."
"Moses, you mind going and checking on her? I want to make sure she didn't change her mind about going with us."
"Sure," Moses said with a shrug. He ambled off toward the Bingham wagon.
Bodie said, "I don't think Miss Savannah would just up and run off."
"She was pretty scared last night," Jamie pointed out. "It's hard to tell what somebody will do if they get spooked bad enough. I've seen animals bolt right into danger instead of away from it, all because they were too scared to think straight."
Bodie looked worried. He drained the last of his coffee from the cup and rose from his position beside the fire. "Reckon I'll go make sure, too—"
"I told Moses to do that," Jamie cut in. "What you need to do is make sure your horse is ready to ride. We've got to get moving soon, or the day's going to be half gone."
Bodie squinted and frowned at the eastern sky, which was still almost pitch black with plenty of stars showing. He figured Jamie was a little loco, and a bit of a slave driver, to boot.
But like the others in the group, he didn't fully grasp what a difficult undertaking it would be to get the wagons to Eagle Valley in Montana Territory before winter closed in around them and stranded them. Jamie would have to use every available minute of every day to accomplish that goal, and it was going to be hard on everybody, human and livestock alike. They might as well get used to that, right from the start.
Bodie went to see to his horse, as Jamie had suggested, and the big frontiersman continued making sure that everything was ready for the journey. Any time he found immigrants who weren't preparing fast enough, he prodded them into hurrying without being overly harsh about it. He was prepared to lay down the law to them if he had to, the law of the trail according to Jamie Ian MacCallister, but they seemed a fairly well disciplined bunch, so he didn't want to do that... yet.
Once they got started to Montana it might be a different story.
Not everyone was completely cooperative. When he got to the Bradford wagon, he found the twins, Alexander and Abigail, struggling to get the team of oxen hitched to the vehicle. The huge, stolid beasts dwarfed the children and paid little attention to their efforts to get them into the traces.
"Where's your pa?" Jamie asked the youngsters. "He should be doing this."
"He's in the wagon reading the Bible," Alexander said.
"Pa always reads some in the Good Book every morning and every night," Abigail added.
Jamie scowled. Being spiritual was all well and good, but there was a time for that and a time to get earthly work done, he thought. After all, the book said that the Lord helped those who helped themselves.
He stepped to the back of the wagon and saw that a candle was burning inside. "Reverend Bradford?"
"What is it?" Bradford answered without lifting the canvas flap over the opening at the rear of the wagon. He sounded clearly annoyed.
"We'll be rolling soon. You need to get your team hitched up. Those kids can't do it by themselves." And even if they could, they shouldn't have to, Jamie thought.
Bradford pushed the canvas aside and glared out, looking as irritated as he'd sounded. "The needs of a man's immortal soul won't wait, Mr. MacCallister. These wagons will."
"That's where you're wrong," Jamie said, making his voice as hard as flint. "If you're not ready to go when the rest of us are, we'll leave you here. Whether or not you catch up is up to you."
"You'd abandon us here?" Bradford demanded in obvious outrage. "I won't hear of it. I paid my fee to join this wagon train, just like everyone else. I'll speak to Captain Hendricks about this high-handed behavior."
"Go right ahead," Jamie told him. "It won't change anything. I'm wagon master now, and we leave when I say we leave. It's your responsibility to be ready." He didn't like speaking to Bradford this way in front of the man's children, but facts were facts and they needed to get on the trail.
"Very well," Bradford said disgustedly. He set aside his big, leather-bound Bible, pushed the canvas flap back farther, and clambered out of the wagon. "But I still plan to speak to Captain Hendricks."
"Go right ahead," Jamie invited. It wouldn't make any difference, and he knew it.
He waited a moment to make sure Bradford was going to help the two youngsters hitch up the team. When he was satisfied about that, he moved on to the area where the saddle horses were picketed.
Bodie was there, tightening the cinches on his saddle. So were Hector Gilworth and his cousin Jess Neville, who were also getting their horses ready to ride.
"Did you fellas introduce yourselves to each other?" Jamie asked the scouts.
"Sure did," Hector replied. "I'm glad you found somebody to help us with the scoutin', Jamie."
"I'll try to live up to the responsibility," Bodie said.
"Keep your eyes open and don't do anything foolish, and you'll be fine," Jamie told him.
"Are you takin' the point today?" Hector asked.
Jamie nodded. "That's right. Bodie, you'll be with me. Hector and Jess, you fellas take the flanks."
"Nobody bringing up the rear?" Bodie asked.
"Not today. Once we've gotten farther from town, one of us will drop back from time to time to check our back trail. I don't really expect much trouble from behind, though. It's what'll be in front of us that we'll have to worry about."
"Meanin' Injuns?" Neville said.
"And outlaws and bad weather and flooded streams and buffalo stampedes and just about anything else you can think of," Jamie said with a grin. "This isn't going to be an easy trip. If all four of us make it to Montana Territory alive, we'll be doing pretty good." Of course, Bodie might not be going that far, he reminded himself.
That all depended on Savannah McCoy.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 28
|
Edward Bingham was a tall man who had once been handsome. With his gray hair and close-cropped, grizzled beard, now he was distinguished, Savannah thought. His tiny, birdlike wife Leticia had long gray hair twisted into braids and wound around her head. The two of them were a good couple. They suited each other, in Savannah's opinion.
They were happy to make room for her things in their wagon and give her a place to sleep, as Moses had suggested they would. They had sold most of their goods before they left their long-time home in Reading, Pennsylvania, bringing with them only what they needed for the journey and to set up basic housekeeping in Montana, avoiding the trap of trying to take everything that some immigrants fell into.
As Mrs. Bingham prepared breakfast, Savannah offered to help, even though her cooking skills had never been anything to boast about. Living on the road with the troupe as she had, there hadn't been many opportunities to better them.
"There'll be plenty of chances for you to pitch in once we're on the trail, dear," the older woman said. "This is your first morning with the wagon train, so I'll take care of this."
Savannah suspected that Mrs. Bingham had her own way of doing things and didn't want anybody interfering with that routine. She could go along with that for now, but she was determined to carry her weight during the trip, for as long as she was with the wagon train.
She'd expected to see Bodie Cantrell again this morning, she thought as she sipped coffee and ate the hotcakes and bacon Mrs. Bingham had cooked. So far, though, she hadn't seen the young man. She supposed he was busy with whatever duties he had as one of the party's scouts.
The most important thing, she told herself, was that she hadn't seen Gideon Kane or any of his men. She would have liked to think that he had already given up searching for her, but she couldn't bring herself to believe that. She had seen a look of pure obsession in Kane's eyes. The look of madness, almost.
"Mrs. Bingham, do you happen to have a sun bonnet I can borrow?" Savannah asked when they had finished breakfast.
"Of course. You don't need it now, what with the sun not being up yet, but you will before the day's over, I'm thinking."
That was true, but the main reason Savannah wanted the bonnet was so that it would obscure her face if any of Kane's men came by the wagon camp looking for her. She had put on her oldest, drabbest dress, and if she wore the bonnet and kept her face turned away from the street as much as possible, she thought there was a good chance she could go unnoticed. "I just want to get used to wearing one."
"All right. I'll fetch one of my extras," Mrs. Bingham said.
When Mr. Bingham went to hitch up the oxen, Savannah offered to help with that, too. He gave her a dubious frown. "No offense, Miss McCoy, but you don't strike me as a farm girl. Have you ever handled oxen before?"
"No, sir, but I'm a quick—" She started to say she was a quick study, then switched from that theatrical term. For the time being, she wasn't an actress.
She was a fugitive.
"I learn quickly," she said. "And I'm not afraid of hard work, even though I have to admit I'm not exactly accustomed to it."
He thought about her offer for a moment, then nodded. "All right. I can always use a helping hand. Just be careful. Those great brutes are peaceful and slow-moving most of the time, but they can be surly beasts now and then." He smiled. "Sort of like people."
Jamie MacCallister stopped by the wagon when they were almost ready to go. "Everything quiet the rest of the night?"
"Quiet as can be, thanks to you and Mr. Cantrell," Savannah said. "Speaking of Mr. Cantrell, I haven't seen him yet this morning...."
"He's around," Jamie said vaguely. "You'll be seeing plenty of him during the trip." He smiled. "I like that bonnet. You look like a real pioneer woman."
Savannah smiled. "I suppose for now, that's exactly what I am."
A short time later, the wagons began pulling out of their places in the circle and lining up. As captain, Lamar Hendricks had the first spot in line. The others pulled in behind him as they were ready. The Bingham wagon was about halfway along the column by the time the train had finished forming up.
Savannah was sitting on the lowered tailgate as Jamie and Bodie rode past. She lifted a hand and waved at them. Jamie nodded and touched a finger to the wide brim of his hat. Bodie followed suit. He didn't smile; his face was serious in the gray light of approaching dawn.
That was all right, Savannah told herself. He was handsome in his rugged way, even when he didn't smile. She was looking forward to the chance to talk with him again.
But that wouldn't come for a while. Jamie and Bodie rode to the front of the train, where the big frontiersman paused and lifted his right arm above his head. His powerful voice carried along the length of the train as he bellowed, "Wagons... hooooo!"
With a shuffling of hooves, a creaking of leather, and a rasp of wheels turning, the wagons lurched forward into motion.
They were off to Montana.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 29
|
Jamie could tell that the big sand-colored stallion Sundown was glad to get out on the trail and stretch his legs again. To tell the truth, so was he. He was even happier to have a destination and a goal again. The drifting he had done since the end of his vengeance quest had felt right at the time, but after a lifetime of getting things done, he was ready to accomplish something again.
If he got the pilgrims safely to where they were going, that would be an accomplishment, all right. A mighty big accomplishment.
The wagons followed a well-defined trail along the Kansas River westward, keeping the stream to the left. Jamie and Bodie rode about a hundred yards in front of the lead wagon.
It wasn't really necessary to do any scouting yet. Their route was easy to follow, and as the sun rose behind them, its golden light washed over the plains and revealed the way before them. Once the wagons were out of town, the trail would lead through farming country for the next few days, so there weren't any significant dangers to watch out for.
That would change once they swung to the northwest. The country would become more sparsely settled, and they would be traveling through regions where it was still possible to run into roving bands of Pawnee and Cheyenne that might prove hostile.
As they rode, Bodie said, "I'd sure like to hear about some of your adventures, Mr. MacCallister, if you don't mind talking about them."
"Make it Jamie. And who said I'd had adventures?"
Bodie frowned. "Well... just about everybody who's ever heard of you, I reckon."
Jamie chuckled. "I'm just joshing you, son. I guess I've run into my fair share of trouble. Ever hear of a place called the Alamo?"
"Well, sure."
"I was there for a spell, before it fell to the Mexicans, of course. A long, long time ago."
Jamie reminisced about that and some of his other exploits as he was growing up a child of a wild, young country. It was a sign that a man was growing old when his own kids didn't want to listen to his stories anymore, but Bodie was an eager audience, paying rapt attention to the yarns Jamie spun. There had been a time when his boy Falcon had been like that, before he had grown up and become one of the most dangerous gunfighters west of the Mississippi.
Jamie hipped around in the saddle and peered along the line of wagons from time to time, checking their back trail.
Bodie followed that example. "You're making sure Kane isn't following us, right?"
"Would you put it past him, if he thought there was a chance Miss McCoy had joined the wagon train?"
"Not for a minute. From what I saw of the man, he's loco... and poison mean."
Jamie nodded. "I haven't met him, but I've got a hunch you're right."
The wagons rolled along steadily for several hours before Jamie called a halt to let the livestock rest for a short time. He and Bodie went to Captain Hendricks's wagon, where Jamie asked the man, "Have you got a map of the route you were supposed to follow? I know where Montana is, right enough, but if you were supposed to go a certain way we'll try to stick to it... as long as I don't know a better trail."
"Actually, yes, I have a map that Mr. Ralston prepared," Hendricks replied. "I'll get it."
While they were waiting for him to do that, Jamie glanced eastward behind the wagon train again, just out of habit, and stiffened in the saddle as he spotted several riders following the trail along the river and coming toward them. He caught Bodie's attention, lifted a hand, and pointed.
A worried frown appeared on Bodie's face as he looked at the riders. "Kane's men?"
"Could be. Let's go find out."
Hendricks had climbed over the seat into the wagon to look for the map. As Jamie and Bodie turned their horses toward the rear of the train, he stuck his head back out. "Where are you going?"
"Just to check something out," Jamie said. "We'll have a look at that map later."
He heeled Sundown into a lope. Bodie rode alongside him. Some of the immigrants waved and called greetings to them as they went past the wagons.
Hector Gilworth and Jess Neville had come in from the flanks when the train stopped. They saw Jamie and Bodie approaching, and Hector asked, "Something wrong, Mr. MacCallister?"
"Probably not, but come along with us anyway."
The four of them reached the end of the wagon train when the newcomers were still about a quarter mile away. Jamie's keen eyes didn't recognize any of them as men he had seen the night before, but that didn't have to mean anything. Gideon Kane was wealthy enough to hire any number of men to do his bidding.
Bodie suddenly let out a startled exclamation. "I know those fellas."
"Friends of yours?" Jamie asked.
"Well, one of them is, anyway. And the others are all right, I think."
The four wagon train men reined in and waited for the riders to come to them. As the men approached, Bodie moved his horse out in front of his companions and called, "Jake! What in the world are you doing here?"
The riders came up and halted. The one in the lead grinned and said to Bodie, "I'll bet you didn't expect to see me again so soon, did you, pard?"
"That's right. I didn't." Bodie glanced around at Jamie. "Mr. MacCallister, this is my friend Jake Lucas."
"Three-Finger Jake, they call me, and you can see why." He held up his left hand with its missing digits. "I blame an old brindle steer and my own dumb luck for that. Call it a souvenir of my cowboyin' days."
Bodie introduced the other two men. "These hombres are Clete Mahaffey and Dave Pearsoll. Boys, this is Jamie Ian MacCallister, Hector Gilworth, and Jess Neville."
The men exchanged nods. Jamie studied the newcomers, sizing them up. Jake Lucas seemed to be a brash, cocky young cowboy, while Mahaffey and Pearsoll were older, more hard-edged.
"I thought you were staying back in Kansas City," Bodie said to them. "You know, until that other business got cleared up."
Jake shook his head. "There's nothin' I hate worse than sittin' around, Bodie, you know that. When I heard that you'd left town, I reckon it put ideas in my head. We got everything squared away and decided to come after you."
A frown creased Bodie's forehead. "I didn't tell anybody I was leaving with this wagon train."
"Well, where else would you have gone?" Jake asked with a laugh. "That sounded like something you'd do, takin' off with a bunch of pilgrims bound for Montana. There's a lot of talk about it back in town. In fact, we were thinkin' we might just throw in with you."
Jamie watched Bodie's face, but the young man seemed to be keeping his features carefully impassive. Even as insightful as he was, Jamie couldn't tell how Bodie felt about the idea Jake Lucas had just come out with.
Bodie shrugged. "That's not up to me. Mr. MacCallister is the wagon master, and the immigrants have a captain they've elected. They'd be the ones to decide who comes along and who doesn't."
Something nagged at Jamie, just a vague feeling that maybe not everything was as it appeared to be on the surface. But having three more experienced men along on the journey might not be a bad idea. The wagons were bound to run into trouble somewhere along the way, the sort of trouble that meant gunplay. Even though Mahaffey and Pearsoll had a rough, hard-bitten look about them, they might make good allies. "If it's all right with Captain Hendricks, it's all right with me. That is, if you vouch for these fellas, Bodie."
"Sure," Bodie said. "Why wouldn't I?"
That was something Jamie wondered about, and he resolved to ask Bodie about it later, in private.
"One thing," Jamie went on. "You boys will have to earn your keep if you travel with this train. Bodie's signed on as a scout, and I could use some more pairs of eyes and ears, if you're interested."
"Why, that sounds like a bang-up idea, Mr. MacCallister," Jake said. "We'd be glad to work as scouts, wouldn't we, boys?"
"Sure," Mahaffey said, and Pearsoll just shrugged and grunted his assent.
Jamie turned Sundown toward the front of the train again. "Come on," he told the newcomers. "We'll go see Captain Hendricks and make sure it's all right with him. I expect it will be, though."
In a matter of moments, he had gone from having barely enough scouts to maybe having too many, Jamie thought as he rode toward the front of the train. But considering the wild country they would be traversing before they reached their destination, maybe it wasn't possible to have too many scouts.
Or too many men who were good with a gun.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 30
|
Bodie's head was spinning. Of all the people he might have run into on the way to Montana, Jake Lucas, Clete Mahaffey, and Dave Pearsoll were just about the last ones he would have expected. He had a bunch of questions for them, starting with their reasons for leaving the gang... and whether or not they had managed to get their share of the loot from Eldon Swint.
That had to wait until later, though. He couldn't say anything about it while Jamie or the other scouts were around. He didn't want to reveal his outlaw past to them. The wagon train was his chance to start over. Maybe his last chance.
When he dared to let himself think about it, he thought that Savannah might be a chance to start over, too. She needed one, and so did he.
Why not together?
Bodie put that thought out of his head for the time being. When they talked to Captain Hendricks, he acknowledged that he and Jake and the other two men had been acquainted for a while and that he trusted them.
"That's good enough for me, I suppose," Hendricks said. "I realize I've known you only a very short time, Mr. Cantrell, but Mr. MacCallister seems to trust you. That carries a great deal of weight with me."
"Thank you, sir," Bodie said. "I'll try to live up to his trust, and yours as well."
He didn't get a chance to talk to Jake privately until the wagons had stopped for the midday meal and to let the teams rest again. Jake was standing on the riverbank, watering his horse, when Bodie walked over to join him.
"I don't reckon I've ever been as surprised in my life as I was when I saw you," Bodie said quietly.
"Why?" Jake asked. "You didn't think I was gonna stay with that lobo wolf Swint forever, did you?"
"You never said anything about leaving."
"Maybe that's because you never put the idea in my head until now," Jake said with a shrug. "When Swint told me you were gone, I asked myself why not? It was as good a time as any to make a break. I'll be honest with you, Bodie. Sooner or later, Eldon was gonna land us smack-dab in some trouble that we couldn't shoot our way out of. I don't want to wind up dancin' at the end of a rope, thrown in a cheap pine box, and stuck in some potter's field. That's what was gonna happen if we kept ridin' the owlhoot."
"Where we're going, wolves may wind up scattering your bones."
"That's a chance I'll take. When I said I was leavin', Clete and Dave wanted to come with me. They're as tired of Swint's bull as I was."
Bodie lowered his voice to a whisper. "What about the money? Did you get him to give you your share?"
"We did better than that," Jake said with his quick grin. "We talked him into givin' us your share, too, so we could deliver it to you when we caught up. He tried to pull that ol' business about how if somebody left the gang, they didn't get what was comin' to 'em. That didn't fly, and we told him so. He backed down."
Until his own confrontation with Eldon Swint, Bodie might not have believed that was possible. He had seen for himself, though, that Swint might be more bluster than real threat, especially when the odds weren't overwhelmingly on his side. He could believe that Swint hadn't wanted to stand up to Jake, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll.
"You must have been mighty sure I was with the wagon train, if you figured on bringing my share of the loot with you."
Jake chuckled. "Well, if we guessed wrong and hadn't found you, I reckon we would've just had to keep that money ourselves. It would have been a shame, but we could've brung ourselves to do it."
Bodie let out a wry laugh and shook his head. "Well, you're here now, and that's all that matters, I reckon. You plan to stay with the wagon train all the way to Montana?"
"We'll have to wait and see about that. Right now all that matters is that we're on the move again, and it feels mighty good. I was already tired of that town. Too many people crowdin' around all the time. I'm a Texas boy. Used to wide open spaces all around me, you know."
Bodie nodded. "From what I've heard, there'll be plenty of those where we're going."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 31
|
Back in Kansas City, Eldon Swint stirred in the grimy sheets of his hotel room bed. Somebody muttered and moaned beside him. Unable to recall which of the soiled doves he had brought from the Bella Royale the night before, he raised himself on an elbow so he could look over at his companion.
The tangled mass of hennaed hair on the other pillow looked vaguely familiar. Harriet? Hermione? Helen, that was it, he told himself... not that it really mattered to him what the dove's name was.
He reached over and smacked a beefy hip under the sheet.
Helen groaned again, rolled over, and opened her eyes to slits, wincing at the morning light coming in through the gap between the threadbare curtains over the room's lone window. "What time is it?" she muttered.
"Time for you to get up and haul yourself out of here," Swint told her.
She didn't seem to have heard his answer. "You can't expect to go again this mornin'. You didn't pay me that much, honey."
"I didn't say I wanted to go again. I said you need to get out."
To emphasize his point, Swint planted a bare foot against her rump and shoved. Helen let out a yelp of dismay as she slid out of the bed. The thud as she hit the floor cut off her cry.
She came up angry, exclaiming, "You son of a—"
Swint had already swung his legs out of bed and stood up. Standing on the far side of the bed, his bony frame clad only in the bottom half of a pair of long underwear, he turned his head to look at her. The ice-cold menace in his slate-gray eyes made her shut up in a hurry.
"You don't have to treat me so mean." Helen pouted as she started looking around for her dress. She still wore stockings rolled just above her knees, and those stockings, her slippers, and the dress were the only things she had been wearing when Swint brought her to the hotel the previous night.
The bare wood floor was cold against the soles of Swint's feet as he went over to a small table where some of his gear was piled. He pawed through it until he found one of the thin black cheroots he favored and a match. He snapped the lucifer to life with his thumbnail and set fire to the gasper. He didn't have any interest in watching the soiled dove get dressed. The night before, he had thought she was beautiful, but a bottle of rotgut whiskey improved any woman's looks immeasurably.
"Are you coming to the Bella Royale tonight, honey?" Helen asked behind him.
"More than likely," Swint replied without looking around. He stared out the window instead.
"Well, I'll be there. You'll look for me, won't you, honey?"
"We'll see," Swint said dully.
His mouth tasted like something had crawled into it and died. His head was throbbing a little from all the who-hit-John he'd guzzled down the night before. His guts roiled unpleasantly. He had hoped the cheroot would help with those problems, but it wasn't doing a blasted bit of good.
Helen tried again. "I had a mighty fine time with you last night."
"Forget it," Swint snapped. "Just get out."
She sniffed angrily, and a moment later the door slammed behind her on her way out of the room. Swint grimaced as the noise made his head throb harder. It felt like imps straight from Hades were capering around inside his skull, banging on it with ball-peen hammers.
Another memory stole back into his thoughts. Bodie Cantrell had quit the gang last night, he recalled with a scowl. That infuriated him. After all he'd done for Cantrell, only to be treated like that!
At least Cantrell hadn't insisted on getting his share of the loot. Swint would let the rest of the gang think that he had. That way Swint could pocket it for himself.
Thinking about the money made him turn away from the window. When he'd brought Helen back to the hotel, he had hefted the saddlebags before they got down to business. No matter how drunk he was, he always checked on the loot.
As the cheroot dangled from his lips, he had the urge to let some of those double eagles trickle through his fingers. That always made him feel better. He went to the wardrobe where he'd stashed the saddlebags, reached inside, and picked up one of them. The weight was comforting, and so was the clink of coins as he set the bags on the table. He unfastened one of the pouches and thrust his hand inside.
He knew instantly that something was wrong. His fingers touched coins, all right, but they weren't the right size to be double eagles. And there was something else in the pouch...
Rocks.
Swint's teeth clamped down on the cheroot so hard that he bit off the end and the thin black twisted cylinder fell onto the table next to the saddlebags. Swint ignored it and spat out the piece left in his mouth. He upended the pouch and stared in shock and disbelief at the rocks that fell out onto the table, along with a handful of pennies.
After a moment, he ripped the other pouch open and dumped its contents as well. More rocks and pennies spilled out. Bellowing a curse, Swint lunged for the wardrobe to get the other saddlebags.
A minute later, he had confirmed the awful truth.
Somebody had stolen all the loot.
Choking with fury, Swint yanked his revolver from the holster attached to the coiled shell belt lying on the table. He threw the door open and ran out into the hall, still wearing just the long underwear.
Two doors down the corridor, Swint hammered on the panel of Charley Green's room and yelled, "Charley! Damn it, Charley, get out here!"
When Green opened the door wearing a pair of baggy long-handles, he looked just as bleary-eyed as Swint had been upon first awakening. He coughed and cleared his throat. "Eldon, what's wrong?"
Swint started to blurt out that the loot was gone, but then he stopped himself. It might not be smart to let the others know what had happened until he figured it out himself. He grated, "Who was standin' guard here last night?"
Green raked his fingers through his tangled hair and frowned. "I dunno," he said after a second. "You must've seen 'em when you came in."
"Yeah, but I can't remember—" Swint stopped short as a couple faces locked into place in his mind. "Wait a minute. Mahaffey and Pearsoll. They were the ones."
"Well, there you go, then," Green said as he started to turn away and close the door. Clearly, he didn't grasp the depth of the problem.
Swint slapped his free hand against the door. "Where are they?" he demanded.
"What? Who?" Green gave his head a violent shake as if he were trying to clear the cobwebs from his brain. "Oh, you mean Mahaffey and Pearsoll. Shoot, I don't know. I don't keep track of where everybody is."
"We've got to find them," Swint said. "Get dressed. Now!"
He stomped back to his room and started pulling on his clothes. Once he was dressed and had his gun belt strapped around his hips, he rousted out the other members of the gang. Green, still confused, helped him.
Within ten minutes, everybody was gathered in Swint's room, with three notable exceptions: Clete Mahaffey and Dave Pearsoll, who had been guarding the loot the night before... and Three-Finger Jake Lucas.
Swint questioned his men, his angry voice lashing them like a whip. Nobody admitted to having seen Mahaffey, Pearsoll, or Lucas since the previous night. Swint ordered them to spread out through the area and conduct a search. There were plenty of saloons, brothels, dance halls, and gambling dens where the three men might be.
He had an unhappy feeling that they wouldn't be found in any of those places.
By mid-morning the conclusion was inescapable. Lucas and the other two were gone. Only one reason for their disappearance made sense. They had stolen the loot from the train robbery and lit a shuck out of Kansas City.
Swint had no choice but to break the news to his men. They took it with startled curses, followed by bitter anger.
"What are we gonna do, Eldon?" Charley Green asked when the hubbub in Swint's room subsided.
"I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna find those damned double-crossers and get our money back! And when we do... those three are going to wish they'd never been born."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 32
|
Gideon Kane was in the habit of rising late. There was no reason for him not to, since he had never done an actual day's work in his life. Things like that were for lesser men.
In the mansion on the outskirts of Kansas City, breakfast and coffee were waiting for him on a table covered with a fine linen cloth in the sitting room next to his bedroom, even though it was late enough that most people were starting to think about their midday meal. He belted a silk dressing gown around his waist and sat down to eat.
A bell pull hung within reach. Kane tugged on the cord, and a moment later his butler, Jenkins, appeared in the doorway. "Yes, sir?"
Kane sipped from the fine bone china cup and then asked, "Is Harrison here?"
"Yes, sir, he's in your study. He arrived a short time ago and said that he had a report for you when you woke up. I assumed that's where you would want to receive it after you'd eaten."
"Normally, yes. I'm feeling rather impatient this morning, however. Send him up here."
Jenkins inclined his head forward. "Yes, sir. Right away."
Kane went back to his breakfast.
A few minutes later a knock sounded on the partially open sitting room door. Kane called, "Come in."
Eli Harrison stepped into the room. He was a tall, heavy-shouldered man with massive fists and a face like a slab of raw meat. He had worked for the Kane family in a number of capacities over the years, starting out as a stableman.
Now he worked exclusively for Gideon Kane as a troubleshooter of sorts. Whenever Kane had a problem, no matter what it was, Harrison found a way to take care of it. He was brutal when he had to be and utterly ruthless.
Without looking up, Kane said, "I hope you're here to tell me that you've located that girl and brought her here."
"I wish I could, Mr. Kane," Harrison said bluntly, "but my men haven't turned up any sign of her yet."
"You kept watch on the hotel where that troupe of entertainers is staying?"
"I sent a couple men to do that." Harrison didn't sound happy about what he had to say next. "They got sidetracked. One of 'em felt like he had to stop and pay off a gambling debt. They wound up, ah, gettin' mixed up in a game for a while."
Kane frowned as he laid aside the spoon he had been using. "So the hotel went unguarded?"
"Not for long. Only about an hour."
Kane felt his face warming with anger. Harrison knew as well as he did that a lot of things could happen in an hour.
"I want those two fools fired," Kane snapped.
"Already done it, sir." Harrison lifted one of his huge fists. The knuckles were skinned and raw. "Had a talk with 'em about falling down on the job, too."
"You have men watching the hotel now?"
"Yes, sir. If she's still there, we'll pick her up whenever she goes out."
Jenkins stepped into the doorway behind Harrison. He cleared his throat. "A note was delivered for you earlier this morning, sir."
"Who's it from?"
"I don't know." Jenkins lifted a piece of paper that was folded and sealed with wax. "I have it here."
Kane pushed his empty plate aside and made a curt gesture toward the table. Jenkins crossed the room and placed the note on the linen. Kane picked it up and ripped the seal open.
His eyes scanned the words written in a feminine hand on the paper. More anger welled up inside him. He started to crumple the note, then stopped, set it down again, smoothed the creases from it. "Bring me O'Hanlon," he said softly.
"Sir?" Jenkins murmured.
"I'm talking to Eli." Kane stared coldly at Harrison. "O'Hanlon, the head of that acting troupe. Bring him here. Now."
Harrison nodded and left the room.
By the time Harrison returned to the mansion, Kane was dressed and waiting downstairs in his study. He had been pacing back and forth angrily, but he forced himself to regain his composure when Jenkins announced that Harrison was there and had brought Cyrus O'Hanlon with him as ordered. Kane gave the butler a curt nod to indicate that he was ready for them.
Harrison gave O'Hanlon a little shove as they came into the study, making the actor stumble. O'Hanlon caught himself before he fell. Drawing himself up straighter, he glared at Kane. "The authorities will hear about you having me kidnapped like this, Mr. Kane."
"Kidnapped?" Kane repeated. He smiled coolly. "I don't know what you're talking about. I asked Mr. Harrison to request that you honor me by visiting my home, and that's all that happened, Mr. O'Hanlon."
"You know good and well that's not true," O'Hanlon blustered. "This bruiser of yours practically dragged me bodily out of the hotel. My wife witnessed the incident, and so did other members of my troupe."
"We've had this discussion before," Kane chided. "As far as the law is concerned, my version of events is what actually happened, not the fantasies of some wild-eyed actor. Now..." His voice hardened. "Where is Miss McCoy?"
"I have no idea."
Kane leaned over and picked up the note from Savannah that he had brought down with him from the sitting room. "You arranged for her note to be delivered to me."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Please. You look after her. You must know where she's hiding." Kane tossed the paper back onto the desk. "I don't believe for one second that she's left town. You've just got her stashed away somewhere, that's all."
Stubbornly, O'Hanlon shook his head. "She left the troupe," he insisted. "I hated to see her go, but you made it impossible for her to do anything else, you... you..."
Harrison's big hand came down heavily on O'Hanlon's shoulder as the actor sputtered, searching for a suitable epithet.
"I'll find her," Kane said confidently. "I'll involve the law if I have to. The police can scour the entire city for her. Or you can save us all a great deal of trouble by telling me where she is."
"I can't tell you because I don't know. And if I did know, I wouldn't tell you!"
Kane looked at him for a second, then sighed and nodded to Eli Harrison.
The big man kicked O'Hanlon in the back of the right knee. O'Hanlon cried out in pain and toppled to the side as his right leg collapsed under him. Harrison kicked him again as he fell, digging the toe of his boot into O'Hanlon's shoulder blade. O'Hanlon lay on the floor, writhing and making little noises as he tried to keep from crying.
"I'll ask you again," Kane said. "Where is Miss McCoy?"
"G-go to hell!" O'Hanlon spat out between clenched teeth.
"You'll regret that you didn't cooperate with me, O'Hanlon," Kane warned.
"I already regret that I ever saw your damned face!"
Kane nodded to Harrison again.
By the time the big man finished, O'Hanlon had passed out. There wasn't a mark on his face to indicate that he'd been beaten, but Kane wouldn't have worried if there had been. No one was going to believe the actor's story.
Harrison stood over the unconscious O'Hanlon and frowned. In his rumbling voice, he said, "I'm startin' to think that he's tellin' the truth, boss. If he knew where the girl was, he'd have spilled it by now."
"I believe you may be right." Kane picked up the note again. "But if she's abandoned the troupe and left Kansas City, where could she have gone?"
Jenkins cleared his throat again. The butler had been standing to one side during the brutal beating, his unlined face as imperturbable as ever. "I beg your pardon, sir, but I have a thought."
Kane turned to face him. "You're a smart man, Jenkins. What is it?"
"Miss McCoy has been traveling with this troupe of actors and entertainers, which means she's accustomed to having a group of people around her. I have my doubts that she would set out all alone from a strange place. Didn't your men report that they pursued Miss McCoy and that unknown cowboy to a place where a wagon train was camped? A wagon train that, I believe, departed from Kansas City this morning?"
"That's right." Kane closed his eyes for a second and made a face. "Of course! She went with the wagon train!"
"That would be my guess, sir."
Kane flipped a hand at O'Hanlon and told Harrison, "Take him out and dump him somewhere. If anyone ever asks, he was fine when he left here after our visit. Thieves must have attacked him on his way back to the hotel."
"It'll look more realistic if he doesn't have any money left on him," Harrison pointed out.
"Fine, fine, I don't care about that. Just put together a group of men and get after that wagon train. Stop it and search it." A thought occurred to Kane and put a smile on his face. "Not right away, though. Let it get several days away from here." He laughed. "That way Miss McCoy will believe that she's gotten away from me. How delicious it will be when she's dragged back here."
Harrison nodded slowly. "There's just one problem we might have with that, boss."
"I pay you very well to take care of problems," Kane snapped. "What are you talking about?"
"From what I've heard, a fella named MacCallister took over as wagon master for that bunch of pilgrims. He's supposed to be a pretty tough gent. A real ring-tailed roarer."
"Mr. Harrison... did you ever see a man who was tougher than a bullet from a gun?"
"Well, no, sir, I haven't."
"There's your answer, then," Kane said. "No problem at all. If this fellow MacCallister or anybody else gets in your way, just kill him."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 33
|
As Jamie expected that it would, life on the trail soon settled into a routine. He had the immigrants up early every morning, and they broke camp and the wagons rolled when the sky was still gray. Other than short breaks to rest the teams, he kept them moving all day.
Unfortunately, the sun slipped below the horizon a little earlier each day, cutting down the time that they could travel.
Late every afternoon, the wagons pulled off the trail and formed a big circle next to the river. He and some of the scouts stood guard while the livestock was watered and then driven into the circle.
The train had come far enough from Kansas City that the land was sparsely settled with a few isolated ranches in the area. Jamie didn't think there was any real danger from Indians yet, but it never hurt to be careful.
And outlaws, of course, could strike anywhere.
Once everyone had eaten supper, they turned in for the night, tired from the long day on the trail. There was no big center campfire where the immigrants gathered to play music, sing, and dance the way they had done back in Kansas City. They didn't have the energy for diversions like that anymore. The hard pace that Jamie established saw to that.
He set up guard shifts at night, drawing on volunteers from the wagon train along with his scouts. Moses Danzig was always willing to pitch in and do whatever was needed. He wouldn't be much good in a fight, Jamie knew, but he could stay alert and give the alarm in case of trouble as well as anybody else.
So far Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll had worked out fairly well. Mahaffey and Pearsoll weren't very friendly with the immigrants and the other scouts and kept to themselves most of the time. But they didn't cause any trouble and they did what Jamie told them without any arguments.
Jake Lucas, on the other hand, seldom stopped talking and always had a friendly word for everybody. He flirted with all the teenage girls whose families were part of the group and even with some of the married women, which Jamie thought might lead to problems sooner or later. He asked Bodie to have a word with his friend about it.
Bodie agreed to do so, but he added, "Jake doesn't mean anything by the way he acts. That's just how he is. He's friendly with everybody."
"Get too friendly with a married woman and punches can get thrown," Jamie cautioned. "That's if you're lucky. If you're not, guns go off."
"I'll talk to him," Bodie promised.
Lamar Hendricks and Jamie had gotten together and studied the map that Jeb Ralston had drawn before they left. The route Ralston had laid out turned northwest away from the Kansas River, followed the Oregon Trail for a good long ways, then cut almost due north, crossing the Platte and continuing to skirt the Rocky Mountains to the east as they headed for Montana.
Once they were there the wagons would turn west again, travel through the foothills and on into Eagle Valley. It was a route without any extremely rugged terrain to cross, just plains and rolling hills, which meant the wagons could move fairly fast over it.
Jamie planned to follow that route. Ralston might have been a braggart and a bully, and reckless to boot, but he had sketched out a decent trail for the immigrants he was supposed to lead.
Several days out of Kansas City, they camped where the Blue River flowed into the Kansas from the northwest. It was where the Oregon Trail turned away from the larger stream.
That evening Jamie called his scouts together. "We haven't had much to worry about so far, but from here to the Platte we'll have to be a mite more watchful for trouble. Wagon trains have been taking this trail for a long time, so the Indians are used to seeing them, but you never know when some band will take it into their heads to get proddy." He paused to emphasize the next point. "The important thing is that if we do run into any Cheyenne, Arapaho, or Pawnee, everybody needs to stay calm until we see what they've got in mind. That goes for us as well as the pilgrims. No shooting unless I say so. More blood's been spilled because of itchy trigger fingers than any other reason."
The men nodded their agreement, even the normally taciturn Mahaffey and Pearsoll.
"Get a good night's sleep," Jamie added. "We'll all be in the saddle early tomorrow."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 34
|
"And where are you off to, my friend?" Moses asked as Bodie stood up from their supper fire after they finished eating. "As if I didn't know."
"I've hardly gotten a glimpse of Savannah—I mean, Miss McCoy—since we left Kansas City. And I sure haven't gotten a chance to talk to her. I want to see how she's doing."
"Do I need to come with you to serve as a chaperone?" Moses asked with a grin.
"I just want to talk to her," Bodie said, slightly irritated. "I don't plan to do any sparking with her, or anything else that'd need a chaperone." He paused. "Besides, I reckon Mr. and Mrs. Bingham will be right there."
"I don't know, maybe you could convince her to go for a walk with you around the camp. I'm just saying..."
Bodie waved a hand at his friend, clapped his hat on his head, and went to look for the Bingham wagon. He wasn't exactly sure where in the big circle it was parked.
He was walking past the area where the saddle mounts were picketed when he heard a murmur of voices. Something about the sound struck him as secretive, so he circled around the horses to see what was going on.
Several figures stood in the deep shadows next to a wagon. They seemed familiar to Bodie, and as he came closer he recognized Jake Lucas, Clete Mahaffey, and Dave Pearsoll. They were having an animated discussion, but Pearsoll noticed Bodie coming and said something curt to the others, who immediately fell silent.
Jake turned to greet Bodie. "What's up? Is MacCallister lookin' for us?"
"No, not as far as I know," Bodie replied. "What are you fellas doing?"
"Oh, nothin' that amounts to anything," Jake said with a laugh. "This 'tarnal idjit here"—he jerked a thumb at Mahaffey—"is tryin' to claim that he saw a panther today while he was scoutin'. I told him we're a heck of a long way from anywhere that a panther would be. Likely you just saw a coyote, Clete."
"Or a prairie dog," Pearsoll added in an uncharacteristic display of dry humor.
"You lunkheads are both wrong," Mahaffey snapped. "I know what I saw."
"Where are you headed, Bodie?" Jake asked.
"I, uh, thought I'd go see how Miss McCoy is doing," Bodie admitted.
Jake grinned. "At least we know now why you left the gang back yonder in Kansas City."
"I don't want to talk about that," Bodie said as he quickly glanced around to see if anyone was within earshot. "That part of my life is over."
"Don't worry. It's the same way with all of us, pard. Although I wonder sometimes if you can ever leave behind who you really are."
"Sure you can," Bodie said. He hoped that was true, anyway.
He said so long to the three men and moved on toward the Bingham wagon. As he did, he wondered about the conversation they had been having. Even though he hadn't been able to make out any of the words, it had sounded to him as if they were arguing.
But somehow he wasn't convinced that they had been arguing about panthers.
Thoughts of Savannah crowded back into his mind and made him forget about the encounter with Jake and the other two former outlaws. When he reached the Bingham wagon, Savannah and Mrs. Bingham were cleaning up after supper. The cooking fire had burned down to a small blaze, but it gave off enough light for Bodie to see how pretty Savannah was, even with her face flushed slightly from washing dishes in an iron pot of hot water.
"Hello, Bodie," she said brightly. "How are you?"
"Fine. How about you?"
"Oh... all right, I suppose."
He realized how stilted and uncomfortable this exchange was, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to relax around her. "I haven't had much of a chance to talk to you since we left Kansas City."
"I know. Mr. MacCallister must keep you really busy with your scouting duties."
"He does. He's not overbearing about it, though. He just wants to keep the wagon train safe."
Leticia Bingham came up beside Savannah. "Goodness, you two need to start talking to each other like actual human beings. Savannah, let me finish up here. You go visit with Mr. Cantrell."
"Are you sure?" Savannah asked. "Because I really don't mind—"
"Go," Mrs. Bingham said again. "Sit on the wagon tongue. It's a nice night, just a little chilly. If you sit close, you won't be too cold."
The thought of sitting close to Savannah made Bodie's pulse race a little faster. He was grateful to Mrs. Bingham for suggesting it.
"All right." Savannah dried her hands on the apron she wore, then walked with Bodie to the front of the wagon. They sat down.
"I've been keeping an eye on our back trail," Bodie said. "You know, just in case Kane sends anybody after us."
"After me, you mean. He probably doesn't have any idea who you are. You haven't seen anyone following the wagon train, have you?"
"Not so far. And it's been several days. I think if they were back there, they would have caught up by now."
"I hope that means my note worked and that Kane has given up on finding me," Savannah said. "But I don't want to talk about him anymore, Bodie."
"I don't blame you. I don't want to talk about the no-good scoundrel, either." He grinned. "How do you like traveling with the wagon train?"
She smiled back at him. "Well, it's not like I never traveled by wagon before. The troupe travels from city to city in wagons, so I'm used to riding in one. Although Mr. MacCallister certainly has us covering more ground quicker than Cyrus ever did."
Bodie chuckled. "Jamie MacCallister isn't one to let grass grow under his feet, that's for sure."
"You sound like you admire him."
"I've never met anybody else quite like him. The places he's been, the things he's seen and done... I could listen to him talk about them all day. I find myself thinking... a fella could do a lot worse for himself than trying to be like Jamie Ian MacCallister."
Savannah's voice was quiet as she said, "I think you're doing fine just being Bodie Cantrell."
"It's nice of you to say so, but—"
She silenced him by leaning closer to him and kissing him.
That took him by surprise. He wouldn't have thought she would be so daring with the Binghams only a few yards away. But he certainly didn't pull back from her, instead lifting a hand to rest it lightly on her shoulder as he enjoyed the sweet warmth of her lips on his.
"I told Moses we wouldn't need a chaperone," he whispered when she finally broke the kiss after a long, delicious moment.
"We don't." Savannah stood up. "I'll be turning in now, Mr. Cantrell. I'll say good night."
"Good night to you, too, Miss McCoy," he replied, his voice thick in his throat.
He stood there while she went to the rear of the wagon and climbed in. If he was going to tell the truth, he had been thinking about Savannah and wishing he could kiss her ever since they'd left Kansas City. Now that he had...
Now that he had, he realized as a grin broke across his face, he was ready to do it again.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 35
|
"Forget about sharin' the loot with Cantrell," Clete Mahaffey said as the three former outlaws resumed their conversation once Bodie had walked off toward the Binghams' wagon. "That fool doesn't care about money, anyway. The only thing he can think about now is the girl."
"She's worth thinkin' about," Jake said. "She's a mighty pretty gal."
Dave Pearsoll grunted and declared, "A big pile of double eagles is prettier. That's what we've got, and I agree with Clete. I ain't inclined to share 'em with Cantrell. He didn't do anything to earn a share."
"He was with us when we took them off that train," Jake pointed out. "Shoot, he helped Eldon and the others take over the depot and make sure the train stopped. We wouldn't have that pile of double eagles if they hadn't done that."
"But he wasn't there when we risked our necks to steal them from Swint," Mahaffey said. "Anyway, he quit the gang back there in Kansas City. That was his own decision."
"So did we," Jake reminded him. "But I'm not gonna argue about it with you boys. Bodie don't know we've got the loot, and as long as he don't know he can't say that we're cheatin' him out of anything. So I'll go along with whatever you say. When the time comes to leave the wagon train, we'll go our own way and leave Bodie behind."
"Yeah, well, when's that gonna be?" Pearsoll asked.
That was the question they had been wrangling about when Bodie came up to them a short time earlier and caused Jake to come up with that story about the panther. Mahaffey and Pearsoll thought it was already time to leave the wagons behind and disappear in the middle of the night with the loot they had liberated from Eldon Swint, but Jake wanted to wait and stay with the train a while longer.
"We'll reach the Platte River in a few weeks," Jake said. "By then, we'll know for sure whether or not Eldon's gonna come after us. If we haven't seen hide nor hair of him, we can figure he doesn't know where we are and go wherever we want from there. San Francisco, Mexico, wherever suits our fancy."
Despite the fact that he was younger and less experienced than the other two outlaws, he was in charge and he didn't want them to forget it, so his voice hardened slightly. "Until then, we'll stay with the wagons. If Swint and the rest of the gang show up lookin' for us with guns in their hands and blood in their eyes, we'll need all the help we can get fightin' 'em off. Bodie and his new friends will pitch in on our side, I'm sure of that. Those pilgrims will think they're under attack by owlhoots, and that'll be the truth. They just won't know the reason why."
"All right, all right," Mahaffey muttered. "I reckon what you say makes sense, Jake. That big varmint MacCallister worries me, though."
"Me, too," Pearsoll agreed. "Sometimes when he looks at me, it feels like he can see right through me, Jake. Like he knows everythin' I'm thinkin' or feelin'. Man's got eyes like a hawk... or an eagle."
"Don't worry about Jamie MacCallister," Jake said. "He's just like Bodie." He grinned. "He don't suspect a thing."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 36
|
Moses was checking the hubs on his wagon wheels to see if they needed to be greased again when he heard rapid footsteps coming up behind him.
He straightened and turned quickly, not really expecting trouble right in camp but knowing that it was best to be careful. He relaxed when he saw the two children who had just run up to his wagon.
"Hello, Mr. Danzig," Alexander Bradford said.
"Hello," his sister Abigail added.
"Good evening to you, children," Moses told the youngsters with a solemn nod. "What brings you to see me? Shouldn't you be back at your father's wagon, getting ready to go to sleep? You know how Mr. MacCallister likes to make an early start in the morning!"
"We were hopin' you could show us that toy again," Alexander said.
"You know, the spinning one," Abigail said.
Moses grinned. "Ah, you mean the dreidel. Let me get it."
They had seen him idly spinning the dreidel one day back in Kansas City. It helped him to think, and he had explained a little about it to them during that conversation.
He climbed into the wagon over the lowered tailgate and emerged a moment later to hop back down to the ground. Motioning for Alexander and Abigail to come closer, he poised the four-sided top on the tailgate. "Here we go."
Grasping the little shaft that stuck up from the dreidel, he flicked it between his thumb and index finger and gave it a spin. The top whirled so fast that the four Hebrew letters painted on it, one on each side, blurred and became unreadable.
Not that the children could have read them anyway, Moses thought. He was quite probably the only member of the wagon train who could.
But they enjoyed watching the top spin. Abigail clapped her hands together and giggled. Alexander grinned and fidgeted, shuffling his feet back and forth. Moses knew the boy was anxious to try spinning the top himself.
"We use the dreidel to play a game during one of my people's holidays," Moses told them.
"Like Christmas?" Abigail asked.
"Well, not exactly. Our holiday is called Hanukkah, which means the Feast of Lights, and even though it comes at about the same time of year as Christmas, it's different—"
"Alexander! Abigail!" The angry bellow came from Reverend Bradford, who stalked toward Moses's wagon with his hands clenched into knobby-knuckled fists.
The children scurried away from the tailgate, obviously not wanting to incur any more of their father's wrath than they already had by being there. Moses frowned. He didn't like to see children acting so frightened. He worried that they had good reason to be scared.
The dreidel had stopped spinning and fallen over onto its side. Moses picked it up and held it in his hands where Bradford could see it and hopefully realize that he had just been entertaining the youngsters with a harmless toy. "Good evening, Reverend."
Bradford came to a stop and glared at him. "What are you doing with my children?"
"I was just showing them the dreidel," Moses explained. "I was going to let them play with it."
"You were preaching your heathen religion to them!"
Moses shook his head. "Not at all. I wouldn't do that. They're just children."
"I heard you telling them about your Hebrew holiday, the one you celebrate instead of Christmas." Bradford stabbed a blunt finger toward the dreidel. "Look at it! It's got religious symbols painted on it!"
"They're just Hebrew letters—" Moses stopped and drew a deep breath. It was true that the markings on the dreidel had some significance in his faith, and as a rabbi he could have explained all that to Bradford in a calm, rational manner, but he knew the man didn't want to hear it.
Instead he said simply, "I'm sorry. If you'd rather the children not play with it, I'll honor your wishes, of course."
"I'd rather that they not have anything to do with the likes of you," Bradford snapped. "If they come around here again, you send them packing, you hear?"
Moses made an effort to hang on to his temper. "All right. They're your children."
"And don't you forget it."
Bradford turned and stalked off across the camp. Alexander and Abigail had already disappeared, no doubt scurrying back to their wagon.
Moses watched the man go and shook his head. It was a shame that Bradford had to be so hostile, but with some people, once they made their minds up there was no changing them.
"The reverend's lucky you didn't take a swing at him."
The quiet voice made Moses jerk his head around. The huge shape that loomed up in the firelight was instantly recognizable as that of Jamie Ian MacCallister.
"Mr. MacCallister," Moses said. "I didn't hear you." He had wondered before how a man as large as Jamie could move so silently. The big frontiersman was as stealthy as Moses supposed an Indian to be.
"I was keeping an eye on things. If Bradford had jumped you, I would have stepped in. If you'd needed my help, that is."
"I think that's a foregone conclusion. I'm not exactly what you'd call a... a brawler."
"No, but you've got sand."
"Sand?" Moses repeated with a frown.
"Courage," Jamie said.
Moses shook his head slowly. "I don't know about that. I've never been renowned for my bravery."
Jamie hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. "You came all the way to this country from Poland and then set out across it just because that's what your faith told you to do, didn't you?"
"Well, yes," Moses admitted. "But that's my calling, I guess you'd say."
"You joined up with a wagon train full of folks different from you, knowing that some of 'em wouldn't like you, but you're as friendly as you can be toward them and do everything you can to help out."
Moses spread his hands. "What can I say, I was raised to get along with people. And to be practical. I have to get to Oregon somehow, and this seemed like the quickest way."
Jamie sat on the tailgate. "Most of my spiritual beliefs, if you can call 'em that, come from the Indians. They figure we all had to get here somehow, and that somebody put us here. Some of them call him Man Above, some call him the Great Spirit. They have other names for the creator, too. But no matter what they call him, there's always somebody bigger than us, somebody who looks out for us and expects us to be the best folks we can."
"Nothing in my faith would disagree with that," Moses said.
Jamie nodded. "That's what I'm saying. Bradford's got it in his head that he's got all the answers. Me?" The big man chuckled. "I don't reckon I even know all the questions yet. Probably won't while I'm still on this earth. But what I do know is that you'll do to ride the river with, Moses Danzig."
"Ride the river? I'm afraid I don't understand."
Jamie lifted a hand to say good night, and as he turned away he told Moses, "By the time we get where we're going, you'll have figured it out."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 37
|
The months she had spent with the theatrical troupe had gotten Savannah in the habit of going to bed late and sleeping late in the morning. She'd had to get over that in a hurry, and after a couple days of being extremely groggy most of the day after being rousted out of her bedroll early, she was starting to get used to the schedule set by Mr. MacCallister.
In fact, she awoke this morning even before he came around to make sure everyone was up and about, getting ready for the day's journey. The pattering of rain on the wagon's canvas cover may have had something to do with that. It was a soothing sound, but at the same time it was different enough to make Savannah want to get up and see how the weather was.
Mr. and Mrs. Bingham slept in an actual bunk built into the side of the wagon, while Savannah rolled up in blankets next to the tailgate. She lifted her head and pushed the canvas flap aside to peer out, only to discover that she couldn't see anything. The thick cloud cover made the predawn hours even darker than usual.
Savannah wasn't sure what time it was, but she suspected it was late enough that Mr. MacCallister would be coming around soon. She pushed the blankets aside, sat up, and dug around in the bag she had brought with her until she found her rain slicker. The idea of going out in the rain to attend to her personal needs didn't appeal to her, but she didn't have any choice.
She pulled the slicker on and climbed out of the wagon, dropping easily to the ground. It wasn't very muddy yet, which told her the rain hadn't been falling for long. It was just a drizzle at the moment, not much more than a fine mist.
Savannah thought she might try to go ahead and rig a cover of some sort so that she could get a fire started using chunks of wood from the supply that the Binghams carried in a rope sling underneath the wagon's body.
That would wait until she had taken care of her other chores. She took a couple of steps away from the wagon...
The arm that came out of the darkness wrapped around her with brutal, startling force, jerking her off her feet. She opened her mouth to scream, but before any sound could come out, a big, powerful hand clamped across her mouth and silenced any cry.
During the night a steady rain began to fall. Jamie wasn't surprised. So far the weather had been cool and clear, almost perfect for traveling. He had known that such a run of good luck couldn't last.
One thing he and the other scouts would have to keep an eye out for was mud. Heavy wagons had a tendency to bog down on muddy ground. Jamie hoped that they could put some miles behind them as long as the rain wasn't falling too hard. With a slow drizzle, it would take a while before the ground softened enough to cause a problem.
"Let's go, let's go!" He called as he strode through the camp, his powerful voice carrying from one side of the circle to the other. "We need to get a move on!"
He heard a thud from the direction of one of the wagons, then his keen ears picked up what sounded like a scuffle. As he swung in that direction his eyes narrowed. The thick overcast made it difficult to see, and so did the water dripping off the brim of his hat.
He was able to make out several figures near the back of one of the wagons, however, and the way they lurched back and forth told him that a struggle was going on.
He broke into a run toward the wagon. He didn't shout or announce in any other fashion that he was on his way, but loped across the ground in near-silence, a runaway locomotive of a man clad in buckskins.
As he came closer, he could tell that one of the struggling figures wore a dress, and he had a pretty good idea who the woman was. She had to be Savannah McCoy. A tall, male shape had his arms around her, and two more men hovered nearby, ready to grab her if she managed to get away.
Jamie targeted one of those other two men first, clubbing his fists together and swinging them with all the power of his brawny arms and shoulders and his own momentum. They smashed into the back of the unsuspecting man's neck with the force of a sledgehammer, causing him to drop like a stone.
The other man yelled in alarm and whirled toward Jamie. The goal of sneaking into the wagon camp during the predawn hours when everybody was asleep, grabbing Savannah, and getting out again without being detected was ruined, so there was no longer any need for stealth. A shot roared as flame gouted from the muzzle of a gun, almost singeing Jamie's face.
Before the intruder could fire again, the fingers of Jamie's left hand closed around the wrist of the man's gun hand. He thrust that arm skyward and gave the wrist such a powerful wrench that bones snapped like kindling.
The man started to scream in pain, but Jamie put an abrupt stop to that with a pile-driver punch that broke more bones in the man's face and knocked him out cold. When Jamie let go of him, the man flopped to the ground.
The hombre who had hold of Savannah swept her up bodily, threw her over his shoulder like she was a sack of grain, and took off running through the cold mist.
Jamie couldn't risk a shot with Savannah in the man's grasp, so all he could do was give chase. The man he was pursuing was tall, and his long legs covered the ground quickly. Jamie lost sight of him in the gloom, then spotted him again.
He spotted something else, too: tall, bulky shapes that could only be picketed horses. He grimaced. Sundown and the other saddle mounts were back at the camp. If the kidnapper managed to get on one of those horses with Savannah, he could gallop away into the darkness before Jamie could return to the camp and grab a mount of his own.
Jamie wasn't built for running, and he wasn't as young as he used to be, but he poured on as much speed as he could and saw that he was closing the gap. Savannah was still struggling, and that threw her captor off his stride.
When Jamie judged that he was close enough, he left his feet in a diving tackle that caught the man around the knees. Savannah yelped as the man fell and she went sailing through the air. Jamie hoped she would be all right when she landed, but he didn't have time to check on her. He had his hands full with the man he had just brought down.
The kidnapper rolled over and launched a kick that caught Jamie on the left shoulder. It was powerful enough to make the big frontiersman's arm go numb.
Jamie grimaced but didn't make a sound. When the man tried to kick him again, Jamie caught hold of the man's foot with his right hand and heaved, rolling the man over onto his belly. Jamie scrambled after him, intending to pin the man down with a knee in the small of his back.
His opponent twisted aside and shot a fist upward in a blow that landed on Jamie's jaw, a powerful punch that threw Jamie to one side.
It had been a good long while since he had faced anybody who was almost his equal in size and strength. In a way, he almost looked forward to continuing the battle, he thought as he slapped a hand against the muddy ground and pushed himself up.
The two men came to their feet at practically the same instant, about ten feet apart. Jamie glanced around to see if he could locate Savannah, but it was still too dark. He saw a fuzzy, wavering glow coming through the rain from the direction of the wagon train, though. The shot that had been fired had roused the immigrants and somebody had lit a lantern. He hoped Savannah was already on her way back to them, seeking help.
Then he no longer had time to worry about anything because the other man charged him, malletlike fists swinging dangerously at the end of long, powerful arms.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 38
|
They were like two bulls coming together. Jamie blocked the man's first punch, but the second got through and crashed against his sternum, rocking him back a step. Jamie planted a foot on the ground and counterpunched, twisting at the hips as he threw a right that landed cleanly on the man's jaw.
For a long moment, they stood there toe-to-toe, slugging away at each other. Jamie was hammering away at his opponent, doing plenty of damage. His massive, heavily muscled form was able to absorb a great deal of punishment, but he knew he couldn't keep it up forever.
The man suddenly changed tactics, feinting and then lunging forward to catch Jamie in a bear hug.
The collision knocked both men off their feet again. They rolled over and over on the wet ground, grappling and wrestling and trying to get the upper hand. The would-be kidnapper managed to slide his arm around Jamie's neck from behind, and suddenly it clamped down across the big frontiersman's throat like an iron bar, cutting off his air.
Jamie drove an elbow back into the man's belly, causing him to grunt in pain and expel a big gust of foul-smelling breath. That loosened the grip on Jamie's neck just enough for him to twist halfway around and wedge his elbow under the man's chin. He levered the man's head back and broke free completely.
The separation lasted only a second before they were wrapped around each other again, battling for any advantage. Jamie grabbed the man's hair, hunched his shoulders, and head-butted the man in the face.
He sensed the tide swinging in his direction, but at that moment something smashed against the side of his head with stunning force. The dark predawn lit up with jagged red lightning bolts he knew were only inside his head.
In the few seconds that his muscles refused to obey his brain's commands, the man shoved him away. Jamie knew there was a good chance the intruder had hit him with a gun, which meant the next thing might be a shot. He forced himself to move, galvanizing his muscles through sheer force of will and rolling across the ground.
A revolver went off with a roar like thunder. Jamie saw the muzzle flash, dragged out his right-hand .44, and returned the fire. With rain in his eyes and his head still spinning from the clout he had taken, he couldn't tell if he hit anything.
The next moment he heard hoofbeats pounding against the ground and knew his shot hadn't found its target. The intruder had gotten on one of the horses and was fleeing. Jamie lifted the Colt and triggered three more shots in the direction of the sound, but he knew it would be sheer luck if he hit the man.
As he climbed to his feet, he saw lights from the wagon train bobbing closer. People were coming to see what was going on. They were probably pretty spooked, so to keep them from getting trigger-happy, Jamie called, "Hold your fire! It's MacCallister!"
Bodie Cantrell was in the lead when the group of armed men hurried up to Jamie. "Mr. MacCallister! Are you all right?"
Jamie was covered with mud and he knew that by the next day he would be stiff and sore from the fight. "I'm fine. What about Savannah?"
"She's all right," Bodie said. "She ran back to the wagons and told us you were out here fighting with the man who tried to carry her off. Where is he?"
"Gone," Jamie replied curtly. "He got on a horse and lit a shuck before I could stop him. At least we've got the two I left back in camp."
Bodie shook his head. His face was etched with grim lines in the lantern light. "There's only one man in camp, and he's dead. His neck is broken."
Jamie grunted. Obviously, the man he'd hit in the back of the neck with his clubbed fists had been injured worse than he thought. It wasn't the first time he had killed a man with his bare hands, but it had been a while since that happened. "There was another one. I'm pretty sure I broke his wrist. May have broken his nose or a cheekbone, too. He was out cold when I left him."
"He must have come to, crawled off in the dark, and slipped away," Bodie said. "As soon as it gets light enough, we can search for him—"
Jamie waved away that suggestion. "We've got better things to do. As bad as he's hurt, he's not going to be interested in causing any more trouble for us. He'll probably try to find one of the horses he and his friends brought with them and head on back to Kansas City."
And if the man wasn't able to catch one of the horses, he'd probably die out there, injured as he was. Jamie wasn't going to waste any time worrying about a no-good kidnapper, though.
Bodie said, "They had to be some of Kane's men. They didn't pick Savannah at random to go after."
"I reckon you're right about that. Help me find my hat."
It was Hector Gilworth who found Jamie's hat in the mud where it had fallen off and gotten trampled on during the battle. "Looks like it's in pretty bad shape," he said as he handed it to Jamie.
"The rain'll wash the mud off," Jamie said as he punched it back into shape. "This old hat's been through almost as much as I have. It'll be all right."
They trooped back to the wagons. Jamie told Hector and Jess to make sure everybody was awake and preparing for the day's journey, then he went with Bodie to the Binghams' wagon. He wanted to talk to Savannah and see for himself that she was really all right.
A lantern was burning inside the wagon, its yellow glow coming through the gaps around the canvas flaps in front and back. Bodie stepped up to the tailgate. "Savannah?"
Leticia Bingham pulled the flap aside. "She's resting. What do you want, Mr. Cantrell?"
"Mr. MacCallister wants to talk to her."
Savannah might have been resting, but she wasn't sleeping. She heard what Bodie said and spoke up from behind the older woman. "It's all right, Mrs. Bingham. I need to speak to Mr. MacCallister, too."
"All right, dear, but you've been through an ordeal. You should take it easy for a little while."
Mrs. Bingham moved back, and Savannah put her head in the opening at the rear of the wagon. "Mr. MacCallister, are you all right?" she asked anxiously. "I heard some shots..."
"Nothing to worry about," Jamie told her. "Those fellas are long gone and won't be bothering you again."
"You killed them?" Her voice was hushed.
"Well... only one of 'em." But it wasn't from lack of trying, Jamie thought. He would have gladly sent all three of the varmints packing across the divide. "The other two got away, but I don't think they'll be coming back."
"You can't be sure of that."
"Not much in this life is certain. Did you get a good look at any of them?"
Savannah shook her head. "No. One of them grabbed me from behind. The big one who carried me off. I never even saw him. I didn't even have a chance to fight. But I did manage to kick the wagon tongue. I hoped that would make enough noise to attract someone's attention."
"So that's what I heard," Jamie said. "That was fast thinking on your part. If you hadn't done that, they might've been able to drag you off without anybody noticing."
A shudder went through Savannah at the thought. "You said a couple of them got away. You know what's going to happen now, don't you, Mr. MacCallister? Now they're sure that I'm traveling with the wagon train. They'll go back to Gideon Kane and tell him, and since this attempt to kidnap me failed, he'll try something else. Something bigger and more dangerous."
"Let him try," Bodie said. "We'll be ready for him."
"That's right," Jamie agreed. But at the same time he was thinking that Savannah was right. Kane would send a larger group next time, and chances were that they wouldn't be worried about stealth. He would hire gunmen, and their goal would be to catch up to the wagon train and take Savannah away by force.
If that happened—when that happened, Jamie amended because every instinct in his body told him that it would—the rest of the pilgrims would be in danger as well.
It was too bad he hadn't taken the time to hunt up Gideon Kane while they were still in Kansas. He could have gone ahead and put a bullet in the varmint then and there.
Sometimes the simplest ways were the best.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 39
|
The rain continued as the wagon train rolled northwestward along the Blue River that morning. The sky was such a flat, leaden gray it seemed like the immigrants traveled in a depressing state of perpetual twilight.
The warmth of the sun was nowhere to be found. A dank cold had settled over the landscape, the sort of weather that chilled a person to the bone.
Jamie felt it in his bones, that was for sure. He felt every one of his more than sixty years of life.
But he didn't let that stop him from doing the job that needed to be done. He was out ahead of the wagon train with Hector Gilworth riding beside him as they watched out for muddy areas that the wagons needed to avoid.
The rain grew harder at midday, turning into a slashing downpour that quickly formed large puddles on the already wet ground. Jamie grimaced under the dripping brim of his hat as mud began to suck at Sundown's hooves. "All right," he told Hector. "We might as well turn around and tell the wagons to stop for the day before they get bogged down. If some of those wheels sink down far enough in the mud, it might take days to get them back out again."
When they arrived at the lead wagon and told Captain Hendricks of the decision, the leader of the immigrants wasn't happy. "We haven't covered much distance today," he complained. "Don't you think we can push on just a little farther, Mr. MacCallister?"
"No, I don't," Jamie replied bluntly. "You'll be risking an even longer delay if you do. It'll be better to stay here, hope the rain stops tonight, and that the sun will come out tomorrow and dry the ground some. It hasn't been a very rainy autumn so far, so the dirt ought to suck up most of the water pretty fast once it gets a chance."
Hendricks heaved a sigh and nodded. "Very well. Tell everyone to go ahead and make camp. We're not going to be able to build fires in this weather, though."
"It'll be a cold camp," Jamie agreed. If folks were smart, they would gnaw a little jerky, crawl into their blankets, huddle together for warmth, and wait it out.
Earlier, he had told Bodie to drop back a ways behind the wagon train and watch for pursuers. It was possible the men who had sneaked into the camp early that morning to kidnap Savannah had been part of a larger force. If that was the case, they might make another attempt, and Jamie wanted some warning if that was going to happen.
The other scouts had seen that the wagons were stopped and came on in. Jamie left them to keep an eye on things while he rode back to meet Bodie. He had gone about half a mile before he saw the gray figure plodding toward him on horseback, shrouded in the curtains of rain.
Jamie reined in and waited for Bodie to come to him. He slipped a hand under the yellow slicker he wore and tried to dry it on his damp buckskins. He didn't have much luck with that, but it was better than nothing.
Then he wrapped that hand around the butt of one of his .44s, just in case it wasn't Bodie Cantrell coming toward him through the downpour.
A few moments later Jamie relaxed as Bodie hailed him. He took his hand off the gun.
"Any sign of anybody coming after us?" Jamie asked as Bodie rode up to him.
Bodie sounded as wet and miserable as he looked. "I didn't see anything but this blasted rain. Ulysses S. Grant could be right behind us with the Army of the Potomac, and I wouldn't know it!"
Jamie chuckled. "I think old Useless S. Grant has his hands full right now being president and dealing with that bank panic back east I heard about. He's too busy to be chasing us, even if he had any reason to."
"Maybe so, but I still say there could be an army back there. You couldn't prove it by me one way or the other."
"We'll figure there's not," Jamie said. "Come on. I'd say you can go get warm, but I'm afraid that may be an impossible chore under these conditions."
"How long do you think it's going to rain?" Bodie asked as they rode side by side toward the wagons.
"Hard to say. I've seen it settle in and rain like this for days. Maybe even as long as a week. Or it could stop tonight. You don't ever know."
"This is why you warned everybody it might be hard to reach Montana by Christmas."
"One reason," Jamie said. "There are still plenty of other things that can go wrong, too."
When they arrived at the camp, Jamie saw that the wagons had been formed into a circle, as usual, and the men were unhitching their teams. As they passed the Bingham wagon, Savannah stuck her head out the back. "Why don't you two come in here and get out of the rain? It's miserable out there!"
"I'll be back as soon as I tend to my horse," Bodie promised. "How about you, Mr. MacCallister?"
"I'm going to scout around for a while longer," Jamie said. "Then I reckon I'll climb in with Moses, since he's got that wagon to himself." He touched a finger to the broad brim of his hat. "But I appreciate the invitation, Miss McCoy."
Jamie made a big circuit around the camp on Sundown. Satisfied that there were no imminent threats, he rode to Moses Danzig's wagon, tied Sundown's reins to the vehicle, and unsaddled the big stallion. The horses and the other animals were going to be even more wet, cold, and uncomfortable than the humans, but there was nothing that could be done about that.
Hardships were part of life on the frontier. The sooner the immigrants knew and understood that, the better.
Jamie rapped his knuckles on the tailgate and climbed over it into the wagon.
Moses welcomed him. "Come in, Mr. MacCallister. I can't offer much in the way of hospitality other than a canvas roof over your head."
"Right now I'll take it." Jamie stripped off his slicker and hung it over the tailgate.
Moses sat on a crate beside a candle burning on top of a keg and Jamie perched on a second crate. He handed an airtight to Jamie, who opened it with his Bowie knife. Moses then used the candle flame to heat up the can of beans, although it wasn't very effective for that chore.
"All the comforts of home," Moses said with awry grin. "What do you think, Jamie? Is it going to rain for forty days and forty nights, like in the Old Testament?"
"It better not. If it does, this prairie will get so muddy it's liable to swallow up the wagons whole."
As it turned out, they didn't have to worry about that. The rain stopped during the night. In the wee hours, Jamie woke up enough to be aware that he no longer heard it hitting the canvas cover, then he dozed off again. When he woke up at his usual time, long before dawn, and climbed out the back of the wagon, he tilted his head to look up at the sky.
Stars glittered against the ebony backdrop. The overcast had broken and the clouds had moved on, which meant the sun would be shining later.
The wagons wouldn't be going anywhere for a while, though. The softness of the muddy ground under Jamie's boots told him that. As long as the vehicles stayed put, they would be all right, but if they tried to move their iron-tired wheels would sink deeply into the earth.
There wouldn't be any early start that day.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 40
|
Once the sky cleared, the temperature had dropped during the night. Some of the puddles had thin skims of ice on them. But once the sun was up, the temperature began to rise and by noon the day was fairly pleasant.
The ground was still too wet for the wagons to risk moving. Out on the plains, there wasn't much chance for rainfall to run off. Once it fell, it had to soak into the ground, which took time.
Jamie conferred with Lamar Hendricks. "Let's give it until tomorrow. I hate to waste a day, but we don't want to do anything that'll cost us even more time in the long run."
With a gloomy expression on his face, Hendricks nodded in agreement. "I trust your judgment, Mr. MacCallister. I have a feeling that if Jeb Ralston were still our wagon master, we'd be good and stuck here."
"You might be right about that."
Since he had plenty of time to kill, Jamie took Hector and Jess and rode out to make another big scouting circuit. He would have taken Bodie with him, but he was still hanging around the Bingham wagon so Jamie decided it would be better to leave him where he was. Jamie didn't expect any more trouble from Kane's men right away, but if anything came up, he knew he could count on Bodie to protect Savannah, even if it cost him his own life.
Bodie was head over heels in love with that girl.
Jamie and his two companions were riding about a mile west of the wagon train when Hector suddenly said, "Look over there, Mr. MacCallister. Is that what I think it is?"
Hector was smart enough not to lift his arm and point. Instead he indicated the direction he was looking with a nod of his bearded chin.
Jamie didn't have to turn his head to look. He had spotted the Indian pacing them a good five minutes earlier. The lone warrior was riding along the top of a slight rise about a quarter mile away.
"Pawnee, if I had to guess," Jamie said quietly. "He's just taking a gander at us."
"What else can he do?" Jess asked. "There's one of him and three of us."
"There's only one of him that we can see," Jamie pointed out. "Could be fifty more just like him right on the other side of that rise. Maybe more than that."
Hector and Jess got nervous expressions on their faces, and Jamie knew they were thinking about what he had just said.
"He wants us to see him," Jamie went on, "otherwise we wouldn't know he was there. That's his way of making sure we know he's not afraid of us."
"I'm not sure I can say the same thing," Jess admitted. "Redskins make me downright antsy."
"He's not looking for trouble right now. He's just curious."
"What about later?" Hector asked. "He could come back with a bunch of his friends, and they could be looking for trouble."
"We'll just have to wait and see about that," Jamie said.
After a few minutes, the distant rider peeled away and disappeared from sight. His absence didn't seem to make Hector and Jess relax. If anything, they were more watchful than they had been earlier.
The three scouts rode back to the wagon train in the late afternoon.
Jamie told Hector and Jess, "There's no point in saying anything about what we saw today. People would worry about it and might get all worked up for no good reason. I'll tell Cap'n Hendricks, and we'll let it go at that for right now."
Hector and Jess nodded in understanding.
Captain Hendricks, on the other hand, didn't take the news as well. When Jamie told him about seeing the Indian, he became agitated. "We have to warn everyone on the train."
"So they can do what?" Jamie asked. "Keep their eyes open? They're already doing that if they've got any sense, and anyway, that's what the scouts and I are for, to serve as the eyes and ears of this wagon train. You don't want a bunch of inexperienced pilgrims on edge and ready to start blasting away at anything that moves. That's how innocent folks wind up getting shot."
Hendricks paced back and forth on the still-muddy ground next to his wagon as they talked. "I suppose you're right. You're a lot more experienced at this sort of thing than I am. But I was hoping we could make it through to Montana without encountering any savages."
"We might yet," Jamie said, although he knew how unlikely that was.
"What about the ground?" Hendricks asked. "Do you think it'll be dry enough tomorrow that we can get started again and only lose one day?"
"Maybe. As long as it doesn't start raining again tonight."
Luck held. The weather remained clear, cold, and dry overnight, and the next morning Jamie swung up into Sundown's saddle and rode around the camp, checking the ground. He had waited until the sun was up so he could take a good look at the landscape, and he was satisfied with what he saw.
"We'll have to avoid any low spots that might be muddier," he reported to Hendricks, "but I think if we're careful we can get these wagons rolling again."
Hendricks heaved a sigh of relief. "I'll pass the word. We'll be ready to leave as soon as possible."
Spirits were higher as the immigrants prepared to break camp. They had been able to build fires, cook food, and boil coffee, and even though the air was still cold, not having rain pouring down put people in a better mood. They worked enthusiastically as they got the wagons ready to roll again.
Soon the line of canvas-covered vehicles stretched across the prairie again, rolling slowly to the northwest. Jamie sent out the scouts and took the point himself. Bodie Cantrell rode with him.
"The river's up," Jamie mused after a while. He nodded toward the line of scrubby, bare-limbed trees that marked the course of the stream, about half a mile west of the wagon train's route. "I can hear it."
"Is that a problem?" Bodie asked.
"Not necessarily. We won't be crossing it for a good while yet, so it'll have time to go down. But the fact that it's running like it is means that the smaller streams feeding into it are up, too, and we might come upon one of them and need to get across it."
Jamie's words proved to be prophetic. That afternoon, he and Bodie came to a creek that cut directly across the path of the wagon train. They reined in to study the fast-flowing stream, which was about sixty feet wide, filling the depression through which it ran.
"Normally that creek wouldn't be more than eight or ten feet wide and maybe a foot deep," Jamie said.
"How deep is it now?" Bodie asked.
"Hard to say. Four or five feet, more than likely."
"Will we have to wait for it to go down?"
Jamie rubbed his grizzled jaw as he frowned in thought. "That might be the smartest thing to do, but to tell you the truth, I'd rather keep moving."
He decided to tell Bodie what he and Hector and Jess had seen the day before. "I've got a hunch there's a band of Pawnee in the area, and I'd just as soon move on out, in case they consider this their hunting ground and figure we're interlopers."
"You think they'll attack us?"
"They'll be less likely to if they can see that we don't intend to stay and cause them any trouble."
Bodie looked around. "You reckon they're watching us now?"
"Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Come on. Let's see if we can swim our horses across that creek. If we can, the wagons ought to be able to make it."
Sundown and Bodie's horse swam across the creek without any trouble. Jamie could tell that the water was deep enough to float the wagons. The current was fast, but the oxen and mules would be able to handle it.
The wagons were catching up, and Jamie and Bodie rode back to tell Captain Hendricks what lay ahead. Then Jamie went along the line of wagons, explaining to the immigrants how they would ford the creek.
"We'll take the women and children across on horseback," Jamie told his scouts when he had gathered them around him. "That'll be less weight for the wagons, and it'll be safer for them, too. I think the wagons can make it without any problems, but if any of them get into trouble, I don't want a bunch of kids who maybe can't swim getting dumped in the creek."
Jake grinned at Bodie. "I bet I know which of the ladies you'll be ferryin' across, Bodie."
"I'll do whatever I'm told," Bodie said stiffly.
Jamie jerked a thumb toward the Bingham wagon. "Go ahead and get Miss McCoy, Bodie. Nobody's going to stop you."
Bodie smiled somewhat sheepishly and turned his horse to fetch Savannah.
Lamar Hendricks had his wagon poised at the edge of the stream. As Jamie moved his horse up alongside the vehicle, Hendricks said, "I'm ready to give this a try, Mr. MacCallister."
"Let the team do the work for you," Jamie told him. "Just keep 'em moving as steady and straight across as you can. The current will push you downstream some, but not enough to worry about."
Hendricks nodded. He used the whip on the rumps of the stolid oxen and got them moving. They plodded forward into the creek, obviously a little reluctant to fight the current, but as it took hold of them they began to swim and pulled the wagon into the deeper water. Hendricks perched on the seat looking nervous as the vehicle began to float.
Sundown, with Jamie in the saddle, swam alongside the wagon. Jamie had his lasso ready to throw if the wagon happened to capsize. He figured he could drop a loop over Hendricks and haul him out if necessary.
Hendricks made it to the other side of the rain-swollen stream without any problems. The wagon rolled up the shallow bank and came to a stop as he hauled back on the team's reins. He looked over at Jamie and sleeved sweat off his face, even though the day was still chilly. "I never did like boats, and that's what it felt like I was on when the wagon started floating. I prefer solid ground."
"You did fine," Jamie told him with a grin. He turned his horse, took off his hat, and waved it over his head to signal the folks waiting on the other side. "Come on over, one wagon at a time!"
The crossing proceeded without incident for an hour, with the men guiding the floating wagons across while the scouts ferried the women and children on horseback.
Then one of the women refused to leave her husband to take their wagon across. Hector swam his horse across the flooded creek to report on the situation to Jamie and Hendricks.
"The lady's name is Hamilton," Hector said after he passed along the news. "She's being mighty stubborn about it."
"That's Alice Hamilton," Hendricks said. "She and her husband R.G. were married just a couple days before we left Kansas City."
Jamie nodded. "I remember. You folks were celebrating the wedding the night I met you."
"That's right. I suppose Alice doesn't want to leave R.G.'s side because they're newlyweds."
Hector looked uncomfortable as he said, "I can take her off the wagon seat and bring her on horseback whether she wants to come or not, but I don't know how her husband will feel about that, Jamie."
"I don't reckon we want to go that far. Tell her she can stay with the wagon, but it's her choice."
Hector nodded, wheeled his horse, and urged the animal back into the water.
The Hamilton wagon was the second in line. Jamie watched as Hector conveyed the message to the young, recently married couple. Alice Hamilton clutched her husband's arm, clearly not intending to leave his side. She couldn't weigh very much, Jamie thought, so it shouldn't really make any difference whether she rode across on the wagon.
A short time later, R.G. Hamilton urged his team of mules into the creek. They swam strongly toward the center of the stream.
The wagon hadn't reached the mid-point, when Jamie noticed that something was wrong. It was riding lower in the water than the others, and he felt a surge of alarm when he saw that it was starting to tilt. The cracks between the boards in these vehicles were supposed to be sealed with pitch to keep water out, but it was possible the Hamilton wagon had sprung a leak.
Jamie cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, "Hector!" When the burly scout turned to look at him, Jamie waved a hand toward the wagon, urgently gesturing for Hector to get out there and see what he could do to help. As soon as he had done that, Jamie heeled Sundown into motion and entered the creek from the north side of the stream.
R.G. could feel the wagon tipping underneath him. So could his wife, who grabbed his arm even harder. He lashed the mules in an attempt to get them to go faster, so the wagon might get across the creek before it capsized, but it was taking on water too quickly for that.
Alice screamed as the wagon suddenly rolled to the side. The water caught the canvas cover and pulled it over. Both Hamiltons were thrown off the wagon seat and disappeared into the muddy, fast-moving water.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 41
|
Jamie jabbed his heels into Sundown's flanks and sent the big stallion churning through the creek toward the overturned wagon. Hector was coming from the other direction. So were Bodie and Jake, having heard shouts of alarm from some of the immigrants when the Hamilton wagon rolled over.
Jamie's keen eyes searched the water for any sign of R.G. or Alice popping back to the surface. Even flooded, the creek wasn't really that deep, but it was deep enough for a person to drown in it, especially if he or she was disoriented or had hit their head and was stunned.
Alice Hamilton had bright red hair, so she was easy to spot when she broke the surface. The current was carrying her swiftly downstream. Jamie angled after her.
With Sundown's powerful legs stroking through the water, Jamie caught up with the young woman in a matter of moments. He leaned down from the saddle and reached for her as she flailed wildly in panic.
His hand wrapped around her wrist and he hauled upward, lifting her from the stream almost effortlessly as if she had been a child's toy. Hysterical with fear, she grabbed him, winding her arms around his neck and hanging on in sheer desperation.
"Take it easy," Jamie told her. "You're all right, Miz Hamilton. Just settle down. I'll take you to shore."
His firm, steady voice seemed to penetrate her shocked brain. She still clung to him, but not quite as urgently. She began to shiver from being dunked in the cold water.
Jamie knew she would need to get out of the wet clothes as soon as possible. Some of the women could wrap her in blankets and set her down next to a big fire. That would thaw her out in a hurry.
"R.G.," she said. "Where's R.G.?"
Jamie glanced over his shoulder as he urged Sundown toward the northern bank. Several of the scouts were looking around, but it appeared they hadn't found R.G. Hamilton yet.
"Don't worry, some of the other fellas are helping him." Jamie kept her turned so she couldn't see the search going on in the middle of the flooded stream. It wouldn't do any good to worry the young woman when her husband might come thrashing out of the creek at any moment.
Leticia Bingham and Savannah were waiting on the bank when Jamie got there, along with Alice's mother, who was almost as distraught as her daughter. Leticia reached up. "Let us have her, Mr. MacCallister. We'll take care of her."
"That's exactly what I planned to do, ladies," Jamie said as he gently lowered Alice into their waiting hands. As the women hustled her away, he turned his horse and plunged back into the flooded creek. "Any luck?" he called to the scouts as he swam Sundown out to join them.
Bodie shook his head. "There's no sign of him so far, Mr. MacCallister. He's got to be around here somewhere, though."
Jamie had a bad feeling. If R.G. had been knocked unconscious when he fell from the wagon, he could have drowned in as little as a minute or two. Several minutes had passed since the accident, and the situation was beginning to look bleak.
"Hey, over here!"
The shout came from Jess Neville. He was about fifty yards downstream, where the roots of one of the scrubby trees on the bank extended out into the water. Something was caught in those roots. Grim lines formed on Jamie's rugged, weathered face.
The men on horseback headed in that direction. So did some of the immigrants on the northern bank who had heard Jess's shout. They all got there about the same time.
As soon as Jamie saw R.G. Hamilton's pale face and the wide, sightlessly staring eyes, he knew the young man was dead. The water had washed away the blood, but a large gash was still visible on his forehead. Obviously he had struck it on something when he fell, just as Jamie feared, and that had doomed him.
Jamie didn't think he had said more than a dozen words to the young man during the journey, but he felt sorry for what had happened, anyway.
He had known before they ever left Kansas City that not everyone in the wagon train would make it safely to Montana. Trouble along the way was inevitable, and so were losses.
But Hamilton was the first to die, and that was painful.
Jess Neville looked at Jamie. "What do we do, Mr. MacCallister?"
"Work him out of those roots," Jamie said flatly. "Hector, give him a hand." To the other scouts, he added, "The rest of you get back to work. We've still got wagons to bring safely across this creek."
One of the people who had come running along the bank, the wagon train captain looked pointedly at Jamie. "We'll get started digging a grave. Reverend Bradford can conduct the service. He's the one who performed the wedding."
It was almost dark before the last of the wagons rolled out of the water and onto the northern bank. Some of the time had been spent hooking up extra teams to the Hamilton wagon and dragging it out of the creek. The men set it upright and examined it for the leak that had caused the tragedy and any other damage. All the goods inside the vehicle had been soaked, of course. Some of them were salvageable, and those that weren't would be discarded and done without.
Jamie assumed that Alice Hamilton would continue the journey to Montana Territory along with her parents and her two younger brothers. There was really nothing else she could do. They couldn't leave her out in the middle of nowhere by herself.
The burial service took place by torchlight that evening. Alice, who had started whimpering and moaning and wailing when she was told of her husband's death, hadn't stopped. Her mother and several of the women, including Savannah, tried to comfort her as best they could, but she was inconsolable in her grief.
Reverend Bradford droned on endlessly. Jamie tried to be respectful as he stood with the others, his hat in one hand and his head bowed, but he would have rather been almost anywhere else.
When the service was finally over, the women led a weeping Alice away while several of the men began filling in the muddy grave where R.G. Hamilton's blanket-shrouded body lay. Somebody had fashioned a marker to put up.
It was a nice gesture, Jamie supposed, but ultimately meaningless. The elements would take that marker in a matter of months. It would fall and rot into the ground as if it had never been there. The mounded dirt would flatten out. And come spring, grass would poke up through that dirt, maybe a few wildflowers. By the next summer, no one would be able to tell there was a grave there.
Maybe that was the way it ought to be. Man was on earth and then he moved on, sometimes after a long, full life, sometimes before it seemed like his days ought to be up. The answers to such things were beyond mortals, mused Jamie. They belonged only to the Man Above.
Bodie came up to Jamie as the immigrants scattered from the grave site and went about their business. "What are we going to do now, Mr. MacCallister?"
"You mean after we try to get some sleep?"
"Yeah."
"Tomorrow morning, when there's enough light to see, these wagons are rolling north toward Montana again. What did you think we'd do, turn around and go back just because one hombre's bad luck caught up to him?"
"No, but—"
"This is the first grave we've had to dig since we left," Jamie said. "I can promise you, it won't be the last."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 42
|
Gideon Kane sipped from the glass of champagne and watched the woman cross the room toward him.
Her walk was a thing of sinuous grace. Her blue eyes were full of temptation, and her mane of blond hair draped over her bare shoulders, dipping toward the creamy swells of her breasts exposed by the scandalously low neckline of the gown she wore. She could get away with such an outfit because her family was rich. Her name was Deirdre Burton.
Kane had taken her to his bed a couple times, and she had assumed that meant they would get married, creating a marital and a business relationship between their families. He had other ideas, however. He had quickly become bored with her that first night and given her another tumble later on just to make sure it hadn't been just an off night for him.
That experience only confirmed his first impression. The thought of spending the rest of his life with someone as bland and complacent as Deirdre Burton held no appeal for him at all. Good Lord, he told himself when he considered the idea, he'd have to take a new mistress every few weeks just to keep from dying of boredom.
Savannah McCoy, now, she would be a different story, Kane thought as he took another drink of his champagne. Someone as fiery as she could keep him interested.
She was an actress, after all. From one night to the next, she could be anyone he wanted her to be....
"You give the best parties, Gideon," Deirdre said as she came up to him. Musicians played softly on the other side of the big ballroom. "I'd love to dance with you."
"Perhaps later," he told her. "I have a lot on my mind right now. Business matters."
He had expected Eli Harrison to be back with Savannah by now. It had been more than a week since the wagon train had left Kansas City.
Deirdre leaned closer to him and said in a throaty voice she thought was seductive, "I can take your mind off of business if you'd like, Gideon. I guarantee, you won't be thinking of anything except—"
He stopped her by pushing the half-empty glass of champagne into her hand. He had spotted Jenkins coming toward him, and he could tell by the expression on the butler's face that something had happened.
"Excuse me," he said curtly.
She had taken the glass instinctively and stood there with a surprised expression on her face. That look turned angry as he pushed past her and walked away, but he ignored it.
"What is it?" he asked quietly as he and Jenkins met in the crowd of well-dressed men and women—Kansas City's elite—filling the ballroom.
"Mr. Harrison is back," Jenkins said equally quietly.
Kane's pulse surged as he caught his breath. If Harrison had returned, that meant— He quickly asked, "Is she with him?"
With a doleful look on his face, Jenkins shook his head.
The anticipation Kane had felt was replaced abruptly with fury. "Where is he?"
"In the study."
Kane stepped past the butler without another word. Several of his guests smiled and spoke to him as he left the ballroom, but he paid no attention to them. His rudeness might cause a minor scandal among the city's upper crust, but he didn't give a damn.
Harrison had a haggard look on his ugly face when Kane came into the room. His appearance testified that he had spent several long, hard days in the saddle.
Kane closed the door hard behind him and snapped, "What happened?"
"We trailed the wagon train for a while, like you said for us to do. The girl's there with those immigrants. We saw her. Hell, I had my hands on her."
"But you let her get away?" Kane couldn't believe it.
"MacCallister," Harrison spat out. "He stuck his nose in. The man's as big as a blasted grizzly bear, and even faster than that. We tangled, and I did good just to get away from him. The fellas I had with me weren't so lucky."
"If you didn't get Miss McCoy, it doesn't matter if you got away from him," Kane said coldly. "You failed."
"This time." Harrison's right hand clenched into a huge fist. "I didn't take enough men with me the first time. I'm going to round up some more and go after the wagon train again. I've got a score to settle with that big bas—"
"I don't care about your scores," Kane cut in. "I just want Miss McCoy brought back here, and I won't tolerate another failure, Harrison. Do you understand?"
"You bet I do. I can hire a dozen men?"
"Hire two dozen if you want. Just bring the girl back here."
"And if anybody else gets hurt along the way? There are a lot of innocent pilgrims on that wagon train."
The scornful look that Kane gave him was more than enough of an answer to Harrison's question.
Harrison spent the evening in some of the worst saloons, taverns, and dives in Kansas City, scouring them for gunmen who would be willing to sign on for the job of taking Savannah McCoy away from that wagon train.
He had tried being stealthy, sneaking in and carrying off the girl with no one the wiser until it was too late to stop them, and that hadn't worked at all. Things were going to get ugly next time. There would be gunplay, and people would die. And Harrison didn't care as long as he got what his boss was after.
If he let Gideon Kane down again, he knew he might as well keep going and never come back to Kansas City. He had seen Kane fly into a rage once when a drunken freighter had bumped into him on the street and his filthy boots had gotten dung on Kane's shoes. Kane had beaten the man to death with his walking stick, right then and there.
That wouldn't happen to him; Harrison wouldn't stand still for such an attack, and Kane no doubt knew that. He would just hire as many men as it took to beat Harrison to death rather than do it himself.
Harrison was in a squalid saloon, looking for hardcases willing to hire on to use their guns, when two men sidled up to him at the bar. Harrison barely spared them a glance. They were tough enough in a way, he supposed, but not really the sort of ruthless professionals he was after.
But the smaller one, who had eyes like a pig and a swinish face, said, "Word's gettin' around that you're hirin' men."
Harrison shook his head. "You must have heard wrong, mister."
The man got a shrewd look on his face—if a pig could be said to look shrewd. "You're not goin' after that wagon train Jamie MacCallister's leadin' to Montana Territory?"
Harrison stiffened. He supposed he had let a few too many hints slip when he was making the rounds of the saloons. But what did it really matter? Where he and the men he recruited would be going, there wasn't much law. In most places, there wasn't any. "What if I am?"
The short, squat man said, "My name's Keeler." He jerked a thumb at his taller companion. "This is Holcomb. We signed on as scouts to go with that wagon train when our pard Jeb Ralston was supposed to be the wagon master. That was before MacCallister broke his leg and stole the job for himself."
That was interesting, Harrison thought. "So you've got a grudge against MacCallister?"
"Damn right we do. But there's more than that, mister. We went over the route with Jeb more'n once. I'd say we know where MacCallister's takin' those wagons just as well as he does. Maybe better."
Going by what he'd heard about Jamie MacCallister, Harrison doubted that, but he was intrigued anyway. "You think you could help me catch up to them?"
"I know we could," Keeler said confidently. "And if you plan on tanglin' with MacCallister... well, we wouldn't mind gettin' in on that, too."
He and his men would be able to travel faster if they knew where the wagon train was going, Harrison thought. They might even be able to get ahead of the wagons and set up an ambush. MacCallister would be watching his back trail, but he probably wouldn't expect death to be waiting in front of him.
"Keeler," Harrison said as he stuck out a big paw, "you've got a deal."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 43
|
Days of searching hadn't turned up any clues to the whereabouts of the men who had stolen the loot from the train robbery. The failure filled Eldon Swint with a fury he was barely able to contain.
When he finally found Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll—and he would find them, he had no doubt about that—he would see to it that they died long and painfully for daring to steal from him. Before he was through with them, they would wish a bunch of bloodthirsty Apaches had gotten hold of them instead.
The problem was... he didn't know where they were. The frontier was a mighty big place. Without some sort of trail to follow, it might take months, maybe even years, to locate the thieves.
Swint was sitting in the Bella Royale, seething as usual and trying to distract himself with a bottle of whiskey. It wasn't working. He glanced up as Charley Green entered the saloon and crossed the room toward him. Green looked a little excited about something, which was unusual for him. He was usually about as stolid as a lump of stone.
Without waiting to be invited to sit down, Green pulled back one of the chairs and lowered himself into it. He reached for the bottle, but Swint pulled it out of reach.
"You look like you've got something to say, Charley," Swint told his second in command. "Spit it out first, then maybe you can have a drink."
"I might have a line on where those three varmints took off to with our money."
Swint's bushy, almost colorless eyebrows crawled up his forehead in surprise. He pushed the bottle back where Green could reach it. "Tell me."
"Bodie Cantrell."
Swint's eyebrows came back down in a frown. "What about him?"
"He disappeared the same night, didn't he?"
"Well, yeah," Swint admitted. "But he told me he was leaving the gang. He wouldn't have done that if he was mixed up with Lucas and those other two. That was just a, what do you call it, coincidence."
"Maybe, but Cantrell and Lucas were friends. Lucas could've told Cantrell what he and Mahaffey and Pearsoll were plannin' to do. Shoot, for all we know, stealin' those double eagles might've been Cantrell's idea."
Swint restrained his impatience and the urge to take the bottle away from Green again. "I've been over and over this in my head, Charley. You're not tellin' me anything that I don't already know. Let's say you're right and Cantrell was part of the whole scheme, maybe even the mastermind, although I still don't know why he'd draw attention to himself ahead of time. We don't know where Cantrell went any more than we do Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll."
"Maybe we do," Green said with a self-satisfied smile. "I talked to a fella who saw Cantrell ride out with a wagon train the same morning that the others vanished with our loot."
Swint leaned forward sharply in his chair, sensing with his predator's instincts that this might be the lead they had been looking for. "How'd you happen to do that?"
"I've still been goin' around town askin' questions, describin' all four of those hombres, not just Lucas and the other two but Cantrell as well, on the chance that he might've been involved. I found a fella who saw him with those pilgrims who were headed to Montana. It was just pure luck, I reckon, Eldon. Luck, and bein' stubborn about it."
"But the man you talked to, he didn't see Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll with the wagon train?"
Green shook his head. "No, but that don't mean anything. They could've rendezvoused with it later, after the wagons left town. That probably would've been the smart thing to do."
Swint considered the theory. It made sense, but it was far from what he'd consider proof. On the other hand, they hadn't found any other leads so far....
"But that ain't all," Green went on. "There's a fella goin' around town puttin' together a crew of hired guns to go after that wagon train."
Swint's nostrils flared as he took a sharp, angry breath. "Going after our money?" he demanded.
Green shook his head again. "No, from what I hear, they're after a girl who joined up with the immigrants here in Kansas City. She's some sort of actress, and they're workin' for a fella who's stuck on her and wants her brought back."
"I don't see what this has to do with us and that missing money," Swint said.
"I talked to some of the boys about Cantrell. They said that he was stuck on an actress from that show, too, and I figure it's got to be the same one, boss."
"How do you figure that?"
"Because he quit the gang with no warnin', and then he shows up with that wagon train, too. It's all got to be connected."
Green was a good man, plenty tough, and he followed orders well and could be depended on. Swint had never considered him to be all that smart, though. But as he followed his lieutenant's reasoning, he had to give Green some grudging credit for his intelligence. The theory Green had worked out actually made sense, and it was the best explanation so far for what had happened.
Plus it sure beat nothing, which was what they had come up with so far.
"So what are you saying, that we need to follow that wagon train?"
"Well, it's a place to start, anyway," Green said.
"And if you're wrong," Swint snapped, "we'll have lost a lot of time. Enough time that we might never be able to find those blasted thieves."
"It's up to you, Eldon," Green replied with a shake of his head. "I've never pretended to be in charge of this gang and don't want to be. You're the boss and we'll do whatever you say. I just thought—"
"And you did a good job. I'll admit that." Swint took the bottle back from Green, tilted it to his mouth, and swallowed a long swig of the fiery liquor before thumping the mostly empty bottle down on the tabletop. He had reached a decision. "Round up the rest of the boys. Get some pack animals and lay in plenty of supplies. We're liable to be on the trail for quite a while."
"So we're goin' after the wagon train?" Green asked excitedly.
"We're going after the wagon train," Swint agreed. "And it's a long way from here to Montana Territory."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 44
|
The weather held for several days as the wagon train continued northward. A glittering blanket of frost covered the ground every morning, but it melted away when the sun came up. Chilly winds blew from the north, sending towering white clouds scudding through the blue sky like tall-masted ships. The thick wool and sheepskin coats worn by the immigrants kept them from getting too cold.
The brisk air didn't bother Jamie. After the rugged life he had led and the iron constitution it had given him, he was practically immune to the weather unless it became really extreme. He enjoyed the cold, clear conditions.
For one thing, the wagon train was making good time again, and he was satisfied with the number of miles they covered every day. There was still a slim chance they would reach Eagle Valley by Christmas.
One of the teenage boys in the group had been recruited to drive R.G. Hamilton's wagon. R.G. had no family and had been traveling alone until romance had blossomed between him and Alice and they had wound up getting married in Kansas City.
Alice insisted on staying with the wagon, even though she could have gone back to traveling with her family. Savannah rode with the grieving widow sometimes, keeping her company. After several days, Jamie sought her out at the Bingham wagon one evening to ask how Alice was doing.
Not surprising, Bodie Cantrell was having supper with Savannah, Edward, and Leticia. Any time he wasn't out scouting, Bodie could be found somewhere near the Bingham wagon. He was so head-over-heels in love with Savannah that Jamie sometimes had a hard time not chuckling at the moonstruck look on the young man's face.
The good thing was that Savannah seemed to return the feeling. There weren't many things worse in this world than being desperately in love with somebody who didn't really give a darn about you.
At least, Jamie supposed that to be the case. He had never experienced such unrequited love himself, since he and Kate had been soul mates right from the start and that feeling hadn't lessened a whit over the years.
It had taken an outlaw's bullet to part them, and Jamie would carry that loss with him for the rest of his life.
"Would you like something to eat, Mr. MacCallister?" Leticia Bingham asked him as he came up to the wagon.
Jamie shook his head. "No, ma'am, but I'm obliged to you for the offer. Moses and I already had supper a little while ago." He grinned. "I'm teaching him how to cook trail grub."
"How's he taking to that?" Bodie asked with a smile.
"Not bad. He's a pretty smart fella. Can do most anything he puts his mind to." Jamie tipped his hat back. "I really came to talk to you, Savannah, and ask how Alice Hamilton is getting on."
Savannah's pretty face wore a solemn expression. "It's been really hard on her, Mr. MacCallister. That's not surprising, of course, losing her husband like that so soon after they were married... although I suppose it would be difficult no matter how long it had been."
"Has she said anything about wanting to go back? She might be able to manage that, come spring."
Savannah shook her head. "No, it was R.G.'s dream for them to have a place of their own in Eagle Valley, and Alice seems determined to go through with that. She says she's going to take up the homestead R.G. intended to file. But other times..." Savannah looked worried. "Other times she acts like she's too overwhelmed with grief to go on. She says she doesn't think she can make it."
"Probably be a good idea for you to keep an eye on her as much as you can," Jamie said.
"You don't think she'd... hurt herself, do you, Mr. MacCallister?"
"I hope not, but you never know what folks might do when they've suffered a bad loss." Some folks might even set out to hunt down an entire gang of vicious killers and outlaws, he thought.
He put that out of his mind and went on. "If you get a chance, tell Alice's folks about how she's acting."
"They already know," Savannah said. "They're worried about her, too. Her mother keeps trying to talk her into coming back to their wagon, but Alice won't hear of it. She insists she's going to stay in the wagon she shared with R.G., because that's where she was happy."
"Seems to me like there would be too many reminders of him in that wagon," Bodie commented.
"People never really know what they'll do until they're faced with something. Then it's too late to prepare. You've just got to do what it takes to survive." That was something Jamie Ian MacCallister knew all about—survival.
The next day dawned clear, but by noon there was a dark blue line on the northern horizon. Within an hour it had grown into a low cloud bank that seemed to be rushing toward the wagon train. To Jamie it looked closer with every minute that passed. He pointed it out to Bodie, who was riding ahead of the wagons with him. "Blue Norther."
"A snowstorm, you mean?"
"Might be some snow with it, might not be. At this time of year, it's hard to say until the blasted thing is right on top of you. But whether it snows or not, we need to stop and hunker down until it's passed us by."
They turned and rode back to the lead wagon. At Jamie's command, Bodie headed on along the line of vehicles, telling the drivers to stop and form up in a circle.
"What's going on here?" Captain Hendricks asked.
Jamie leveled a finger at the onrushing clouds. "We're in for a bad blow. The wind's going to be so hard it'll seem like these prairie schooners of yours are about to lift up off the ground and fly. The temperature's liable to drop forty degrees in an hour, too."
"But it's not much above freezing now," Hendricks protested. "If it drops forty degrees..." His eyes widened at the thought.
Jamie grunted. "Yeah. That's what happens when you start out on a trip like this so late in the year."
Hendricks's face hardened angrily, but he said, "What do we need to do?"
"We'll go ahead and make camp. Build fires now while we still can and get some hot food and coffee in everybody. Then tie everything down tight to keep it from blowing away, climb in the wagons, and heap as many blankets and quilts as you can on top of you. It'll be a mighty cold night, but we ought to make it through all right."
Hendricks nodded. "I'll make sure everybody gets busy and does what you said."
For the next hour, as the Blue Norther rampaged closer and closer, the camp was a beehive of activity. Everyone seemed to understand the seriousness of the situation. As the cloud bank swept in, it grew darker and more sinister.
The wind, which had been fairly light, died down to almost nothing as Jamie walked around the circle of wagons, checking to make sure everything was secured as much as possible. Most of the immigrants were worried. He tried to reassure them. They had all been through cold snaps back where they came from, he told them. A great plains norther was a mite more... enthusiastic, he explained, but they could ride it out.
"Keep everybody close," he said again and again. "And huddle up together. You'll need the warmth by morning."
Satisfied that the immigrants were as ready as they were going to be, he headed for Moses's wagon. The clouds had swallowed up the sun, and even though the hour was just past mid-afternoon, it was almost dark as night.
The wind hit while Jamie was walking across the camp.
He reached up quickly and grabbed his hat to keep it from blowing away. The wind smacked into his face like an icy fist. By the time he reached the wagon he was leaning forward into it, struggling against the violent gusts.
He climbed into the wagon, ducked through the opening, and pulled the canvas flap tightly closed behind him, tying it in place with the cords attached to it. He could feel the wagon vibrating from the wind pushing against it.
"You know, I've seen some bad blizzards back in Poland," Moses said. "Is this one going to be worse, Jamie?"
"Don't know. I've never been to Poland. I don't smell any snow in the air, though. I think we're just going to get the cold wind. But it's going to be mighty cold."
"You can smell snow?" Moses sounded like he found that hard to believe.
"Sure. Snow, rain, dust storms... you get to where you can smell what the weather's going to do if you stay out here on the frontier long enough."
"Somehow I don't doubt it. I don't think I'd doubt anything you had to tell me, Jamie."
"Oh, I can spin a few windies when the mood strikes me," Jamie said with a smile. "But when it comes to getting by out here, I won't steer you wrong."
The wind began to howl in mindless shrieks that sounded like lost souls being tormented in hell. It made the cold seem even more numbing. Jamie dug an old buffalo robe he'd had for more than thirty years out of his gear and wrapped himself in it. Night closed down quickly, and he slept the way any frontiersman would sleep when he had the chance.
He woke to shouts, stirred himself, crawled out of the buffalo robe, and untied the flap over the back of the wagon. He had just stuck his head out when Savannah McCoy came running toward the vehicle, carrying a lantern and calling urgently, "Mr. MacCallister! Mr. MacCallister!"
"What is it?"
Savannah lifted her stricken face toward him. "It's Alice Hamilton, Mr. MacCallister. She's gone!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 45
|
"What do you mean, gone?" he asked Savannah as he climbed out of Moses's wagon.
"I decided she shouldn't be alone tonight and went over to her wagon right after the wind hit. Alice seemed glad to see me. We put our bedrolls next to each other on the floor. I... I tried to stay awake, but I dozed off. When I woke up, she wasn't there anymore." Tears began to roll down Savannah's cheeks. "I'm so, so sorry—"
"Stop that. It's not your fault. Anything you did to watch out for that gal was from the goodness of your heart, and nobody's going to blame you for what's happened."
"Do you think something has... happened?"
Jamie didn't answer that question directly. "Let's go take a look around. Maybe we can find her."
Moses was leaning out the back of the wagon. He had overheard what Savannah said, and asked, "Should I rouse everyone else, Jamie, to help you look?"
Jamie considered for a second. The wind was bitingly cold, and it was only going to get worse. Everybody was hunkered down in their wagons, buried in quilts and blankets, and that was where they needed to stay.
"Get Bodie and that fella Lucas," Jamie decided. "We won't tell anybody else for now." He reached back into the wagon, got his hat, and tugged it down tight on his head. He pulled out the buffalo robe as well and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then he took the lantern from Savannah and headed for Alice Hamilton's wagon.
He studied the ground around the wagon for tracks, but it had dried out since the rain several days earlier and he didn't see any footprints. He found a place where he thought the dry grass had been disturbed, but he couldn't be sure about that.
Bodie and Jake Lucas arrived, looking half-frozen already even though they had blankets wrapped tightly around themselves. Bodie asked, "What can we do to help, Jamie?"
"We're going to look for Miz Hamilton, but we don't want anybody else wandering off and getting lost, so stay close together while we search."
"Do you think that's what happened to her?" Savannah asked. "Do you think she got lost?"
"More than likely. She might've stepped out of the wagon to tend to some personal business, gotten turned around, and started off in the wrong direction, thinking she was coming back. By the time she figured out she was going the wrong way, she couldn't locate the camp anymore."
That explanation was entirely possible, Jamie thought. But his gut told him it wasn't the only explanation.
Since her husband's death, Alice Hamilton had been trying to drag herself up out of a pit of despair. Maybe it had pulled her down so deep she couldn't escape from it.
"I'll help you look," Savannah said.
"No!" Jamie and Bodie said at the same time.
"Get back in the wagon, out of the wind," Jamie told her. "The four of us will find her."
As he, Moses, Bodie, and Jake spread out in a fan shape from the Hamilton wagon, Jamie thought about how the chances of finding Alice would be increased if more people were searching for her.
But the chances of somebody else getting lost and freezing to death would be greater, too. It was like the old saying about being caught between a rock and a hard place. Whatever he did increased the risk of somebody dying.
With the temperature dropping the way it was and the savage wind ripping away any trace of warmth, a person could freeze to death in an hour, maybe less. The frigid cold wouldn't kill as quickly as that flooded creek had, but it could kill just as surely.
Jamie cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, "Mrs. Hamilton! Alice!" The other men began calling her name, too. Somebody at the wagon train might hear the shouting and wonder what was going on, but that couldn't be helped. If Alice was lost and truly wanted to be found, the sound of their voices might save her life.
The yelling helped Jamie keep track of the other men, too. He didn't want to lose anybody else.
They spread out away from the wagon for what seemed like a long time. When Jamie estimated that they had covered close to a mile, he called his three companions to him. "I don't think she could have gotten this far. We've missed her somewhere."
"She could have headed off from the wagons at any angle," Bodie pointed out.
Moses suggested, "Maybe we should go back and start over, taking a different direction this time."
"That's all we can do," Jamie said. "Come on."
The night dragged past. First one hour, then two, then three. Jamie's worry had grown with every minute that ticked by. Somebody could survive in the wind for this long—he and his companions were doing it, after all—but they were all bundled up in thick jackets and blankets. Even so, they were suffering. Jamie knew he was going to have to call off the search soon or else risk the men suffering from frostbite.
"I... I can't feel my fingers and toes anymore," Moses said, reinforcing Jamie's concern for their safety.
"Let's head on back," he said with a heavy sigh. "We can't do any more."
"Wait a minute," Bodie protested. "You can't mean to just leave poor Mrs. Hamilton out here."
"I don't mean to let you three fellas freeze to death, either. Or lose your fingers and toes."
Moses gulped. "Is that what's going to happen?"
"It could if we don't get you warmed up." Jamie herded them back to the wagon train.
Savannah met them, and the lantern light revealed the worry etched into her face. Her expression fell when she saw that the men were alone. "You didn't find her." It wasn't a question.
"We can't stay out there anymore," Jamie said. "Maybe she found a place to get out of the wind and hole up for a while. There are little gullies and such—"
"You know she didn't," Savannah said. "She didn't get turned around so that she couldn't find her way back to the wagons, either."
"What do you mean?" Jake Lucas asked.
Moses said gently, "I suppose she didn't want to live without her husband. She thought the pain was too much for her to bear and she couldn't go on. So she walked off into the night, never intending to come back."
Savannah started to cry again. Bodie took her in his arms and drew her against him.
Jamie let the young man comfort Savannah for a few moments, then told her, "You'd better go back to the Bingham wagon. The rest of us will hunker down in Moses's wagon. We can start searching again at first light. It'll be easier then."
They would be able to see better in the morning, he thought, but the chances of finding Alice Hamilton alive then would be practically nonexistent.
He didn't sleep much the rest of the night. Along toward dawn, the wind died down, ceasing its eerie howling. The stars came out as the overcast broke. And the temperature dropped harder and faster, like the bottom had fallen out of the thermometer.
Jamie and his companions resumed the search in the gray light of dawn. The air was so cold it seemed to burn their lungs with every breath. Huge clouds of steam fogged the air in front of the men's faces every time they exhaled. It looked like smoke wreathing their upper bodies.
They found Alice about half a mile from the wagons. She was in a small gully, all right, but from the way she was lying there it appeared that she had stumbled and fallen into it instead of seeking shelter. It hadn't saved her. Frost glittered on her open, sightless eyes, and her flesh was cold and hard as stone.
By the time they got back with her body, everybody in the wagon train knew that Alice was missing. Sobs filled the air as the men carried in her blanket-wrapped form. Alice's mother threw herself on her daughter's body and wailed piteously.
Jamie felt the grief that gripped the camp, but didn't show it. In his life he had seen so much death and suffering that he knew it was inevitable. He drew Captain Hendricks and several other men aside. "It hasn't been cold enough long enough to freeze the ground. We'd better get a grave dug while we can."
"It's a shame the poor girl couldn't be laid to rest beside her husband," Hendricks said.
"I reckon it's a big country on the other side of the divide," Jamie said, "but not so big that the two of them won't be able to find each other."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 46
|
As often happened out on the plains, within a couple days the fierce, freezing wind out of the north was replaced by a much gentler, warmer breeze from the south. Jamie knew it would be only a matter of time until the next Blue Norther came barreling down on them, so he wanted to cover as much ground as he could while the weather was decent. He pushed everyone hard and used every bit of daylight he could.
The grinding pace meant there wasn't much time to mourn Alice Hamilton. Her death and that of her husband were tragic and senseless, but those graves were behind the wagon train. Everyone needed to look ahead, because that was where the next challenge would be found.
As Jamie could have predicted, that challenge wasn't long in coming. He was riding the point with Hector Gilworth several days later when he spotted riders paralleling their course about half a mile to the west.
Without saying anything to Hector, Jamie turned his head and looked to the east. He saw more riders in that direction. That came as no surprise to him. He had been expecting something like this. The wagon train was just too tempting a target.
"Ride on back and tell Cap'n Hendricks to have everybody circle the wagons," Jamie said quietly to Hector.
"But it's the middle of the day," the burly, bearded scout protested. "We don't usually circle up until we stop at nightfall."
"Well, we're going to today, because there are Indians on both sides of us."
Hector let out a surprised exclamation. "Are they going to attack us?"
"Too soon to say, but we'd better be ready in case they do. Now git!"
Hector got, hauling his horse around and galloping back toward the wagons.
Jamie reined Sundown to a halt and sat easily in the saddle. As soon as the Indians saw the wagons forming up into a circle, they would know that their presence had been discovered. If they planned to attack, they would probably do it quickly, before the immigrants had time to get set up for defense.
On the other hand, it could be that the Indians just wanted to parley. Some of the tribes didn't mind the wagon trains passing through their territory as long as they received some sort of tribute in return for safe passage.
They liked to negotiate from a position of strength, though, which is why they usually showed up with a considerable number of warriors, all painted fiercely and bristling with lances, bows and arrows, and occasionally, rifles. They liked to throw a scare into the settlers.
It wasn't just for show. If things didn't go well, the Indians would welcome a fight.
Jamie turned his head slowly from side to side. More mounted figures were visible in both directions, and they were angling their ponies toward the wagon train. The Indians were closing in, but they weren't getting in any hurry about it. Jamie hoped that meant they just wanted to talk.
He turned the stallion and rode back toward the spot where the immigrants were hurriedly pulling the wagons into a circle. Seeing the train stopping, the other scouts and outriders were coming in, too, some of them galloping hard to make it back to the relative safety of the wagons.
Bodie Cantrell rode out to meet Jamie a couple hundred yards away from the wagons. "Hector says there are Indians about to attack us." They both reined to a halt.
"That's jumping the gun a mite," Jamie said. "Right now it looks to me like they don't want to fight. Of course, that could change mighty quick-like."
"What should we do?"
Jamie narrowed his eyes in thought. After a moment he said, "Your friend Lucas is pretty good with a gun, isn't he?"
Bodie looked a little uncomfortable about answering that, but he said, "Yeah, I suppose so."
"He's cool-headed and can take orders?"
"I'd say so."
"Go get him. The three of us will ride out to see what they want."
Bodie nodded. He was aware that what Jamie was asking of him involved considerable risk, but he wasn't the sort to dodge trouble.
When Bodie came back, he didn't have just Jake Lucas with him. Captain Lamar Hendricks rode with them, too.
Before Jamie could say anything, Hendricks spoke up to explain his presence. "If you're going to talk to these savages, I need to be there. I was elected to be the leader of this wagon train."
"And I was hired to be the wagon master," Jamie said. "Who'd you leave in charge back there?"
"Hector Gilworth."
"Well, Hector's a good man, I suppose. If we all get killed, he'll put up a good fight."
Hendricks was a little pale under his tan. "Do you think there's a chance we'll all be killed?"
"There's always a chance." Jamie inclined his head toward the north. "I reckon we'll find out pretty soon, because here they come."
About a dozen warriors were trotting their ponies toward the four men. As they drew closer, Jamie saw that they were painted for war. But that didn't have to mean anything, he reminded himself. They might still be able to get out of this without a fight.
"Somebody else is coming from the wagon train," Jake said suddenly.
Jamie twisted around in the saddle to look. It was hard to surprise him, but his eyebrows rose slightly when he saw Moses Danzig riding toward them on one of the extra saddle horses.
Confronting a bunch of potentially angry Cheyenne was just about the last thing Moses needed to be doing, Jamie thought. But it was too late to send the rabbi back to the wagons. Jamie turned back to keep an eye on the approaching Indians.
As Moses came up beside him, panting slightly from the effort of riding two hundred yards on horseback, Jamie said quietly, "Moses, what in the Sam Hill are you doing out here?"
"Hector wanted to let you know that we're all dug in and ready to fight if need be," Moses replied. "He was going to send his cousin to do it, but I suggested that he let me ride out here instead. Jess can use a gun and I can't, so he's of more value there."
"If there's a fight out here, you can't even defend yourself."
"I'll trust in a higher power for that."
Jake said, "On these plains, ain't no higher power than Mr. Colt and Mr. Winchester."
"We'll save the theological debate for later," Moses said. "Oh, my. They're certainly savage-looking, aren't they?"
The Indians were close enough to confirm by the markings on their faces and the decorations on their buckskins that they were Cheyenne, just as Jamie had suspected. As Moses had pointed out, they looked fierce.
Jamie remained utterly calm. That required an effort of will, but he kept his face just as stony as those of the warriors who brought their ponies to a halt about twenty feet away. Beyond them, about as far distant as the wagons were, a hundred more warriors waited on horseback.
Jamie raised a hand in the universal signal of friendship and said in the Cheyenne tongue, "Greetings. We come seeking only a trail to travel peacefully to the north."
One of the older warriors in the group, a man Jamie suspected was the war chief for this band, responded. "This is our land. We have hunted it for many, many moons. It gives my people life. We would not have it taken away from us."
"Nor do we wish to take it," Jamie said with the formality such parleys always demanded. "If we hunt the buffalo, it will be for fresh meat only, and we will kill no more than one."
"You already have the buffalo with sleek hides," the Cheyenne said.
Jamie knew he was talking about the oxen. "We do," he acknowledged, "but we need them to pull the wagons. They are not for eating."
"If you kill a buffalo, you should replace it. Give us one of your animals for this buffalo of ours that you may kill."
Hendricks asked nervously, "What are the two of you saying? It sounds very serious."
"He wants us to give him an ox," Jamie drawled in English. "I reckon we can spare one. Unless you'd rather fight over one animal."
"No, no. Not at all," Hendricks said quickly. "If that's all it takes for them to let us go on safely, then by all means, give them an ox!"
Jamie conveyed that to the war chief, but before the Cheyenne leader could respond, one of the other warriors suddenly pushed his pony forward and spoke up angrily. "It is not enough! We must have one of their women in trade for their safety as well!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 47
|
Jamie instantly knew what the interruption was about. The warrior who had just made the outrageous demand was probably one of the war chief's rivals. He didn't want the encounter with the white interlopers to end peacefully. He wanted a fight, wanted the wagon train wiped out so that he could claim credit for the massacre and further his own cause among the tribe.
The varmint had to know good and well that the immigrants would never turn over one of their women.
"What did that one say just then?" Hendricks asked. "It didn't sound good. What's this about?"
The chief turned to glare at the warrior who had butted in as Jamie said, "The other fella has upped the stakes. He wants an ox... and one of your womenfolks."
The men gasped in shock and anger, and Jake exclaimed, "Why, that dirty—" He grated out a curse and reached for the gun on his hip. He had just cleared leather when Jamie leaned over in the saddle and shot his hand out to clamp around Lucas's wrist to keep him from raising the revolver and firing.
It was too late. The damage had already been done. The warrior who had started this ruckus cried out and jerked a rifle to his shoulder, ready to fire.
Jamie heard some rapid words he didn't understand behind him, but ignored them. He was about to reach for his Colts, knowing that in another second the air would be full of gun smoke and flying lead and arrows.
"Stop!"
The voice was old and not exactly powerful, but the piercing timbre of it cut through the air of impending violence and made all the men on both sides freeze in their actions. Another of the Cheyenne pushed his horse forward. He was ancient, his coppery face so lined with wrinkles that he seemed a hundred years old. His braided hair was pure white. But despite his obvious age he sat tall and straight in the saddle, like a much younger man. He leveled a buckskin-clad arm, pointing as he asked, "Who is this mighty shaman?"
Jamie didn't have any idea who the Indian was talking about. Realizing that the man was pointing past him, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Moses sitting on horseback, looking terrified. The young man's lips were moving as he muttered unfamiliar words under his breath.
The war chief reached over and grabbed the barrel of the angry warrior's rifle, forcing it down.
Jamie said harshly to Jake, "Pouch that iron, mister!" They had been given an unexpected respite, and he didn't intend to waste it. "Everybody else, keep your hands away from your guns!"
The tension was still thick as the two groups of riders faced each other.
Jamie went on. "Moses, the old man is talking about you. He says you're a mighty shaman and wants to know who you are."
"A... a shaman?" Moses shook his head. "I don't even know what that is."
"A medicine man, like I suspect that old fella is himself. Sort of like the spiritual leader of the tribe."
"Oh. I suppose you could say that, although Reverend Bradford certainly wouldn't agree."
"What was that you were saying a minute ago, Moses?"
"I was praying." A glimmer of understanding dawned on the young man's face. "I was praying in Hebrew..."
Before Jamie could stop him, Moses walked his horse forward, putting himself between the two groups. Several of the warriors lifted lances, but a sharp word from the chief made them lower the weapons.
The ancient Cheyenne moved his pony forward until he and Moses sat alongside each other with their mounts facing in opposite directions. Moses began speaking again in Hebrew.
Jamie didn't understand a word of the speech, of course. He didn't see how the Cheyenne medicine man could understand it, but the old man listened attentively. When Moses was finished, the old man surprised Jamie by lifting a hand and launching into a long speech of his own.
Jamie was fluent in the Cheyenne tongue, but what the medicine man was speaking was something else. It was similar to the Cheyenne language, enough so that Jamie thought he caught a word every now and then, but at the same time the words carried a sense of antiquity with them, as if the old-timer were speaking a long-forgotten tongue that had mostly vanished from the face of the earth.
When he was done, he held out his hand. Moses clasped it, and they sat there like that for a long moment. Then the medicine man turned to the warriors and barked words in Cheyenne that Jamie understood.
"What's going on now?" Bodie asked in a hushed voice.
"The old man is telling them to turn and ride away," Jamie explained. "He says that we're among the favored of the Great Spirit and that their medicine will become very bad if they harm us."
"We don't have to give them the ox anymore?" Hendricks asked as the Indians began to turn their ponies and ride away, some with obvious reluctance. They weren't willing to go against the old medicine man's decree.
"No, they won't bother us again, thanks to Moses."
Bodie said to the young rabbi, "What in the world did you do, pard?"
Moses shook his head. "I just called down blessings upon him and his people and told him that we were peaceful and would cause no trouble as we crossed the lands that traditionally belong to them." He smiled faintly. "I said it in Hebrew, of course, and made it all sound a lot more flowery."
"And he understood you?" Jake asked, visibly astonished.
"I don't know. He seemed to. Or maybe he just understood the tone of what I was saying."
"How about all that palaver he gave back to you?" Jamie asked. "Did it mean anything to you?"
Moses frowned. "He wasn't speaking Cheyenne?"
"Not the Cheyenne I know."
"That's... odd. I didn't actually understand what he was saying, of course, but every now and then I... I sort of felt like I ought to understand. Do you know what I mean?"
"Like if you went back far enough, the lingo he was talking had something in common with what you were saying to him?"
"Exactly!" Moses exclaimed. "And that makes perfect sense."
Bodie said, "How in the world do you figure that?"
"Have you ever heard of the Lost Tribes of Israel? In biblical times, the land of Canaan was ruled by twelve tribes. But when Canaan was split into two kingdoms—Israel and Judah—those tribes to the north that formed the Kingdom of Israel vanished from history and are now considered lost. According to legend, they were forced by enemies to leave their homeland and spread out across the world." Moses smiled. "There are some who say that one of those tribes found its way to the North American continent and eventually became the Indians that we know today."
"Wait just a doggone minute," Jake said. "You're sayin' that you... and those Cheyenne... are related somehow? Like distant cousins?"
Moses spread his hands. "Well, it's just a theory... but you have to admit, that old medicine man responded when he heard me praying in Hebrew. The fact that we're all still alive and no blood was spilled... I'd say those prayers were answered, wouldn't you?"
Jamie nodded. "I'm not exactly sure how you managed it, Moses, and I don't care."
All the Indians had vanished. The plains were empty around them again.
"Let's get those wagons lined out and rolling again," Jamie continued. "We've dodged a bullet, and we've still got some daylight left. Let's put some more miles behind us!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 48
|
Even though the encounter with the Indians hadn't resulted in any fighting, the immigrants were more nervous as the wagon train continued on its way. It took a week for them to stop looking over their shoulders and expecting to see painted, war bonneted savages intent on scalping them.
Of course, the more prudent among them continued being watchful as the wagons rolled northward, but that was a good thing. The more alert they were, the better, Jamie thought.
They reached the Platte River and crossed the broad, shallow, muddy stream without incident. From there, the route diverged from the Oregon Trail, which headed west toward South Pass. The wagon train would keep going north for several more weeks.
They spotted their first buffalo herd a few days later. Jamie had expected to run across the shaggy beasts much earlier. The great herds always moved south for the winter, but other than that one cold blast, the weather had been unseasonably warm.
"Good Lord," Bodie exclaimed as he and Jamie reined in atop a ridge and looked at the vast sea of brown in front of them. The herd stretched as far as the eye could see.
Jamie grinned and rested his crossed hands on the saddle horn, shifting his weight forward to ease weary muscles. "You haven't seen buffalo before?"
"Well, yeah, of course I've seen them," the young man replied. "But never that many in one place. There must be a million of them!"
"I wouldn't doubt it. Maybe more than that. I've seen herds go by all day, all night, and all the next day before they finally got out of the way."
"We're going to have to stop and wait for this one to go past, aren't we?"
Jamie took a pair of field glasses from one of his saddlebags and studied the herd. "They're moving southeast. They'll miss us and ought to be out of our way by tomorrow."
With a worried tone in his voice, Bodie asked, "What if they were to turn and stampede toward the wagon train?"
"It wouldn't be good," Jamie replied. "A buffalo stampede is just as much a force of nature as floods, fire, and cyclones. Every bit as destructive, too. You can't stop it, so you just have to get out of its way if you can."
The big frontiersman turned in his saddle to look behind them. "The wagons are about a mile back. Go tell the cap'n to stop right where he is and don't come any closer. Teams stay hitched to the wagons until those critters are clear of us, in case we have to light a shuck and make a run for it. I'll stay here and keep an eye on the buffalo for now. We'll have scouts watching them all the time, just in case something makes them turn toward the wagons. We'll need as much warning as possible if that happens."
Bodie nodded, wheeled his horse, and galloped away.
Jamie turned his attention back to the buffalo. He had hunted the creatures many times, sometimes with his Indian friends using lances and bows and arrows, sometimes with groups of white hunters armed with Sharps rifles.
Even though the sight of a herd like this made it seem as if the buffalo were endless, Jamie knew that wasn't the case. Many of them had been killed already for meat to feed the crews building the transcontinental railroad several years earlier.
They continued to be slaughtered for their hides. Back in southern Kansas, Jamie had seen stacks of those hides piled so high that they looked like shaggy brown hills. It was wasteful and shameful, the unknowable number of carcasses skinned and left to rot, their bones littering the plains. The Indians, at least, used every bit of the buffalo, instead of just taking one part and throwing away the rest.
It was such slaughter, he mused, that would spell defeat for the natives in the end. Without the animals they had depended upon to feed and clothe and shelter them for centuries, they would have no choice but to turn to their white conquerors and change their entire way of life.
Jamie believed in manifest destiny, but at the same time he could share a moment of sympathy for those swept aside in the inexorable tide of progress.
The enormous buffalo herd moved on without menacing the wagon train, and as Jamie had predicted, by the middle of the next day the route was clear again. But they had lost a day to the delay, and with December almost upon them, every day was becoming more and more crucial.
A couple days later, they saw something unexpected: cattle. Not wild cattle, but what appeared to be well-grazed stock with wide, spreading horns.
"Dadgum it!" Jake exclaimed when he saw them. "Those are Texas longhorns. I've seen 'em down in Kansas at the railheads. What are they doing up here?" He and Bodie and Jamie were scouting ahead of the wagon train.
Jamie said, "Some of the ranchers from Texas are moving their herds up here and starting spreads. I've heard tell there are even some in Wyoming and Montana. I'm a little surprised we haven't run across any before now."
"I guess it makes sense," Bodie said. "There's plenty of grassland up here. That's about all there is, in fact."
"Since the farmers haven't gotten this far west yet, it's all open range. I expect that'll change one of these days, but for now this is some of the best ranching country in the world... if you don't count the Indians and the blizzards, of course. But you've got problems like that wherever you go, I reckon."
"Those are some fine-looking beef cows," Jake mused as he studied the grazing animals.
"Don't get any ideas in your head," Jamie said sharply. "If we slaughter any of those critters for meat, we'll buy them from their owners first. There won't be any rustling."
"Never said there would be," Jake replied.
Jamie had a hunch that was what had been in the young man's mind, though. His instincts had told him all along that Jake Lucas wasn't the same sort of upstanding young hombre as Bodie Cantrell, even though the two of them were friends.
Where there were cows, there were cowboys, and later that afternoon Jamie spotted riders coming toward them. He reined in and motioned for his companions to follow suit. A few minutes later the horsemen rode up, their chaps and big hats telling him that they were from Texas as he had suspected.
"Howdy," one of the men called. "Mind if we ask what you fellas are doin' riding on Slash M range?"
"That's where we are?" Jamie asked.
"Have been for the past five miles," the puncher replied. "This is Mr. Owen Murdock's spread. I'm Jim Haseltine, his foreman."
"Jamie Ian MacCallister." Jamie nodded. He leaned his head toward the other two and added, "Bodie Cantrell and Jake Lucas. We're scouting for a wagon train that's coming up about a mile behind us."
One of the other cowboys, a lean man with a dark, hawklike face, leaned to the side and spat. "Wagon train," he repeated scornfully. "That means a bunch of damn sodbusters. You better not be intendin' to stay on Slash M range, mister. You'll get a hot lead welcome if you do."
Anger darkened Jake's face.
Jamie knew the young man was a hothead, so he snapped, "Take it easy. I'm handling the talking here."
He turned back to the cowboys. "I'm not going to argue the idea of open range with you. As a matter of fact, the people with those wagons are bound for Montana Territory, so they shouldn't be any concern to you boys at all. We'll just pass through and go on our way."
Jim Haseltine had a speculative look on his face. "Seems like I've heard of you, Mr. MacCallister. You wouldn't be the one who tangled with the Miles Nelson gang, would you?"
"That was me," Jamie said heavily, recalling the bloody months he had spent avenging his wife's murder.
"Doss, don't go makin' threats against this man," Haseltine said to the hawk-faced cowboy. "He chews up and spits out two-bit pistoleers like you."
Doss exclaimed, "By God, Haseltine, you can't talk to me like that!"
"I just did," Haseltine said coldly. "You can draw down on me if you want. I know you're faster than me. But I don't reckon you'll last long if you do."
"You've just been lookin' for an excuse to run me off."
"I don't need an excuse other than bein' sick and tired of you. Go back to the ranch and draw your pay. You're done on the Slash M."
For a moment Jamie thought Doss was going to slap leather, but the man jerked his horse around and galloped off.
"Looks like we caused you some trouble after all," Jamie said to Haseltine.
The ranch foreman shook his head. "No, that's been buildin' up for a while. I just got tired of that hombre's blusterin' around all the time. Maybe he's right and I was lookin' for an excuse to tell him to rattle his hocks."
"Is he fast on the draw?" Jake asked.
"Fast enough to have killed three men in fair fights," Haseltine answered. "Fast enough to get a swelled head and make a blasted nuisance of himself." He changed the subject. "You need any help gettin' through our range, Mr. MacCallister?"
"You don't have any of it fenced off, do you?"
Haseltine made a face like he had just bitten into a rotten apple. "You won't find any fences within five hundred miles of here, Mr. MacCallister. And that's just the way we like it in these parts."
You'd better enjoy it while you can, Jamie thought, because it won't last. "Then I reckon we'll be fine. Obliged for the offer, though. We might cut out one of these steers and butcher it, if you'll tell me what price your boss would want for it."
"Don't worry about that," Haseltine said. "We can spare one of the critters. And the boss'll back me up on that."
Jamie nodded again. "Obliged." He lifted a hand in a wave of farewell as the cowboys rode on.
"Tough-looking bunch," Bodie commented.
"Texas cowboys," Jamie said. "They're tough, all right. Let's take Haseltine up on his offer and cut out one of these steers."
"Steaks tonight!" Jake said with a grin.
The fresh meat lifted the spirits of the immigrants, even though longhorns tended to be a little tough and stringy. The wagons had been on the trail for a long time, and sometimes it seemed like Montana was still as far off as it had been when they started.
Jamie knew they had made good progress, but there was still a long way to go.
He was standing beside Moses's wagon that evening, sipping from a cup of coffee, when he heard hoofbeats approaching the circle of wagons. He set the cup on the lowered tailgate and turned toward the sound.
The horse came to a stop, and as Jamie walked toward the gap between two of the wagons, a tall, lean figure appeared in it. The cowboy called Doss stepped into the glow from several nearby campfires. When he spotted Jamie coming toward him, he stiffened and his hands curled into claws poised above the black butts of the Colts holstered on his hips, ready to hook and draw.
"There you are!" he called. "They tell me you're one of the big he-wolf gunfighters, MacCallister! Well, I'm here to call you out!"
And with that, his hands streaked for the revolvers.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 49
|
There were too many people around. A group of women stood a few yards behind Jamie, talking. Off to his right several kids were chasing each other around, and one of the big yellow mutts that accompanied the wagon train ran after them, barking. It was a peaceful scene. A stray bullet could alter it suddenly, tragically, and irrevocably.
There was no time to do anything except kill the troublemaker.
Faster than the eye could follow, Jamie's big hands swept down and back up. Even though Doss had already cleared leather before Jamie started his draw, the man never got a shot off. Jamie's Colts crashed, the two shots coming so close together they sounded like one.
The pair of .44 slugs punched into Doss's chest and drove him backward. The back of his calves struck a lowered wagon tongue, and he flipped over it. His guns finally roared as his fingers contracted in death spasms, the shots going harmlessly into the heavens. Doss thudded onto his back and his arms fell out loosely to the sides.
He didn't move again. One of Jamie's bullets had ripped through a lung. The other had pulped his heart. He was already dead when he hit the ground.
The chatter that had filled the camp a couple seconds earlier stopped short, leaving a stunned silence. As the echoes of the shots rolled away, the silence was broken by shouted questions and running footsteps.
Jamie holstered the left-hand Colt and began reloading the expended chamber in the other revolver. Bodie Cantrell, Hector Gilworth, and Jess Neville came pounding up to him with their own guns out and ready.
Bodie asked, "Jamie, are you all right? What happened?"
Jamie leaned his head toward the fallen gunman, whose legs were still visible hanging over the wagon tongue. "That fella Doss came looking for me, I guess he figured he'd add to his reputation by killing me." Jamie paused. "It didn't work out for him."
Hector took a lantern from one of the settlers who had come to investigate the shooting and carried it over to shine its light on the dead man. "It sure didn't. Looks like you drilled him dead center twice, Jamie."
"And the man already had his guns out before Jamie drew," Moses added, having joined the group, too. "I saw the whole thing. It was amazing."
Jamie leathered the right-hand gun and set about replacing the spent cartridge in the other weapon. He turned his head to listen as he picked up the sound of more horses coming toward the wagon train. "I don't know if Doss had any friends, but just in case he did, all these kids and womenfolks ought to get inside where it's safer."
Moses and several of the men hurried to spread the word and hustle the women and children into cover. Jamie, Bodie, Hector, and Jess moved to get ready for whoever was galloping toward the wagons. Jake Lucas, Clete Mahaffey, and Dave Pearsoll hurried up as well, and Jamie waved them into position around one of the wagons. They were a formidable group and if the night riders were looking for a fight, they would get it.
Instead, the hoofbeats stopped, and a man's voice called, "Hello, the camp! Hold your fire! We're friends!"
Jamie grunted as he recognized the voice. "That's Jim Haseltine, the Slash M ramrod." He raised his voice. "Come on in, Haseltine, unless you're hunting trouble!"
"No trouble," Haseltine replied. The man walked his horse forward into the light, trailed by several more members of Owen Murdock's crew. "In fact, we came to warn you. That varmint Doss may come looking for you, Mr. MacCallister. There's a trading post a few miles west of here, and Doss was there earlier tonight gettin' liquored up. He was bragging about how he was gonna find you and kill you, and to warm up for it he shot one of my men who tried to talk some sense into his head."
"Kill him?" Jamie asked curtly.
"No, thank the Lord. Just wounded him."
"Well, Doss won't shoot anybody else." Jamie holstered his guns and pointed. "You want to bury him, or should we take care of the chore?"
Haseltine swung down from his saddle, walked over to where Doss's body lay, and looked down at it. He let out a low whistle of admiration. "He's got his guns in his hands. I hate to admit it, but he was mighty fast. I guess he ran up against somebody faster, though."
"There's always somebody faster," Jamie said. "About planting him...?"
"We'll do it. Shoot, we owe you that much. He was always causing trouble. I'm sorry he came here and caused more."
"Not your fault," Jamie said with a shrug.
"Maybe not, but I hope the rest of your time on the Slash M is a mite more peaceful."
A short time later, the Texas cowboys rode off, taking Doss's body with them, draped over the saddle of his horse. The commotion caused by the gunfight settled down quickly. The immigrants knew that come morning, Jamie would have them up before first light, getting ready to push on toward their destination.
A chilly rain started a couple days later. There was no wind, so it came straight down from a leaden sky, steady but not hard enough to turn the landscape into a quagmire. The wagons were able to continue their journey, although the rain made everyone cold, wet, and miserable.
The sickness started a couple days after that.
Some of the immigrants had been sick at times, but none seriously. As the rain continued to fall, fever raged through the train with little warning. So many people were ill, Jamie knew there was no choice but to stop until the outbreak ran its course.
Around the clock, the sound of the constant drizzle was punctuated by coughing, wheezing, and gagging from half the wagons. Those fortunate enough not to catch the sickness stayed well away from those who had fallen ill... with a few notable exceptions.
Moses Danzig seemed to be everywhere at once, doing whatever he could to comfort the afflicted and nurse them back to health. As he explained to Jamie, "For a while back in Poland, when I was younger, I thought I might become a doctor. I even had a little medical training before I accepted the calling to attend rabbinical school. Unfortunately, there's not much even a real doctor could do for these poor people. I just keep them as comfortable as I can and try to help them let their own bodies fight the sickness."
A lot of the time, Savannah McCoy was at Moses's side, helping him despite Bodie's objections. Bodie just wanted her to be safe and not come down with the fever herself, so he urged her to avoid those who were sick.
"I can't do that, Bodie," she told him. "These people... they took me in when I had nowhere else to go. They protected me, gave me a new home." She smiled sadly. "Why do you think I haven't gone back to the troupe? When we left Kansas City, I didn't plan to stay with the wagon train all the way to Montana Territory, you know."
"I know," he said softly as they stood under a canvas cover rigged at the back of the Bingham wagon and watched the rain fall.
"I couldn't leave. I waited until I thought enough time had passed that it might be safe, but by then... I just couldn't. I love Edward and Leticia. They're almost like a second set of parents to me. And I've made so many other good friends, like Moses and Mr. MacCallister and the Bradford twins. Alexander and Abigail had been spending a lot of time with me before this rain started, you know, even though they had to sneak away from their father to do it."
Bodie's jaw tightened at the mention of Reverend Thomas Bradford. "Do you know what I heard that so-called preacher saying yesterday?"
"I don't have any idea," Savannah replied. "I think he's capable of saying almost anything."
"He said the rain, and folks falling sick from it, were because we'd offended God by harboring too many sinners among us."
"I'm sure that as an actress I'm one of those sinners he was talking about."
"That's crazy!" Bodie exclaimed. "You're about the best person I've ever known, Savannah. The way you and Moses have tried to take care of everybody—"
"Reverend Bradford probably thinks that Moses being here is another reason the wagon train is being punished."
"Let him think whatever dang fool thing he wants. All I really care about is you taking care of yourself, Savannah. If anything happened to you... if you got sick and... and... I don't know how I'd stand it." Bodie reached out, drew her into his arms, and cradled her against him.
She rested her head on his chest and sighed. The two of them clung to each other in the gloom as the rain continued to drizzle down.
Four people—two children, a man, and a woman—died during the outbreak of fever. Considering the number of immigrants who had fallen ill, Jamie was surprised the death toll wasn't higher. As he told Moses, "I figure it would have been a lot worse if not for what you and Savannah did."
"I just tried to help," Moses replied with a shake of his head, "and so did a lot of other people. Not just Savannah. Bodie pitched in, and Hector and Jess and so many others. We're past the worst of it now, I think. People are on the mend again. Another few days and we might be able to travel again. That is, if this blasted rain will ever stop."
The rain did stop. And the wagon train moved on, leaving four new graves behind it.
Christmas was less than a month away.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 50
|
It was a rare sunny day, and as a result slightly warmer, when the wagon train stopped next to a creek so the immigrants could fill the water barrels lashed to their wagons. The creek had some ice along its edges, but it wasn't frozen over as it would be later on in the winter.
All the scouts were out except Jake Lucas and Dave Pearsoll, who had been left behind to keep an eye on the wagons as the pilgrims went about their chores. Jake saw Savannah McCoy walking along the creek bank with the preacher's kids and strolled after them. The youngsters were carrying buckets to help fill their father's water barrels, and he supposed Savannah was watching out for them.
They stopped at the edge of the creek, and when Savannah saw him coming, she smiled. "Hello, Jake." The two of them were on friendly terms, even though Savannah had never been around Jake much when Bodie wasn't there, too.
He returned the smile and tugged on the brim of his hat. "Nice day, ain't it?"
"The nicest we've had lately," she agreed. She watched with approval as Alexander and Abigail Bradford filled the wooden buckets in the stream and then started back toward the wagons with them.
"Why don't we walk down there where those trees are?" Jake suggested, pointing to some bare-limbed aspen that grew about fifty yards downstream.
"Why would we do that?" Savannah asked with a slight frown of puzzlement.
"I want to talk to you about Bodie."
Savannah's frown deepened. "There's nothing wrong, is there?"
"No, not really. It's just that, well, him and me have been friends for quite a while, and there's something that's worrying me a mite."
Savannah hesitated a moment more, but then she nodded. "All right. If it's about Bodie."
The kids came back with their empty buckets. Savannah told them to keep carrying water to the reverend's wagon, then she and Jake walked toward the trees.
The trunks were close enough together that they formed a screen of sorts and provided a little privacy. When they stopped, Savannah turned to Jake. "Now, what's this about Bodie? What are you worried about, Jake?"
A grin stretched across his face. "I'm worried that he don't know how to take proper care of a beautiful girl like you."
Before she could stop him, he had his arms around her, pulling her against him. His mouth came down on hers in an urgent, demanding kiss.
Savannah stiffened and shoved her hands against his chest, but she couldn't break away from him. Nor could she twist her lips away from his until he broke the kiss and pulled back slightly, grinning again.
Her hand flashed up and cracked across his cheek. "How dare you!" she exclaimed. "You... you... I never—"
"Maybe that's your problem," he cut in. His hands were tight on her arms. "Listen, Savannah, you can do a lot better than Bodie Cantrell. I can treat you right, and I've got a lot more money than he does." He didn't explain how he had come by that money. "Once we get to Montana, if you stick with me I'll show you a better time than Bodie ever could."
"Let go of me, Mr. Lucas," she said coldly. "If you don't, I'll scream, and the people at the wagons will hear me. Don't think they won't."
He knew she was right. He wasn't ready to leave the wagon train just yet, so he released her arms, but he didn't step back. He still crowded close to her, and with the icy stream right behind her, there was nowhere she could go.
"Maybe I took you by surprise," he said. "I'm sorry if I did. But I had to tell you how I feel. I had to show you—"
"No, you didn't," she snapped. "You could have had the common decency to respect your friend... and me. From now on I want you to stay away from me, Mr. Lucas. Far away."
Jake's face hardened. He asked harshly, "Are you sure about that?"
"I'm positive. And if you don't, I'll tell Bodie—"
"You don't want to do that," Jake told her in a hard, menacing tone. "I know Bodie. If you tell him what happened here today, he'll figure he's got to come gunnin' for me. And if he does, I'll kill him. Simple as that. I'm faster than him, and if he draws on me, he'll die."
He could see in her eyes that she knew he was telling the truth. Fear sprang up in them, fear for Bodie's life.
"If you don't bother me again, I won't say anything."
"We understand each other, then."
"We do," Savannah said quietly.
Jake stepped back to let her go past him. As she did, he told her, "You're makin' a mistake. I can do more for you than Bodie ever can."
She didn't reply, didn't even look around as she hurried back toward the wagons.
Jake stood there glaring and muttering curses under his breath until a sudden footstep from among the trees made him turn quickly and reach for his gun.
"Take it easy," Dave Pearsoll said as he moved out into the open.
"What are you doin' skulkin' around here?" Jake demanded. "We're supposed to be keepin' an eye on those pilgrims."
"You were sure enough keepin' an eye on one of them," Pearsoll said with a sly grin. "A really close eye, looked like to me." His grin disappeared as he went on. "I reckon I understand now why we're still with this blasted wagon train. We could've taken off for the tall and uncut weeks ago, once we were well clear of Kansas City, but no, you insisted that we ought to stay with 'em a little while longer, Jake. But it's just one of them you're interested in. The McCoy girl."
"That's none of your business," Jake snapped.
"It is when you're hangin' on to my share of that money," Pearsoll said. "You're doin' just like Swint, draggin' your feet about divvyin' up. What's the idea, Jake? Are you hopin' something will happen to Clete and me so you can keep all of the loot?"
"That's just loco," Jake scoffed, although in truth such a prospect had entered his mind more than once. "I'm just still not convinced that Eldon won't come after us. Hell, he could be on our trail right now. It makes more sense to stay where we've got friends who'll back our play if it comes to a fight."
"Friends," Pearsoll repeated. "Like the McCoy girl. She didn't look any too friendly when she slapped your face."
Jake felt himself flushing. He blustered, "She'll come around. She just needs some time, that's all."
"And maybe for something to happen to Bodie. That'd make things easier for you, wouldn't it? Maybe more inclined to keep your word to your real friends and honor the deal you made with them."
"Forget it. Nothing's gonna happen to Bodie."
"Is that so? You know good and well that if you're ever gonna get that girl, he'll have to die. You change your mind about that, let me know." Pearsoll turned and walked off toward the wagons, leaving Jake standing there with a worried frown on his face.
He didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but maybe there was some truth in what Pearsoll said.
"I'm getting tired of carrying water," Abigail said. "Can't we do something else?"
"Miss Savannah asked us to do this," Alexander told her. "I don't want to let her down."
Abigail made a face, but she walked back toward the creek with her brother. As they dipped the buckets in the water, she exclaimed, "Alex, did you see that?"
"What?" he asked as he looked around.
She pointed. "I saw something up the creek that way. It looked like a pretty bird with bright-colored feathers."
"All the birds have gone south for the winter," Alexander pointed out. "You're just saying that because you want me to say we can quit fetching water."
"That's not true! I did see it, and if you'll come with me, I'll prove it."
"What are you doing, Abby?" Alexander asked as his sister set her bucket aside.
"I told you. I'm going to find that bird." She started walking along the creek, toward a bend in the stream a couple hundred yards away where low brush lined the banks.
Alexander looked around for Savannah, but didn't see her. A few minutes earlier, she had been talking to Bodie's friend, that other scout Mr. Lucas. But he wasn't in sight, either.
Abigail was beyond where the wagons were parked, and she wasn't slowing down. Alexander knew how impulsive and dadblasted stubborn his sister could be when she put her mind to it. She was going to get in trouble if she wandered off. She would get both of them in trouble, since their father would take it for granted that Alexander should have been looking out for her.
He trotted after her, calling, "Abby, hold on." When he caught up to her, he frowned. "I'll come with you to look for that stupid bird that's not even there."
"It is, too," she insisted.
He ignored that. "But then we've got to go back. Just a few minutes, all right?"
"I saw it right up here, moving around in those bushes."
Alexander still didn't believe it. Either Abigail was seeing things, or she had just made up the story. If she had made it up and their father found out about it, he would punish her. Making up stories was lying, he always said, and lying was a terrible sin.
Sometimes it seemed to Alexander that most things in life were terrible sins.
The closest wagon was about a hundred yards away when they walked around the bend and into the brush. Alexander looked around. "I don't see anything except a bunch of old dead bushes—"
At that moment, something closed around his right ankle and jerked. Before he knew what was happening, he'd been pulled right off the creek bank. Somebody grabbed him, looping an arm around his ribs and squeezing so tight he couldn't breathe. At the same time, a hand covered his mouth and clamped down equally hard, so he had no chance to yell.
His eyes widened in horror as he saw an Indian standing a few feet away. The man wore buckskins and had feathers in his hair—feathers!—and the worst thing of all was that he had hold of Abigail and was clutching her tightly to him as she kicked and squirmed. The Indian was more than twice her size, and Alexander knew his sister had no chance of getting away.
He knew that an Indian had hold of him, too, and even though he fought, there was nothing he could do. The Indians began walking through the creek, taking their two young prisoners with them.
Nobody at the wagon train even knew they were gone, Alexander's panic-stricken brain screamed.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 51
|
Jamie knew something was wrong as soon as he got back to the creek where the wagons had stopped to water up. He heard shouting. There was anger in the sound, of course, but there was also something else.
Fear.
He swung down from the saddle and dropped the reins. Sundown would stay ground-hitched. He walked toward the large group of immigrants gathered beside the stream. Several people were talking at once, but the loudest voice belonged to Reverend Thomas Bradford.
"—unforgivable!" he was saying. "I knew I couldn't trust a... a shameless jezebel like you to watch my children! I never should have allowed them to associate with the likes of you! I should have put a stop to it as soon as they started sneaking off to visit you!"
The crowd parted without Jamie having to say anything. It was just a natural result of his imposing presence. He saw that Bradford was shouting at Savannah. The preacher's rough-hewn face was as red as a brick, while Savannah's, by contrast, had all the color washed out of it. She looked frightened.
Moses stepped up. "Please, Reverend, there's no need to browbeat Miss McCoy—"
"You stay out of it, you damned Christ-killer!" Bradford roared.
Moses went pale, too.
Bradford went on. "This harlot was probably seducing some man when she should have been watching my children—"
"That's enough," Jamie said as he moved forward. He hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and confronted Bradford. "There's no need for talk like that. You'd better be glad Bodie Cantrell isn't here right now, mister. If he was, I reckon he'd be going after you for saying such things. I'm tempted to myself."
"You don't know what she did!" Bradford leveled a finger at Savannah. "My children were with her, and now they're gone! Disappeared!"
Now they were getting down to it. Jamie turned to Savannah. "What happened?"
"Reverend Bradford is right," she replied in a shaky voice. "It's my fault. I was supposed to be watching Alexander and Abigail while they fetched water, and they... they vanished while I was busy talking to someone else."
"They can't have gotten very far on foot," Jamie said, keeping his tone calm and reassuring. "Where was the last place you saw 'em?"
"They were right here along the creek, getting water for their father's water barrels."
Lamar Hendricks spoke up. "I've been asking around, Jamie, and a couple people saw the children walking up the creek toward that bend." He pointed. "But I looked up there and there's no sign of them."
There might be sign that Hendricks wasn't experienced enough to see, Jamie thought. "I'll take a look." He glanced around, spotted Jake in the crowd. "Come on, Jake."
The young man fell in with Jamie as his long legs carried him along the creek bank. Several other men tagged along, including Hendricks.
The banks deepened around the bend. They were about four feet high, and the ground was covered fairly thickly with brush on both sides of the creek. Jamie studied the growth, looking for broken branches that might indicate a struggle. When he didn't find anything, he turned his attention to the creek itself and the narrow band of muddy earth at its edge.
His jaw tightened as he spotted a familiar-looking indentation. He pointed it out to the men who had come with him. "That's a footprint. The fella who made it was wearing moccasins."
"Indians!" Hendricks exclaimed.
"Looks like it." Jamie nodded and pointed to a vertical mark on the bank. "Something skidded along there. A foot, maybe, like somebody slid down the bank... or was pulled." He pointed again. "Another footprint there, but not left by the same man. There were two of them."
Hendricks said, "They lurked here and kidnapped the Bradford children."
"Maybe. I want to look around some more."
It took Jamie another few minutes to locate hoofprints left by unshod ponies on the far side of the creek, beyond the clump of brush. The Indians had left their mounts there, skulked along the creek to spy on the wagons, and then when Alexander and Abigail had come wandering up the creek for whatever reason, had grabbed the kids and carried them off.
This was bad, Jamie thought, but it could have been worse. Indians seldom killed such young captives. They might murder children in the heat of battle, but if they went to the trouble to take prisoners away with them, they usually kept those captives alive. They would either make slaves of the children, or more likely raise them as members of the tribe.
He didn't intend to let either of those things happen. "How long have they been gone?"
"Less than an hour," Hendricks replied.
Jamie jerked his head in a curt nod. "I'll get after them. There's a good chance I can bring 'em back. There were only two Indians. Probably just out hunting, although they could have been scouting for a war party, I suppose. If I can catch up to them before they get back to their village, I'll rescue those kids."
"But what if there wind up being more Indians?" Hendricks asked. "You'll need help, Jamie. I'm coming with you."
Several other men voiced their eager agreement with that sentiment.
Jamie didn't want to be saddled with a bunch of inexperienced pilgrims, but if there was a whole war party out there, he probably couldn't risk taking them on by himself. That would put the children in too much danger.
He compromised. "I'm starting after them right now. Hector Gilworth ought to be coming in soon. Jake, maybe you can go find him and bring him in sooner. Hector can put together a rescue party and lead it after me. He ought to be able to follow my trail. No more than a dozen men, though. The rest need to stay with the wagons. This could be a diversion."
Hendricks said, "What do you mean?"
"They could've grabbed the kids thinking they'd use 'em to lure most of the men away from the wagons, while the rest of the war party circles around and hits the train from another direction. I don't think that's what's happened here, but we can't risk it."
"I understand. We'll do what you say, Jamie."
Jamie's long legs carried him back quickly to the wagons. As he was about to swing up into the saddle, Reverend Bradford stormed up to him and demanded, "What did you find out, MacCallister?"
Jamie knew the truth would just set off the reverend even more, but Bradford would find it out soon enough from one of the others even if Jamie didn't tell him. "It looks like Indians have them, but I'm going after them right now. I'll bring them back."
Bradford looked horrified. "My God!" he burst out. "My poor innocent children, tortured and scalped—!"
"Nobody said anything about them being tortured and scalped," Jamie snapped. "Usually when Indians take white kids like that, they adopt 'em into the tribe."
That seemed to bother Bradford more. Eyes wide, he said, "I'd rather them be killed than see them turned into godless heathen savages!"
Jamie put his foot in the stirrup and swung up onto Sundown's back rather than say what he was thinking. He supposed most people would share the sentiments Bradford had just expressed. That made no sense to Jamie, though. Life was too precious to throw it away that easily.
He turned the stallion and heeled Sundown into motion, splashing across the creek. It took him only a moment to pick up the trail of the two unshod ponies as they headed north. He followed it, his eyes constantly scanning the landscape for signs of danger.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 52
|
After following the Indians for about an hour, Jamie came to a spot where the hoofprints of the two ponies joined with those of a number of other horses. He reined in, studied the marks on the ground, and frowned.
The hoofprints confirmed one of his biggest worries. The two men who had grabbed the kids had rendezvoused with a larger party. The prints were such a muddle, he couldn't tell for sure how many there were. More than a dozen, that was certain. Maybe as many as twenty-five or thirty. Even if the group from the wagon train caught up to him, they would still be outnumbered.
But he wasn't going to leave Alexander and Abigail to become part of whatever tribe had taken them.
People usually fell into one of two extremes when it came to the Indians. Most folks considered them filthy, bloodthirsty savages, little better than animals. But some people—usually easterners who had never actually seen an Indian, much less had anything to do with them—claimed that they were noble aristocrats of the plains, living in harmony with nature, the land, and each other.
As usual, both sides were full of buffalo droppings. There were plenty of things to admire about the Indian way of life, but there was no escaping the fact that most of them suffered through hard, short, brutal existences, struggling to survive and constantly warring on each other. The odds of starving to death, dying of illness, freezing in the winter, or being killed in a raid by another tribe were high.
Jamie wasn't going to abandon the Bradford children to such a fate. He would get them back or die trying. Once the two kidnappers joined up with the war party, if that's what it was, the trail was easier to follow. He pushed on, confident that Hector and the others would be able to find him.
By late afternoon Jamie entered a range of small, wooded hills, the highest elevations and the most trees he had seen in quite awhile. With his instincts warning him that he might be closing in on his quarry, he used every bit of cover he could find as he continued following the trail.
He smelled the camp before he saw it. Wood smoke, cooking meat, and horseflesh. He dismounted and went up the slope ahead of him on foot, moving in silence over a carpet of pine needles. Before he reached the top he took off his hat and got down on his belly to crawl the rest of the way. When he got to the top, he worked his way through a patch of undergrowth, parted some branches, and looked down into a little canyon where more than two dozen Indians had made camp.
Blackfeet, Jamie thought as he saw the markings on their buckskins and the way they wore their hair. No women and children in sight. It was a raiding party. Several of the warriors sported crude bandages, which meant they had already been in a fight. They'd probably skirmished with another tribe and were on their way back to their usual hunting grounds, taking with them the two white captives a couple scouts had been fortunate enough to come across.
Jamie saw Alexander and Abigail sitting with their backs propped against a fallen log. They appeared to be all right, although their hands and feet were tied and Abigail was slumped against her brother's side, sobbing. Alexander had his head up and Jamie could tell that the boy was trying to be brave, but he had to be scared out of his wits.
Not for much longer, son, Jamie thought.
The trick was figuring out how to get him out.
Jamie studied the landscape around the Blackfoot camp. The canyon was formed by two ridges that dropped off almost sheer for about forty feet. He lay where those ridges angled in and came together. The trail the Indians had used to get into the canyon zigzagged down from that point. Anybody going down it would be in plain sight from the camp below.
At the far end, the canyon ended in a shale slope at the top of which rose a stone wall. The drop from the top of that wall to the shale was about twenty feet. However, the cliff face was rugged enough that it would provide handholds and footholds so that a man could climb down part of the way, leaving a reasonable drop to the shale.
If a man tried that and landed right, he could slide all the way to the canyon floor. If he didn't land right... well, he'd probably break an ankle, at the very least.
Jamie didn't see any other way into the canyon. He would have to have help to manage it.
He moved back down the near slope and glanced at the sky. About an hour of daylight was left, giving the other men from the wagon train time to catch up to him. He could finish working out his plan then.
The sun had just dropped below the western horizon when Jamie heard horses coming. He stepped out of the thick stand of pines where he'd been waiting and waved his hat over his head to signal the approaching riders.
They angled toward him. Hector Gilworth was in the lead, with Bodie Cantrell and Jess Neville right behind him, trailed by nine or ten men from the wagon train. Most of them were carrying rifles or shotguns.
He didn't see Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll and figured those three had stayed behind at the wagons. That was good. Jamie wanted some seasoned fighting men left with the rest of the immigrants.
He was much less pleased to see Reverend Thomas Bradford with the rescue party. He had hoped that Bradford would stay behind. He didn't trust that the preacher would follow his orders. In his arrogant stubbornness—and, to be fair, his legitimate concern for his children—Bradford was liable to try some foolish stunt that would endanger all of them.
Jamie would make sure to tell Hector to keep a close eye on the man.
Bradford crowded his mount ahead of the others and said loudly, "Have you found them? Have you found Alexander and Abigail?"
"Keep your voice down," Jamie snapped. "Sounds carry farther out here than you think they would, and the Indians are right on the other side of that ridge. I figure they'll be posting guards on top of it any time now since it's getting dark, and we don't want them to know we're here."
Bradford was a little quieter as he said, "All right. But what about my children? Have you seen them?"
"I have. They look fine, just a little tired and scared." As the men gathered around him, Jamie went on to describe everything he had seen.
Jess Neville said, "That ain't good, is it? Them Injuns bein' Blackfeet, I mean. From what I hear tell, they hate white folks more than any of the other tribes in these parts."
"That's true," Jamie admitted, "but chances are, if they were going to hurt those kids, they'd have done it before now. We just need to get them out of that camp."
"How are we going to do that?" Bodie asked. "It sounds like there's no way in there that wouldn't be suicide."
"There's no good way," Jamie explained. "But I think a couple men could work their way around to the cliff above that shale slope and drop down into the canyon from there. The rest of our bunch can cause a distraction that'll keep those Blackfeet busy while the two hombres grab the kids."
Bodie shook his head. "No offense, Jamie, but how do they get back out?"
Jamie rubbed his chin and frowned, realizing that he hadn't gotten that far in his thinking. After a moment he said, "We'll have to take ropes with us and tie 'em at the top of the cliff. That'll help us get down, and the kids can hang on to us while we use the ropes to climb out."
"Us?" Bodie repeated with a faint smile.
"I was thinking you might want to come with me."
Bradford said, "I'll do it. They're my children."
"That they are," Jamie agreed, "but how are you at using a gun, Reverend? There's a chance whoever goes into that camp will have to fight their way out."
"I've never believed in violence," Bradford said stiffly.
"And I believe in using whatever does the job best. Bodie's coming with me. Unless you don't want to, son."
"Try and stop me. Savannah's tearing herself up over this. She'll never forgive herself if we don't get those kids back safe and sound."
Bradford started to bluster something, but Jamie stopped him with a hard look. He figured the preacher was about to say something else bad about Savannah, then Bodie would take offense, and they didn't need that complication.
"What do you want the rest of us to do, Jamie?" Hector asked. "How do we provide that distraction you were talking about?"
"Well, there's only one way to do it as far as I can see. You fellas are about to get your feet wet when it comes to Indian fighting."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 53
|
With a faint glow still in the western sky, Jamie and Bodie started out. They circled wide to come at the canyon from the west.
Hector and the other men were dug in behind rocks and trees on the other side of the ridge, waiting for the two rescuers to get into position. Hector owned a railroad watch that had been left to him by his father, and when exactly an hour had gone by, he and the other men would charge the ridge, yelling and shooting, before turning around and dashing back to their defensive positions.
The outbreak of gunfire would be the signal for Jamie and Bodie to make their move.
As darkness gathered, Bodie asked, "How are we going to find our way to the top of that cliff you mentioned?"
"I took a pretty good look at it a while ago," Jamie replied. "Studied the lay of the land while there was still some light in the sky. I'll be able to get us there."
"When it comes to surviving out here, is there anything you can't do, Jamie?"
A grin stretched across the big frontiersman's rugged face. "There's bound to be, but since I'm still alive I reckon I've figured it out pretty well so far." He led them unerringly to the foot of a ridge where they dismounted.
"That canyon where the Blackfeet are camped ought to be just on the other side," Jamie said quietly. "Get the rope off your horse and let's go."
The slope on that side of the ridge was too steep for horses, but Jamie and Bodie were able to negotiate it on foot, carrying the ropes with them. As they climbed, Jamie sniffed the air and smelled smoke from the Blackfoot campfire. His instincts had been reliable yet again.
When they reached the top of the narrow ridge, the two men crawled forward until they could look down into the canyon. The campfire still burned, and in its flickering orange light they saw some members of the war party still moving around. Others slept. Jamie spotted the two children, dozing as they huddled against the same log where he had seen them sitting earlier. He touched Bodie's shoulder and pointed them out to the young man, who nodded.
Moving quickly and silently, they knotted one end of the ropes around the trunks of pine trees that grew atop the ridge. When that was done, they stretched out on the ground again, and Jamie whispered, "Now we wait. Shouldn't be long."
It wasn't. Within ten minutes, gunfire suddenly roared in the distance. Jamie saw muzzle flashes from the opposite ridge and knew the Blackfoot sentries posted up there were returning the fire. In the camp, the rest of the war party grabbed rifles and began charging up the twisting path to the top of the ridge.
"Let's go," he said.
They dropped the ropes over the cliff and swung out onto them, walking down the cliff backwards. It wasn't that far. When they reached the shale, they let go, left the ropes hanging there, and slid down the rest of the way to the canyon floor.
Jamie drew his Bowie knife as he ran toward the log where the children were lying, wide awake because of the yelling and shooting. He had warned Bodie against using their guns unless they absolutely had to, since that might alert the Blackfeet that something was going on behind them.
With a grace and agility unusual in a man of his size and age, Jamie vaulted over the log and dropped to one knee next to Alexander and Abigail. Abigail opened her mouth to scream. From her perspective, all she could see was a dark, giant figure looming over her.
Jamie put his free hand over her mouth. "Hush, Abby. It's me, Mr. MacCallister. Mr. Cantrell is with me. We're going to get you and Alexander out of here."
He started sawing through the tough strips of rawhide with which they were bound while Bodie crouched next to the log and kept a lookout. Jamie had Abigail loose when Bodie suddenly hissed, "Somebody's coming!"
Jamie looked up just as a couple Blackfoot warriors charged into the firelight. The leader of the war party had sent them back to keep an eye on the prisoners. It was a smart move, but it had occurred to the fellow too late.
Spotting the two white men trying to free the captives, the warriors skidded to a halt and tried to raise their rifles. Firelight winked from the blade of Jamie's knife as it flashed across the clearing to bury nearly a foot of cold steel in the chest of one of the Blackfeet. The man gasped, stumbled, and dropped his rifle without firing it. He crumpled to the ground.
Less than half a second later, Jamie's left-hand Colt roared. The bullet ripped through the second warrior's throat and bored through the lower part of his brain. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Bodie had drawn his gun but hadn't had a chance to shoot. Jamie's blinding speed had seen to that.
Jamie pouched the iron. "Get my knife."
It had taken only one pistol shot to dispose of the second warrior, and neither Blackfoot had gotten off a shot. He hoped the single shot had gone unnoticed by the other Indians, since they were busy trading lead with the rest of the rescue party and things were pretty noisy.
Bodie ran to the fallen warriors, pulled the knife from the chest of the one Jamie had killed with it, and hurried back to hand the blood-smeared blade to the big frontiersman.
While he was cutting Alexander loose, Jamie told Abigail, "You go with Mr. Cantrell now, honey. You'll have to put your arms around him and hang on tight to him while he climbs up a rope. Can you do that?"
"I'd rather you take me, Mr. MacCallister," the little girl said.
"I'm busy with your brother. Mr. Cantrell will take good care of you. You just do everything he tells you, and don't be scared, all right?"
"I... I'll try."
"Good girl. Go on, now."
Bodie scooped Abigail up in his arms and ran for the cliff. It wouldn't be easy getting back up that loose shale while carrying the girl, but he'd manage.
A moment later, the last of the rawhide thongs fell away from Alexander's ankles. "You don't have to carry me, Mr. MacCallister. I can run."
"Mighty fast?"
"Mighty fast!"
Jamie grinned in the darkness. "Come on, then."
They hurried to the cliff. Through the moonlight, Jamie could see Bodie climbing the rope with Abigail clinging to his back, her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.
"I can climb the rope, too," Alexander said.
"I expect you can, but it might be faster if you got on my back, like your sister did with Mr. Cantrell. Reckon you can do that?"
"Sure."
Alexander clambered onto Jamie's back as the big man knelt, then Jamie started up the slope. It took every bit of balance he had not to slip back down the shale. The climb seemed to take a long time, but finally he was able to reach up and grasp the rope. That steadied him the rest of the way and allowed him to go a little faster. He reached the bottom of the cliff, planted a booted foot against the rock, and started that part of the climb. It was the hardest part of the climb, taking a lot of muscle power to lift a man of Jamie's size. Alexander's weight added to the burden.
"Hang on tight," Jamie grated.
"Don't worry," Alexander said. "I won't let go."
Jamie tipped his head back to watch the top of the cliff come closer. Bodie and Abigail reached the rimrock and vanished over it. Jamie was relieved they were safe. In a matter of moments, he and Alexander would be, too.
Below them, a shot suddenly blasted, and a bullet smacked into the rock face less than a yard away from them.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 54
|
Jamie twisted his head to look down and behind them and saw that several of the Blackfoot warriors had run back into the camp and were pointing rifles at them. Jamie couldn't let go of the rope to grab his guns and put up a fight. He and Alexander would plummet to the ground if he did.
Bodie appeared at the rimrock and shouted at Jamie, "Keep climbing!" Then the revolver in his hand spouted flame as he opened fire on the Indians, spraying the clearing with lead.
That scattered the Blackfeet momentarily, but Jamie knew it wouldn't take long for them to regroup. He redoubled his efforts, grunting with the strain as his thickly corded muscles hauled him and the boy up the rope.
More slugs from below began to pepper the cliff around them. Jamie felt rock splinters sting his cheeks and hands. He called to Alexander, "Hang on tight, son!"
Bodie's gun ran dry. Jamie knew there wouldn't be time for his young friend to reload. Still clinging to the rope with his left hand, he let go with his right and reached down to pluck the .44 on that side from its holster. "Catch!" he yelled as he tossed the Colt the seven or eight feet to the rim.
Bodie dropped his gun beside him and grabbed Jamie's by the barrel, fumbling with it for a second before he secured it. He reversed it, pointed it down into the canyon, and started shooting again.
Jamie heaved, reached higher, heaved again. They were almost at the top. Another second or two...
He felt the heat of a bullet as it whipped past his ear. The slug hit the cliff and sprayed grit in his eyes, blinding him momentarily. He clenched his jaw and kept climbing.
He reached up for the rim, only to have a strong hand close around his wrist. Bodie hollered, "Keep coming! I've got you!"
"Grab the boy!" Jamie gasped out.
"Come on, Alexander!"
A second later, Alexander's weight lifted from Jamie's back.
"I've got him!" Bodie exclaimed as he fell back from the rim, taking Alexander with him.
At that instant, a bullet clipped Jamie on top of the left shoulder. The impact was enough to make his arm go numb. His grip on the rope slipped, and at the same time his toes slid off the tiny foothold where they had found purchase. He yelled as all his weight dangled from the grip of his right hand on the rope.
At that moment, Jamie Ian MacCallister's almost superhuman strength was all that saved him. He hung there with bullets screaming around him and smacking into the cliff for what seemed like an eternity.
In reality, it was only a couple heartbeats before he forced his left arm to work again and grabbed the rope with that hand. He hauled himself up another foot, then Bodie caught hold of the buckskin shirt. Jamie dug his toes against the rock as Bodie lifted him through the air and he rolled over the edge of the rimrock.
His pulse hammered inside his head like a gang of railroad workers driving spikes as he lay there on his back trying to catch his breath. A couple feet away, Bodie knelt and fired down at the Blackfeet, ducking occasionally as one of their bullets came too close to his head.
Jamie rolled onto his side and lifted his head. In the moonlight, he saw Alexander and Abigail watching him worriedly. He grinned at them. "I'm all right, kids. We'd better get out of here."
Bodie threw one final shot at the Indians, then retreated from the edge. "That sounds like a good idea to me." He handed Jamie's gun back to him. "Sorry it's empty."
"I'm not. I hope you hit some of 'em."
The four of them hurried down the slope as fast as they could, heading for the spot where Jamie and Bodie had left their horses. Within minutes they were mounted, with Abigail riding in front of Bodie and Alexander in front of Jamie, as they circled back toward the rest of the rescue party.
Jamie was counting on Hector and the other men to keep the Blackfeet bottled up in that canyon. The Indian ponies could only get in and out of the camp by one route, up that zigzag trail. As long as the men from the wagon train kept raking the top of that ridge with rifle fire, it ought to keep the Blackfeet from getting out.
Once Jamie, Bodie, and the Bradford kids rejoined the others, they would all have to make a run for it back to the wagon train. Jamie didn't think a war party of less than three dozen would dare to attack the entire group of immigrants. The Blackfeet would be angry because somebody had stolen their prisoners from them, but more than likely they would cut their losses and head on back to their home.
That's how Jamie hoped it would play out, anyway. With Indians, it was impossible to predict with absolute certainty what they would do.
As they galloped through the night, Bodie called over to Jamie, "How bad were you hit?"
Feeling had returned to Jamie's left arm. The wound on top of his shoulder throbbed, but he was able to move his arm and roll that shoulder without any trouble other than a twinge of pain. "Just nicked me. It's nothing."
If the Blackfoot who had fired that shot had gotten it off a couple seconds earlier, the bullet probably would have hit Alexander in the head. It had been that close a call. Just thinking about it made Jamie go a little cold in the belly.
They could no longer hear gunshots over the pounding hoofbeats of Sundown and Bodie's mount, but Jamie hoped the fighting was still going on. If not, the four of them might be riding right into trouble.
Finally, the moonlight revealed a saddle between two hills, one of the landmarks he remembered, and as they rode through it he saw the glow from muzzle flashes in the trees up ahead.
"Who's that?" a voice challenged in the darkness. "Sing out!"
"MacCallister!" Jamie replied. "I've got Cantrell and the kids with me."
"Thank the Lord!"
That was Bradford's voice, prompting Alexander to exclaim, "Pa!"
As Jamie reined in, he scrambled down from the stallion's back and ran toward his father. Abigail was right behind him. Bradford stepped forward and gathered them up in his arms.
The preacher was an unlikable son of a gun, thought Jamie, but he loved his kids and they returned the feeling. He had to give the man credit for that.
"Hector, where are you?" Jamie called.
"Right here," Hector responded as he stepped out of the shadows under some trees. "Are all of you all right?"
"Good enough," Jamie said. "Get the men on their horses. We're lighting a shuck back to the wagon train."
"What about the Blackfeet?"
"When they realize nobody's taking potshots at them anymore, they're liable to come boiling out of there and chase after us. It'll be a race back to the wagon train, but I think we'll have enough of a lead to beat them there, and once we do, they'll give up and turn back."
Hector hurried to carry out Jamie's orders, moving through the trees and rocks where the rescuers were forted up. "Back to your horses! Mount up, mount up!"
The men swung into their saddles.
Jamie rode over to Bradford. "Better let Bodie and me take the kids again, Reverend. Our horses can handle the extra weight, and you're not used to riding double, or in this case, triple."
"I can take care of my own children," Bradford snapped. But then common sense prevailed and he relented. "You two go with Mr. MacCallister and Mr. Cantrell."
"I want to stay with you," Abigail wailed.
"Hush now, and do as I say!"
That sharply voiced command got the children to obey. Jamie reached down, grasped Alexander's hands, and pulled the boy up in front of him again. He wheeled Sundown around as the line of men formed and started to leave the shelter of the trees.
They had just emerged into the open when muzzle flame split the darkness, coming from in front of them. Bullets raked through the rescue party, drawing pained shouts and sending two of the men toppling from their saddles.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 55
|
"Fall back!" Jamie bellowed as he hauled hard on the reins. "Back into the trees! Take cover!"
Bullets whined around them as the men hastily retreated. Over the sound of the shots, Jamie heard strident whoops from the unexpected attackers. He knew none of the Blackfeet in the canyon could have gotten in front of them, so that left only one other explanation.
The war party that had camped in the canyon was meeting another group of Blackfoot warriors, and the second bunch had shown up at just the wrong time.
Jamie and his companions, already outnumbered, were caught between the two forces.
Jamie swung Alexander to the ground and then flung himself out of the saddle, taking his Winchester with him. He told the boy to find his sister and make sure both of them stayed down as low as they could on the ground.
Taking cover behind a tree, Jamie brought the rifle to his shoulder, nestled his cheek against the smooth wood of the stock, and began firing at the muzzle flashes from the second group of Indians, cranking off the rounds as fast as he could work the Winchester's lever. More shots rang out as the other men began mounting a defense again.
Bodie Cantrell ran up and knelt behind a tree next to Jamie. "This is pretty bad, isn't it?"
"They've got us pinned down from both directions," Jamie acknowledged. "These trees and rocks give us pretty good cover, so we ought to be able to hold them off for a while, but sooner or later we'll run out of bullets."
"We can't count on any help from the wagon train, either. They don't have any way of knowing we're in trouble, so they won't send anybody after us."
"I reckon not," Jamie agreed grimly.
"If we hit the ones in front of us hard enough, could we bust through them?"
"Not without getting half our bunch killed, including those kids."
"Who are they? What's going on here, anyway?"
"Pure bad luck," Jamie said. "That's what's going on." He went on to explain his theory that the first bunch of Blackfeet had planned to rendezvous in the canyon with another war party.
Bodie agreed that made sense.
The firing from both directions died away.
Jamie called softly, "Everybody keep your head down! They're trying to draw us out into the open, but we're staying put."
Silence settled down over the rugged landscape.
Bodie said in a whisper, "Now we wait?"
"Now we wait," Jamie agreed. But only until morning, he thought.
Some people thought Indians wouldn't fight at night. Obviously, that wasn't true. But they preferred to do their killing during the day, and Jamie figured that's what they had in mind. They would keep the rescue party pinned down until daylight, and once they could see what they were doing, the Blackfeet would attack from both directions at once and overwhelm the defenders in the trees.
When that time came, Jamie and his companions would sell their lives as dearly as possible. There was nothing else they could do.
The hours stretched out uncomfortably. Jamie heard a lot of frightened muttering from the men. Abigail cried for a while before drifting off into an exhausted sleep. Alexander let out a few sniffles, too, but he was trying to be brave.
Reverend Bradford crawled up to Jamie's position and said in a low, angry voice, "You've managed to get us all killed, MacCallister. We'll never get out of this alive."
"I thought you were supposed to have faith, Reverend."
"I have faith in the Lord. I have none in you."
"Well, I'd be the last person to put myself on the same level as the Lord. I'm just a poor sinner trying to make his way in the world the same as anybody else. But I'll tell you the truth, Bradford. I did the best I knew how to do to help get those kids of yours back. Our luck ran out, that's all."
"Our luck ran out when we agreed to let you lead us to Montana," Bradford said bitterly.
Bodie said, "Why don't you just shut your mouth, Bradford? You're always telling other people how they've fallen short, but you're sure as hell not perfect yourself! Those two kids are scared of you, you know that? You're nothing but a damned hardheaded tyrant!"
Bradford started to get to his feet. "You can't talk that way to a man of God—"
Jamie reached over, put a hand on Bradford's shoulder, and shoved him back down. "Stay put, Reverend," he said coldly. "I don't cotton to you, but for your kids' sake I don't want you getting a bullet in the head."
"The Indians aren't shooting anymore. We don't even know they're still out there. Maybe they gave up and left."
"They're out there, all right," Jamie said. "Mark my words, Reverend. They're out there."
However, everything was still quiet by morning. As dawn turned the sky gray and then golden light spread from the east, Jamie scanned the landscape in front of the trees. He didn't see anything... but he knew that didn't matter.
He wasn't the only one watching the broad valley between the rolling hills that represented their way out. With no warning, Reverend Bradford suddenly strode out into the open, holding his Bible in one hand and waving it in the air.
"They're gone!" he said loudly. "See for yourselves! The red devils have departed!" He turned to gaze in triumph at Jamie.
"Get down, you fool!"
"The Lord has delivered us from—"
At that instant, a rifle cracked. Jamie saw blood fly in the dawn light as a slug bored into the side of Bradford's head and exploded out the other side in a grisly pink shower. The preacher dropped limply, dead by the time he hit the ground.
Abigail screamed and tried to run to her father. Bodie grabbed her as she went by and rolled onto the ground with her as the Blackfeet opened up again. Bullets thudded into tree trunks and shredded through branches.
The barrage lasted only a moment before ending abruptly. Startled yells came from the war parties in both directions. Guns roared again, but the reports were the duller booms of revolvers. Hoofbeats hammered the ground. Men howled in pain.
The oddest thing was that with all that shooting going on, none of the bullets seemed to be directed toward the trees where Jamie and his friends were.
"What's going on out there?" Hector asked as he knelt behind a rock.
"Sounds like reinforcements showed up," Jamie said.
"Reinforcements? From where?"
"I don't know... but I'm glad they're here!"
Stampeding ponies burst into view, along with Blackfoot warriors fleeing on foot to avoid being trampled. With targets out in the open like that, Jamie brought his Winchester up and took advantage of the opportunity. His deadly accurate shots took a toll as .44-40 rounds ripped through the warriors. Around him, the other men joined the battle again, too.
The Blackfeet were the ones caught in a crossfire, and they were smart enough to know that the best thing to do was get out while they could. Several of them grabbed stampeding ponies, hung on desperately to the manes, and swung up onto bare backs. They fled, shouting angrily. The ones who still could, followed that example.
"Must be a cavalry patrol came along and heard the shooting," Bodie said as the gunfire tapered off again. The surviving Blackfeet from both war parties were taking off for the tall and uncut.
"Maybe," Jamie said. "I reckon we'll find out pretty soon."
"What about the preacher?" Bodie nodded toward the body of Bradford.
With a glance at the sobbing Alexander and Abigail, Jamie said quietly, "Leave him for now, until we're sure those war parties are gone."
A few tense moments went by, then Bodie asked, "Who in the world is that?"
A man had stepped out into the open and was walking toward the trees, apparently as casual as if he were out for a Sunday stroll. He was tall and lean and clad in greasy buckskins. His hat was pushed back on thinning white hair, and he sported a grizzled beard. Despite his obvious age, he moved with the ease and vitality of a much younger man.
Another man appeared behind him, leading several horses. He was younger, clean shaven, with sandy hair and a very broad set of shoulders.
Jess Neville said, "We got a couple of hombres comin' in from this other side, too."
Jamie looked around and saw an even more unusual pair approaching the line of trees and rocks. One was a thick-bodied Indian with long, graying hair. Beside him, hurrying to keep up, was a white man not even four feet tall, also dressed in buckskins.
"There's your so-called cavalry patrol," Jamie told Bodie with a grin.
"Four men? That's all? How is that possible? Four men couldn't rout a whole Blackfoot war party, let alone two of 'em!"
"Depends on who they are. I don't know the young fella, but I'm acquainted with the other three, although it's been a long time since we crossed trails."
Jamie stepped out of the trees and raised a hand in greeting to the skinny, grizzled old-timer.
The man squinted at him. "Well, if that don't beat all! Jamie Ian MacCallister his own self, still big as a mountain and twice as ugly!"
"How are you doing, Preacher?" Jamie grinned and extended his hand. "Long time no see!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 56
|
The reunion was a happy one, although Jamie's pleasure at seeing the old mountain man called Preacher was tempered by Reverend Bradford's sudden and senseless death. The two veteran frontiersmen shook hands and slapped each other heartily on the back.
Almost forty years had passed since Jamie and Preacher had first met down in Texas. Since then, they had run into each other from time to time, often with years between meetings.
Jamie wasn't sure exactly how old Preacher was, but he knew the mountain man was at least a decade older than him. If anyone had asked him, he wouldn't have been sure whether Preacher was even still alive.
Obviously, Preacher had proven to be amazingly resilient. Jamie wasn't sure the gun or knife had been made that could kill the old buckskinner.
"Who's this?" Jamie asked with a nod toward the young man accompanying Preacher.
"Fella name of Smoke," Preacher said. "Smoke Jensen. We been driftin' around together for the past few years, ever since Smoke's pa got hisself killed by some no-good polecats. Heard a rumor those varmints might be over in Idaho, so we're sort of amblin' in that direction."
"Plan to settle the score, do you?"
"I do," Smoke said curtly.
"Smoke's about as naturally fast on the draw as anybody I ever seen," Preacher said with a note of pride in his voice. "That's how come I started callin' him Smoke. His real front handle is Kirby, but he don't go by it no more. I pree-dict you'll be hearin' a heap about him on down the line."
Smoke shook his head. "I'm not looking for a reputation. Just justice."
Preacher waved a hand toward his other two companions. "You remember Audie and Nighthawk, of course."
"Sure." Jamie shook hands with both men, former fur trappers who were long-time friends of Preacher. "How are you, Audie?"
"Exceedingly fine," the short white man answered. "The fresh air and hardy life I've experienced out here on the frontier seems to have allowed me to stave off decrepitude, at least for the time being."
Audie spoke like an educated man, which was exactly what he was. At one time, he had been a professor at a college back east before he had abandoned that stifling academic life and headed west. Although he was small in size, he had the fighting heart and spirit of a much larger man.
Jamie went on. "You're looking good, Nighthawk."
The impassive Crow warrior nodded solemnly. "Ummm."
"Still as talkative as ever, I see," Jamie commented with a grin. "Fellas, this young scalawag is Bodie Cantrell. Big hombre with the beard over there is Hector Gilworth, and the fella with him is his cousin Jess Neville." Jamie went on to introduce the other men in the rescue party.
"Who's the sky pilot who got in the way of a bullet?" Preacher asked.
"That would be Reverend Thomas Bradford," Jamie said. "Pa to those two youngsters."
Preacher's expressive mouth twisted in a grimace. "Tough on young'uns, seein' their pa gunned down like that."
"Yeah. They got carried off by some of those Blackfeet, and we were trying to get 'em back when we got pinned down here. It's a mighty good thing for us you came along when you did. What did you do, pull that old trick of yours where you slip into the enemy's camp during the night and cut some throats?"
Preacher chuckled. "It does tend to shake folks up a mite to find a few of their compadres with new mouths carved in their necks. When it got light, Audie and me stampeded the ponies that belonged to each bunch, whilst Smoke and Nighthawk waded in, their hoglegs a-blazin'. Every way those redskinned varmints turned, they was either a bullet or a wild-eyed bronc waitin' to ventilate 'em or trample 'em. Didn't take much o' that to make 'em light a shuck."
"What's left of the two bunches are liable to get together somewhere," Jamie mused. "We'd better get on back to the wagons while we can."
"Wagons?" Preacher repeated. "These fellas are from a wagon train?"
"That's right. Bound for Eagle Valley in Montana Territory."
"Mighty pretty place," Preacher said. "But in case you ain't noticed the chill in the air... it's December! What sort of dang fool takes a wagon train to Montana at this time o' year?"
"You're looking at him," Jamie said.
The old mountain man snorted. "I stand by that dang fool business."
"I'm not arguing the point. But we're here, and I'm bound and determined to get those pilgrims where they're going by Christmas." An idea occurred to Jamie. "Why don't the four of you come along with us?"
"Told you, we're headed for Idaho," Preacher said with a frown.
"And that's the general direction we're going," Jamie pointed out. "I wouldn't mind visiting with you for a while, Preacher... and having four more good men along for the rest of the trip wouldn't exactly make me unhappy, either."
Preacher scratched his grizzled jaw in thought and looked at Smoke. "What do you think, youngster? It's your pa we're goin' to settle the score for."
Smoke pondered the question for a moment, then said in his grave manner, "Chances are some of the passes where we need to go in Idaho are already closed, Preacher. We knew we might have to winter somewhere. I reckon it might as well be with these folks."
"There's your answer, Jamie," Preacher told the big frontiersman. "We'll come with you."
Jamie nodded in satisfaction.
Quickly, he got everyone mounted. Reverend Bradford's body was draped over his saddle and lashed in place. Several other men had been wounded in the fighting during the night, but none of the injuries were bad enough to keep them from riding. Bradford was the group's only casualty.
To Alexander and Abigail, though, it was a big loss. The two youngsters were orphans now. The only good thing about the situation was that Jamie was sure one of the families with the wagon train would be willing to take them in.
Jamie and Preacher took the point, and as the two old pioneers rode together, they talked about the things they had been doing since they had seen each other last.
"I was mighty sorry to hear about what happened to your woman, Jamie," Preacher said. "Heard tell you went after the sorry bunch responsible for her dyin' and rained down hellfire and brimstone on their heads."
"I settled the score for Kate as best I could," Jamie said, his face and voice grim. "It wasn't enough."
"No, I don't 'spect it was. I've lost folks I loved, too, and no matter how much vengeance you get, it ain't never enough 'cause it don't bring back them you lost. Nothin' does."
"But that doesn't stop us from trying."
"Nope. Reckon we wouldn't be human if we didn't want to even things up, so we try even though we know it won't really put our hearts at ease."
A chuckle came from Jamie. "Preacher, you're getting profound in your old age."
"Reckon it comes from bein' around Audie too much. That fella goes on and on about philosophy and such-like. And who in blazes are you callin' old?"
By midday, the rescue party, along with its newest additions, came in sight of the wagons parked next to the creek. Several men led by Jake galloped out to meet them and escorted them on in. Everyone gathered around to celebrate the safe return of Alexander and Abigail.
The immigrants were sobered by the death of Reverend Bradford. After his body was laid out on the ground, Moses covered it with a blanket and took his hat off, holding it over his heart. "The reverend might not want the likes of me praying over him, but I feel like I have to do it anyway."
"I don't reckon all those disagreements mean a blasted thing now," Jamie said. "The fella's dead, and I hope his soul is at peace."
"So do I," Moses murmured. "So do I. If it's all right with everyone, I'll conduct the funeral."
"I don't think anybody's going to object. You've got a lot of friends on this wagon train, Moses. Your faith may be different, but after what you did during that outbreak of fever and all the other ways you've pitched in, if these folks have a spiritual leader now... it's you."
Moses swallowed and nodded. "I'll try to live up to that."
Jamie nodded. "What we need to figure out now is who's going to take care of those kids."
A voice spoke up from behind him. "That's not going to be a problem, Mr. MacCallister."
Jamie and Moses turned to see Savannah standing there. She had her arms around the shoulders of Alexander and Abigail, whose pale, tear-streaked faces testified to their grief. They huddled against Savannah's skirts, obviously taking comfort from her presence.
"I'm going to take care of them," Savannah went on. "I can handle their wagon and see to it that they have everything they need."
"Are you sure about that?" Jamie asked with a frown. "You being an unmarried woman and all?"
"They were being raised by the reverend alone since his wife passed on," Savannah pointed out. "The children and I have become close, and this is something I'd really like to do."
"Well... if that's what all of you want... I don't reckon it's my place to say no."
"I'm sure everyone in the group will pitch in to help if need be." Moses paused. "Did you happen to ask Bodie what he thought about this idea?"
"It's not Bodie's decision to make," Savannah replied. "It's mine."
"Sounds to me like it's settled, then." Jamie looked at Alexander and Abigail. "You two have been mighty brave all through this. Miss Savannah's going to need you to keep on being brave. Reckon you can do that?"
Alexander nodded. He used the back of his hand to wipe away a stray tear. "This is all our fault. If we hadn't wandered off and let those Indians grab us, our pa would still be alive."
Jamie shook his head. "There are too many things going on in the world to say something like that for sure. Too many turning points where everything could turn out different. Might as well blame me for not keeping a closer eye on your pa, so that he couldn't step out there in the open where the Blackfeet could get a shot at him. Things happen, and I reckon we just have to tell ourselves that there's a reason for the way they do, and then we go on from there."
"That's right," Moses said. "On to your new homes in Eagle Valley. When do you think we'll get there, Jamie?"
"By Christmas, like I've been saying all along."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 57
|
When the wagon train had left Kansas City, Jamie had worried that he might not have enough scouts. With the addition of Preacher, Smoke Jensen, Audie, and Nighthawk, he almost had too many.
On the other hand, he also had four more first-class fighting men to help out in case of trouble. He knew from experience that Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk were hell on wheels in a ruckus, and it didn't take much time to realize that Smoke Jensen might well be the deadliest of them all.
During one of the wagon train's midday halts a few days after the rescue of the Bradford children, Preacher urged Smoke to get in a little practice with his guns. The old mountain man pointed out a fallen aspen about fifty feet away. "See if you can pick off some of them branches that are stickin' up."
Jamie was close by and heard what Preacher said. He looked at the fallen tree and saw that the branches weren't much more than twigs maybe half an inch wide. They were barely visible. Jamie figured he could have hit those branches with a rifle, if he'd had time to draw a bead on them.
Smoke swept out one of his .44s and started firing in less than the blink of an eye. He didn't shoot from the hip, but rather thrust the gun out at the end of his arm, taking no more than a split second to aim before the Colt began to roar.
He triggered off five shots. Even with having to cock the single-action Colt each time, the reports sounded so close together they formed one continuous peal of gun-thunder. To Jamie's amazement, five of the aspen branches leaped into the air as Smoke's bullets smashed through them.
Moses had wandered up in time to witness the display. He let out a shrill whistle of admiration and awe. "I never saw such shooting!"
"Taught the younker everything he knows," Preacher said with a proud grin.
Smoke smiled faintly as he reloaded the expended chambers.
Preacher shrugged. "Of course, the boy had some natural talent to begin with."
Moses said, "Mr. Preacher, do you think you could teach me to shoot?"
"Hold on a minute," Jamie told him. "Moses, you never said anything to me about wanting to learn how to shoot."
"Well, it just seems so foreign to me. But the longer we stay out here on the frontier, the more it seems like maybe it's something I should learn how to do."
"Why, sure, I'd be glad to give you a few leetle pointers," Preacher said. "Don't go to thinkin' you'll ever be as good with a hogleg as Smoke is, though. To that boy, usin' a gun is just as natural as breathin'."
"I just want to be able to protect people who need to be protected," Moses said.
"That there's an honorable goal. There's a heap of bad folks in this world, and it falls to them who have good hearts to stand up to those varmints and do what's right. You got a gun?"
"Well... no."
Drawn by the shooting, Bodie walked up in time to hear most of the conversation. He grinned and unbuckled his gun belt. "You can borrow mine, Moses."
"Oh... all right. Thanks." Moses took the belt and rather awkwardly strapped it around his hips.
"Hitch that belt up a mite," Preacher told him. "Your holster's too low. You want the gun butt about halfway betwixt your wrist and your elbow, so when you raise your arm your hand'll hit it natural-like. Yeah, that's right," he went on as Moses adjusted the belt. "You saw that log Smoke was a-shootin' at. Pull that hogleg and see if you can hit it."
Moses faced the log, squared his shoulders, and took a deep breath. He made what he probably thought was a quick grab at the gun, although the move seemed painfully slow to Jamie's eyes.
The gun came clear of the holster, and Moses immediately exclaimed, "Whoa!" He grabbed it with his other hand to keep from dropping it. "It's heavy!"
"You'll get used to it," Preacher said. "It's a dang good thing that log ain't gonna be shootin' back at you. Now burn some powder, son!"
Moses pointed the revolver at the fallen tree. The barrel wobbled back and forth violently. He grunted as he tried to pull the trigger, but nothing happened.
Bodie said, "You've got to cock it. Pull the hammer back until it locks into place. Then pull the trigger."
"Oh," Moses said. "I didn't notice Smoke doing that—"
"That's because he does it too fast for the eye to follow. But you can take your time, Moses."
"All right." Moses looped his right thumb over the hammer and pulled it back. The effort caused the barrel to point upward.
"Straighten it back down," Preacher said.
Still using both hands, Moses pointed the gun at the log. It was still pretty shaky. Seconds stretched out as Moses tried to get the barrel to stop jumping around enough that he could aim.
"Any time now," Preacher drawled.
Moses jerked the trigger.
The Colt boomed. The recoil forced the gun up, and Moses obviously wasn't ready for it. He yelled as the revolver flew out of his hands.
"Duck, boys!" Preacher shouted.
Jamie stepped forward and caught the gun before it could fall to the ground.
Moses had his hands clapped over his ears. "That was so loud. It sounds even louder when you're holding the gun."
"Here you go," Jamie said as he handed the weapon back to Moses. Quickly he pushed the barrel down toward the ground. "Don't point it at me or anybody else. Not unless it's somebody who needs shooting."
Moses squinted at the log. "Did I hit it?"
"You didn't even come close," Preacher said. "Your bullet went ten or twelve feet over it, I reckon. Try again."
By now quite a crowd was gathering. Savannah, with Alexander and Abigail, was one of the spectators. She called, "You can do it, Moses!"
"Yeah!" Alexander added.
"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Moses said, "but I'm beginning to have my doubts."
"A man never knows until he tries," Jamie said. "Sometimes he has to try a bunch of times."
"You're right, of course." Moses took a deep breath and aimed at the fallen aspen again.
Fifteen minutes later, he had emptied the Colt, Bodie had reloaded it, and Moses had emptied it again. He had dropped the gun four times, nearly shot himself in the foot twice, and hadn't hit the log even once.
"Moses, ol' son, I hate to tell you this," Preacher drawled, "but you ain't cut out to be a pistoleer. I reckon if you was to find yourself in a gunfight, you'd be more of a danger to them who was on your side instead of the hombres you're supposed to ventilate."
Moses sighed and nodded. "I think you're right, Mr. Preacher." He unbuckled the gun belt. "I need to be a good sport about it, though. Not everyone can be good at everything."
"That's all right," Bodie told him as he took the Colt back. "You just leave the shooting to the rest of us."
Moses brightened and suggested, "Maybe I could learn how to use a rifle. Or a shotgun."
Jamie felt a shiver of apprehension go through him at the thought of Moses Danzig with a scattergun in his hands. "Not today. Back to your wagons, folks. It's time for us to be rolling again!"
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 58
|
The wagon train turned west a couple days later. If Jamie had figured correctly—and he was pretty sure he had—Eagle Valley was right in front of them, about two weeks' journey away.
Two more weeks for the good weather to hold, he mused as he rode in front of the wagon train. Would that be possible? Already winter had held off with its full force for longer than he had dared hope.
Not that it wasn't cold all the time. Every morning ice had to be broken off the top of the water buckets before the animals could drink. The sun shone most days, but its light was weak and watery and held only scant warmth. The temperature usually climbed above freezing, but not always. People lived in their coats now, not taking them off even at night when they crawled into their bedrolls.
By the time they got where they were going, the whole lot of them would be pretty gamey, Jamie thought with a smile.
Bodie came up alongside him and waved a hand at the grasslands surrounding them. "It's mighty dry up here. Is there a drought going on?"
"No. The cold's killed all the grass, at least on top of the ground. The snows will come in and cover it up for several months, and then come spring when the snow melts, all that water will soak into the ground, down to the roots of the grass. That's when it'll start budding out again. Once these pilgrims get where they're going, they can plant winter grass next fall if they want to, so they'll have some graze for their livestock almost year-round. Anyway, as I recall, Eagle Valley has more and better vegetation to start with. The foothills get more rain in the spring and fall than the plains do."
Bodie squinted at the western horizon. "If Eagle Valley is in the foothills of the Rockies, like you said, Jamie, shouldn't we be able to see the mountains by now?"
"Be patient," Jamie told him. "You'll see 'em soon enough. When you do, it'll seem like you're never going to get there. They'll sit there in front of us for days without looking like they're getting any closer."
Jamie's prediction proved to be true. A day later, the immigrants spotted what looked like low-lying white clouds in the distance. Jamie rode along the train to the Bradford wagon, which was being driven by Savannah, who had proven to be an adept hand at getting the oxen to move.
Jamie pointed to the west and said to Alexander and Abigail, "See those white patches up in the sky, way off over yonder? That's snow on top of the Rocky Mountains."
The children were impressed, and so was Savannah.
"It's beautiful," she said. "I never thought I'd see such a sight. When you spend your days in hotel rooms and your nights in a darkened theater, your idea of scenery is a painted backdrop. I like the real thing much better."
"You've changed a mite in the past couple months while we've been on the trail," Jamie said.
Savannah shook her head. "No. I've changed a lot. And all for the better, thanks to you, Mr. MacCallister."
"Not just thanks to me. A certain young fella had something to do with it, too."
Jamie couldn't be sure if Savannah's cheeks were red from the chilly wind... or if she was blushing a little, too. But she looked happy, and that was the main thing, he supposed, whatever the reason.
Savannah had gotten Alexander and Abigail nested down in a veritable mountain of blankets and quilts when she heard a soft footstep outside the wagon. The children were asleep, so she moved to the back of the vehicle and whispered through the gap around the canvas flap, "Who's there?"
"It's just me."
The voice was familiar, and it made warmth well up inside her. Not real, physical warmth, although that would have been more than welcome, but rather an emotional one that was quite comforting, anyway.
She climbed over the tailgate and out of the wagon, her movements hampered somewhat by the thick layers of clothing she wore. Bodie reached up, took hold of her under her arms, and helped her to the ground.
That made it easy for him to press her body against his as he hugged her. As many clothes as they both had on, there wasn't anything sensual about the embrace, but Savannah found it very satisfying, anyway.
And when he leaned down to kiss her... well, that was sensual, and it started her heart pounding harder as their lips clung together.
"I'm sure glad you decided not to leave the wagon train and go back to acting," he said quietly as they held each other and she rested her head against his chest.
"I miss Cyrus and Dollie and everybody else in the troupe," Savannah said. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't. One day I'd like to see them all again. But I've made so many friends here on the wagon train... Moses and Hector and the Binghams... and you. I can't imagine ever leaving now." She paused. "When we get to Eagle Valley... you're going to stay, aren't you, Bodie?"
"I've been talking to Captain Hendricks. I told him I want to claim a homestead, too. I've spent a lot of years on the drift, Savannah, ever since my folks died. I reckon it's time that I settled down."
He wouldn't have to find a homestead to claim, she thought. The one where Reverend Bradford had planned to settle with his children ought to be available. Savannah planned to see to it that Alexander and Abigail got what was coming to them, but they would need a grown-up to help them.
Maybe a couple grown-ups... a couple... and two children...
Well, that made a family, didn't it?
She didn't allow herself to say any of those thoughts out loud. She didn't want to rush Bodie or pressure him into anything. But he was a smart man, she told herself. He would figure it out soon enough. If the idea hadn't occurred to him by the time the wagon train reached Eagle Valley, surely it would once they had been there a while.
Moses had conducted Reverend Bradford's funeral. Maybe he would be willing to perform a marriage ceremony, too.
The two of them held each other for a time, talking quietly and kissing now and then. Even though the night was very cold, the time they spent together was a pleasant interlude.
Finally Savannah said, "I need to get back in the wagon, I guess. If the weather was nicer—"
"But it's not," Bodie said. "One of these days it will be again, though. When that day comes, we'll spend a lot of time together and enjoy every minute of it."
"I can't wait." Savannah gave him another kiss and climbed into the wagon.
Bodie's heart was light as he walked back toward Moses's wagon. He had come mighty close to asking Savannah to marry him, but he wanted to wait for a better time. For one thing, he wanted to see the look on her face when he asked her that all-important question, and the night was too dark for that.
There would be plenty of chances to propose later, he told himself. Now that they had both decided to remain in Eagle Valley permanently, they had all the time in the world. That thought made him so happy he started whistling a tune. It wasn't a real song, just an irrepressible expression of how he felt at the moment.
It also served inadvertently to cover up the sound of a footstep behind him. He had no warning before something smashed into the back of his head, driving him to his knees.
Pain exploded inside his skull, pain so intense that it blinded him momentarily. He tried to fight his way to his feet, but somebody kicked him in the back and knocked him facedown on the ground. Weight came down on him, a knee digging painfully into the small of his back and pinning him there. An icy-cold ring of metal pressed into his temple.
He recognized it as the muzzle of a gun and stopped trying to struggle. He had no idea who had attacked him, but he sensed that his life was hanging by a slender thread. All that would be required to end it was a little pressure on the trigger....
"That's better," a man said in a harsh whisper.
The voice was familiar, but Bodie couldn't place it right away. The man bent over closer to him, close enough for Bodie to smell the whiskey on his breath.
"Don't give me any trouble," the man went on, "and you might come out of this alive. But I wouldn't count on that, you dirty, stinkin' double-crosser."
Bodie knew the voice, knew who it was that had come out of the cold, dark night to wreck all his plans.
Eldon Swint.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 59
|
The outlaw wrapped the fingers of his left hand around Bodie's arm and hauled the young man to his feet, keeping the gun barrel pressed to Bodie's head.
Bodie tried to force his brain to work despite the throbbing in his skull and make some sense of what Swint had said. "Eldon, why are you doing this? I never double-crossed you! I told you I was leaving the gang. I even gave up my share of the loot."
Swint ground the gun barrel against Bodie's temple, making him gasp in pain. "You pretended to give up your share! I'll bet it was your idea for Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll to steal that whole pile of double eagles!"
Bodie's heart sank. Everything suddenly made sense. He knew why Jake and the other two had left the gang right after he did and had joined up with the wagon train.
He had considered Jake his friend and didn't like to think that he was capable of such treachery, but Bodie's instincts told him it was true. Jake had been angling to get his hands on more than his fair share, right from the start. Clearly, he had come up with a way to do it.
Swint had figured out who was responsible for the loss of the loot, as well as where they had fled, and he had gotten on their trail like a bloodhound.
"You followed us all the way from Kansas City?"
"Damn right we did," Swint said. "Took us awhile to realize where that money must've gone, and we've run into nothin' but trouble chasin' you boys down. Fever hit the whole bunch of us and laid us low for a while. Killed a couple of the fellas. But the rest of us got over it, and now we've caught up to you at last, you no-good thief."
"Listen to me, Eldon," Bodie said, trying to make his voice as convincing as he possibly could. "I swear I didn't have anything to do with taking that money. I gave up my share, just like I told you back in Kansas City. That's the truth. All I wanted was to come with this wagon train."
"And be with your little whore of an actress." Swint laughed as Bodie stiffened. "Yeah, I know all about her. If you don't want somethin' mighty bad to happen to her as well as you, you'll tell me where the loot is."
"I don't know. I swear I don't."
Swint took the gun away from Bodie's temple, but before the young man could react, Swint raked the barrel across the side of his head in a vicious swipe. Bodie gasped as he felt blood well from the gash that the gun sight had opened up.
"I'll kill you, you damn fool," Swint grated. "You know that, don't you?"
It had been a mistake for him to ever think that Eldon Swint might not be as tough and brutal as he appeared to be, Bodie realized. The man was a ruthless hardcase, through and through, and would do anything to get what he wanted.
"If I knew, I'd tell you, Eldon. I really would. But I can't tell you something I don't know."
"Where's Lucas and the other two?"
Bodie hesitated. If he sold out Jake, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll, it would be the same thing as signing their death warrant. Swint intended to kill them.
But Swint intended to kill him, too. Bodie had no doubt about that. And he had threatened Savannah.
"You brought the whole gang with you?"
"That's right, except for the two the fever took. They're situated all around the camp, ready to open fire at my signal. We'll lay waste to this wagon train if we have to, Cantrell. You better believe it."
Bodie believed it, all right, and with a sinking feeling inside him, he realized the situation was worse than he had thought. Swint wouldn't want to leave any witnesses alive, and he wouldn't pass up whatever loot he could find in the wagons. A cold certainty came over Bodie, colder even than the frigid winter temperatures in Montana Territory.
Swint planned to wipe out everyone on the wagon train—Savannah, the kids, Moses, everybody—take everything of value from it, and probably burn the wagons behind him as a memorial to his evil.
To give himself time, Bodie took a deep breath and sighed. He suddenly realized Swint's mistake was not knowing who was accompanying the wagon train. He decided to go along with what Swint thought had happened. "Blast it, all right. I should've known all along that I couldn't fool you, Eldon. But just for the record, it was Jake's idea, not mine."
That was the truth, anyway.
"That don't surprise me none," Swint said. "I always thought Lucas was a sneaky little snake. Show me where the loot's hid and I'll let you live. Lucas and them other two got to die, though."
"Fine." The bitterness in Bodie's voice was genuine even if the sentiment he expressed was not. "He never should've been greedy and gotten us into this mess."
"Damn right. Now move, and don't forget that I'll blow your brains out if you try anything funny. I don't really need you. It'll be easier if you show me where the money is, but I'll find it one way or another."
"There's a false bottom in one of the wagons," Bodie said, his brain working furiously as he formulated his plan. It would take a considerable amount of luck to make it work, but he didn't really have any other choice. "It's over here."
With the gun still at his head, he stumbled toward the wagon where Moses was asleep.
Moses... and Jamie Ian MacCallister.
Jamie didn't sleep as well as he once had. It was just part of growing older. The cold didn't help matters, either. He felt it more as it seeped into his bones and made them ache and his muscles grow stiff. He was half-awake as footsteps approached the wagon.
Something was off about them. The gait was wrong, causing Jamie's instincts to warn him. Instantly, he was fully awake and alert. His hands reached out in the darkness and unerringly closed around the butts of the .44s he had placed where he could get to them easily.
He rose up, a massive, bearlike shape in the shadows inside the wagon, and moved silently to the rear of the vehicle. Using the barrel of one gun, he moved the canvas flap aside slightly. Two men were coming toward the wagon, one of them stumbling slightly like he was drunk. The other man held his arm as if the first man had imbibed too much.
As clouds moved away from the moon, Jamie saw the second man holding a gun and knew the first man wasn't drunk. Something was very wrong.
The first man said, "I'll show you how to get into that false bottom in the wagon. The loot's hidden there. You've got to give me your word, though, Eldon, that you and the rest of the gang won't hurt anybody."
"Nobody but Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll," the second man said.
Jamie knew he was lying. He could hear it in the man's voice.
"Those double-crossers got to die."
"Fine, but you've got to get word to the men hidden outside the camp not to open fire," the first man said.
Jamie recognized the voice. It belonged to Bodie Cantrell. He was doing a good job of letting him know what was going on.
"That's enough jabberin'," the other man snapped. "Anybody in that wagon?"
"No, it's mine. I took it over after the fella who had it died of a fever, too. The same sickness hit us. After that happened, I fixed up the false bottom and hid those sacks of double eagles in it."
"All right, open it up. I want to see that loot of mine... and then get down to business."
Killing business, Jamie thought. He could hear the bloodlust in the man's voice.
They were right outside the wagon. It was time to make his move.
Jamie swept the canvas aside and bellowed, "Hit the dirt, Bodie!" He came out of the wagon like a whirlwind, both guns extended in front of him.
Bodie rammed an elbow back into his captor's body and twisted away just as Swint pulled the trigger. Flame spouted from the gun muzzle. Bodie cried out as if he were hit.
Jamie didn't have time to check on him. He was too busy killing the viper in their midst.
Both .44s roared as he thumbed off shot after shot. Tongues of flame a foot long licked out from the gun barrels. Eldon was tough and stayed on his feet for a moment as Jamie's bullets pounded into him. He even got another shot off, the slug whining harmlessly over Jamie's head.
Then the lead storm took its toll. Eldon went over backwards, shot to pieces.
Jamie rammed the revolvers behind his belt, reached back into the wagon, and plucked his Winchester from the floor. He levered a round into the chamber as he shouted, "Preacher! Smoke! Outlaws around the camp!"
He leaped over a wagon tongue and plunged into the night, ready to do battle. He didn't know how many outlaws were hiding around the camp, but with him, Preacher, and Smoke going after them, to say nothing of Audie and Nighthawk...
Well, however many there were, the varmints were outnumbered.
They just didn't know it yet.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 60
|
The next few minutes were flame-streaked chaos. Hidden gunmen opened fire on Jamie, and he returned the shots with deadly effect. He hoped all the immigrants were keeping their heads down while the fight raged.
The battle ringed the camp. Jamie heard a rapid fusillade of six-gun fire and figured that was Smoke Jensen getting in on the action. He didn't think anybody else could keep a pair of hoglegs singing that fast.
The Winchester's magazine ran dry. As it did, a man leaped up from the ground nearby and ran at Jamie, thrusting out a gun, eager for a sure shot.
Jamie ducked as the blast rang out, then stepped in to meet the charge. He drove the rifle's butt into the man's face and heard the satisfying crunch of bone. The outlaw dropped like a rock.
"Jamie, look out!" someone called.
Jamie twisted and crouched, and another shot blasted close enough he felt the heat from the muzzle. Before he could do anything else, Bodie appeared, the gun in his hand flaming. The outlaw who had nearly ventilated Jamie went down, twisted off his feet by Bodie's shots.
"Glad to see you're all right," Jamie told the young man.
"Muzzle flash nearly burned my eyebrows off," Bodie said, "but the bullet missed and that's all that counts."
"You're right about that. Let's finish cleaning up these rats... and then you'll have to tell me what this is all about."
Just as Jamie expected, the outlaws were no match for the fighting men from the wagon train. Hector Gilworth and Jess Neville had joined in the battle, too, and had given a good account of themselves. Jess might claim to be lazy, but he had tackled two of the gunmen in a fierce shoot-out and brought them both down, taking a bullet through his left arm in the process. Hector had gotten his hands on one of the outlaws and broken the man's neck.
Preacher, Smoke, Audie, and Nighthawk wiped out the rest of the gang in short order. They weren't the sort of men who asked for or gave quarter, especially when faced with human vermin. By the time they finished sweeping in a big circle around the wagon train, the plains were littered with owlhoot corpses.
Then, as Jamie had told Bodie, it was time for explanations.
The main campfire in the center of the circle was built up until it was blazing brightly and casting light over the gathering. The first thing Bodie did was look around for Jake Lucas, Clete Mahaffey, and Dave Pearsoll.
There was no sign of the three men.
They must have realized what was going on and taken advantage of the confusion to slip away, Jamie decided once Bodie had revealed that they were all former members of Eldon Swint's outlaw gang and spilled the story about the stolen loot.
"I'm sorry, Savannah," Bodie said to the young woman as she stared solemnly at him. A bloodstained bandage was wrapped around his head where Swint had pistol-whipped him. "I hoped you'd never find out about my past. I'm ashamed that I ever got mixed up with a bunch of owlhoots like that."
For a long moment, Savannah didn't say anything. Then, "You could have told me, Bodie. I thought you trusted me more than that."
"I do trust you," he insisted. "I just didn't want you to think bad of me."
"I've seen what you're really like these past weeks." Savannah looked around at the rest of the immigrants. "We all have. You risked your life to save Abigail and Alexander. You've been a good friend to everybody on this wagon train. I'm sure you've made some mistakes, done some things you regret and wish you could take back... but everyone has. I know I have." She shook her head. "But it doesn't make me feel any differently toward you."
Relief washed over Bodie's face. "Thank the Lord! I was afraid you'd hate me when you found out the truth."
Savannah shook her head, moved closer to Bodie, and laid a hand on his arm. "I could never hate you."
Jamie stepped between them and the rest of the crowd, putting his back to the two young people so they could have a moment of privacy as he addressed the group. "Hector, we need to get some horses and rope and drag those carcasses well away from the wagons. I reckon the wolves will take care of them after that."
Moses made a face. "Is it really necessary to deal with them in such a callous manner, Jamie?"
"The ground's too hard to dig a grave big enough for all of them."
Preacher added, "I wouldn't be inclined to go to that much trouble for such a bunch of polecats, anyway. Nature's got its own way of dealin' with varmints like that, and I don't figure on losin' a second's sleep over how they end up."
"What about those other three Bodie mentioned?" Smoke asked. "The ones who made off with that money to start with and started all this trouble."
A grim smile touched Jamie's mouth. "I thought you and me and Preacher might take a little hunting trip."
"That sounds like a mighty fine idea to me," the old mountain man said with a savage grin of his own on his grizzled face.
"I told you we should've gotten far away from that wagon train a long time ago," Clete Mahaffey groused as the three men rode through the dawn light.
"Yeah, and you've said that how many times since we lit out?" Jake Lucas shot back at him.
Dave Pearsoll said, "Look, we're all lucky to be alive. If Swint had gone after us first instead of Cantrell, we probably wouldn't be. We've still got the loot, so let's count our blessings. We're on our own now, and from the sound of the shooting back there when we rode out, at least some of Swint's gang have to be dead. Maybe all of 'em if they went up against MacCallister, Preacher, and that Smoke kid."
Pearsoll had a point, Jake thought. If he was being really honest with himself, he had to admit that he had hung around the wagon train for as long as he had only because of Savannah McCoy.
Even after the unsatisfying incident along the creek where the Bradford kids had been snatched by the Blackfeet, he had harbored feelings for her. Clearly, though, the little tramp was never going to see that she ought to be with him instead of Bodie, so staying with the wagons was a waste of time.
Hell, he was a rich man, he mused. He could find all the willing women he wanted. Women a lot better looking than Savannah McCoy...
He wasn't convinced of the truth of that last part, but he could tell himself that, anyway.
Fate had taken a hand and forced their separation from the pilgrims.
Jake said, "You know, I've heard about a place over in Idaho we ought to look for, a settlement called Bury. From the sound of it, gents like us are welcome there."
"Bury?" Mahaffey repeated. "What sort of name is that for a town?"
"Don't know and don't care, as long as that's not what they do to us there," Jake said with a grin. He didn't feel too bad any longer.
Sure, it was bothersome that Eldon Swint had trailed them all that way. But luck had been on Jake's side, as it always was, and he was convinced that Swint and the other outlaws had been wiped out in the fighting around the wagon train. From here on out, he and his two pards could just enjoy life.
He died with the grin still on his face as an arrow struck him between the shoulder blades with such force that its flint head drove all the way through his body and ripped out from his chest. Jake's body toppled loosely from the saddle and hit the ground beside the spooked horse as shots, war cries, and, ultimately, screams filled the cold morning air.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 61
|
Preacher sniffed the air. "I don't know about you fellas, but that smells like snow to me."
The morning had dawned clear as Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke set out on the trail of the three outlaws, but thick gray clouds soon had moved down from the north, obscuring the sun and making the cold wind seem more frigid.
"Yeah," Jamie agreed with the old mountain man's prediction. "Not today, I don't reckon, but it wouldn't surprise me to see some snow tonight."
"How far you reckon we are from Eagle Valley?" Preacher asked as he squinted at the sky.
"Three days, maybe. I've known we were getting close for a while now, but I didn't tell those pilgrims just yet."
Smoke said, "I'm pretty sure this is December twenty-first."
The two older men looked at him.
Smoke's broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "Just pointing out that three more days will be Christmas Eve. You said you wanted to get there by Christmas, Jamie." A rare smile touched the young man's face. "You're cutting it a mite close."
"Yeah, but Bodie and Hector will keep those wagons moving as fast as they can until we get back."
Preacher suddenly drew back on his reins and frowned. "Danged if I don't smell somethin' else now. And it ain't nothin' good, neither."
Jamie and Smoke reined in, too. Jamie took a deep breath, and his face was as grim as Preacher's. "Gun smoke."
They hadn't heard any gunfire. Whatever had happened was over, leaving only faint traces in the air.
All three men drew their rifles and laid them across the saddles in front of them, then rode forward, still following the tracks. The trail led over a gently rolling hill. As they crested it, they brought their mounts to a halt again.
About a hundred yards in front of them, at the bottom of the grassy slope, lay three bloody, huddled shapes that had once been human.
Jamie took a pair of field glasses from one of his saddlebags and used them to study the dead men. They had been scalped and mutilated. The blood that covered their faces was already freezing in the cold air.
"Is that the three we're after?" Smoke asked.
"Just going by what's left of them, that's hard to say," Jamie replied. "But I recognize the clothes. That's Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll, all right."
Preacher said, "From the looks of 'em, they run into a bunch of Blackfeet. Might be the leavin's from those war parties we scrapped with awhile back."
Jamie grunted. "Let's take a closer look."
They rode forward, eyes constantly scanning the landscape around them for any sign of an attack. Jamie spotted a double eagle lying on the prairie and pointed it out.
"The Blackfeet scattered that money those fellas had with them," he said. "They let the earth have it. That's their way of showing it didn't mean anything to them."
Jamie's instincts told him that the Indians were gone. They'd had their brutal sport with the three luckless outlaws and then moved on.
The question was, where had they gone?
Once Jamie got a closer look at the bodies, he was convinced that they were Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll. The gruesome sight didn't particularly bother him; he had seen plenty of violent death in his time.
What worried him were the tracks of the unshod ponies they found around the mutilated corpses. He gestured toward the hoofprints. "Looks like there were forty or fifty Blackfeet. That's more than we left alive in that battle."
"The ones who got away met up with some of their pards," Preacher suggested.
"And then what?" Smoke asked.
Jamie rode in a big circle and found tracks moving away from the place where the three outlaws had been killed. He pointed them out to his two companions. "It looks to me like they angled off on a course that'll cross the path of the wagon train."
"Chances are that was what they was after all along," Preacher said. "They're mad about gettin' whipped before, and they're goin' after the whole wagon train this time. They just happened to run across these three varmints along the way and took advantage of the chance to kill 'em."
"Come on," Jamie said as he wheeled Sundown. "We'd better get back there as fast as we can."
A grim hunch filled him as he rode, a hunch that said they might already be too late.
Bodie rode out in front of the wagons with Audie and Nighthawk. He enjoyed talking to the little mountain man, who seemed to know something about almost everything. No matter what the subject was, Audie could converse on it. Bodie didn't always fully understand what the former professor was saying, but it was interesting, anyway.
"And that's why I believe it's imminently possible that life may exist on other planets in our solar system," Audie said. "If we can ever develop telescopes powerful enough to study them more closely, we may see the evidence of great civilizations with our own eyes. Don't you agree, Nighthawk?"
"Ummm," said the Crow warrior.
"Yes, but you like to argue just on general principles, my friend. You'll see, one of these days. The evidence will prove me correct, as it always does."
"So, let me get this straight," Bodie said. "You're saying there are people like us on other planets?"
"Well... not necessarily like us. Different conditions might produce different sorts of life. But they could still be self-aware and highly intelligent. More intelligent than we are, perhaps."
"Wouldn't that be something?" Bodie mused. "I'm not sure I'd want to meet a man from another planet."
"I would," Audie said. "I would consider it a great privilege and honor, not to mention the most scientifically intriguing encounter of our age or any other."
"Ummm," Nighthawk said.
Audie turned to frown at his friend. "What do you mean, we have bigger prob—Oh, Lord. Bodie, look at that."
The three men reined in. Bodie's breath seemed to freeze in his throat as he saw the dozens of mounted figures on a rise to their left. Even at that distance, his keen eyes could make out the feathers in their hair.
"Blackfeet," Audie said. "We need to get back to the wagons—now!"
The three men wheeled their horses and kicked them into a gallop. As they raced back toward the wagons, Nighthawk pointed to a group of Indians closing in from the other direction.
"Make some racket!" Bodie yelled. "We've got to warn the train!"
They pulled their guns and started firing into the air. Bodie was confident that Hector Gilworth would hear the shots and order the immigrants to stop and pull the wagons into a defensive circle.
He glanced over his shoulder at the pursuit and saw puffs of smoke as the Indians opened fire on them. At that range, shooting from the back of their ponies, the likelihood of any of those bullets finding their targets was extremely small, but Bodie couldn't rule out pure bad luck, though. His muscles were tense as he halfway anticipated the shock of a slug hitting him.
The wagons came into sight. He felt a surge of relief when he saw that they were already forming into a circle, just as he'd hoped. The Blackfoot war party was a large one, but the men of the wagon train had some experience at fighting Indians. They would give the Blackfeet a hot reception.
In fact, shots had already begun to crackle from between the parked wagons by the time Bodie, Audie, and Nighthawk reached the train. They leaped their horses through one of the gaps as gunfire and shrill war whoops filled the air and lead tore through the canvas covers on some of the wagons. Hector Gilworth ran along the line of wagons, bellowing, "Everybody keep your head down!"
Bodie threw himself out of the saddle, dragging his Winchester from its sheath, and looked around frantically for Savannah. He spotted the wagon she had been driving and ran toward it, but before he could get there he heard Jess Neville shout, "Bodie! Over here! Those red devils are chargin'!"
Bodie swung around and saw a large group of Blackfeet thundering toward a gap in the circle. If they broke through and got inside, it would be bloody chaos. Bodie sprang to join Jess and several other men in defending the opening. He brought the rifle to his shoulder and began firing as fast as he could work the lever. Clouds of powder smoke rolled around him, stinging his eyes and nose, and the constant roar of shots deafened him.
The savages wouldn't get through, he vowed to himself. They would never reach Savannah or any of the other women and children. He would stop them.
Or die trying.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 62
|
Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke heard the shooting before they came in sight of the wagon train. The immigrants had had a little warning, because they'd been able to pull the wagons into a loose circle. They were defending that stronghold from at least fifty Blackfoot warriors who were galloping their ponies around and around the circle.
Jamie drew rein and lifted his rifle. "Let's see if we can pick some of them off and even the odds a little."
Three Winchesters cracked as the frontiersmen opened fire. With all the shooting already going on, the Blackfeet didn't notice right away that some of the bullets were coming from a different direction. That gave the three men a chance to do some real damage before they were discovered.
Jamie fired, saw a warrior throw up his arms and pitch to the ground from his pony's back as the .44-40 slug bored through him. By the time that Blackfoot hit the ground, Jamie had worked the repeater's lever and shifted his aim. The Winchester blasted again, and another of the attackers fell.
The shots from Preacher and Smoke were just as deadly. Nearly a dozen members of the war party died before the Blackfeet realized what was going on. Shrieking in outrage, a group of them peeled off and charged toward the three men.
"Time for us to light a shuck," Preacher drawled as he slid his rifle back in its saddle boot.
"I want to get back to the wagons," Jamie said. "Let's take them by surprise and plow right through them."
"Sounds good to me." Smoke pulled both Colts from their holsters.
Preacher did likewise.
Jamie filled his hands with his .44s and dug his boot heels into Sundown's flanks. The big stallion leaped forward.
It was a mad, outrageous maneuver, filled with gun thunder, swirling clouds of powder smoke, pounding hoofbeats, and the constant whine of bullets slashing through the air around them. The three men never broke off in their advance, smashing into the group of Blackfeet and scattering them. The hail of lead from six revolvers shredded through the warriors, and several of those who escaped being ventilated were knocked from their ponies and trampled.
As Jamie's Colts ran dry, a mounted Blackfoot with his face painted dashed in from the side and thrust a lance at him. Jamie twisted away from the deadly weapon and as the warrior came within arm's length, Jamie reversed his left-hand Colt and crashed the butt into the man's forehead, crushing it and driving bone splinters into the man's brain. He grabbed the lance away from the dying warrior.
Preacher and Smoke were slowed down by hand-to-hand battles, but they broke through and galloped toward the wagons. Jamie was right behind them. As he charged past another of the Blackfeet, he threw the lance like a spear. His massive strength put so much power behind the throw that it tore all the way through the man's torso and stood out a foot on the other side.
The wagon train's defenders saw them coming and intensified their fire, giving cover to the three men. One after another they leaped their horses over a wagon tongue and into the circle.
As they piled off their horses and ran to join the defenders, Bodie, who was a couple wagons over, called to them, "You got back just in time!"
"Durn right we did!" Preacher responded. "We was about to miss all the fun!"
If it was "fun" the old mountain man wanted, he got plenty of it for the next few hours. With their initial charge beaten back and their numbers cut into by the unexpected attack by Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke, the Blackfeet settled down to a waiting game, continually circling the wagons just out of easy rifle range. From time to time, some of them would dash in and concentrate heavy fire on one part of the wagon train, then pull back sharply as the immigrants mounted a stronger defense at that position. Then, mere moments later, the Indians would attack somewhere else.
The Blackfeet suffered losses with each foray, but so did the immigrants. Several men were killed, and a dozen more were wounded.
During the afternoon, Jamie was able to talk to Bodie and tell him about finding the bodies of Jake Lucas, Clete Mahaffey, and Dave Pearsoll.
Bodie sighed and shook his head solemnly. "I know that they nearly got all of us killed and that Jake never could be trusted after all, but there was a time when I considered him a friend, Jamie. I don't think he was all bad. He was just too weak where money was concerned."
"Most folks have their weak spots. You've just got to learn how to keep from breaking at those spots."
"I suppose. I'm sorry for what happened to Jake, anyway." Bodie's voice hardened. "But if I'd had the chance, I might have shot him myself."
"Reckon I know the feeling."
Moses kept busy bringing water and ammunition to the defenders. At one point in the afternoon as he handed a box of cartridges to Jamie, he said, "I wish now I'd been able to learn how to shoot. I feel like I'm useless."
"Not hardly." Jamie hefted the box of ammunition. "I didn't have to go fetch this myself. I was able to keep fighting."
"Remember what Preacher said when he was trying to teach me? Maybe I should volunteer to fight on the side of the Blackfeet. Then they'd be wiped out for sure!"
Jamie laughed. "You stay right where you are, Moses. We need you to send up a few prayers for us."
"I can do that," Moses said. "In fact, I have been for several hours now!"
A short time later, during a lull in the fighting, Preacher came over to Jamie. "What do you reckon the chances are they'll give up once the sun goes down?"
Jamie glanced at the sky where the thickening clouds meant that it would get dark earlier than usual. "I got my doubts." Something caught his eye, and he pointed it out to Preacher. "Even more so now."
"Dadgum it!" Preacher exclaimed as he looked at the column of gray smoke that was starting to thicken and climb into the equally leaden sky. "You don't think they've started a prairie fire, do you?"
"No. I think they've started more than one," Jamie replied grimly as he pointed out several more clouds of smoke in different directions. "They're putting a ring of fire around us, Preacher. If they can't kill us one way, they'll do it another."
"We got to get movin'. If we just sit here whilst them blazes join up with each other and completely surround us, we'll never get out. All that grass is dry as tinder this time of year."
"I know," Jamie said with a nod. "But if we start to hitch up the teams, the Blackfeet will come charging in while we're busy with that and overrun us."
Preacher's eyes narrowed. "Not if some of us keep the varmints busy."
"You mean take the fight to them again?" Jamie pondered the idea for a second, then nodded. "The ones who do that probably won't stand a chance, but the wagons might be able to get away. I seem to recall there's a little river a mile or two from here. If the wagons can get on the other side of it before the fire pins them in, those folks could make it."
"Well, I'm goin', that's for durn sure," Preacher declared.
"So am I," added Smoke, who had come up in time to hear the two older men formulating the plan.
"We'll need seven or eight other men," Jamie said, "all of them volunteers." He sighed. "I'll spread the word."
Everybody had seen the smoke and was worried about it. Within a few minutes, Jamie had put together a force of volunteers who would attack the Blackfeet and keep them occupied while the wagons made a dash for the river.
It wasn't a surprise that Bodie was one of the volunteers. Savannah clung to him for a long moment, sobbing, but she didn't beg him not to go.
Bodie was relieved by that. She had Alexander and Abigail to think of, and anything that gave the children a better chance of getting through this ordeal alive had to be done.
Hector and Jess were going along, too, as was Captain Lamar Hendricks. "These people elected me to lead them. I don't know of any better way to do it than to do whatever I can to see that they get where they're going."
"I wasn't too sure about you starting out, Cap'n," Jamie said. "I reckon you'll do, though. Yes, sir, you'll do."
Half a dozen more men joined the group. They were all mounted and ready to charge out of the circle. Edward Bingham had been put in charge of getting the teams hitched up and leading the race to the river. He shook hands with Jamie. "Buy us some time, Mr. MacCallister. We'll do the rest."
"Never doubted it," Jamie said.
They were just about ready to launch the counterattack when Moses appeared, also mounted on a saddle horse and carrying a rifle.
"Blast it, Moses!" Bodie exclaimed. "You shouldn't be doing this."
"We're causing a distraction, right? Keeping the Indians busy? I can give them something to shoot at. Don't worry, I won't shoot any of you by accident." Moses grinned. "This rifle isn't even loaded!"
Jamie moved Sundown over next to Moses's horse. "You've been a mighty good friend to all of us, and I appreciate what you're trying to do here. You ready, Moses?"
Moses swallowed hard and nodded. "I'm ready."
"Good." Jamie's arm shot out and he hit Moses in the jaw, a crashing, big-fisted blow that knocked the young rabbi out of the saddle and sent him sprawling on the ground, out cold. "Somebody put him in a wagon. I reckon he'll forgive me when this is all over."
He turned to the other men, looped Sundown's reins around the saddle horn, and drew both revolvers. With a rebel yell, he sent the stallion lunging forward and led the attack as the men galloped toward the startled Blackfeet, guns blazing.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 63
|
It was even more loco than the earlier dash through the war party ringed around the wagon train. They were outnumbered at least three to one.
But the Blackfeet weren't the same sort of fighters on horseback that, say, the Sioux or the Comanche were. More used to battling on foot, they didn't respond quite as quickly as they might have. The men from the wagon train were among them almost before the Blackfeet knew what was happening.
Not only that, but Jamie Ian MacCallister, the old mountain man called Preacher, and the young gunfighter named Smoke Jensen were veritable engines of destruction. The guns in their hands roared again and again, left, right, left, right, and each time flame spouted from the muzzle of a Colt, one of the warriors cried out and died as a bullet ripped through him.
Bodie, Hector, and Jess fought savagely, desperately, too. So did Captain Hendricks and all the other men. Seeing their fellow warriors being slaughtered, the rest of the Blackfeet closed in, surrounding the men from the wagon train. Jamie couldn't see the wagons anymore, but he hoped they were on the move.
Truthfully, he couldn't see much of anything because of all the smoke around him. Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't all powder smoke.
Like a runaway freight train, a wall of flames swept over the top of a hill and barreled down on the fighting men.
Some of the Blackfeet were too slow to get out of the way, and the fire engulfed their shrieking forms. The rest of the war party broke and ran. Their strategy had worked too well. The thick grass was so dry the flames had moved faster than they'd expected.
The smoke made the horses panicky. Jamie fought to control Sundown and hauled the big stallion around. He waved an empty gun at Preacher and Smoke and shouted, "Head for the river!" He spotted Bodie, Hector, and Jess and repeated the command to them, then rounded up the rest of the men from the wagon train. Some of them were wounded, but managed to stay in their saddles as they fled from the onrushing flames. Those who had been shot off their horses lay lifelessly on the prairie.
Jamie saw the wagons moving fast up ahead. The sky was filled with smoke, and the oxen and mules pulling the wagons were as frightened as the horses were. Every instinct they possessed told them to flee, and they were doing it rapidly.
Jamie galloped past the Bingham wagon in the lead and saw the line of trees that marked the course of the river. But he also saw fires closing in from both sides. His heart sank as he realized they weren't going to make it. The flames seemed to race toward each other with supernatural speed... and the gap he had counted on closed, forming a fiery, impenetrable wall.
Groaning, he hauled back on the reins. Despite everything they had done, the wagon train was completely surrounded by barriers of flame and smoke. Most of the flames were still half a mile or more away, but it wouldn't take long for them to continue their inexorable advance until that whole part of the country was burning, with the wagons and the immigrants right in the middle of the inferno.
The sky overhead was black as midnight from the smoke and the clouds, but the plains and the hills were lit up by the blazes so it looked like the landscape of hell. Jamie wheeled Sundown and saw that the wagons had come to a stop. So had the men who had attacked the Blackfeet. Everyone realized that they were trapped. There was no way out.
They had come so far only to meet a fiery death days before the holiest time of the year.
Jamie rode back to the wagons, not getting in any hurry. His eyes searched the landscape around him, what he could see between the clouds of smoke, anyway. He didn't see any sign of the Blackfeet. Any of them who had survived the battle had either been swallowed up by the fire or managed to find a way out, so they were on the other side of the flames and no longer a threat.
Seeing quite a few people gathered beside the Bingham wagon, Jamie headed for them. He dismounted, and the crowd parted to reveal Jess Neville lying on the ground with his head pillowed on Savannah's lap. She was crying. Bodie and Hector knelt on either side of Jess. Burly, bearded Hector was bawling like a baby.
"D-don't worry about it," Jess said in a weak voice.
Jamie hadn't noticed him being wounded before, but Jess's coat was pulled back and the shirt underneath it was sodden with blood.
Jess went on. "The way I look at it... I'm finally gonna get plenty of... rest now."
Hector took his cousin's hand and held it tightly. He said in a voice choked with emotion, "That's right, Jess. You just rest. You... you've got it comin'."
"Yeah... just a nice long... sleep..." Jess's eyes closed, and a final sigh came from him.
Bodie reached over and squeezed Hector's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Hector. He was a heck of a fine fella."
Moses came up behind Hector. The young rabbi had a bruise forming on his jaw, courtesy of Jamie's fist earlier. He rested a hand on Hector's other shoulder. "He died trying to save us all. No man could ask for a more honorable end."
"I reckon not," Hector agreed with a heavy sigh. He lifted his head and looked around. "But it won't be long before all of us are crossing over the divide, will it?"
One of the men burst out, "I can't stand this! We're all going to burn to death! I won't let that happen to my wife and kids. Where's my gun? I... I'll end it for all of us!"
Jamie grabbed the man's arm and jerked him around. "No, you won't. Nobody's going to give up hope. Not yet."
"But we're trapped," someone else said. "The fire's all around us. We can't get away."
"No, but look at the smoke," Jamie insisted. He had just noticed something. "It's going almost straight up now. That means the wind isn't blowing as hard. If the wind's not blowing as hard, the fire won't move as fast."
"So it gets here in fifteen minutes instead of five," one of the men said bitterly. "What difference does that make?"
"That's ten more minutes to say good-bye," Jamie said. And ten more minutes to hope for a miracle, he thought.
He was a pragmatic man, always had been. He looked at life as it was, not as he wished it could be. He had stared death in the face on many, many occasions. He knew that when his time was up, his days on earth were going to come to an end.
But he also knew that when that time came, he would lie down for his eternal rest next to his beloved Kate. They would be together again, never to be separated. He knew that with every fiber of his being—which meant that it couldn't be the end. It just couldn't.
Blamed if he could see any way out, though.
He stood there as the immigrants slowly dispersed, going back to their wagons to be with their families for what they believed would be their final minutes on earth. He saw Bodie huddling with Savannah, Alexander, and Abigail.
"You reckon this is the end of the trail?" Preacher asked from beside him.
Jamie looked over at the old mountain man and shook his head. "No. For some reason, I don't."
"Neither do I," said Smoke, who came up on Preacher's other side. "I've still got too much to do."
Audie said, "We all know Preacher here is just too stubborn to die."
"Ummm," Nighthawk added.
They stood there together, five of the more formidable fighting men the West had ever known. Between them they had killed hundreds of badmen, had risked their lives to protect the innocent countless times, had seen things and done things that few other men ever had. Even though Smoke Jensen was still young, he was one of them as much as any man could be. It was bred into his blood. If Smoke survived, Jamie was sure he would go on to carve the most illustrious career of them all.
The flames crept closer.
"Dang, I'm sure glad we got to fight side by side again, you ol' hoss," Preacher said.
"I am, too," Jamie whispered.
Something touched his cheek.
He lifted his head. It wasn't an ember that had come swirling down from the sky to land on his rugged face. That would have been hot. The thing that had touched his cheek was... cold. Then he felt another and another.
Preacher said, "What in tarnation?"
Jamie looked up into the sky and saw more of the fat white flakes, heavy with moisture as they tumbled down from the heavens. Dozens, no, hundreds, thousands, millions, were falling almost straight down because there was no wind, already blanketing the ground.
A smile spread across his face. "It's snowing."
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
Chapter 64
|
It wasn't a blizzard, but the snow fell so thickly that it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead. At first, the terrific heat of the fire melted the snow as it fell and vaporized the water, but there were just too many flakes. When the flames reached the unburned ground that was covered with a couple inches of snow, they couldn't go any farther. Soon they began to sizzle and go out.
The danger was over. It might not be Christmas yet, Jamie reflected as he stood with his friends and watched their salvation piling up whitely on the ground, but it was sure close enough to call it a Christmas miracle.
Moses, Bodie, Savannah, and the Bradford children came to stand with the frontier men. Jamie rested a big hand on Moses's shoulder. "You were the most valuable fighter of us all, amigo."
"How do you figure that?"
"You fought for us with your prayers." Jamie swept his other hand at the deepening snow. "If this isn't an answered prayer, I don't know what is."
By morning, the snow was a couple feet deep, completely blanketing the landscape so that there was only a vast expanse of pristine white around the wagon train. The ugly swath of black, burned ground was hidden underneath the snow.
Jamie worried that if the drifts got much deeper, the wagons wouldn't be able to move. They would be stuck there, maybe for weeks.
The snow stopped falling not long after dawn. It would slow the wagons' progress, but it wouldn't stop them. They could still push on to Eagle Valley.
The immigrants took half a day to bury Jess Neville and the other men who had been killed in the fighting. Some of the bodies were badly burned from the prairie fire, which made the grisly task even worse. It wasn't easy chipping graves out of the frozen ground, but they did it.
With the sun starting to peek through the thinning overcast, they moved on, bound for their new homes.
Late in the afternoon of December 24, 1873, Jamie Ian MacCallister reined Sundown to a halt at the top of a saddle between two hills and looked down into a broad, fairly level valley bounded by wooded slopes on the north and south. The valley stretched for fifteen miles before more hills gradually rose into the snowcapped peaks looming over it. A twisting line of trees showed the course of the stream that meandered through the valley. Frozen over now, come spring it would thaw and water the land, turning it into a verdant oasis. Protected from the worst of winter's storms by the heights around it and fertile in the summer, Eagle Valley was one of the prettiest places Jamie had ever seen. It would make a fine home for the pilgrims in the wagon train rolling slowly up the trail behind him.
He looked to his right and saw a lone pine tree growing there. Snow dusted its branches. A smile spread slowly across his weather-beaten face as he looked at the tree.
Bodie rode up to him. "What are you thinking, Jamie?"
"I'm thinking we'll camp right here tonight. It's Christmas Eve, and there's our tree. We'll celebrate here and thank the Good Lord for getting us this far."
"That's a fine idea," Bodie agreed. "I'll go tell the others." He turned his horse and rode back to the wagons.
Jamie stayed where he was, resting his hands on the saddle horn, easing weary bones and muscles. He looked up at the mountains and the towering vault of sky above them. "I figured it was loco, starting out with those pilgrims so late in the year, but that was Your plan all along, wasn't it? You got us through, and now You'll watch over these folks while they make their homes here. I'm glad I could be a part of it."
The children improvised decorations and tied them to the branches of the little pine tree. Everyone gathered around that evening and sang hymns and Christmas carols. As the strains of "Silent Night" drifted out across the valley, Jamie walked over to Moses, who stood watching silently.
"Must be sort of hard on you, seeing them like this when your faith doesn't agree with what they're doing," Jamie commented.
"Hard?" Moses smiled and shook his head. "Not at all. I'm happy for them. They have their beliefs to sustain them, just as I have mine. The differences... well, right now they're not as important as the things we all have in common. Love one another, your scriptures say, and that's what matters the most."
"Remember when I told you you'd do to ride the river with, Moses? I reckon that's more true than ever."
"And you as well, my friend. We've been to see the elephant together, haven't we, Jamie?"
Jamie laughed and slapped Moses on the back. "You're learning, amigo. You're learning."
They were still standing there a few minutes later when Bodie and Savannah came over to them. Bodie shook hands with Jamie and Moses. "We've got a favor to ask of you, Moses."
"Anything," Moses answered without hesitation.
"We'd like for you to perform our wedding tomorrow," Savannah said.
"A Christmas Day wedding?" Moses said, smiling. "Well, that should be easy for you to remember."
"We figure we'd better be married," Bodie said, "since we're adopting Alexander and Abigail. I'm not sure how we'll go about doing that legally, but—"
"Don't worry about that," Jamie said. "I've got friends in the territorial capital. We'll see to it that it gets done. I don't reckon a piece of paper will make much difference, though. In all the ways that count, you two are already mother and father to those kids."
Savannah said, "I don't want them to ever forget their real parents. Reverend Bradford had his faults, but he loved them and I'm sure their mother did, too. They'll grow up knowing that."
"They won't have to worry about knowing they're loved," Moses said. "I think you and Bodie will handle that just fine."
"So you'll do it?" Bodie said. "You'll perform the ceremony?"
"Of course. Tomorrow, before everyone spreads out across the valley to find their homesteads. It's my Christmas gift to the both of you."
Most of the snow from several days earlier had melted, but there were still patches of white here and there, enough to make the valley beautiful on Christmas morning. Jamie was up early, as usual, and was sipping a cup of coffee when Preacher came up and helped himself to a cup from the pot sitting at the edge of one of the campfires.
"Well, you done it," the old mountain man said. "Got them pilgrims here by Christmas."
"With a lot of help from you and Smoke."
"I got a hunch you'd have brought 'em through somehow even if we hadn't come along. I'm glad we got to help out, though." Preacher sipped the hot, strong brew. "As soon as ol' Bodie gets hisself hitched to that pretty little Savannah gal, Smoke and me are gonna be movin' on. We got places to go." He paused. "Varmints to kill."
"I could give you a hand with that," Jamie suggested.
Preacher shook his head. "Nope, but I'm obliged for the offer. This is just too personal. The fellas we're after killed Smoke's daddy. Score like that, an hombre's got to settle his own self. I'll do my best to help him catch up to those murderin' skunks, but once he does, he'll want to take 'em on alone."
"I reckon I can understand that," Jamie said.
"How about you? I recollect how fiddle-footed you can be. You'll be movin' on, too?"
"Maybe when winter's over," Jamie mused. "Reckon I'll stay long enough to see to it that these folks get established all right. And then come spring, I'd like to make sure Moses gets to where he's going. He has a calling of his own he needs to answer." Jamie thought of something else. "What about Audie and Nighthawk?"
"Those two are gone already."
"What?"
"It's true," Preacher said with a nod. "They drifted out last night. Audie said they was gonna spend Christmas in the high country, then maybe winter with Nighthawk's people."
Jamie shook his head. "Wish I could've told them so long."
"That's just it with them two," Preacher said with a chuckle. "They'll turn up again one o' these days. They got a habit of showin' up when their friends need 'em."
At mid-morning, the immigrants began assembling in the center of the camp for the wedding. Bodie had no suit, but he had cleaned up his clothes as best he could. Savannah left the Bingham wagon wearing a white dress that Leticia had altered to fit her. Bodie stood with Moses, waiting for her, a big smile on his face.
Savannah stopped short as she started to walk up the aisle formed by the gathered immigrants. With a worried frown on her face, she asked, "Where are Alexander and Abigail?" She raised her voice. "Bodie, where are the children? I thought they were with you."
"I thought they were with you." Bodie started toward Savannah. "Where in the world—"
"Right here," a man's harsh voice called out.
Tall, powerfully built, and ugly, he stepped out from behind one of the wagons with his right hand clamped around Alexander's arm, his left holding Abigail equally cruelly. Behind him loomed a large group of men bristling with guns. "And unless you want them to die on Christmas Day, Miss McCoy is coming with us."
Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke stood to one side. Bodie had taken his gun off for the wedding, but they were all packing two irons apiece, as usual. They couldn't slap leather with those kids in the line of fire, though.
"Kane!" Savannah gasped. "Kane sent you! You're the man who tried to kidnap me before!"
The big stranger grinned, but that didn't make him any less ugly. "That's right. It's taken us a long time to catch up to you." He glanced at two of the men with him. "My so-called guides didn't really know where they were going, after all. But this time I'll be taking you back to the boss, just like I promised."
Jamie recognized Keeler and Holcomb, the former scouts. Somehow the treacherous varmints had thrown in with Gideon Kane's men, he thought.
Hector growled, "Jamie, what do you want us to do?"
"Have everybody back off," Jamie ordered. "If bullets start to fly, we want as many folks out of the way as possible."
Hector prodded the immigrants back, leaving a rough triangle with Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke at one corner, Bodie and Moses at another, and Savannah, the two youngsters, and the gunmen at the final point.
Moses suddenly stepped forward, putting himself between Jamie and his companions and the hired killers. He held his hands up and said quickly, "Let's all just settle down here. It's Christmas Day. A holy day for these people. We don't want any bloodshed or violence."
"There doesn't have to be, as long as Miss McCoy comes with us," the leader of the gunmen said.
Moses came closer, still with his hands lifted beseechingly. "Please be reasonable. You can't expect to come in here and steal a bride away from her groom."
"We're taking her," the man grated. "No matter who we have to kill do to it."
Moses sighed. "I was hoping I could get through to you, talk some sense to you. I really hoped it wouldn't come to this."
The man sneered at him. "You're some sort of sky pilot, aren't you? What the hell are you gonna do?"
"This," Moses said softly.
He launched himself into a diving tackle. His arms, already spread out, went around Alexander and Abigail and jolted them loose from their captor, knocking them to the ground. As he shielded the children with his body he cried out, "Now, Jamie!"
The hired killers already had their guns out. They were completely ruthless men, eager to slay without conscience or hesitation.
But they were facing Jamie Ian MacCallister, Preacher, and Smoke Jensen.
They never had a chance.
It was a gun battle that would be talked about in that part of the country for years, even decades. Less than two hundred people actually witnessed it, and of those, many caught only brief, chaotic glimpses because they were too busy ducking for cover as shots rang out. But even so, over time thousands of people told friends or children or grandkids about how, yep, they were there when Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke faced thirty hired killers. Or forty. Or a hundred, depending on how the story got inflated. The important thing was Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke all suffered wounds that laid them up for a while.
And all the gunmen who had come to kidnap Savannah died.
The stuff of powder smoke legends, to be sure... but only one more adventure in the lives of those three frontiersmen.
When the guns had fallen silent, the wounds had been bound up, and the dead dragged away, a man and a woman stood together and pledged their love for each other, in front of God and their friends, and for two young children, that union and the family it created proved to be the greatest Christmas gift they ever received.
|
A Big Sky Christmas
|
William W. Johnstone
|
[
"western"
] |
[
"Christmas",
"1870s"
] |
EPILOGUE
|
[ Montana, 1947 ]
Alexander Cantrell sighed.
Beside him, his sister Abigail said, "Are you all right, Alex? Are you having a touch of that angina again?"
Alexander shook his head. Mere moments had passed, although to him it was as if he had traveled back in time seventy-four years. He looked down at the graves of his parents. "I was just remembering again."
"The wagon train?"
"Yep. And everything that happened on the way up here."
Abigail shivered. "Some of those times were awful, like when the Indians got us. And that terrible fire... I never saw anything like it."
"I thought about those things," Alexander said, "but mostly I thought about Ma and Pa... and the Reverend... and Moses..."
"And Jamie," Abigail whispered.
"And Jamie," Alexander agreed.
Although it still seemed hard to believe, less than three years after that fateful Christmas Day, Jamie Ian MacCallister was dead, struck down in 1876 by bushwhackers who had mistaken him for his son, the famous gunfighter Falcon MacCallister. When they had heard that awful news in Eagle Valley, Bodie had wanted to strap on his guns and leave the Diamond C ranch to track down Jamie's murderers. Hector Gilworth, Lamar Hendricks, and a number of the other settlers in the valley had been ready to saddle up and go with him.
Before that could happen, they got word that Falcon had wreaked his bloody judgment on the killers. Jamie's death was avenged, and he slumbered peacefully, eternally, under the earth of his home range, next to his beloved wife Kate.
From time to time, they had gotten news of Smoke Jensen, too, and knew how the young man had settled the score for the death of his father. For many years, Smoke continued to be the deadliest gunfighter the West had ever known... but he was also a devoted family man, marrying twice, raising a whole passel of children and grandchildren, and establishing one of the finest ranches in Colorado.
As for Preacher... well, for a time he had been thought to be dead, but as it turned out, the old mountain man was too tough to kill. His friends in Eagle Valley never did know for sure what happened to him. For all Alexander knew, Preacher was still out there somewhere, roaming the wild places and getting into one scrape after another. That idea was pretty farfetched, of course. Downright impossible, in fact. But when Alexander thought about Preacher... well, it was hard to rule out anything completely.
Moses Danzig had visited the Diamond C now and then and enjoyed the time spent with his old friends Bodie and Savannah. Cyrus O'Hanlon, who had recovered from the beating he'd received from Kane's men, his wife Dollie, and the rest of the troupe had come to Montana, too, and performed in the Opera House in Billings. Savannah had joined them for one night and thoroughly enjoyed being an actress again, but that was enough. She had an even better life on the ranch, she told her old friends, being married to Bodie and raising a fine pair of twins, although she and Bodie were never blessed with children of their own.
Alexander's parents never spoke of Gideon Kane, but years later, giving in to curiosity, Alexander had looked into the situation and found out what had happened to the man from Kansas City. He remembered Jamie saying something ominous about paying a visit to Kane, but that hadn't come about. Some woman whose affections Kane had spurned had killed him in February 1874, sticking a knife in his chest. As far as Alexander was concerned, it was a more merciful end than the lowdown snake deserved.
The farms and ranches in Eagle Valley were some of the best in the territory, and then later, in the state, and the Diamond C was the best of them all. Years passed, and Alexander and Abigail grew to adulthood, married fine partners, and raised families of their own. Some of those children and grandchildren had brought them out to the old burying ground on the ranch.
It was the tenth anniversary of Bodie Cantrell's death. His beloved wife Savannah had gone to be with the Lord a couple years before that. Alexander missed them every day. He would for the rest of his life, however much of it was still allotted to him.
He took off his hat as Abigail leaned over and placed one bouquet of flowers on her father's grave and another on her mother's. Bodie and Savannah had adopted them, but as Jamie had once said, the piece of paper didn't matter nearly as much as the love, and they always had that.
Oh, they had that.
"Dad...? We'd probably better be starting back to town."
Alexander nodded, tightened his arm around his sister's shoulders for a moment, and then put his hat on. He turned and told his son, "You're right, Jamie. Let's go. Come along, Abigail."
"You think we can make it home without the Indians getting us?"
"I reckon," Alexander said.
They walked away, cradled in the memories of days gone by, of days when true heroes walked the earth under the big Montana sky.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
Chapter 1
|
'Nature teaches beasts to know their friends' -Coriolanus
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
WULFGAR
|
'Yes, I can smell him,' said Stargrief. The old dog fox raised his muzzle.
'And the lurcher,' Wulfgar said.
They came out of the trees to drink at Lansworthy Brook. Wulfgar led the way, stepping gingerly through the reeds. His paws crunched into frail ice where it silvered the hoofprints of cattle. He was a large, dark fox with a brush almost as black as the peaty Dartmoor soil, and even his underfur and lower limbs were black. The wind and rain of three summers had lent his coat a pale sheen and the tip of his brush was whiter than wild parsley. His eyes gleamed against the grey December afternoon and pointed ears deciphered the faintest sounds which the wind could not mask.
'They were here last night,' said Stargrief. Two inches of tongue moistened his nose and he read the air long and carefully. His head moved a little from side to side and he seemed to lean on the wind, each quiver of his nostrils bringing him a detailed account of what lay in the field and far beyond. Presiding over everything was the smell of gin-metal spiced with the scent of passing birds. The earth smelt of ice and moss and nibbled grass, cattle, men and dogs, then the rank odour of the trapper alerted all his senses.
Stargrief was slight and inconspicuous. His coat was the colour of winter woodland. He placed his paws carefully in Wulfgar's tracks, for gin traps had been tilled amongst the reeds to catch wild duck.
'That mad dog isn't far off,' Wulfgar said. The smell of fieldmice lofted in a white plume as he yawned.
'This is a bad place in broad daylight,' said Stargrief. 'There's a disused sett in the wood up ahead. I don't know about you but I'm on my last legs. I could really do with a sleep.'
Running beside the stream they came to the ford. Stargrief's heart no longer raced but he found it difficult to match his young friend's speed through the wooded valley of the River Sig.
The sett was warm and dry. The badger boar and sow had been dug out and clubbed to death by the man who owned the lurcher. Wulfgar licked a paw and rubbed it over his face.
'The bottoms of my pads are freezing,' said Stargrief. 'Winter seems to last for ever. What a penance age can be!'
He groaned and laid his tail across his nose.
'Maybe the lurcher could do you a favour,' Wulfgar said cheerfully.
'I won't make it easy for him,' said the old dog fox. His thin angular body was shaking.
'Winter has sharp teeth,' Wulfgar said. 'Curl up against me, old mouse. There's more flesh on a seagull. After all these seasons are you afraid of death?'
'No. Dying doesn't trouble me — but you're so damned stiff the next day.'
Wulfgar chuckled in the darkness.
Now hunger eclipsed everything.
The path was less than a foot wide, and where it mounted the hedge of blackthorn, hazel and bramble behind Bagtor Cottages, the grassy surface was trampled but not worn away. Here and there were crumbs of snow.
Delicately Wulfgar flattened out over the top of the hedge and the wind passed, leaving a sudden hush. He squinted up the valley. Thrushes flashed among the leafless trees. The Sig glittered through distances speckled with white smudges that moved and bleated. Wulfgar narrowed his eyes. Above the blur of Saddle Tor clouds left little room in the sky for the sun of the winter solstice. His paws scuffed the crisp bramble leaves and he heard the shrew scream. It was not a scream of fear, for the shrew was even hungrier than the fox. Standing on tiny hind feet it menaced the fieldmouse amongst the stems of bramble and hemlock, then it was on the mouse's back and the struggle was over before the wind returned.
The hunting foxes trotted up the coomb of half-frozen sphagnum moss and lichen to the birth place of the River Sig. The world was bounded by the slow heave of horizons ending always in cloud. Powder snow lifted and smoked on the easterly wind, hissing through grass and furze to drift against drystone walls and clumps of heather.
Wulfgar stalked mallard and snipe but caught nothing. Soon it became necessary to cross the Widecombe Road under the scrutiny of Swart the crow and his mate Sheol who were scavenging among a flock of Scottish Blackface sheep.
The wind brooded on its melody. Despite the ache in the air the sheep gave off a warm, damp smell. Back from the road the heather grew thick and deep, and Galloway cattle stood in it up to their hocks. The foxes passed among them and found the sheep path. Presently the heather gave way to turf and they came upon some cowpats. Flicking them over one by one with their paws they greedied on the beetles lodged in the soft under-sides.
'Must the soul tread the same stony track as the body,' Stargrief said wearily.
'Is that a question?' asked Wulfgar.
'If it is, who can answer it? I was only making noises – like a sick cub.'
Wulfgar licked the old fox's muzzle.
'I wish I was the first fox standing in the brand new world,' Stargrief went on.
'You'd get your coney then.'
'I wouldn't need conies.'
'Even Holy Tod visited the rabbit runs.'
'Yes, I'm sorry. I've lived on dreams for too long.'
'Didn't the beetles help?'
'Of course, of course! But I see a fox lying dead on the cold hillside and it makes me sad.'
'Perhaps it is yourself you see.'
'Perhaps. Winter is like a long illness.'
'Don't forget you have been sick,' Wulfgar said briskly.
'You were out of your mind for two sunsets. We all thought you were going to die. You should have died.'
'Better dead than ga-ga,' Stargrief smiled.
'Life would be easier if you'd stop thinking about yourself.'
He was tired of company and Stargrief could see it in his eyes.
North-east of where they stood Hay Tor was bursting out of cloud. Dartmoor was the colour of a hen kestrel. Beside water the grass was green and stiff, and the wind keening through the heather sounded like the stricken shrew. Scent lay breast high. Wulfgar jerked up his head and sniffed the invisible contours of what lay before them. Instantly he was aware of fox.
'How did the hunting go, Ashmere?' he said.
The sheep path, which was one of the main highways for most moorland creatures, brought them to the scenting post. At first they failed to see the young dog fox Ashmere, who was crouching low and facing them with ears pricked. Then the twitching of his brush caught Wulfgar's eye.
'Have the crows got your tongue?'
Ashmere rolled onto his back and presented his throat to the dark fox. The gesture was not wasted.
'Come on,' Wulfgar said. 'Get up and go about your business. You're not a cub any more.'
'And you must learn to live with your greatness,' said Stargrief.
Wulfgar strutted around the grey tooth of granite where three paths met before cocking his leg and depositing his own strong smell. The odour of the post contained much gossip, telling him not only how many foxes had visited it but also their names and condition.
After luxuriating in the ritual he sat on his haunches and thrust a stiff hindleg into the air and cleaned his belly.
'The hunting wasn't so good,' said Ashmere. 'In fact it was terrible. This morning the hounds came to the Great Down and ran me close to death. They killed a vixen.'
'What was her name?' asked Stargrief.
'Fernsmoke.'
'I knew her,' said Stargrief. 'She was very young,'
Nothing lives long, he thought, only the valleys and tors.
This morning she saw the sunrise and was part of it.
Brambles were knotting his guts but his eyes remained blank.
'They broke her up under the beeches,' said Ashmere.
'It was a clean death,' said Wulfgar.
His companions nodded.
'The Good Death,' said Stargrief. 'And what about you, Ashmere?'
'I'm still a bit stiff and tired. I'll probably kennel in the woods below.'
'Watch your step,' said Wulfgar. 'The trapper was down by the mill yesterday. His dog's on the loose again.'
'I'd rather have the hounds breathing on my arse than that creature trailing me,' Ashmere said. 'The lurcher never gives up. Never.'
Wulfgar and Stargrief went down the path keeping their heads high to avoid the spikes of gorse. The wind sang in their chest fur. Beneath Saddle Tor were four small frozen ponds. A heron paced the margins, but despite his slowness he flapped into the sky before the foxes could strike. The bird was called Scrag. Behind the ice he had seen tangles of grass lying motionless in the water gloom like sleeping eels.
'Herons aren't good eating, anyway,' Stargrief said.
Wulfgar nuzzled the texture of the day, sifting rabbit smell from the scores of other scents which showered his knowing.
'Maybe we'll find a coney old enough for you to catch,' he said.
'If he's that old he won't be worth catching,' said Stargrief.
'Would you like me to stun an earthworm for you?'
'Eat your grandmother's scats!' Stargrief growled. 'I may be groggy but I'm not stupid. When I'm really fit I'll grab conies by the warrenful.'
Brightness flooded the sky around Holwell Tor and further on Greator Rocks and Hound Tor were shadows in shifting haze. Beyond Wulfgar's vision Stormbully the buzzard sailed across the Leighon Ponds to take up his station above the slopes.
The foxes trotted past the hawthorn where Swart lived. Three shrivelled red berries had eluded the songbirds and woodpigeons and they guided the eye to the crow's nest less than twelve feet from the ground. Swart and Sheol had raised many youngsters here, for the tree was old but sound. Ponies and cattle had rubbed the bark off the middle of the trunk with their flanks, leaving wisps of black hair clinging to the wood. Stargrief snapped at these as he eased his scat onto the roots, sniffed at it and loped away.
'What do the stars say about the coney hunting?' Wulfgar asked.
'They say Wulfgar comes to the runs with all the speed and guile of a legless pig.'
Wulfgar smiled the lazy smile of an animal who was completely aware of his strength and power, and Stargrief basked in his good humour. No other fox of the Hay Tor Clan was permitted to take such liberties.
They skirted the bog above the glint of running water. The murmur of jackdaws' wings overtook them and crept back into the hush. Here and there the track was flooded and they trotted alongside it. The smell of rabbit was strong now and they clapped down in the heather and Wulfgar began to stalk.
Near the ruins of the quarryman's cottage was a hawthorn tree and a lawn of turf. Under the tree sat a rabbit. Although he was a first season buck he had learnt the lessons of his kind. There were movements in the heather which had nothing to do with the wind. Upright on his haunches he watched the dog fox rippling towards him, eyes flashing green and bright, mouth smiling. Instinct urged him to bolt but curiosity rooted him to the spot.
The fox advanced slowly and smoothly. He flowed out of the heather and turned three somersaults on the lawn, then he stood on his hindlegs and twirled and swayed until the rabbit lost his fear. Two more somersaults brought Wulfgar almost within striking distance. He rolled over and bit at the tag of his brush. The rabbit smell pulsed in the pit of his stomach and he held the buck with his slumberous eyes, gathering himself to pounce. But even as his muscles hardened, the blackbird slammed into the hawthorn and let loose its scolding chatter. At once the rabbit was up and gone, his flight leaving Wulfgar scrabbling among the fallen stones of the cottage where there were many burrows. One bolt-hole was large enough for him to crawl into but the passage soon narrowed and he retreated backwards feeling angry and foolish.
Stargrief did not laugh.
Other foxes came to mind as they walked up the slope of dead bracken to Holwell Tor. Light was ebbing from the sky and the wind had dropped to a gentle breeze.
'How has Wendel survived for two whole winters?' Wulfgar said. 'He's such a bloody idiot.'
'Thorngeld says he's taken fowls from the trapper's coops.'
'He'll end up on a wire. Pity the hounds didn't get him instead of Fernsmoke.'
And instantly he regretted his peevishness. In the beauty of day's end he felt close to Tod, for life was sweet. Season lapped over season, animals died, others came into the world. The stream never stopped flowing.
'I'll come as far as the tor with you,' said Stargrief.
Near the hilltop a herd of Dartmoor ponies grazed, their coats thick and shaggy, their manes long. They tugged at the grass and ignored the foxes. Wulfgar paused to sniff the trunk of a rowan tree. Rabbits had been gnawing the bark and Ashmere had left his scat on one of the roots. He had also eaten dung beetles and his scat had a bluish tinge. Wulfgar ran his nose over it and continued up the sheep path to the brow of the tor.
From the highest granite outcrop he looked up at Black Hill. In the coomb at his feet was the old granite tramway that long ago had carried wagons loaded with granite blocks from the rock face to the road and thence to waiting ships at Teignmouth. Stone from Haytor Quarries had been used to rebuild London Bridge in the reign of Queen Victoria, but the business had failed and the moors had crept back to hide most of the scars.
'Where will you lie tonight, old friend?' said Wulfgar.
'On that hill – close to the stars, close to Tod.'
'Put in a good word for me.'
'I always do.'
'Then I'll leave a rabbit by Crow Thorn.'
'And you will run with Tod in the golden fields.'
'Like a legless pig?' Wulfgar smiled.
'As Wulfgar of the High Tors – proudly. And they will tell your saga in the Star Place.'
'What if I leave two rabbits at the tree?'
Stargrief laughed and trotted down through the bracken to the tramway.
After he had satisfied himself that the air was free of the taint of man, Wulfgar went to his kennel on the west-facing side of the hill, under the tor. It was a sheltered spot in the heather and furze above a great clitter where he often sat and swam on the tide of his thoughts into drowsiness.
For the fox, evening was a time of mystery. Wulfgar settled down and laid his chin on outstretched forepaws. The Becca Brook rushed through the dusk to shining ponds that mirrored the sky. Greator Rocks and Hound Tor sailed out of cloud but the head of the Leighon Valley was lost in mist. Daws jangled into the beeches of Holwell as lights were coming on in the old house. The sky on the horizon where Blackslade Down nudged the West was grey and gold.
The pupils of Wulfgar's eyes narrowed to vertical slits and he gazed at the sun until clouds hid it and filled the valley with darkness. A hundred thousand years before his birth another fox had lain under Holwell Tor watching the same sun go down. Stargrief had spoken of such a past as if the blurring of countless seasons was of no more significance than the fall of hawthorn blossom.
Wulfgar winkled balls of ice and snow from between his toes. The sky was deepening grey, then darkness swelled and the night became a vast map of scents. The daws no longer made a din in the beech trees but the crisp air amplified the sound of the river.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
MOONLIGHT AND FOG
|
In the stealth of a frosty night the barn owls quartered vole runs close to Jay's Grave, white of moonlight on white wings, the glaring moors racing to the sky. Kitty Jay had hanged herself in some forgotten winter of man's history. Her grave was a simple mound of grass and stones with a jam jar of flowers at the head. It lay at the crossroads and was visited by tourists.
The owls knew nothing of suicide or wrong of any sort, for their purity was of the moonlight through which they sailed. Every so often they screeched at each other as though the silence were too much to endure, but the voles died noiselessly in the grip of talons that squeezed the breath out of them. Each pellet on the barn floor at Hedge Barton contained the bones and fur of six or seven of these tiny animals.
Wulfgar heard the owl cries and checked for a moment in the grass at the foot of Hound Tor. He stood and assayed the distances with ears and nostrils, then he sniffed at a dead whortleberry leaf, brushing the twig with the tip of his nose so gently he failed to disturb the frost. It was nearly dawn and he had yet to make a good kill. Back in Leighon Woods the bank voles had proved hard to catch, and the owls had not helped. Trotting down the slope to Swallerton Gate he saw the halo round the moon above Hameldown Beacon. A vixen barked in the copse near Beckaford and he answered without urgency.
Two nights later Wulfgar came to the stand of beech trees at Holwell called the Rookery. The weather had changed. A mild west wind washed away the frost and the sky vanished. There was before him a shifting greyness like his own breath, the moisture beading his whiskers and fur. He walked along the path of beech leaves with the exaggerated delicacy of a cat. Among the trees on the ground above him Thorgil the badger was rooting for grubs. The great, one-eyed boar grunted as he dug and scratched. His sett in Leighon Woods had been occupied by badgers long before the Norman conquest, and in one direction the galleries and tunnels ran for a hundred yards.
Another creature had heard the badger and was fleeing down the slope as fast as his short legs would carry him. He was a hedgehog named Earthborn, who during the cold spell had dozed in a pile of dry leaves against a field wall. Now he scuttled across the woodland path and almost collided with Wulfgar. Immediately the muscles along his sides and back contracted and he curled into a ball. Wulfgar strode around him stiff-legged, brush twitching, and gingerly touched the spines with the pad of a forefoot. The ball of prickles tightened and the fox cocked his leg and doused the hedgehog. Snuffling and sneezing Earthborn uncurled and the life was crunched out of him.
After he had eaten the hedgehog Wulfgar came up through the beeches to a drystone wall. With the light of the new day brightening the fog, he leapt the wall and landed in the wet grass. It was good to be among the rabbit runs, gulping the exciting smell of conies. The fog thinned and the world emerged from darkness; trees walked out of shadow, cattle grew legs, and a slow flood of colour brought things alive. But for the rabbits leaping in the wires the fox-smell added a new dimension to their fear. Since dusk of the previous day they had fought the snares, sinking through exhaustion and despair to a place where misery whirlpools.
The trap line ran from the field towards the crossroads under Bonehill Down. Wulfgar killed the first rabbit he came to and left only a foot in the snare. He skinned and ate the carcass on rough ground surrounded by ponies who were rising from beds of heather. The morning was opening up, but fog in a milky mass covered the river, which threaded noisily through the valley bottom. Rain began to fall and the wind freshened and veered north-westerly, carrying on a gust the faint cry of the vixen. This time Wulfgar made no reply for he had smelt man.
The fox showed his teeth and broke cover. Halfway across the patch of cotton grass he put up a flock of lapwings, and the birds pursued him, wheeling and keening until he was among the gorse and scrub rowan. Wulfgar trotted on at hunting pace, down into the valley bed, over the Becca Brook and up through the bracken to Holwell Clitter. Among the boulders the wind spoke in slow, deep hoots ….
The trapper loosened the wire and tossed the rabbit's foot into the trees, while the lurcher danced around his legs.
'Down, Jacko – you bleddy fool,' he snarled.
Jacko laid back his ears and whimpered. His master stared absently through his thoughts and dropped the snare into the sack.
'Fox,' he said. 'Smell him, Jacko? We missed him, but only just.'
He rammed his fists in his pockets. Along the shoulder of downland the lapwings darted and called. Breasting the sere grasses Wulfgar stood out like a dark, heraldic device.
'It's that sly black bugger,' the trapper said quietly. 'You had a couple of fowls from Yarner Wells last night, didn't you, boy. But I'll have you – by Christ I will. I'll have you if it's the last thing I do.'
As he reached down and fondled the dog's ears, the lurcher yawned and raked its belly with a rigid hind foot.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
THE BOXING DAY MEET
|
Wulfgar was born in the earth at Mountsland Copse with the sound of gunfire in his ears. For nine seasons he had passed along the picket lines of tent encampments and had heard the convoys of lorries on the moorland roads while he came and went like a cloud shadow. Towards the end of the war the army had been busy around Haytor Rocks, but few men had seen the dark fox slinking to the garbage heap at dusk. Now the war was over and the soldiers had gone, although there was still the occasional crackle of rifles from the Rippon Tor range.
Time passed as imperceptibly as a face ages. Wulfgar came often to Black Hill in search of Stargrief but the ancient dog fox had retreated into his dreams and did not seek company. Alone on the hilltop in the twilight, which Devonians call dimpsey, Wulfgar would catch the flicker of Bovey Tracey's lights and hear the trains puffing up to Lustleigh. Then the owls would send their cries floating on the stillness and the stars would tremble and wink around him. The Plough, the constellations of the Great Bear and the Little Bear, the bright cluster of Cassiopeia, Capella and Vega, Sirius and Orion danced in the margins of his consciousness, and sitting there drinking the night sky he thought about the countryside that lay beyond death. All foxes knew of the place where creatures were absorbed into god's love. Here light was made magnificent, a spiritual aurora borealis beyond the reach of men.
Stormbully was alone. His mate had died hideously in a pole trap set by the man who kept the lurcher. The pole trap was a kind of circular gin that the trapper had placed in the fork of a pine tree on the edge of Mill Wood when the North Eastern moors were red with rowan berries. Swart the crow had tried to take the bait of rabbit flesh but the old hen buzzard had driven him off. Caught by the legs she had hung upside down throughout the night until the trapper ended her misery at daybreak. Stormbully's grief endured after the last leaves had fallen from the birches in the goyals close to Bag Tor, and even now as he tacked across the great westerly storms of year's end he sometimes felt her winging beside him and heard her cat-call rising from the spring of their first mating. There was little joy in his flight. He disliked the rain that rolled off the hills like smoke from an oil fire. Planing down through scudding cloud, he circled Haytor Rocks and windsurfed over the horses and riders who were congregating outside the Moorland hotel.
Dartmoor is not easy country to ride over but the Boxing Day Meet at Haytor Vale was popular among hunting folk. Despite the rain a good field had assembled to follow the South Devon. For nearly a century and a half packs of mainly black and tan hounds had chased the big, tough hill foxes who were as wild as the country they ranged over. In 1892 several horses went in a bog and almost perished before they were dragged clear.
The mastership of the South Devon pack had been in the hands of a Whitley since the outbreak of the First World War. Claude Whitley was a tall man with craggy features and a wry sense of humour, and he wore the hunting pink that had belonged to his father. He could read the countryside almost as well as the fox he hunted and loved.
'Well, Scoble,' he said to the trapper. 'I hope you're not bagging any of my foxes. I'm told they're fetching seven and six a pelt these days.'
'You know me better than that, maister.'
'The pheasants are keeping you busy, then.'
'Rabbits, maister. Me and Jacko's playin' 'ell with the conies. Wouldn touch a pheasant – no zur.'
Claude Whitley smiled and tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger. Scoble gazed blankly up at him. Last night's rough cider broke from his face in beads and mingled with the raindrops.
'Mind you keep that animal on a leash,' the master said in parting.
Scoble touched the peak of his cap and unclenched his fist for Jacko to lick the nicotine-stained fingertips.
Returning from Strelna and Yarner Wood early in the morning of the meet Wulfgar had smelt man. The rain was falling in grey swaths but the taint of the trapper and his dog had soured the air coming off Holwell Quarry. Heavy fox gins had been tilled near the clitter but remained empty.
The episode was enough to disturb Wulfgar, who took himself off to kennel in the hawthorn scrub of Seven Lords Lands. Torrential rain had fallen throughout the night and continued unabated as the first horseboxes rattled through Emsworthy Gate. The River Dart burst its banks at Salmon's Leap weir under Buckfastleigh and at Hoods Bridge further downstream. The Bovey also rose and flooded the railway line at Bovey Tracey. It was poor hunting weather, for heavy rain can kill scent.
Wulfgar would have been content to sleep among the woody stems of heather and whortleberry all day. From his hiding place he heard the sparkling song of a blackbird, which seemed to be singing at the storm from the top twig of a rowan tree. Wulfgar curled deeper into his thoughts and recalled the wise things Stargrief had said during their last meeting. Stargrief had survived eight winters and although he could never have matched Wulfgar in combat he was as brave as he was sagacious. All foxes are valiant but there are degrees of valour. Stargrief was small and slight but he had more heart than Wendel and Ashmere put together. And he understood the world. He had told them about the all-loving Tod and the Star Place, and had explained the desires and tastes and instincts that had flowed down generations of blood into Wulfgar's veins. The law was kill or be killed, but behind it lay the summer country and the comradeship of the foxes who had gone before him into the golden haze.
'Yoi – yoi, leu-in, leu-in.'
The cry whipped Wulfgar to his feet, and he left a warm pocket of air in the hollow, rank with the odour secreted by his anal scent gland and the glands on his pads. The dog fox snaked between the furze clumps until he came to a tributary stream of the Becca. His ears and nose had located the pack. They were feathering the lawn at Quarryman's Cottage where Wulfgar had run after Scoble's visit to the clitter. Then the hounds spoke and above their cry rose the cavernous belling of Lancer, the greatest hound to come out of Denbury kennels. The pack had found Wulfgar's line and thirty couple of dogs poured down the slope towards Saddle Tor.
The horn sang out and the field came at the burst over one of the few places on the North Eastern moors where riding was not really hazardous. The huntsman who had told the pack to 'leu-in' – which was his way of encouraging them to smell out the fox – stood in his stirrups and watched the animals with pride. To find so quickly in foul weather was a good omen.
Wulfgar ran in the stream where it glided amongst bell heather into the Leighon Valley. He was swift but not as fast as a bolting rabbit, and there was about his dark, graceful form an aura of confidence.
The thrushes hit the trees like bullets. The noise of the wind and water blended in a dull roar, and to the east and west cloud fumbled the hilltops. Distances were dark under rain. Wulfgar ghosted through the scrub birch and sedges, and plashed along the Rookery path. The rain hissed through branches that writhed and flailed. The ground heaved in places as the beech roots lifted. He was still running flat-out, carrying his fur close to his body, wet and spiky.
The pack lost the scent at the brook and ranged about the undergrowth. Lancer and Captain – a tan-coloured dog – took to the water. The huntsman regarded them placidly and walked his horse downstream until he gleaned a whiff of fox.
'Leu-in, leu-in,' he cried. 'Yoi – yoi. Come on my beauties. Leu-in, leu-in.'
The pack settled on the line and gave tongue. Their body-steam mixed with the spray raised by their feet. Lancer was in the forefront, his great lolloping stride gobbling up ground. He was unaware of the excitement and confusion behind him. A horse slipped and crashed on its side, then other horses fell, but the rest of the field surged irresistibly into the neck of the valley.
Wulfgar trotted with a flock of sheep until they huddled under the newtake wall. He jumped the wall and crossed the Becca Brook. His heart had slowed and his nostrils no longer gaped but he was releasing a sharp, heavy smell. Although he did not take the hounds for granted he moved with a kind of arrogant unconcern down the river to the ponds.
Wind exploded in the tops of the trees, bending the dead flags and reeds, lifting the water in waves. The stinging rain filled Wulfgar with joy and he ran swiftly again, the world blurring around him, along water-bright ditches, runnels and guts onto a rough stone track. He had taken the line of least resistance, giving a virtuoso performance of cunning for its own sake. Where he paused to drink, a little downstream of the stone footbridge, he left his print in soft mud beside the Becca. The river was brim full of flood water.
Wulfgar traced the shape of his lips with his tongue and walked briskly up the hill. On the wind the belling pack sounded as remote as yesterday. He loped into the wild sky, pressing under the gate to breathe the air of real moorland again, and the sweep of turf brought him to a hollow littered with the debris of a medieval village. Instinct took over and he fled for Thorgil's sett, but a party of farm labourers out ferreting turned him and he ran along the treeline to the scattered buildings of Great Houndtor. Emerging from a copse of young oaks he stood making up his mind which way to go. Then he departed leisurely, leaving in his wake, a long way behind, sixty dogs and a field of drenched, grim-faced riders.
The hunted fox who knows his ground runs in a rough circle, but being wise to his game the foot-followers had parked their cars and vans on the roadside with a clear view of Hayne Down. Rain, driven horizontally by the gale, rattled like grit on side windows and bonnets.
Wulfgar was among the boulders behind a thirty-foot column of granite called Bowerman's Nose, where he squelched over sumptuous brown mosses and dull green lichens that completely covered many of the rocks. In the crevices ferns and rowan saplings grew, and pipits found shelter. The fox ran low onto open ground, crossed the Manaton Road and turned by Blissamoor Cottage. Scoble switched on his windscreen wipers and made sure it was the 'black bugger'. A woman in a headscarf and oilskins tapped on the side door.
'Which way, Mr Scoble?' she said.
'Natsworthy, ma'am. I'd bet money on it.'
As the fox crept out of Heatree Plantation, a woodcock whirred up from the brambles and the wind smacked it away. Behind him a pheasant alarmed and sounded like a fat man choking on a plum stone. He crossed to Hamel Down pursued by the cry of the pack.
Lancer led the rest of the hounds past Ford Farm, holding the weak line marvellously with his nose. Wulfgar bounded up through furze and bracken to the head of Woodpit and the clouds. The rain drove hard into his back. When he breasted patches of ling there was a remarkable change in scent, a pungent muskiness that the deluge could not obliterate. Slithering down the steep slope of bearded thistle into the brush and bristling stumps of a felled larch wood he remembered Fernsmoke. Among the tangle of brambles and branches he rested and groomed his chest. He could smell Lancer half a mile away. The hound had checked where a herd of Galloways had foiled the line. Huntsman and master watched him work and once it was necessary for the whipper-in to stop the pack from running back over ground they had already covered. While they cast, the hounds moved their sterns quickly to and fro. They were feathering.
Wulfgar pushed deeper into the thicket. Under a larch bough he discovered the tiny brown body of a wren and ate it in one gulp. The bird had been killed by a clap of thunder two days before.
Near the centre of Bagpark he encountered the faint stink of fox. His nose brought him to the root tangle of a fallen tree. Large green eyes stared back into his own.
'So I did hear the hounds,' said the stranger. 'Sometimes I can't tell if I'm dreaming or not.'
Wulfgar went up to him and sniffed his face. The old dog fox's nose was warm and dry. He had a belly full of tapeworm and had not eaten for three nights.
'My name is Runeheath,' he said. 'I live in the woods where the two great rivers meet. The pain in my gut is giving me hell, so last night I walked with the storm and finished up here.'
'Where are you heading?' Wulfgar said, as if he did not know.
'The Star Place,' Runeheath grinned. 'I've had it. Still, to live through six summers is enough. Are the hounds pushing you?'
'Tod no!' Wulfgar said. 'They couldn't run down a three-legged hedgehog on a straight road.'
'What about a sick old fox?' said Runeheath quietly. 'Would they do for him?'
'It's not necessary,' Wulfgar said. 'I could take them round in circles till dark and leave them chasing moonbeams.'
'Would you deny me the Good Death?'
Wulfgar shook his head.
'No more words, then,' said Runeheath, and he got to his feet and stretched.
There was a heavy coldness in the air. Wulfgar turned and left the old dog fox to his destiny. The hounds spoke again, and above the din of the storm Lancer's baying filled the valley. Wulfgar came out of the ruined larch wood and ran down to the River Webbum where it was narrow enough for a horse to jump. He let the current carry him to the spinney by Stouts Cottages, and was climbing the hill to Chinkwell Tor when the hounds, running at full cry, saw Runeheath.
Though I may die
the grass will grow,
the sun will shine,
the stream will flow.
Runeheath recalled the first time his mother had chanted the prayer in the earth under the ash saplings. He felt curiously weightless, and it was not an unpleasant sensation. The hot ache in his stomach had vanished and he ran easily with the suppleness of a yearling. Brown horizons swam out of the rain that darkend the sky, while his past dropped behind him and vanished in mist. Then the sky tilted and the hills were flying in slow disarray, and it was as if his nerve-ends fused and all the power rushed inwards to charge the spirit for its release. Numbness cancelled out the sudden flash of fear and beyond the black silence of Lancer's jaws the country of abundant game and eternal summer moonlight opened to receive him. The crash of hound clamour ended as the beasts milled around the body Runeheath had left behind.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
THE TRAPPER AND HIS DOG
|
The woodpeckers wobbled away like green flares in the coppice oak. Scoble stood at the kitchen door and lit a cigarette. Jacko whined briefly from the centre of a yawn and sniffed the frosty air. Beyond the vegetable garden of Yarner Cott glittering hedges wandered into dusk. There was a whisper of ferrets in the straw of the hutches down by the chicken run. Scoble let the smoke drift from his nostrils. A fortnight of driving rain had at last given way to brighter weather, and the evening smelt faintly of rotting leaves and soil. It was a good time, when all the noise of living was turned down and a man could put his thoughts together.
Dragonflies' wings of ice covered the hollow parts of the turnip leaves. A blackbird said chink-chink! and shook the cold out of its feathers, and behind the ferret hutches the teazels bent under the weight of goldfinches. Daylight leaked from the sky that showed over Haytor Down. The treetops were black against the stars. Vega twinkled with blue fire. From the depths of Yarner Wood the tawny owls began to cry and that saddest of all evening sounds, the hooting of a steam train, echoed along the cleave.
'Get in, dog,' Scoble said, and Jacko returned happily to the warm kitchen.
The darkness came suddenly to life as fieldfares skirmished in the trees for roosting places. Scoble shut the door and settled the fire with the toe of his boot. He had scrounged a wagonload of logs from an old cider apple orchard that had been grubbed-out at Liverton. The cheerful flames made orange puddles on the hearth and flickering shadows on the walls. Scoble flopped down in his armchair and worked at the wires for a new batch of snares. All over the kitchen were many engines for taking wild animals, but he had hidden the pole traps in a chest under the table. The big, heavy fox gins lay beside the cabinet where Scoble kept his guns. These gins had served him well. Three fox pelts were pegged to the stretching board, good pelts that would soon be ready to join the bundle in the bedroom, and nailed along the oak beams were the tails of squirrels and foxes. Smaller gins used against rabbits and wildfowl, net-traps for crows, a couple of claptraps, long nets and snares stood in a heap near Scoble's chair.
The lurcher enjoyed browsing through the trapping gear, where there were enough smells to fuel his madness. The blood-smell always made his own blood sing behind his eyes and he liked nothing better than to be among the conies, wrenching the life out of them. 'Kill-killy-kill,' he crooned to himself as the warm blood flowed. 'O Killy-killy-killy and Jacko do cracko the old coneyo!' How the moments blurred in the humming ecstasy of deeds which liberated him from the agony of thinking. Sometimes ideas burnt like acid into his brain, but chopping a rabbit or, better still, a lamb brought glorious release. Only as a pup burrowing into his mother's warmth had he known such peace. Jacko's kingdom was full of victims, who waited for his coming and welcomed his embrace.
'I come from sky,' Jacko thought. 'My head full of fire.'
He had looked into a pool once and had seen his eyes twinkling among the stars.
'What you thinkin' about, dog?' Scoble said. He went to the nine-gallon barrel by the window and drew off a pint of scrumpy, the real farmhouse rough cider of Devon. The lurcher's tail thumped the floor.
'You'm a prapper ornament – damn me if you idn,' Scoble said. 'But you knows yer trade, boy. You'm like a four-legged gin.'
He sat down again and ate his beef dripping, while twigs crackled and blazed on the fire. Jacko stared up at him, strange images churning in his skull. The primrose-coloured scrumpy vanished into the trapper's face. He would drink nine or ten pints before crawling off to bed, but often he drank more. It had been so since 1918 – cider and whisky, occasionally at the pub but usually alone. He was fifty-eight but looked older. His face carried the blotches of burst blood vessels and across his rutted baldness he had laid a few strands of grey hair. On his right cheek was a mole as black as an ash bud. There was about his shabby bulk a suggestion of real strength but alcohol had sapped his stamina.
During the First World War Scoble had fought on the Somme where he had been wounded in the legs. The memory of lying in long, wet grass beside a dead mule for a day and a night would return on a wave of nausea. Poor old Charlie the mule. It wasn't his war. The shell seemed to explode under the animal and spill out its tripes. Scoble emptied his tankard and fetched a refill, and the apple log spat and flared white, like a Very light. That was when the foxes came, in the darkness, under the arcing flares, three of them, snapping and growling and worrying the mule's carcass, there in that ditch in France. 'Christ!' Rifleman Leonard Scoble of the Devonshire Regiment cried. 'Christ, it'll be me next! The bastards are goin' to eat me.' And he yelled obscenities at the foxes but they just kept on gnawing at the mule. All night they were at it. Gradually he had slid into unconsciousness and when he came to he was in a field hospital. For the rest of the war he dreaded the lonely death and the foxes who always seemed to be lurking on the edge of darkness.
'They idn animals, Jacko,' he said, fishing between the cushion and the arm of the chair for his tobacco tin. 'They'm bleddy vermin. And that black bugger is the maister of 'em all. But I'll have him. Blackie will take a vixen and bring 'er to they old rocks. Then us wull have him – won't us, boy. Yaas, you'm a good dog.'
He lit the Woodbine and sighed smoke. Above the muslin half-curtain of the kitchen window he could see the moon edging into the sky, rising slowly from the trees.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
VIXEN
|
Just before dusk Wulfgar left Hook's Copse, walking with his customary soft step among the oaks and ashes. Red squirrels were busy in the treetops where there was still enough light to give the plum-covered twigs a sheen. The branches bent under the weight of the squirrels who flung themselves across canyons of shadow to flit through one tree after another until the dreys were reached.
For a little while Wulfgar sat and watched the small, dark shapes sailing overhead. The treetops rocked against a cloudless sky, then settled into stillness. Trollgar the brown owl crooned gently to his mate from his perch in the tallest ash. His flat face glared down at nothing in particular and his talons closed like a vice on a dead vole. Using the tip of his hooked upper mandible he tenderly preened the breast feathers of the hen bird while the faint, bubbling notes caressed the silence.
Wulfgar ranged over ground that men had once mined, and below Owlacombe Farm, in one of the tiny wooded valleys that Devonians call goyals, he killed a rat. The rat came from a ruined linhay buried under a tangle of elderberries. Wulfgar ate it down to the scaly tail and sat among the vole runs in the hedge beside the Sigford Road. The waxy greenness of the first celandines smelt of cat, for the farm tom had recently been out watering his territory.
Cattle slithered and stumbled down the lane, harried by a labourer with a stick and a couple of dogs. Fear brimmed the animals' eyes, for they were treated as things, not creatures. From birth to death they bowed to Man's tyranny and were used carelessly as if such mute calmness could not house a soul.
The dog fox ran up the tree-dotted hill with the last dregs of sunset on his left shoulder, over ground called Owlacombe Beams. The crisp pallor of frost lay on the fields. Dusk bloomed and a huge golden moon lit the sky above Bur-changer Cross. Flocks of redwings and fieldfares dropped into the copses, and the Dogstar twinkled from constellations paler than the frost.
Wulfgar carried an emptiness in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. For nearly a week the ache had grown, pulling him out of sleep and disturbing his thoughts. He had covered a lot of countryside trying to shake off his restlessness, and a black fox had been seen at places as far apart as Two Bridges and Holne. Once he had even taken a pet rabbit from the lawn of Mearsdon Manor in Moretonhampstead.
He came over the hedge of ivy, granite rocks, holly and ferns and glided down the Bagtor Road. In the coombe where Lansworthy Brook was a thread of moonlight beneath alders and hazels he caught a moorhen, and before eating it clipped the pinion feathers tight to the base with his teeth.
The night was clear and the frost too slight to stifle scent. The reek of wet swedes lifted from the fields of West Horridge. Sandwiched between the hedgerows was the warm shippen smell of cattle and to the south-east the land slipped away into the vast plain of South Devon. Blackness, blurred here and there with yellow lights, was seen from grass level, from loops and snarls of bramble.
He stood on the bracken bank above the roofs of West Horridge's barns and the vixen's scream tore the darkness. The weird owl-like screech rose and fell and trailed off into silence. Wulfgar trotted forward and paused for a moment, and again the cry rang from the moonlit distance, three screams long drawn-out and shrill. Wulfgar gave a yelping bark and sounded like a tomcat going into battle. From the surrounding coombs and hills came the answering cries of other dog foxes on their way to the clicketing. Deep in Wulfgar's gut the vixen's scream corkscrewed and he cruised along on the floodtide of his lust, the shrill insistent keening passing through him like a knife.
Beyond East Horridge he overtook a noble dog fox named Briarspur, but no words were exchanged. Briarspur's lips were drawn back in a silent snarl and his brush swished from side to side.
Soon the brakes of ash and alder gave way to a hanger of ancient beech trees, where the vixen's music was loud and the barking of dogs seemed to rise from the shadows all around.
She was there, ghosting through the trees into his senses, no flesh and blood creature but a phantom of soft fire. The dog foxes circled her cautiously, giving off a strong musky odour. The screaming stopped, but the suitors continued to bark insults at each other while the vixen rolled on her back in the dead leaves. Seven foxes had obeyed her call.
Among the younger dogs was Wendel the chicken-killer whose arrogance and stupidity were well known. He strutted up to the vixen on stiff legs.
'What do they call you?' he said.
'Teg,' she replied.
'Well, Teg – I'm Wendel the Fearless. My name is spoken with respect from Black Mere to the wide road. In combat I'm unbeatable. Before the hounds I'm smoke. Grown foxes are like cubs when they come up against me.'
'Cluck, cluck, cluck,' sneered Brackenpad. 'The Terror of the Chicken Runs isn't fit to eat the scats of real dog foxes.'
'I disagree,' said Briarspur. 'Wendel is welcome to my scat anytime he fancies it. But if I were Wendel the Fearless I'd get my arse out of here – now, while it's intact.'
Brackenpad sniffed and pretended to nip a flea from his belly fur. He had seen Wulfgar and was in no hurry to fight for a prize he could never hope to win. Of all the dogs who knew Wulfgar only Wendel was reckless enough to challenge for the vixen. He was two years old and had never mated.
'I don't run,' he said, puffing out his brush and expelling his breath across his teeth in the clicketing sound.
'He flies – like a hen,' Briarspur said.
The dog foxes were still restless and noisy but although they snapped at each other the tomcat growling lacked malice. Teg sat on her hindlegs and gazed about her. Beyond the jostling males she saw the black, motionless shape of Wulfgar. The blaze of her eyes held the moonlight.
'Wendel,' Wulfgar barked. 'You have the heart of a rabbit and the brains of a mouse. The night is a big place. Go and hide in it.'
'Make me – Scat-eater.'
A surge of anger lifted Wulfgar's hackles. He trotted forward with murder in his belly, nursing a hatred too thick for words. The vertical ovals of his eyes were full and dark, his tail twitched and his lips were screwed back in a terrible snarl. The explosive firework noise climbed to a venomous yaraow of passion. Wendel came in sideways, his teeth bared, and Wulfgar savaged him with a frenzy born of an emotion more profound than hatred. The last leaf broke from the tree above them and before it reached the ground the contest was over. Dazed and bleeding Wendel crouched at the great dog fox's feet. His whimpering roused pity in the hearts of those who watched.
'Get him out of my sight,' hissed Wulfgar, and Ashmere helped Wendel into the trees to lick his wounds. The other dog foxes stared at Wulfgar as they would have stared at an immortal animal who had descended from the Star Place. Moonlight flickered about his swarthy body so that he looked like a true creature of the night. His ears were cocked and his nose quivered. The beauty of the vixen's face played on his senses and the painful hunger of wanting her cut off his breath. But before he could lead her away another challenger entered the glade, large and reddish-grey and moving lazily in the manner of a seasoned veteran.
'Thornblood will fight all present for the vixen,' he said. The words came out in a chattering torrent, which to human ears would have sounded like the staccato screeching of a jay.
'She is mine,' said Wulfgar.
'I've come too far to chat, friend,' said Thornblood. 'This is fang and claw business. Talk's cheap.'
'Then let's do a little business,' Wulfgar grinned.
They circled each other, humpbacked and bristling. Puffed-out brushes swished and twitched and the peculiar clicking sound punctuated the caterwauling. Many of the onlooking dogs joined in and the hollow depths of Bagtor Woods amplified the chorus. Thornblood was braver than most of his kind but he had never met an animal like Wulfgar. They fought in the classic manner of the Hill Fox Nation – darting under the opponent's jaws to snap at his throat. There was no holding or worrying, but whenever the fangs struck they drew blood. Wisps of hair danced around their heads and the pungent smell of their bodies lingered for a week afterwards.
Gradually Wulfgar's ferocity wore Thornblood down but he refused to give in. Sometimes the snarling animals stood on their hindlegs and tried to deliver the good clean bite that would end the contest. Wulfgar bled about the nose, his upper lip was torn and his forelegs were injured, yet his strength seemed limitless.
Dismay registered in Thornblood's eyes. He carried a dozen bad wounds and had lost his nimbleness. Only pride kept him snapping at the black shadow that swelled from the smoke of their bodies and breath to deliver pain in sharp spasms.
'He's had enough, Wulfgar,' said Brackenpad.
'Well, Thornblood?' Wulfgar said, sitting back on his haunches.
'The vixen is yours,' Thornblood gasped. 'Fighting you is like grappling red-hot barbed wire.'
His lips were drawn back in a grin of exhaustion. Brackenpad and Briarspur went over to him and started to clean his wounds with their tongues.
'Look after him,' Wulfgar said. 'And now if there is no more of this fang and claw business …'
The dog foxes lowered their eyes.
'Good,' he said, and turned his back on the gathering and walked slowly down towards the road.
Teg followed him with short, swift steps, and when she drew level she said, 'Are we to go together?'
'Yes,' Wulfgar said gently, and the little vixen leaned against him as they went out into the moonlight.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
COURTSHIP
|
He had taken many vixens before but had never loved one as much as he loved Teg. Quietly they ran through the tiny hamlet of Bagtor and on down the lane, and the starry night broke around them in sweet-smelling waves. The River Lemon falling from pool to pool under the trees of Crownley Parks was part of the silence and never disturbed it. Sometimes she spoke but they were words that soon faded from the knowing. The joy of living within the moment took them beyond themselves. For there is a state of grace that all wild creatures discover where the spirit makes its secret assignation with the seasons.
None of this belongs to us, Wulfgar thought. We belong to it. We live with it and in the end it claims us.
The river rushed under the bridge and on past the mill. Teg's coat had been groomed by the wind and the rain and seemed to spark moonlight. He drew his tongue along the warm white fur of her chin and the shift of their blood was a surf-sound in the night. Coming out of her love he wondered where time had gone. To curl into warmth while she licked his head was fine. Their sleep was unclouded by bad dreams or pangs of conscience.
The ash tree moving across the sun made the light flicker. For several days Wulfgar and Teg had ranged over the moors and the in-country and the bond between them had strengthened. At the shippen by the road at Kelly's Farm they had eaten rats and mice. The rats had whispered across the beams and Wulfgar had scattered them for Teg to catch. A farm labourer setting snares near Yarner Wood had seen a big dark fox and a small red-grey vixen creeping round the keeper's gibbet. Wulfgar had stood on hindlegs to sniff at the corpses that swung gently in the wind. Two sparrowhawks, a kestrel, a pair of stoats, a weasel, crows, magpies, jays and a feral cat hung from the strand of barbed wire. The labourer had tried to shoot the foxes but fumbled the safety catch.
'He was as black as coal and as big as a pony,' he told his mates that evening. They stood at the bar of the Rock Inn and drank scrumpy. Scoble sat by the fire, stroking Jacko's ears with a twig.
'He had a vixen with 'im,' the labourer went on. 'They was closer to me than that dartboard, but before I could blast 'em they'm off.'
'Blackie was down round Mountsland back along,' someone else said. 'My uncle seen un cross the sheep field below Halsanger.'
Scoble lidded his eyes and bent the twig slowly until it cracked.
A flock of hen chaffinches broke across the morning. Stormbully had shot his mutes on the gatepost at Holwell before sailing above the roof of the wood. He watched the foxes with interest, for their stealthy progress along the drystone wall meant rabbits.
The buzzard's globose eyes were eight times keener than a man's and from three hundred feet he detected the small group of feeding conies. He fell in a swift rush and hit the doe from the rear, putting her burrow-mates to flight and halting the foxes in their tracks. Then Stormbully was lifting again on long, broad wings whose tips were splayed-out like fingers, with the dead rabbit hanging from his talons. In great flaps he flew into a beech tree and butchered the carcass.
Teg sat back on her haunches and growled.
'Do you ever get the feeling that Tod is poking fun at you?' she said.
Wulfgar could not help laughing. She looked so comical with her tail whisking and the tip of her tongue hanging over her bottom teeth.
'I've never thought of Tod having a sense of humour,' he said.
'Why not – he's fox, isn't he?'
'Yes, but very special fox.'
He smiled at her and licked the fine inner-hair of one of her ears.
'He's supposed to loosen snares and trick the hounds and perform all sorts of miracles,' Teg said.
'Cub stuff,' Wulfgar said. 'Stargrief says it's too simple.'
'How does Stargrief know?'
'He has visions.'
'Anyway, Holy Tod let the hawk snatch the coney from this vixen's jaws,' Teg sighed. 'And he didn't loosen the wire that choked the life out of my mother.'
'It's a daft idea, Teg. Tod speaks to foxes like Stargrief in dreams and visions. He doesn't interfere with individual lives. Loosen one snare and you've got to loosen the lot.'
'My mother said we just had to pass through the seasons and we would come to the Star Place without any fuss. I'm not sure I want all the answers before I get there.'
'Maybe there aren't any questions,' Wulfgar said.
Teg frowned. 'Yes, I see what you mean,' she said. 'Loving is enough.'
A mysterious felicity burnt in her eyes. Trotting beside her onto the heath of Holwell Down he was aware of how her moods and emotions affected his life. To be alone now seemed unimaginable. This was living in the sacred manner, and surely Tod understood. Even he had loved a vixen. Wulfgar glanced at Teg. She had such delicate features: slender muzzle, chocolate-brown eye patch sloping in a line to the corner of her mouth, white bib. His whole existence centred on her being; nothing else mattered. That night as he slept with his chin on her neck he felt the world rolling under him.
The days passed and dog and vixen became bolder and more mischievious. It was bright spring morning in Wulfgar's heart. He felt he could jump up and catch the stars that hovered above Hay Tor like moths. When he stood on his hindlegs and twirled around Teg, the tomcat yell of love pouring from his gape, she laughed helplessly and lost her breath. Then they would lie together and nibble each other's fur in the bliss of mutual grooming.
And often he was weak with happiness, scampering over Hamel Down behind her. His yikkerings and barks were heard in the village of Widecombe, but they were the sounds of Dartmoor winter nights and caused little comment. Other dog foxes avoided Wulfgar. Suddenly his territory had become dangerous. Only Stargrief, whose mating instinct was as blunt as his fangs, was permitted to roam within sight of Hay Tor. Teg's blood-chilling screech kept vagrant dogs on edge, but Wulfgar's spoor was enough to douse the fiercest desire.
The moors belonged to the kestrels and buzzards, to the merlin and the lark; they were in constant attendance. Foxes came and went, rarely lingering. The grey smell of the twilight hills would often make them whimper like cubs with the ache to journey to far horizons. Distance promised so much and there was always the chance that something amazing lay under the skyline.
One evening while they waited in the heather for darkness to mantle Blackslade Mire, Mordo the raven brought his mate Skalla to a nearby rock. The cawing of rooks carried up the cleave and at Chittleford woodcocks darted and twisted in courtship flight. It was a soft, Westcountry evening. Coltsfoot had pushed through the frail skeleton of the shrew Wulfgar had killed at Bagtor Cottages, and deep in the goyals of the Webbum Valley alder catkins hung motionless above the river.
Mordo caressed his mate's neck, the great wedge of his bill lifting black feathers to reveal grey down. With strange purring cries he urged her into the air, and called his deep 'cronk-cronk' and rolled and swooped. Side by side dog and vixen leapt the stream at Grey Goose Nest and read the darkness all the way to Emsworthy. The aerobatics of Mordo and Skalla continued against the stars. It was not yet Candlemas but the mild weather brought a touch of spring to the uplands.
A fieldmouse eating haws it had stored in the last year's nest of a blackbird nearly fainted as it peered down through the cracked mud into Wulfgar's eyes. The dog fox was sniffing a wisp of black fur left by a gone-wild farm cat. The fur was hooked on a twig near the base of the hawthorn. Steelygrin, the tom who had deserted the kitchen range of Whisselwell Farm for a swashbuckling life, had nearly caught the fieldmouse half an hour before but Trollgar had intervened. Cat and owl had quarrelled briefly and departed to hunt elsewhere, so the fieldmouse lived.
Wulfgar and Teg killed a hare on the slopes of Rippon Tor. The dog fox chased the animal along its favourite run to a gap in the wall where the vixen lay in ambush. Despite the swiftness of her pounce and bite the hare had time to scream before it died. The foxes carefully skinned it and ate all except the pads and head.
'I'm still hungry,' Teg said, cleaning her face with a forepaw.
'There are rabbits at the rocks by Four Ponds,' Wulfgar said. 'They aren't easy to catch. Their burrows go under the stones of a ruined house.'
'Rabbits are stupid,' Teg said.
'But some aren't so stupid as others,' Wulfgar said patiently. 'Their tunnels are narrow. It would take ages to dig them out.'
She grinned and showed her small white canine teeth.
'Dog and vixen can do anything, Wulfgar.'
Foxes are creatures of few words, like most hunters. Moving silently up the sheep path they came to the newtake wall of Emsworthy. Rabbits scattered and fled, and a slight breeze set the blackthorn squeaking.
It comforted Wulfgar to hear the Becca singing from the invisible valley bed to his left. He stopped and drew a cold draught of air. The rabbits had left a little of their fear on the night.
'Fitch,' Teg said, wrinkling her nose.
'Yiss,' said a thin voice. 'Fitch – and a fitch wot's not too happy because a couple of bloody foxes have ruined his work.'
Chivvy-yick the stoat spoke Fox with the odd nasal accent of the mustelid tribe. He darted out of the drystone wall then back again, peeping at them from a chink.
'Maybe you're just too thick to chop conies,' Wulfgar smiled.
'Sod off! I've forgotten more about drummers than you'll ever learn. You're as nimble as that bloody tor.'
'Why don't you crunch him, Wulfgar?' said Teg. Her brush twitched.
'Because he can't catch me, maggot face,' the stoat hissed, retreating deeper into the Crevice.
He had spent the best part of the evening lulling the rabbits into a stupor, so from the safety of his labyrinth he mocked the foxes and cursed them. But Teg and Wulfgar being wise to the ways of a fitch in a drystone wall left him and climbed the hillock to Saddle Tor. A farm labourer came whistling along the main road on his bicycle into darkness that swam away below them to the far-off sea and the flash of Berry Head lighthouse.
'Bloody foxes,' Chivvy-yick fumed. He jigged up and down in rage and spat through his fangs.
Several stoats rippled along the wall towards him.
'Foxes,' he hissed. 'We've been robbed by stinkin' foxes. O I hate 'em. I hate 'em.'
His relatives exchanged baffled looks and licked their lips.
'OK, you worm brains,' Chivvy-yick snarled. 'What about our grub? Sittin' on your butts gawping at the stars won't grab us a drummer. Git into them burries – sharpish.'
Teg and Wulfgar took the pony track to Four Ponds and drank at their leisure. The water broke from the biggest flood pool in a silver lip and tinkled across the night.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
TWO GREEN LEAVES
|
The mild weather showed no signs of breaking. A little after St Valentine's Day Teg discovered she was with cub. Dog and vixen were still joyful wanderers but their hunting games had become serious exercises in cunning. Twice they had robbed Scoble's trap lines and on one memorable occasion Teg had snatched a guinea fowl from the roadside at Canna while a couple of labourers were hanging a gate less than twenty yards away.
'It's not worth taking so many risks,' Wulfgar said.
'But it's fun,' Teg replied. 'Men are like rabbits.'
'They're not,' said Wulfgar firmly. 'Start believing that and you're dead. Your mother taught you to fear Man above all creatures. She didn't tell you to watch out for rabbits.'
'I meant they're stupid.'
'I know what you meant, Teg, but once they decide to destroy you they don't give up. They come after you with dogs and guns or they set traps. Stay invisible and live. Leave Man's things alone.'
'We'll find a safe den for the cubs, won't we?' she said.
'The safest place there is.'
'The only really safe place for foxes', Teg said, 'is death.'
'You're beginning to sound like Stargrief.'
'It's your fault. You've always got to poke around under the surface of things.'
She smiled to soften her words.
'Come on,' Wulfgar said. 'I'll race you to the top.'
He led her to the broad summit of Conies Down Tor. Flocks of starlings and lapwings darkened the sunset. The valley head where the Cowsic River began was a reedy bowl streaked by narrow streams, and on the opposite side of the river a herd of almost a hundred Dartmoor ponies cropped the thicker grass among the hut circles. The air was full of the music of water running off the hills.
When Tod trotted into the first dusk of creation the Dartmoor wilderness was as it is today. Wulfgar and Teg could cross vast tracts without glimpsing a human being. The moors were not old with Man's history. Civilisations had come and gone, but little of their glory remained. A few hut circles, some megaliths, pounds, lynchets, terraces and the odd Clapper bridge did not add up to much. All were weathered down to anonymity. Stargrief understood such things. On those special occasions when he had emerged from his meditation he had spoken to small gatherings of the Haytor Clan, using the bardic phrases of his ancestors. He was the great survivor. Foxes regarded him with reverence and few doubted that he was under the personal protection of Tod.
Wulfgar and Teg sat in the lee of a boulder. Masses of pink cloud blotted the sky behind them. The vixen pressed a forepaw on her brush and cleaned the tag, while Stargrief's words sang behind Wulfgar's eyes:
'I speak of the Now and the What Has Been and the What Will be, to the foxes who will go through death to the Star Place. I think of the time before Man came and I look to the time of Man's going from the beloved country.
'We are no more than shadows flickering briefly on the moors. But the flickering is beautiful. Through falls of hawthorn blossom we pass. We drink the seasons and the seasons take us. The seasons are hounds. No earth or clitter can keep that pack at bay.'
At night the hunting kept him busy, for he could think with his body in the thrill of pursuit and capture.
They left the North Moor late one afternoon and trotted over tilting fields to Cator Court. There was a sudden gleam of lamplight in an upstairs window that checked the foxes for a moment. The moist smell of watercress bruised by the hooves of cattle lofted from the ford.
'I was chased by a dog near here when I was no more than a cub,' Teg said. 'Didn't he give me a fright! He was all legs and teeth – like the bogeywolf my mother used to go on about.'
'Sounds like the lurcher,' Wulfgar said. 'How did you get away?'
'I climbed a tree and hid in the ivy. The dog made a lot of noise.'
'Dogs always do. The lurcher's mad. He's killed foxes. Last summer he took a piece out of Wayland's ear.'
Teg shivered.
As darkness fell the countryside became silent and the barn owls appeared. Although they swept with a noiseless beating of wings down West Shallowford goyal, they screamed to scare small creatures into movement. The rustlings in the hedge betrayed voles and shrews. Sometimes earth dribbled over dry leaves. The night was prickled with faint squeaks and screams, many of which ended abruptly.
The sun was lifting a little higher above the southern hills every day. Wulfgar and Teg crossed a countryside of apple-green coombs and brown hills. The drystone walls were held together by gravity and they marched into the haze of high ground, and where they joined in right angles there were sheltered pockets of bracken. On warm afternoons the foxes slumbered here, burrowing into the dead fronds while the larks sang above them and gnats danced round their heads.
With day crumbling into smoke they talked of love and the good life they shared. Fox is a raw language, wrung from rock and heather, but for Wulfgar and Teg it was a musical celebration of their togetherness. They flickered on the margins of dusk above the farmsteads, and their cries set the work dogs whimpering,
A rising easterly wind brought a cold snap and there was a brief, vicious return of winter with light snowfalls on ground above a thousand feet. Running over patches of whiteness dog and vixen left a double line of small oval prints that other foxes noted. At Hedge Barton the sparrows pressed tightly together against the barn wall, behind the ivy. The earth became firm again, but not with the killing frost that breaks a gardener's heart.
Wulfgar and Teg enjoyed walking over white fields. The ponies had retreated from the heights to coombs where water always flowed even under the thickest snow. They lay in field corners nibbling the grass thawed out by their body warmth and their breath climbed into the air like mist from the bogs. With the coming of the foxes they knelt and got up in a strange, clumsy way as if the cold had stiffened their muscles.
The snow lay for a couple of days and vanished. Rain fell gently and calm mornings became warm afternoons. Blackbirds and thrushes sang in the village gardens at sunset. On the lawn of the Moorland Hotel were drifts of snowdrops, and beneath the rosebeds chrysalides and caterpillars waited for the real spring. In the banks of the deep lane by Easdon Farm the celandines were full and golden, and among the roots primroses were budding. The grass was very green along the ditchside.
'Why the old cottage?' Teg said.
They had journeyed to the Leighon Ponds at the end of a day spent dozing in a copse.
'Pride, I suppose,' Wulfgar said. 'I've never been able to take a rabbit from that warren.'
Teg narrowed her eyes.
'You mean there's such a thing as a clever coney?'
'Lucky coney,' he said. 'A lucky animal doesn't need brains. Anyway, what would a rabbit do with intelligence? They lead such dull lives. If they thought about it it would drive them crazy.'
'It's all that grass,' said Teg, mysteriously.
Beside the Becca Brook they found a dead trout. Romany the otter had killed several that evening and he had taken a single bite out of the fish's shoulder. Wulfgar let Teg eat the trout and afterwards they climbed up to Holwell Tor and made their way through twilight to Quarryman's Cottage.
'O no!' Teg whispered. 'Not fitch again!'
They clapped down in the furze and lifted their heads to read the wind. There was enough light to reveal what was going on below in front of the ruins. A gang of stoats, including Chivvy-yick, were wrangling over a coney. Chivvy-yick had one forepaw raised and the other resting on the carcass, his lips twisted back to show the tiny white thorns of his fangs.
'Will you leave off!' he snarled. 'I eats first and when I've had enough Shiv can get stuck in. It's fitch law.'
'Me and Flick-Flick caught the bloody drummer,' Shiv said. 'We should get the first helping.'
'Mind you don't get my fangs in yer throat, dung beetle,' Chivvy-yick said, glaring at him.
'There's four of us,' Shiv said.
'But it's your throat I'll go for, my bucko. So why not join the queue? There's plenty for everyone. This is a very plump drummer.'
'OK – OK,' Shiv said. 'Just make sure you don't scoff the lot.'
'You're family,' Chivvy-yick grinned. 'Would I cheat my own flesh and blood?'
'Yiss,' said Flick-Flick. 'You'd eat granny if she smelt like a drummer. And you wouldn't share 'er either.'
Chivvy-yick laughed through his nose and sounded like a wet blade of grass being drawn between forefinger and thumb.
'Keep laughing, fitch,' Wulfgar snarled. 'But get your paws off my rabbit.'
The dog fox leapt from the bracken and confronted the stoats. He was humpbacked and bristling, and his puffed-out tail spoke volumes.
In Chivvy-yick's vocabulary there was no word for fear, but he understood the meaning of discretion. A dog fox weighing twenty-four pounds and standing sixteen inches tall at the shoulders is worthy of respect, especially if you are a seven-ounce mustelid. Chivvy-yick withdrew, swearing horribly, and chivvied his relatives.
'Five fitches could chop a fox,' he hissed. 'Now if Flick-Flick and Shiv was to come at old Canker Head from this side, and Slickfang and Snikker did likewise from the other side, yours truly would be free to attack that bit of fur under Canker Head's chin.'
'And this vixen would crunch the funny little fitch like a dry stick,' said Teg.
She had crept up behind the fitch patrol to within easy pouncing distance. Chivvy-yick squeaked. There was a flurry of snakelike bodies and the stoats shot down the nearest burrows where they lingered to toss insults. Five pairs of tiny green eyes pinpricked the darkness.
'Maggot Face and old Canker Head will regret this,' Chivvy-yick yelled. 'I don't forget. I never forget. Never. Stinkin' foxes! Never!'
Wulfgar carried the rabbit to the top of Holwell Tor and they ate it under the rowan trees beyond the reach of the stoats' yikkering.
There were dark days and days of great luminosity. All along the Becca yellow tassels hung from the hazel bushes. A thousand feet above the valley Stormbully mewled on his thermal. He had taken another mate. She had come from Hexworthy and was called Fallbright. The bulky nest of twigs and sticks in the oak tree in Mill Wood had received her approval. With wings angled against the wind she carved her own circle in the sky and called to Stormbully like a cat speaking to its kittens.
Wulfgar glanced up and three clear drops of water fell from his chin into the Becca Brook. The stillness of the afternoon made him uneasy. The trapper's smell clung to the docks beside the path and Wulfgar's nose quivered as he picked up the rich scent of rabbit. He looked for Teg but she had gone a little way ahead and in a flash he understood.
'Teg,' he barked. 'Teg – stay where you are.'
He darted over the stone bridge and followed her trail down the Becca into scrub oak.
'Teg,' he cried again.
'Over here,' she replied. 'There's a dead coney.'
His mouth went dry and like some garish episode from a nightmare he heard the clang of the trap snapping shut. Then Teg was screaming. He breasted the ferns feeling her agony clenching in his stomach. The gin held her by the front paw. It was one of three Scoble had tilled around the rabbit carcass. Teg's eyes were big with fear. She fidgeted and twisted in the gymnastics of her terror.
'Teg, please keep still,' Wulfgar said. 'I can't help you if you don't keep still.'
The screaming stopped. Teg crouched and licked the mangled paw. She gazed at him from some distant, private world of pain. Her ears were flattened to her head and her brush swished and jerked. A stong acrid odour escaped from her fur.
'What can you do?' she gasped,' – kill me? Well, do it – do it.'
Wulfgar moved cautiously, stepping in her footprints. He sniffed at the gin and tugged at the chain with his teeth. Teg was whimpering now.
'Forget that,' she said, 'I can't go round with this thing on my leg.'
They stared helplessly at each other through their misery.
'You must bite off her foot,' said a calm voice. 'It must be done quickly. The trapper will return at sunset.'
'But a three-legged vixen …' Teg said in horror.
'Three-legged vixens have cubs and some have been known to live to my age,' said the voice.
And Stargrief appeared like a conjurer's trick in the bramble thicket. He was gaunt and grey and his brush was no longer bushy, but he had the brightest eyes Teg had ever seen. Very gently he licked the trapped paw.
'Is it bad, Teg?' Wulfgar said.
'No – there's hardly any pain now. Please get on with it, and do it quickly.'
'Look into my eyes, Teg,' said Stargrief. 'Forget everything else. Come – do as I say.'
In the pool were the bright unmoving reflections of green leaves. The cub vixen peered down from the alder root. 'Teg,' her mother cried. 'Where are you, Teg?' Like underwater flames the leaves blazed and winked at her. Her body had floated away. She was merely an idea in someone else's mind. Was death like this? Was this death? Now there were just two green leaves and her eyes printed upon them. Numbness spiralled into peace …
'It's done,' Wulfgar said.
Teg lay on her side and Stargrief and Wulfgar licked the stump of her leg until the bleeding had stopped and the wound was clean. Then they helped her to her feet and supported her body with their own, one each side of her.
'O Tod,' the little vixen panted. 'I can't hobble around like this. I can't.'
'You'll get used to it,' Stargrief said. 'Wulfgar will look after you. Everything heals in time, Teg. You mustn't give up.'
But the unborn life stirring inside Teg had already strengthened her resolve.
They took her to Thorgil's sett and laid her in a chamber deep under the oak wood.
'I'll wait outside,' said Stargrief.
Once they were alone Wulfgar curled up beside her and made her snuggle into his body. Tenderly he licked the wound while she tried to sleep.
'You will court another vixen,' she whispered. 'What use am I? You'll get fed up looking after a cripple.'
'Please, Teg – don't hurt me,' Wulfgar said. 'I love you. How can you talk like that?'
She fetched up a long, shuddering sigh and let exhaustion sweep everything out of her mind.
Wulfgar left the sett several hours later but Stargrief had gone; so had the rabbit carcass and the gins. The trapper's taint fouled the night air. A brown owl spoke, but the fox found no beauty in its cry, then coming to the Becca to drink he discovered Thorgil grooming himself on a rock.
'How is Teg?' said the badger.
'Very ill,' said Wulfgar. 'She left a paw in the trap.'
'I'm sorry,' said Thorgil in his deep, quiet voice. 'You are welcome to use my sett for as long as you like. The entrance under the boulders by the dead tree is safest. It's hard to hide gins there.'
'I'll remember this kindness,' said the fox.
'We are friends, Wulfgar. If you find a gin near here let me know and I'll roll on it. Gins I can deal with. It's the wires that bother me. Last spring I lost a cub in a snare.'
Wulfgar sealed his eyes and lapped the dark water.
'The lurcher doesn't come here very often,' Thorgil said a little later, sensing the fox's anxiety.
'He had a go at me once, but I left my mark on him. Didn't he yelp! He went over Black Hill like the wind, his tail between his legs. He may be mad but he's not mad enough to bother me twice.'
The dog fox went to the vole runs at Hedge Barton and hunted mechanically. There was a bleakness round his heart that persisted until Teg hobbled out into the sunshine on the morning of the third day.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
WISTMAN'S WOOD
|
The harrows were raising red-brown clouds of dust in the lowland fields. A chill wind blew from the North, bending the crocuses and unopened daffodils from Haytor Vale to Trumpeter and on to Stover Park. In woods all over Devon cock pheasants were gathering their harems.
Teg lay up for a week in Thorgil's sett. She refused food and when she was not sleeping she spent hours licking her maimed leg, but every so often she struggled down to the brook and ate grass and drank the pure water.
'It's a dead loss,' she sighed after a longer trip to the ponds. 'I couldn't chop a sleeping frog. I'd be better off dead.'
'Nonsense,' Wulfgar said. 'Hunting's not everything. I can easily catch enough for us both, but you are really very good on three legs. Look – do you feel strong enough to make a journey?'
'Where to?'
'Rocky Wood. It's not exactly just over the hill but if we take it easy we could be there in three or four sunsets.'
'Why is it so important?' said Teg.
'Well, you can't have the cubs here. Foxes have been dug out of this sett before and in any case it's not fair on Thorgil. Rocky Wood is safe. I've never smelt gin steel anywhere near it. The trapper isn't likely to bother us there.'
'When do we start?'
'Tonight,' said Wulfgar. 'Stargrief has promised us a full moon.'
'Stargrief is a beautiful old animal,' said Teg.
Even on three legs she was a nimble creature, but she could not execute the fox pounce that ends with the forepaws clamping the prey to the ground. It galled her to have to lie under cover while Wulfgar ranged around for conies and mice. She ate sullenly, making sure there was more than enough left for him. But his love and kindness gradually won her over and the old passion for life returned. The moon was still the moon and night the true, thrilling place of labyrinthine scents.
The foxes followed the pony paths over Hameldown Tor to Challacombe. March showers made the high ground glitter. The sheep huddled together wherever there was shelter, for lambing time was near and they were nervous. Crows were in constant attendance, waiting to feed on misfortune, and they craarked at Wulfgar and Teg. Light glinted blue on their plumage. Wobbling on the air they looked like black rags, but when they flew too close to Teg she leapt and snapped a mouthful of feathers from the hen bird's tail.
Wulfgar's pace was slow, but moving as they did between sundown and daybreak the foxes never had to hurry. Below Pizwell Cottage the Walla Brook crept through a marsh where curlew nested. In the mud of the flood pools common frogs had buried themselves, absorbing oxygen through their slack skin. They were more dead than alive. Herons came to the marsh to feast on them when the warm weather made them kick for the sun.
'Oor-li, oor-li,' sang the curlews, adding their own melancholy to the sadness of twilight. The cock bird flew in circles, dropping chains of short notes, and whenever the hen settled among the reed clumps he pursued her in a curious hunchbacked walk. They were the colours of dusk and their song was as soft as the evening air.
Through lengthening shadows Wulfgar and Teg crossed the clapper bridge at Bellever and wandered up Lakehead Hill. Teg was very weary, her tongue was flopped over her chin and only courage kept her on her feet. Wulfgar sniffed out a kennel where the ling was tall and bushy, and the foxes lay side by side watching the lights of Powdermill Cottages twinkle in the clarity of early night. A bus crawled along the road towards Postbridge, boring into the blackness with its headlamps, but when the silence returned it was profound.
'I think I'll wait here while you hunt,' Teg yawned. 'I'm so tired I could sleep till summer.'
'But will you be all right?'
'Of course – go on, you must be hungry.'
She smiled but her voice was sad.
'Am I much of a burden?' she asked.
Wulfgar swallowed his misery and licked her muzzle.
'Whenever I look at you,' he said, 'I see a countryside where there are no men like the trapper. There are no guns turned on us and no traps set to crush our limbs and no hounds to worry us into the Star Place.'
'That sounds like the Star Place,' Teg said.
'No – it's closer. It's this side of death.'
'There's no such place, Wulfgar.'
The dog fox sat up and scratched his side.
'Maybe not,' he said. 'But lately I've had glimpses of a land that looks like the moors. The same bit of countryside always fills my dreams. And it never changes.'
'Tell me about it.'
He gazed down at her from unseeing eyes.
'The hills are much higher than the tors. Their peaks are like knives poking into the clouds. Great rivers rush down the hillsides in rapids and falls. And there are huge birds in the sky, and the valley is carpeted with rabbits.
'Where the snow lies on the high ground the hares are white and there are white grouse. The hunting is good and no man wants to kill us.'
'How do you know?'
'I can feel it as strongly as I feel your love.'
'It must be very comforting to have such dreams.'
'Perhaps they are visions,' Wulfgar said.
Her eyes widened.
'But you're not like Stargrief,' she said.
'Maybe I'm becoming like him. Does that sound conceited?'
Teg shook her head.
'You are Wulfgar,' she said, as if it were sufficient.
From Longford Tor the sunset was too magnificent merely to be looked at. Religions are born out of such experiences – beginnings and endings, dawn and sundown. His thoughts swept and danced across the deathless countryside, ideas swooping into despair.
Wulfgar turned away. The vixen raised her eyes to meet his own.
'It goes beyond love of fox for fox, doesn't it?' she said. 'But why must we grope around in darkness?'
'There's Rocky Wood,' he said stiffly, and she felt she had trespassed on some forbidden area of his being.
Below Beardown Tors, the West Dart passed quickly over shallows of rock and grit. Moonlight shivered on the water like beads of mercury vibrating on a drum. The reef of oaks known to men as Wistman's Wood and to foxes as Rocky Wood lay on the hillside at their feet, and the sound of the river grew louder as they descended.
From a great jumble of boulders the dwarf oaks grew close together, gnarled branches entwined. Moss, lichens and ferns sprouted from the bark, and bracken clogged the roots where the leaves of many seasons were rotting down to humus. The wood had come into being as a handful of acorns spilled from the crop of a pigeon. The bird had fallen victim to a peregrine falcon, long before the men of bronze had made their lynchets and terraces. Teg's nose quivered.
'Songbird, rabbit, mouse, squirrel – but no trapper,' she said.
'We aren't the first foxes to use Rocky Wood,' Wulfgar smiled.
They trod gingerly on the dead leaves and twigs, and wherever it was possible went over the low branches for fear of snares. Wulfgar let Teg lead and waited patiently for her to select the earth.
'This will do,' she said eventually, poking her head out of a hole that was partly concealed by a boulder. 'There are two bolt-holes at the back and a den big enough to raise a dozen cubs. I like the way it's hidden by the ferns and brambles. No man could dig us out, it's solid rock. When the trees come into leaf we'll be invisible. A buzzard wouldn't know we were around.'
Wulfgar ranged as far afield as Huntingdon Warren in the South and Cranmere Pool to the North. Around Dunnabridge Farm on the West Dart there were good pickings – fieldmice, conies, rats and chickens. When the sheep dropped their lambs there was afterbirth and the odd stillborn scrap of wool and mutton. Close to Crockern one dawn he found the bodies of a sheep and two lambs. The ewe had successfully dropped the first but had struggled and died having the second. Wulfgar buried the heavier lamb for future use and carried the other back to Teg.
For long hours he ran wild with the hunting fever. Full of bravado he stalked a cock red grouse in the heather above Huntingdon Warren and killed the bird as its mating call crescendoed to a harsh 'go-bek-bek, go-bek-bek'. On the outskirts of Holne he was spotted with a baby rabbit in his jaws. A boy with fair hair, who had cycled all the way from Paignton because he loved Dartmoor and its creatures, saw Wulfgar lope off into the furze. The boy had spent the afternoon opening and closing the moorland gate for tips, but he valued the sight of the dark fox above the coppers and threepenny bits that bulged his trouser pocket.
Along the stone walls blackthorn was in blossom, its frail white flowers traced against a cloudswept sky. The glare of sunlight gilded the grassmoor. Wulfgar drank at the Wheal Emma Leat and ate a salmon that he found wedged between rocks below the weir on the River Swincombe. A ring ouzel flew away crying 'tac-tac-tac'. The bird's bib was whiter than the water that rushed past the round, polished rocks to feed the pools under the Old Gobbett Tin Mine.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
JACKO RUNNING
|
Scoble came home drunk from Newton Abbot market. His face was redder than usual and he breathed heavily through his mouth. The cider barrel tap squeaked as he turned it on and the level of the scrumpy rose to his thumb. Scoble swayed and took half a dozen swift backward steps to regain his balance, like a lunatic learning the tango. Jacko regarded him apprehensively from under the table. Cider gushed out of the barrel to form a golden puddle on the floor.
'Bloody hell!' roared Scoble, fumbling with the tap. The eyes of dog and master met, and Jacko licked his lips and tried to look lovable.
'What you starin' at, bone bag?' Scoble said. 'I'll beat some sense into your thick head. Yaas – I will.'
He staggered to the grate and reached down to pick up a stick. Scrumpy slopped over his trouser front. He collapsed on his knees and found his mouth with the pint pot. By the time he had finished drinking he had forgotten what he was doing. Like a child surrendering to weariness at the end of a long day, he curled up and laid his head on the fender and passed dizzily into unconsciousness.
The door rattled gently, swung wide, and let the remains of a sunny afternoon flood the kitchen. With hardly a click of his claws Jacko departed, taking the garden wall in his stride, running elegantly down the road to Yarner Wells. The ruddy sky drew all the soft inner parts of his head up tight against his skull. At first there was a churning agony of heat, then numbness and light-headed bliss.
'Jacko run the red race,' said a voice very similar to his own. Sheep broke away from him in sumptuous panic and he rolled a mad bloodshot eye at them.
'Too close to home,' said the voice.
He sniggered.
'Jacko sly. Jacko know all tricks. O kill-killy-kill, but over the hill. Yes yes O yes! Over the hill.'
Another shock-wave of sheep, ewes fat with lamb, eyes like fear-tinted marbles. He smashed into them, nipping a leg, tearing out a tuft of wool, blindly, playfully, holding the throbbing desire in check. At Yarner Wells some chickens were scratching the gravelly wayside. He killed two and would have had a third, but an upstairs window flew open and a woman squawked. It was old Mrs Lugg whose sight was failing.
'What be it, mother?' her daughter called up the stairs.
'Fox, I think,' said the old lady. 'It's after they fowls.'
But Jacko was streaking up the hillside out of sight, spitting small feathers from between his teeth. On the top of Black Hill he lay panting beside the cairn and gazed westward. There was rain in the air and distances were clearly etched. Jacko's chest heaved. His eyes were redder than the sun. Thoughts quaked like lava and he whimpered, waiting for the pain to pass. Slowly the sunset opened and admitted him to the gold and scarlet kingdom, where golden sheep paraded before him in glorious slow motion. A river of blood flowed into golden ponds, and blood-red birds and black birds sailed silently overhead. Then the sun was gone and the magic was draining out of the landscape as swiftly as the pain faded from his mind. The ground seemed to tilt and fall from under him. He closed his eyes and somersaulted into blackness …
There was a late rising of the moon above the trees. Jacko woke up shivering. It was a windless night with sound carrying immense distances, and clouds moving low across the tops of the western tors. The lurcher struggled to his feet and lifted his muzzle and howled. The goods train that was gathering speed below Pullabrook answered with a long drawn out hoot.
'Night belong to me,' Jacko growled. 'I kill other dog. Yes yes! Killy killy killy.'
And he ran off to find the goods train dog.
The dark, decaying wood was haunted by owls of Trollgar's family. Whenever they screeched Jacko showed his teeth and lifted his hackles. The merciless light of the moon was splintered by the branches of Yarner's trees. Needles of light pierced his brain. He ran hard to drive the pain out, down the stream past Reddaford Water and on to the River Bovey. The train had gone. His body quivered with madness and the need to kill set his nerves on fire.
'Jacko great. He come from stars. Stars love Jacko. They say, "Send us animals to play with. We lonely, Jacko. Send us sheep, lambs, rabbits, foxes, squirrels. Kill 'em quick and they fly up to us.'"
The lurcher stopped babbling and lapped at the stars that dappled the surface of the river.
'Drink stars. Put out pain. Fire go out in my head.'
He went through the sepulchral coombs of the cleave, beneath roots shaped like gargoyles. But he was too noisy and did not encounter any victims until he reached Parke. Here he stumbled upon a blind rat who was crossing a woodland ride gripping the tail of a companion. The blind rat died and its friend lived.
Jacko ran on. The stars sang to him and when they suddenly fell silent he looked up and saw clouds filling the sky.
At Bovey Tracey he took the road that brought him once again onto the moors. By Kiln Brake the pain drove through his head in a fiery wave, and he crawled into the ash trees and blacked-out – almost on top of a fox. Wendel sprang up from his kennel of brambles and ran very quickly from the spinney. The lurcher had fallen on his brush and Wendel had dribbled scats in his haste to depart. Darting across the road he nearly met death under the wheels of a motorbike. Lacing the air with the musk of fear he headed for the oak coppice on the edge of Haytor Down, wondering why he was still alive.
Dawn filtered through mist and the moon had faded to transparency. Behind the eastern spur of Dartmoor the sun rose. Jacko opened his eyes onto the ball of burning gold and yawned. For him there were no yesterdays. The sun was his father, the stars were his masters and friends. In the hedge bordering the cottage gardens of Ullacombe a yellow-hammer trilled, and the robin who ruled the vegetable patch of the Rock Inn broke into song. All winter he had sounded like a rusty iron gate swinging on its hinges, but now he warbled loud and passionately to warn other cock birds off his territory. Many earthworms had been swallowed to fuel his performance. Behind him the remoteness of quiet, deserted farmland materialised from the mist.
Jacko's long legs brought him to Haytor Quarry Ponds. Mordo the raven sat in the top of a rowan tree above the quarry and watched the lurcher. Every so often Mordo thought of his mate who was sitting on four eggs and he bowed and chuckled. Long ago ravens had nested on Hay Tor, but boys from Widecombe had taken the eggs. Mordo and Skalla had built a nest of sticks lined with sheep's wool, moss and ponies' hair in a 100-foot-tall oak at Pullabrook Wood. The eggs, were pale green, blotched and freckled with dark brown markings.
'Big black bird know Jacko,' the lurcher said. 'He bow to me. He know I friend of stars. One day I chew off his head and he fly up to stars. Jacko good dog. Stars say so.'
He cocked his leg and watered the handle of a rusty iron winch. Mordo laughed quietly to himself, and a swish and flap of black wings announced the arrival of Swart.
'Is it the dog?' said the crow.
'It's a dog, right enough,' the raven grinned.
'That one's special,' Swart said. 'He's cracked, addled; nutty as a hazel bush. He goes round killing everything that moves – for fun. It's obscene.'
The rowan branch bent under the weight of the two corvids.
'He don't bother me,' Mordo said, regarding his cousin cheerfully.
'The corvid that is born to be hanged need never fear the mad dog,' Swart said.
'Ah well,' Mordo laughed. 'We all run the risk of the keeper's gibbet. What a bundle of bad weather you are, Swart.'
Swart frowned and waggled his beak in his breast feathers to disturb the fleas.
'I was born crow and have been ever since,' he said.
'That's a fact,' said the raven.
Jacko flashed him a look of utter desperation and began to bark.
'He's talking to himself again,' said Swart.
'And why not?' cronked Mordo. 'I do it.'
'Ah yes,' the crow said slyly. 'Well, I'm not surprised.'
'It's because I enjoy talking to intelligent corvids,' Mordo said, refusing to relinquish his good humour. 'There aren't many about.'
Swart ruffled his feathers and quizzed the raven with a bright, black eye. He had never laughed in his life and he had no intention of beginning now.
'Funny – you never see ravens till the best part of the day's gone,' he said.
'We sleep slowly,' Mordo grinned.
'Cra-ark,' said Swart and he flew away.
An idea crumbled in Jacko's head and gusted through his brain like sparks from a furnace. Daws floated down into the silence and started to chatter. A pair of woodpigeons rose in a slow concave curve, paused with a clap of wings and swooped – only to begin their upward glide again. From the reedy margins of the pond came the clucking of moorhens, and the surface was divided for a moment by the blue flight line of a kingfisher. Jacko sighed. The raven preened the coverts of a great, black wing, whose feathers held and bent the light.
The lurcher drank noisily and set off towards the sun. Pain swelled behind his eyes like organ music and he raced down to Emsworthy, hurdling the furze clumps, dodging in and out of the rocks. Clouds drifted by, a shower fell and the road glistened. Jacko sat by the gate and fought the giddiness. The word 'KILL' was branded on the dome of his skull in fiery capitals. He grinned and sniffed the air. The smell of death leaked from a passing cattle truck. Round, terror-stricken eyes were pressed to chinks in the slats. Liquid excrement splatted onto the road and Jacko whimpered. The truck was a mirage wobbling on the red horizon. With a snakelike action the lurcher turned and bounded into the Leighon Valley, and under Holwell Tor he found Ashmere sleeping in the heather. The young fox leapt up but Jacko caught him by the neck and wrenched the life out of him with a twist of his powerful shoulders. From the corner of his eye he saw another fox slinking away but he had to linger and savage the carcass. By the time he was ready to kill again Stargrief had slipped into the clitter and quietly placed himself beyond the reach of the lurcher's jaws.
'I get you,' Jacko barked. 'You there. Jacko get you. Tonight he come and –'
He gnashed his teeth and snapped at invisible foxes. For a long while he barked into the hollow places of the clitter and he loved the way they made his voice sound deep and menacing.
'Old grey fox I get you,' he panted. 'Yes – Jacko do cracko old foxy-o. Bloody quick.'
Madness lifted him out of himself and he was running again towards the clean expanse of water, when the birdlike whistle of Romany brought him back into the morning. Rooks left the nests they were patching in the beechtops and mobbed him, but Jacko laughed wildly, lifting his head high and rolling his eyes.
'One day Jacko grow wings,' he barked. 'Then flap-flap he go and he kill all black birds in sky. All caw-caw birds get sent to stars. And stars say, "Good dog, Jacko", and Jacko get best place at fireside.'
From the dam at the end of the ponds Romany called again to his mate, and Moonsleek's reply fluted down the Becca Brook. Something was wrong. The otter bitch swallowed the frog she had caught and made for the river, but Jacko hurtled out of an explosion of rooks and bowled her over. She spat at him like a fire cracker and gave a sharp yikker of rage. No wild creature had ever stood up to Jacko before, and the lurcher stared down at her in wonder. Moonsleek uncoiled and bit his nose. Jacko screeched and brushed her off with flailing forepaws. The otter wriggled under the alder roots and melted into the river.
'Caw caw caw,' laughed the rooks.
Jacko splashed through the shallows. The dark flickering shape of the otter sped away from him but he was fast and never lost sight of it. Beneath the alders a dipper was striding along underwater, upstream, held down by the current washing over his slanting back. Every now and then he lifted a pebble with his beak and winkled out tiny crustaceans, but when Jacko's shadow fell upon him he burst from the water and dashed over the marsh on short, brown wings.
Moonsleek swam into the deep water of the ponds and Romany joined her. A trout leapt high and fell back with a splash. The lurcher scampered up and down the bank whimpering at the otters as they glided among the drowned branches of sallows. At last he could bear it no longer and with a loud snarl he dived in and savaged the water. Romany closed his jaws on one of Jacko's hindlegs and bit him to the bone.
It was a very wet and subdued dog that hobbled up to Holwell Tor.
'Jacko kill they water fitches,' he growled. 'Yes – killy killy killy. But not in water. Water not good. Stars say so.'
There was a nest of small hot stars in his head. What was he going to do? He licked his wound and tried to remember. Then it dawned on him. He was a mighty lurcher running across a red world, reaping a red harvest. In the dream of his pain he killed a sheep and two newborn lambs. Red drizzle drifted down from the red sky.
'No more, no more, please,' he whined.
The stars laughed at him and he ran for home dragging his stiff and bloody hindleg.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
CONFRONTATION
|
'Ashmere is dead,' Stargrief said.
Wulfgar silently waited for him to elaborate.
'It happened in a flash. He was asleep. The lurcher just shook him by the neck and that was that.
One moment he was alive and then he wasn't.'
The old dog fox lowered his eyes.
'The lurcher killed a sheep and some lambs as well,' he went on.
'That's bad,' said Wulfgar. 'When sheep are killed, men come with dogs and guns.'
'We take and are taken,' Stargrief said.
'Yes, well, maybe we accept too much. We aren't stupid like rabbits. We are hunters.'
Stargrief smiled.
They were sitting under a chin of rock on Longford Tor. The wind of the vernal equinox was combing the deer grass in the valley by the derelict powder mill. Blossom lifted from the blackthorns. The north-easterlies had brought a fresh snowfall, forcing the ewes and lambs down from the high ground to the roadsides. Snow lay thinly in patches on the north-facing sides of walls and buildings.
'I'm finding it difficult to make long journeys,' said Stargrief.
'I hope I'll live to enjoy such difficulties,' Wulfgar said.
'A long life doesn't necessarily mean happiness,' said Stargrief.
'Ashmere would disagree.'
'It was a good, clean death.'
'Always death – good, bad, Tod's will, the wire, the gin, a blast from a gun. We accept and die, or run and cringe. It isn't a hunter's philosophy.'
'The world has changed since Tod's day. It belongs to Man.'
'But we aren't stupid.'
'So what do you suggest?'
'I don't know,' Wulfgar said. 'I only know we accept too much as inevitable.'
Stargrief nodded and extended his forelegs in a luxurious stretch. A sunny morning broke though the river mist. The silver-green tufts of thread moss were stiff and cold between the animals' toes. Both foxes sniffed the air that smelt faintly of running water, furze and sheep, as clouds swept across the open moor bringing a flood of darkness.
'I think I ought to go back to the clitter and the ponds,' Wulfgar said.
'You're asking for trouble,' Stargrief said.
'If the trapper sees I'm not around he'll start looking elsewhere. You know what he's like. And Teg's in no condition to run or do anything.'
'How long will you be gone?'
'A couple of sunsets.'
'I could provide the odd rabbit or a nestful of fieldmice if Teg would accept such gifts from a worn-out old dog.'
Wulfgar smiled and nodded.
'The state I'm in,' Stargrief continued, 'she'll probably have to look after me.'
Under Broad Barrow he found Thornblood and Briarspur trailing a sickly pony foal. The mare kept nudging the little creature with her nose, snuffling gently, but the foal carried the heaviness of death and could not be roused. Every so often its mother showed her teeth and charged the foxes who separated and waited patiently for her anger to subside. The murky start to the day suited the occasion. Hail fell and rattled off the bare hillside. The foxes bowed their heads and let the squall wash over them.
'So it was Ashmere's turn,' Thornblood said rhetorically.
Wulfgar squinted at him while the hailstones beat a sharp tattoo on his skull.
'That bloody lurcher's as hard to shake off as the Itching Sickness,' said Briarspur.
The shower passed and the sky above Hay Tor brightened. A shimmering flock of rooks lifted from Natsworthy Spinney and fell and rose again. The foxes turned as one and stared into the valley. Their movements were unhurried, for they knew that once the oaks were in bud the hounds would not come to the moors. The hunting season on Dartmoor was over and the riders who had whooped and spurred their way across the wilderness were now preparing for the point-to-point races. Pheasants, partridges, grouse and foxes were safe from all save the poachers' guns.
'How long have you been following this scent?' Wulfgar asked when they had finished reading the wind.
'Two sunrises,' Briarspur said. 'It should have dropped ages ago.'
He placed his nose briefly on a hailstone and regarded Wulfgar from the corner of his eye.
'I'll join you at sundown,' the dark fox said.
He ran through the cuckoo pints and ramson that carpeted the floor of the spinney. Once he was alone it was possible to absorb Mind-self in Body-self so that no thoughts raced ahead of the moment. The soft yellow blaze of hazel catkins lit the trees as they roared and danced. Many branches had been ripped and broken by the equinoctial gales. Stormbully and Fallbright rode the turbulence high above the valley, but they saw Wulfgar leave the hazels and ashes and marked his progress up the steeps to Honeybag Tor.
At Hedge Barton a sparrowhawk snatched a cock chaffinch from the bramble thicket behind the great barn. The little bird screamed in the predator's talons and a rook came flapping out of the treetops cawing loudly to taunt the hawk. For a hundred beats of the chaffinch's heart, rook and sparrow hawk jostled each other in mid-air. Then the sky overhead was suddenly black with rooks who continually stooped on the hawk until the songbird was released.
Wulfgar lingered on the edge of the brambles in case there were any casualties. The wind in the beech trees sounded like a giant blowlamp.
He trotted in the lee of the wall down to Swallerton Gate. Between the clouds over Hay Tor there were rich seams of silver that broadened as Wulfgar skirted the cottage and came stealthily to the roadside. The grassy verge and the road were alive with toads who had been treading ancestral paths all through the night, seeking the Leighon Ponds. Some mysterious force had guided them across the darkness with no visible landmark to give them bearings. But foxes do not eat toads and there was nothing excitable in their actions to rouse Wulfgar's killing lust. He went up the slope of furze and heather to the tor that cut the sky raggedly at the base.
Scoble had wasted a good hour casting March Browns across the shallows where the Becca ran into the Leighon Ponds. Moodily he squatted among the alders while the wind thumped the water and bent the reeds. It was an impossible day for fly fishing but between gusts down in the valley bottom there were periods of tranquillity. At such times the bailiff busied around the salmon pools and left the open stretches to poachers of genius. Scoble knew of easier ways to land a feed of trout but fly fishing was his passion. He had no difficulty in exchanging fish for whisky or petrol coupons. When he had finished he would hide the tackle and collect it after dark.
Sitting on a fallen tree the trapper considered the situation. Fish were rising and feeding but March Browns were not doing the job. He picked at his wart and drew his eyebrows together in a frown. The unlit Woodbine had stuck to the sensitive tissue of his lower lip and had to be freed with the tip of his tongue. Swearing softly he put a match to the cigarette and began to tie on a nymph. His big fingers were surprisingly nimble as they knotted the silk. The cigarette smoke stung his eyes, and he pawed at them and blinked. Then he glanced up and waited for the landscape to settle back into clarity.
Among the birch trees at the water's edge on the far side of the brook stood the big dark fox. Scoble froze and let out his breath in a shuddering sigh of excitement. His stomach heaved and quaked with a sensation akin to lovesickness.
Wulfgar did not flinch. His nose had already told him the lurcher was absent, although the taint of the trapper filled his nostrils. He lifted his head slightly and decoded the wind's other messages. Scoble could not take his eyes off him. The fox seemed to grow larger and brighter like an image on a negative. Then something clicked in Scoble's mind and the lantern slide dropped neatly into place: field-corner, groundsel, ladies' smocks, tall grass, brambles – everything starkly white and the phosphorescent carcass of the mule teeming with foxes where light dilated and contracted.
'You black devil,' Scoble roared, but the rifle in his hand turned into a fishing rod and he was staring across the river while the thunder of heavy artillery receded into a past that refused to die. Wulfgar had gone, but when the trapper came to the mud under the birches he found the oval spoor.
'Good, good,' he said. The words were forced through clenched teeth.
A toad hopped over his boot and sat looking up at him like a dog. Scoble inhaled deeply and teased his wart with a fingernail. Nausea welled up in his guts. Other toads were emerging from the grass and plopping into the water. Down by the dam at the Hound Tor end of the ponds Scrag the heron was filling his crop with them. The trapper shivered and tugged the collar of his greatcoat up round his ears.
Dusk stooped swiftly as it does in early spring, but an illusion of sunlight remained in the smudges of sulphur tuft fungus on the rowan stump close to the dead foal. The mare lay beside the little body and licked it and nudged it with her nose. Sometimes she spoke to it softly from the depths of her love. The hard fact of death had not registered in her simple brain, but the three foxes sitting on the boundaries of her grief had attended such rituals before.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
EARLY SPRING
|
Bert Yabsley grinned and said, 'I saw 'em with my own eyes – two red ones and Old Blackie. They was fierce enough to scare off the mare and pull down the foal.'
The farmer folded his arms on the bar and gazed pensively into his Guinness. He was a small, honest little man with a nose like a partridge's beak and bow legs encased to the knees in polished gaiters.
'I've never heard of 'em hunting in packs,' he said.
'It's that black sod,' said Scoble. 'He's more wolf than fox.'
'Dang me if you idn right, Len,' Yabsley agreed. 'I came up on 'em smartish and gave 'em both barrels but they was away through that furze like a dose of salts. Then Old Blackie trots back as bold as brass and gives me that cold-blooded stare – the "gull-eye" my missus calls it – and I'm buggered if I didn go all goosepimply.'
Farmer Lugg sipped his Guinness and smiled.
'You should have used a silver bullet, Bert,' he said.
'That's as maybe,' Scoble said. 'But he got your ewe and a brace of lambs.'
His pale eyes remained expressionless while the smoke-yellowed tip of a forefinger rolled the wart on his cheek. Lugg nodded and the humour left his face as the corners of his mouth dropped.
'It didn look like no fox job,' he said. ''Twas messy. Foxes kill neat, and they usually chew the heads off lambs.'
'I told 'ee, maister,' Scoble said quietly. 'That fox is different. My Jacko disturbed him and the two had a scrap. You've seen the dog chomp foxes before but he met his match in Blackie. Look at his leg – look, to the bloody bone that is.'
'We'd best sit in the corner out the way,' said the farmer.
Bert Yabsley called his dogs to heel and transferred his tankard to the table under the window. His face was redder than Scoble's but there was a cheerfulness too that went well with his Falstaffian appearance. When he was not labouring for Farmer Lugg he dug out badgers and stopped earths. Throughout that part of the moor he was acclaimed as a great liar – 'thicky girt romancer' the locals called him. Yabsley told lies as easily and with as much relish as mediocre men tell dirty jokes. A good, heavily embroidered untruth flushed from his mouth brightened the dull lives of his drinking companions.
But the big, bluff public bar jester did not have to 'romance' about his terriers. They were called Billy, Tacker and Jan, and they were the bravest Jack Russells on Dartmoor. Tacker was the star performer. Once he had taken a chin-grip on a big dog or a fox, he was hell to dislodge. Jacko hated him, for the terrier had made the lurcher yelp many a time.
'I got 'im from a gypo at Ashburton Pony Fair,' Yabsley said, crumpling one of Tacker's ears gently in a huge fist.
''Im and your Jacko idn exactly bosom pals, Len.'
Scoble frowned and swallowed half a pint of scrumpy.
'Blackie's back round Holwell Clitter,' he said slowly, like a man surfacing from some dark thought.
'Then us will have to get 'im out,' said Yabsley.
'No terrier has ever got a fox out of that clitter,' the farmer said. The Jack Russells sniffed at the soles of his boots and Jan cocked a leg against Scoble's wellington.
'Tacker could winkle a mouse out of a woodpile,' Yabsley said. He made a soft, smacking sound with his lips and Jan came running to receive the caresses.
'I've seen 'im work clitters the wind couldn't get through. He's had a fox belting round like a fart in a collander. Dang me if that poor beast didn die of giddiness!'
'Holwell Clitter's as tangled as a cow's guts,' the farmer said. He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice.
'Emsworthy Gate before daybreak on Saturday and for Christ's sake keep your trap shut, Bert. I idn going to be too popular with the hunting folk if they gets to hear about this shoot.'
'They don't have sheep to worry about,' said Scoble. 'Foxes idn no better than rats. If I had my way I'd shoot the bloody lot.'
'You can't trap 'em, then?' said Lugg.
'If I tilled gins at Holwell the toffs would have my guts for garters.'
'If they had a living to make they woudn be so keen to do it by the book,' Yabsley said.
Farmer Lugg blew his nose.
'You're wrong, boy,' he said. 'Gentry always does it by the book. It's bred into 'em.'
'And I idn sorry,' Yabsley laughed, picking up Tacker and crushing a kiss on the dog's head.
Scoble lidded his eyes like a tired bantam and stared at him through the lashes.
'There's nort better than a lady's arse filling a nice tight pair of jodphurs,' Yabsley went on.
His hand traced the shape of an invisible buttock in the air before him.
'I idn surprised you're the father of eight kids,' Farmer Lugg said wrily.
'Soon it'll be nine,' Yabsley roared. 'Joan's expectin' again.'
Wulfgar took pleasure in the loneliness of bog and tor. It was satisfactory to think of Teg waiting for him under the oaks, by the river, although at times the sadness in her voice as she questioned him about the night's hunting made him feel guilty. But with the lengthening of the shadows he went eagerly to the rabbit runs. The realisation that he was a traveller shuttling between two lives added to the inner conflict.
Once or twice he kennelled elsewhere. Brush laid across nose encouraged reverie. He would spend half the night lying close to the stars, not quite wide awake, letting the dreams run their course. What if Teg had become a convenience and was no longer a necessity? Full of self-hatred he dismissed the thought.
'I love Teg.' He spoke calmly. Blurred with trees the horizon squirmed in a tear, broke free and stood breathless again. He fumbled blindly along the thread of clan instinct. Beyond the screech and wail of owls was the half-heard whisper of dead foxes. The tor drifted somewhere between ideas but the distance was swelling into a shout of shapes.
'I am here,' Wulfgar said. The wind lifts my fur. I am printed on the mists of gone-forever seasons, like Tod. Only in the absence of other foxes do pure thoughts fly from the heart. Stream, heather, sky – to soothe all pain. I drink the sky.'
And floating there close to sleep he saw the vision.
The mountain tops were snowy, and white rivers poured swiftly into lakes fringed with oak and pine. Rabbits were eating seaweed among red deer, hares and wild goats on the shore. The rabbits were as numerous as autumn leaves under beech trees, and their warm, delicious smell clung to the breeze.
He told Stargrief of the experience the next day. The ancient dog fox had taken to kennelling permanently on a mossy ledge near the top of Longford Tor.
'Yes,' he said. 'That sounds like a vision.'
'But what does it mean?'
'I don't know – but you'll find out when Tod wants you to.'
'Have you had many visions, Stargrief?'
'A few; nothing grand. Small visions, I suppose. I even had a vision with you in it once – long before you were born.'
'Tell me about it.'
'There isn't much to tell. It was always the same – the dark fox running before a whole pack of foxes over countryside no moorland dog or vixen has ever visited. I saw the high tors covered with snow.'
'And did you feel the happiness?'
'Yes.'
The hills were hardening in sunlight and all down the valley the grass glinted. The morning air was keen but the purity of light meant real spring. By the powder mill the fields were as bright and green as a fox's eye.
'Teg must be very close to having the cubs,' Stargrief continued. 'What you did by the ponds was good for your family, but men are sure to come to the homelands. Many foxes will die.'
'The clever ones will survive.'
'Of course. It has always been so. You seem to be finding it easier to accept Tod's will.'
'Listen,' Wulfgar said hotly. 'I had a vision of a good place but I didn't see myself as some latter-day Tod sorting out the clan's problems with a flick of my brush.'
They made scats together and pretended the conversation had not occurred.
Larks were singing when Wulfgar came to Sherberton, and mist in shapes like strange animals passed low over the moors. From the brambles that hedged the larch plantation fresh buds had erupted, and in the coombs by Hexworthy children were plucking lambs' tails off the hazels.
Tiny leaves had hidden Swart's nest in Crow Thorn and pink apple buds softened the walled gardens of Holne.
He ate St George's mushrooms on the turf where the sheep had been. Then the gleaming path fell through dark masses of furze and whortleberry and the mist was swirling away.
'Teg,' he said, like a creature addressing a ghost.
A jay spread its blunt wings and jumped into the sky. Pollen drifted down through the hazel branches.
'Fox-ox-ox-ox-ox-ox,' the jay screeched.
'Idiot bird,' said Wulfgar. He shook himself and clenched his teeth on a flea that had been living dangerously in his chest fur. The jay's manic cry doused him like cold water. He returned to the moment and used his nose to fathom the mysteries of the morning air.
Rabbits were squatting close to the ground or sitting on their hindlegs watching him. Among the hawthorn roots were many runs and burrows, and the turf all around was beaded with droppings.
Wulfgar walked in a circle and rose on his hindlegs and began the rabbit-stalking ritual …
'Aren't you hungry?' he said, nudging the carcass towards her with his nose.
'No I'm not,' she snapped irritably.
The damp, earthy smell of underground mingled with her own strong scent and the less attractive odours of decaying flesh. Teg shifted restlessly about the den, scratching first in one corner then the other. When he came near her she lifted her back and showed her teeth in a savage snarl.
'What is it?' he said.
Anger flashed in her eyes and while she continued to turn and twist like an animal with worms, Wulfgar dragged the rabbit carcass to his corner and began to skin it. A little light filtered through the roof boulders.
'Come on – move,' Teg growled.
Wulfgar's hackles rose.
'Move,' Teg said. She was puffed out with unmistakable rage.
'And don't look so surprised. Maybe you'll end up like Stargrief delivering prophetic incantations to daft dogs, but this is real fox stuff.'
She drove her muzzle into his haunches and he could feel her whole body quivering. Clamping his jaws on the rabbit he shuffled to the far side of the den and ate quietly, keeping his thoughts to himself. With a couple of pounds of red meat in his belly it was easy to sleep.
Across his dream the blackthorn squeaked. Swart sat on the top branch opening and closing his wings. He was very black against the dark sky and there was something else in the spiky black tangle of twigs and boughs – something blacker than the crow. Then a terrible mouth was gaping like a gin trap and the thorns kept on squeaking and wailing in the wind that had no other voice. Thin and insistent the squeaking followed him into consciousness. He opened his eyes and shivered. The squeaking sounded too real to be the shard of a dream. He moistened his nose with his tongue. The squeaking smelt of newly minted life.
'We have four cubs,' Teg murmured. 'I'm sorry I was so bad-tempered. I just couldn't think of anything except giving birth to these.'
The blind cubs whimpered faintly and Teg licked away the birth-membrane from their fur and nostrils. The licking not only sent the blood flowing briskly through the tiny creatures but made them aware of their mother and her love. Wulfgar watched silently from the warmth of his own feelings.
After the grooming Teg tucked the cubs under her body and laid her chin on her forepaw.
'Is there any rabbit left?' she whispered.
'No, but lie still and I'll see what I can get.'
'You won't have to go far,' she said. 'I've buried some lamb under the stone by the entrance.'
She greedied on the scraps he brought her. Every now and then a cub squeaked and was silenced with gentle licking.
'The cubs are our love, Wulfgar,' she said drowsily.
'My spirit and your spirit,' he said.
'Stargrief shall name them. I'm too full of them to do it sensibly.'
Teg breathed a score of ridiculous endearments onto the tangle of little bodies that lay beneath her. She called the cubs her catkins, her morning dew, her primrose buds, and names silly enough to make Wulfgar grin.
On the ridge above Wistman's Wood he sniffed out the old dog fox. The sunlight of late afternoon lit the abutments of Longford Tor and a contented flock of ewes and lambs grazed the slopes of Beardown Tors. High over the North Moor a kestrel was taking winged insects in flight.
Wulfgar said, 'Three little dogs and a vixen. She had the lot white I slept.'
'A healthy litter?'
'I suppose so – yes, or Teg would have said.'
The dog foxes decoded the calm air and walked south to the scattered boulders of Littaford Tors.
'She'd like you to name them,' Wulfgar said.
'Only if I can hunt with you tonight,' Stargrief smiled.
'Where?'
'At the larch wood by Little Two Rivers.'
They crossed the road swiftly and trotted over marshy land to the foot of Laughter Tor. The pearly haze of day's end had given way to twilight and a single star hung low in the sky.
'The dog cubs shall be known as Oakwhelp, Nightfrond and Brookcelt,' said Stargrief. 'I name the newborn vixen Dusksilver. May Tod keep them safe.'
The western sky remained bright for a long time. Grass and whortleberry leaf glinted on the steeps that took them down to the larch plantation of Brimpts beside the East Dart. Four crows flapped noiselessly over the treetops and vanished as the foxes paused to examine the wind.
'An omen?' Wulfgar said in a strange bloodless voice.
'Why should it be?' said Stargrief. 'It's only your anxiety for Teg and the cubs that makes you see doom everywhere you look. Four crows, four blackthorn trees, four frogs crushed on the road – you could go on for ever reading runes in this and that.'
But his words lacked sincerity.
Creeping through the wild blackberries on the borders of the plantation Wulfgar felt fear performing its cold, colic tricks in his stomach. 'Stargrief is right,' he thought. 'I'm acting like an old vixen.' He recalled his father who after being caught in a snare could think of nothing else but snares for the rest of his life. The sick fox saw wires all around him but he did not see the car that flattened him to the tarmac. 'No,' Wulfgar thought. 'I won't let a pack of stupid worries drive me to madness.'
He rounded his nostrils and took the measure of the shadows that reached out for him.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
STARGRIEF
|
Vega twinkled in the tawny owl's eyes and minute noises scratched the darkness. Insects ticked against leaves and stems; earthworms came slowly out of their burrows with a whisper of tiny bristles. Little escaped the ears of Wulfgar and Stargrief.
They dug out a nest of young rabbits and ate their fill. River song crept up through the trees, and the tawny owl looked out upon the universe from his perch in the larch. Gemini and Orion added their soft fire to the glow of the western sky.
Wulfgar gave a bark of joy.
'There's something of the wolf in you,' said Stargrief. 'You are well named.'
'No, you're wrong,' said Wulfgar. 'I'm all fox. I snatch at the meat the wind brings me. I nose out mysteries.'
In the half-dark he saw the glitter of Stargrief's teeth as the old fox grinned.
'What if there's no such thing as fate?' Wulfgar went on. 'What if there's only a life to lead?'
'It would make a mockery of your visions,' said Stargrief.
Wulfgar sighed.
'What song does the wind sing when I'm not here?' he said.
'Tod alone knows such things.'
'Isn't it wrong to keep on using Tod as a refuge and an excuse? Shouldn't we shape our own destinies without appealing to a lost age – to a fox with our dreams in his veins instead of blood? We say Tod wants this and Tod wants that, but how do we know? And is it important? We are here, now, under these trees.'
'Tod is as real as the trees. The heart has eyes.'
'But don't you understand,' Wulfgar said. 'If there is a Star Place for us there must be a Star Place for rabbits and everything else including Man.'
A breeze stirred the tree tops.
'You look back to the First Dusk, Wulfgar,' Stargrief said. 'But I look further, into the Great Night from which Tod came. There are truths beyond truths.'
'Does my ignorance and conceit upset you?'
'No. Curiosity isn't vanity. In my thirst for knowledge I was very much like you.'
'I'm a cub in your presence.'
'I've been through a lot of seasons,' Stargrief smiled. 'The wisdom of Tod is hard earnt.'
'But the unanswered questions –
'We can't know everything. If we lived for as many summers as we have enjoyed sunsets we would still have a river to drink dry. But cheer up. Birth and death always make us look beyond self for things to illumine the experience.'
They parted company at Stargrief's suggestion. Wulfgar did not ask the old dog fox where he was going but he guessed and it made him uneasy. Then he thought of Teg and the thought was liquid sunshine in his belly.
He returned along the West Dart at moonrise. The stars had lost the gem-like brilliance of winter and did not shine in great clusters. On the slope above Dunnabridge Farm he came out of the scrub oak and saw the ponies standing perfectly still where the river mist had risen. They were very big in the soft tranquillity, adding their breath to the crumbling greyness; and if it had not been for the slow rise and fall of their flanks they could have been mistaken for statues. Wulfgar passed among them carefully for he sensed their reverence. Even the wind had died to a hush. All the animals were staring up at the horizon, to the dark curve of the earth and the swelling brightness above it. A huge moon rolled into view and silver ponies stood motionless like pilgrims at a shrine waiting for a miracle.
Wulfgar ran over the dewy moors full of the beauty of the night.
In the rick-yard at Prince Hall he discovered roosting fowls and snatched a plump Rhode Island Red before it could squawk. The gut-constricting scent of the bird had him wild with excitement but it was a gift for Teg and he would rather have died of starvation than eat it.
Lapwings sprang from the darkness and their sad cries pursued him to the Moretonhampstead-Tavistock road.
Meanwhile Stargrief was trotting in the opposite direction. He was recalling his own cubhood as he approached Runnage Bridge on the Walla Brook and the collie bitch took him by surprise. Like most farm dogs Queenie had been brought up to hate foxes. Two springs before she had worked the flocks of Swincombe Farm but had always shown a preference for a wilder life. Her habit of wandering off for days, even weeks, had not alarmed her master. Then one morning she had met and mated with a stray mongrel and never returned to the farm. The mongrel had been shot for sheep-worrying but Queenie survived and lived as her ancestors had done before Man claimed them for servants.
Crashing through the reeds the border collie flung herself at Stargrief but he rolled on his side and under her. The animals squared up to each other. Stargrief puffed out his fur and swished his brush while his blood stiffened the hackles on his back. The cold fire of moonlight danced about him and stars splintered his eyes with diamond points and twinkled on his fangs.
Queenie had chased a few foxes in her time but she had never been confronted by one who seemed totally fearless. Her growling lacked conviction and she had difficulty in lifting her own hackles. She froze on stiff legs and tried to pretend she was not afraid of lighting the fuse of Stargrief's ferocity.
The blood banged against her eyes and she swallowed noisily.
'I am Stargrief,' the fox said, speaking the simple canidae argot. 'If this is your hunting ground I'll go. Fox don't want to fight dog.'
'Maybe you go. Maybe you stay,' Queenie said slyly. 'Maybe Queenie kill you.'
'Maybe Queenie grow wings and fly,' Stargrief grinned. 'Maybe Stargrief rip off one of Queenie's ears.'
'You're too bloody small to do that.'
'And you're too wise to chance it. Let me pass.'
'Maybe.'
Stargrief squatted close to the ground and shook his head.
'Look, Queenie,' he said. 'You don't belong to Man any more. Why do bad things that Man taught you? There's plenty of room on the moors for dog and fox. Plenty of rabbits. Plenty of mice. Plenty of birds.'
'True.' Queenie sank on her rump and twisted in a vain attempt to lick a place on the nape of her neck.
'Are you hurt?' said Stargrief.
'Bloody barbed wire. Big cut but I can't get at it.'
'Let me.'
'How do I know you won't go for me throat?'
'What good would it do me? I don't eat dogs.'
'OK, then, but Queenie ain't slow. If you play foxy tricks I'll have your throat out before you can blink.'
The cut was deep and festering. Queenie bowed her head and Stargrief gently licked away until the wound was open and clean and the swelling had gone down.
'I'm sorry I gave you a bad time,' the collie bitch said. 'You're a good animal. Queenie will never forget. You and your tribe can use my hunting ground any time. Are we friends?'
They stood nose to nose for a moment.
'Friends,' Stargrief said. 'Now I go. Man is coming to my homelands to kill foxes. Stargrief must warn all.'
'Man no bloody good,' said Queenie. 'Man killed my mate. Man took my puppies away. No bloody good.'
The old fox reached Leighon Woods with a few hours of darkness left. There was a lot of snuffling and grunting at the mouth of Thorgil's sett. The great one-eyed boar greeted the fox amicably.
'Have men been around with dogs and guns?' Stargrief said. The badger said they had not.
'They will come,' said Stargrief. 'The lurcher killed a sheep and some lambs. We will be blamed for it.'
'It always happens when we have young,' said the sow.
'No matter,' Thorgil said gruffly. 'The terrier that can get me out of the heart of my sett hasn't been born yet.'
'Have you any lodgers?' asked Stargrief.
'Foxes? Only one. I think it's Wendel.'
'Will you let him stay?'
'Does Wulfgar wish it?'
'Yes.'
'Well, there's room – so long as he does as he's told.'
Stargrief ran on, visiting the earths and clitters around Hay Tor, taking in a wide circle of moorland and in-country. But one vixen with cubs refused to move. She was called Redbriar and her stubbornness was well known among the clan dogs. Her mate had been killed by the hounds on the last hunt of the season. The earth was on a tree-clad hillside in Crownley Parks.
'When are the men coming?' she said, looking down her muzzle at him.
'Today, tomorrow – three sunrises from now; does it matter? I'll help you carry the little ones to a safer place further south.'
'And what if they decide to visit that "safe place" instead of my earth?'
'They never have in the past. It is the trapper. He is as much a creature of habit as the hare and the badger.'
'I suppose the runes told you,' she sneered.
'Surviving for eight summers tells me.'
She would not be persuaded and Stargrief was too tired to argue at length. He dragged himself to the top of the hill and kennelled under a holly tree. He was asleep almost before his eyelids shut out the world.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
ALMOST A FOX SHOOT
|
Things went wrong from the start.
Yabsley arrived at Emsworthy with the sun, and his mates who had been standing around for nearly an hour were not amused.
'It'd be easier to separate a wasp from jam than to lever your butt off the mattress,' said Farmer Lugg.
'My missus is a heller for her oats,' Yabsley grinned. 'I got to sneak out of bed mornings, maister, or her would have me at it all day.'
'We come to shoot foxes not to jaw,' said Scoble.
'A few minutes either way idn goin' to matter, Len. Foxes don't carry watches.'
Scoble lit a cigarette and his eyelids slowly descended. Leather cut into his hand as Jacko strained at the leash. The lurcher whined and glared at the terriers who were inspecting Farmer Lugg's border collie.
'Right then,' the farmer said. 'Let's make a start. Better late than never.'
Scoble was already striding down the hillside with his twelve-bore on his shoulder.
'Miserable bugger,' Yabsley said under his breath.
A cock pheasant whirred up from the bracken and the iridescent head shone against the sky. The crash of Yabsley's shotgun sent flat echoes skipping across the valley.
'Are you mazed?' cried Farmer Lugg. 'You've told every bloody fox this side of Widecombe we're coming. One day they'll have 'ee certified, Yabsley. You idn sixteen ounces. There's more sense in a cowpat than you've got between your ears.'
'But old pheasant didn know that, did he?' Yabsley said gleefully.
He hoisted the bird aloft by its feet and swung it round his head. Scoble was speechless, and all he could do was screw a forefinger viciously into his temple and spit.
'Don't fret, Len,' Yabsley bawled. 'You can have the foxes and I'll make do with these little beauties.'
The sun vanished behind a cloud and a shower fell. Then it passed and the last raindrops glittered down. A rainbow arched over Leighon, and along the edge of Seven Lords Lands the fence posts were steaming.
They put Tacker in Holwell Clitter. The terrier went down on all fours and squeezed under the stone that blocked the crevice. Urged on by the men, he explored the maze of runs and galleries to the centre of the clitter. A muffled yapping marked his progress. He met fox smell and bolted a few rabbits that were shot, but eventually he had to admit defeat. Some of the passages ran far underground into blackness and from their depths came the ghostly chittering of stoats and weasels.
Every so often Tacker nosed through a warm pocket of air heavy with the reek of mustelid. The stoats mocked him as they flowed in and out of the boulders.
'Coo-ee … cooo-eee … Over here, dog. No, not there – here, stupid. Yoo-hoo … I see you-oo. Stoaties chew out dog's liver, yiss – snik-snak! Dog crazy to come alone into Stoatland. Get out. Get out, crow's guts, or you'll stay here forever.'
Tiny pointed fangs nipped his hindlegs and he yelped, but the narrowness of the tunnel stopped him turning. Above him was a small aperture, and scrabbling furiously he shot out of it into the sunlight and stood panting on a boulder.
'I bet there's half a dozen foxes lying up in this place,' said Scoble. 'Your terrier idn all that smart, boy, or he'd have 'em out by now. He's a bit like you, Bert – all wind and pee.'
'Get home, do!' said Yabsley. 'If a fox was in there Tacker would have flushed 'im out. Tacker's flushed more foxes than you've had hot dinners.'
'If some daft bugger hadn let off his gun there'd be a few foxes round here to shoot,' Farmer Lugg said.
'They usually goes to ground when they'm scared,' said Scoble. 'It idn right for the clitter to be empty.' He fingered his wart and frowned.
'Still us have got a couple of brace of rabbits,' Yabsley said.
'Rabbits don't kill sheep,' Scoble grated.
'Big ones might,' said Yabsley, shaking with laughter.
Scoble showed him a saturnine face and marched off towards Leighon Woods.
The terriers were let loose in Thorgil's sett but found the way to the chamber where the sow and cubs lay blocked by the boar. The passage was wide enough for two dogs to attack at the same time. Thorgil was not impressed. Bristling and growling he bowled Billy over and crunched Jan's left forefoot like a hazel nut.
The terrier bitch squealed and struggled to reverse past Tacker. Thorgil thundered into them. His jaws snapped shut and locked on Billy's stump of a tail. The dog let out a howl of agony as the badger's teeth severed a part of him that had never been his noblest attribute. Jan and Billy collided with Tacker and their panic filtered through the rocks to the men above.
'Fox?' said Yabsley.
'Badger,' said Scoble.
'Where's Old Blackie to, Len?' Yabsley said with a wink. 'Here, that fox is leadin' you a bit of a dance, boy. Dang me if he idn.'
Scoble stared through him into the past and kept quiet.
'Tidn natural,' Farmer Lugg said. He wedged himself between Yabsley and the passenger door of Scoble's van. 'Not one bloody fox. Last year us were shootin' them in job lots.'
'There's still the woods round Bagtor,' said Scoble in his frosty voice.
'Not for me,' said Yabsley. 'Drop us at Halshanger Cross. My little dogs need the vet.'
'I'd have the sods put down,' Scoble said. 'They idn up to much.'
'Careful I don't put you down, Scoble,' Yabsley said.
He knotted his handkerchief on Billy's bleeding stump, while Jan whimpered softly from the back of the vehicle.
'Soddin' old badger,' Yabsley growled. 'If I had a stick of dynamite I'd blast 'im out.'
He fixed his eyes on Jacko and said, 'Does that tripe hound do anything else other than whine and piddle?'
Scoble was too wise to bite …
The trapper and his dog came alone to Crownley Parks. Lugg had departed in disgust with Yabsley, the farmer trying to be philosophical. If they had not seen a fox there were no foxes about and his lambs were safe. It was an opinion Scoble did not share, for he had a feeling the foxes were one jump ahead of him. The hair stiffened on the back of his neck. They had never behaved like this before. Blackie was responsible – he had to be.
'You're a sly old boy,' Scoble murmured.
Stargrief heard the van pull up on the bridge over the River Lemon and within seconds his nostrils were full of the smell of oil and petrol, gun metal, trapper and lurcher. He hurried down the hillside into the earth. Redbriar bared her teeth and snarled at him, but there was an urgency about the old dog fox that could not be ignored.
'How many cubs?' Stargrief said. 'Quickly – the trapper is coming and Tod help you if his lurcher gets in here.'
'Three,' Redbriar said. 'But what –
'One each and hurry,' Stargrief snapped. 'I'll come back for the third. Follow me.'
He grabbed the nearest cub by the scruff of the neck with his teeth and darted outside.
The foxes ran through the beech trees to the narrow road. Stargrief crossed it in four strides and wriggled through the hedge. The cub squeaked as a twig scratched its nose. Stargrief tightened his grip and trotted down the slope behind a derelict cottage. He could hear the river surging past the mill on the other side of the clearing. Lowering his head he dropped his cub.
Dog and vixen were standing under an ash tree that was growing outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees from the bank.
'Now what?' Redbriar said breathlessly.
'Do exactly as I do,' said Stargrief.
He gathered up the cub again and climbed the tree, running up the bark like a squirrel, until he reached a great branch about eight feet from the ground. The branch shot out horizontally over the cottage roof. Stargrief walked along it and jumped onto the thatch, then he scrambled to the top of the roof and vanished down the other side.
Redbriar found him squatting between the thatch and the chimney.
'Wait here and keep them quiet,' Stargrief said.
'The cub is called Gorseflame,' said Redbriar.
The journey back to the earth seemed to take a long time, but Stargrief was in and out of the bolt-hole before Swart could spread his wings a dozen times. The crow flapped through the tree tops and said 'craark-craark'. He had seen the man and the dog creeping up through the ramsons and ash saplings. A little earlier he had been sucking eggs in the nest a thrush had built low in the ivy of a hazel bush.
Scoble dug a fingernail savagely into his wart and drew blood.
'Blackbird, black fox; black bloody day,' he said.
Jacko tugged so hard on the leash he nearly strangled himself.
'Can 'ee smell fox, boy?' Scoble said. 'Go get 'im. Go on – good dog. Good Jacko.'
The lurcher was away like a snipe but he had seen nothing and merely wanted to stretch his long legs. He barked excitedly to con his master and pretended to be on the fox trail. Blindly he smashed through brambles, primroses and ramsons, loving his freedom.
Scoble clenched and unclenched his fists. He reached the earth, smelt the hot stink of fox and for a moment could not catch his breath. There seemed to be a tight steel band round his lungs. He coughed and retched and brought up an oyster of phlegm.
'Soddin' fags,' he wheezed, fishing out his cigarette tin.
The England's Glory match rasped and a whiff of sulphur cancelled out the fox smell. He inhaled deeply and felt better as Jacko trotted out of the trees looking alert and keen.
'Get down the hole, boy,' Scoble said. 'Go on, Jacko – chase 'im out.'
The lurcher stared mindlessly up at him and wagged his tail.
'For Christ's sake!' Scoble snorted.
He gripped the dog's collar and dragged him to the earth.
'In,' he said, planting the toe of his boot in Jacko's rump.
The dog nosed around the passages and yelped and barked to show he was busy. Then he emerged wearing a morose expression and slunk up to Scoble.
'It don't matter, boy,' the trapper said. He crouched and ruffled Jacko's fur.
'There was a fox in here and that's certain sure.'
He shifted the scats with a stem of dead bracken and retrieved a scrap of wool from among the beetles' wing cases and the beak of a chaffinch.
'The sod's had a lamb too,' he murmured. 'Well, Jacko, us will till a few gins round here at dimpsey. Yabsley and his lap dogs can go to hell.'
The cigarette end fell from his lips and lay smoking in the primroses.
'If we don't make a noise we're safe,' Stargrief whispered. 'When the man goes I'll take you and the little ones to another earth downstream. It's in a thick wood where men are never seen.'
'Why bother with me?' Redbriar said. 'I've made a fool of myself again. I'm always doing it.'
Stargrief smiled.
'Better a live fool than a brave corpse,' he said. 'Suckle the cubs and rest. We're not in danger. I've used this hiding place before.'
'You look very pleased with yourself,' said Redbriar.
'Do I? Well, we've beaten the trapper and that doesn't happen every day.'
Redbriar grinned and licked his muzzle.
Stargrief suddenly felt an intense sorrow, as though an old wound had opened inside him. For a while the sensation puzzled him, then he realised what it was. He was in love with life of which he had so little left.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
A WOODPIGEON CROONING
|
The wren's mutes splashed white on the fern frond. The little bird dipped through the deepening light of the wood into greenness that had the luminosity of an aquarium. Wulfgar did not raise his head from his outstretched forelegs even when the brimstone came to cling to the nettle. A faint breeze lifted the dust from the butterfly's wings.
Wulfgar cocked an ear and yawned.
A lizard's length from his nose a cuckoo pint was poking out of the ground-ivy and ramsons. The plant's arrowhead leaf had uncurled four sunsets ago to reveal the stiff purple spike of the flower stem. The flowers were at the base, protected by the spathe and ringed with bristles to trap insects. Wulfgar could smell the frail odour of decomposing animal matter given off by the spike to attract flies and tiny beetles. At a signal from the bristles the leaves would shut, holding the victim in a green envelope. Its efforts to escape would lead to the collection of dust from the male flowers and the pollination of the female flowers. When the spathe withered the insect would escape.
In Princetown the children called the cuckoo pints 'Wake Robins' and 'Lords-and-Ladies', but they did not pick them.
The dog fox looked up. Beyond the tree trunks was a close horizon glimpsed through fern fronds and the dark leaves of wild garlic. The pale evening sky was stamped with the outline of hills and tors. It was a soft sky to complement the soft colours of blossoms and flowers. Cockchafers clacked against the ash saplings. It grew darker, and a woodpigeon began to croon from her platform in a solitary fir. Gradually the universe flickered and glowed, and just east of the meridian a curving group of stars bloomed for Tod's glory. The bottom star was pale Regulus. Lower in the sky the constellation of Virgo shone beneath the dim star cluster known as the Hair of Berenice.
Alert for a detailed picture of his Good Place Wulfgar had seen his dreams climb out of the darkness, shaping his joy. For a little while longer he lay staring into the night with the heightened sensibility of the predator. The thin days of winter were forgotten. He stretched and sat up, and his eyes tasted the rabbits feeding on the sward where the wood ended. Their smell was a hot knife turning in his belly – red meat to hold death at bay.
O Teg, he sang from the silence of his thoughts. Your head is a brow of bracken in the autumn. Your body is sweet like the flow of sunset on a gentle hill. He shuddered, recalling the warm part of her from which the fox future issued in blind, mewling cubs. It was not merely the ache that coupling dulled but a choking happiness.
She growled as he entered the den but accepted the young rabbit and made a noisy meal of it.
'Down by the river the night is calm and full of scents,' he said. 'You wouldn't have to be away long and it isn't very far.'
Teg rose and shook the cubs off her nipples. They lay in a quaking mass while she silenced them with her tenderness.
'I would give ten seasons of my life to have a complete set of legs,' she said. 'If anything happened to you we would starve.'
'There's Stargrief,' Wulfgar said. 'He wouldn't neglect you.'
'What about silly little Redbriar?'
'She's taken a more active mate.'
Teg smiled and allowed him to cover her on the star-speckled leaves.
They lingered a long time at the mouth of the earth before departing. Teg moved her head from side to side, testing the wind. Then they dashed into the darkness and shared again the joys of their courtship nights.
The cubs' eyes were open. Large and bright they stared from snub-nosed faces. Their coats were chocolate brown and woolly; their tails short and pointed. Teg fussed over them as if they would perish without constant grooming, and it amused Wulfgar to see them staggering under the force of her busy tongue. All of a sudden they had felt the urge to leave her belly-fur to explore the den, but as fast as they waddled off the vixen retrieved them and let them taste her displeasure.
Wulfgar was rarely permitted to remain in the earth after he had delivered food.
'I'm as servile as a farm dog,' he told Stargrief. 'I bring her a coney and she eats it and turns her back on me.'
'You don't sound too upset,' Stargrief grinned.
'I'm happy for her.'
Morning light was slanting across the valley, falling on the scalloped hawthorn leaves and the broken surface of the river. A sparrowhawk rushed past trailing thin, yellow legs, and larks climbed high on their song. The thrill of the living world hummed through Wulfgar's body. Things soon lost to the eye remained trapped in a fine mesh of ganglia and the musky scent of gorse filled his mind. All round him the season burgeoned. Whinchats had returned to nest on the railway embankment near Moretonhampstead and a nightingale sang after dark in Yarner Wood. Swifts circled the church tower of Holne and cuckoos spoke above the open heathland.
Several dawns had flared since the sluice at Slapton Ley was clogged with elvers. Spawned in the Sargasso the young eels had drifted on ocean currents for three summers before reaching Devon. Herons trod the shallows and fed well, alongside gulls and waders.
He went alone to Cherrybrook Farm and ate curlew chicks on the boggy ground. At the foot of the dwarf elm in the goyal by the old quarry the leaves were like a mouse's ears.
Golden lichens plugged the cracks and chinks in the wall, and the countryside was the colour of a firecrest. The day had been hot enough to ripple distances, but after sunset the temperature dropped rapidly. Curlews and lapwings fluted across the dusk and he hunted field corners where the rabbit runs were furrows in the dew.
Teg's reluctance to have him around permanently had forced him to bivouac on the west side of Longford Tor. From a couch of whortleberries and ling he could watch over the valley and the earth, but sometimes the purring, bell-like cry of the vixen was almost too much to bear.
During his hilltop vigil he saw Isca the roebuck eating bramble leaves on the edge of Wistman's Wood. The small, red-brown deer crept through the shepherd's crooks of new bracken, curling his black, velvety upper lip to tug the shoots off the tendrils. The doe sat under an oak, her ears flickering and her nostrils opening and closing. She had dropped a stillborn fawn and was still mourning the loss. From a hole in a dead limb of the oak came the soft lisping of infant birds. Eight naked marsh tit nestlings crowded together among the pony hair and down. The hen scolded the deer, crying 'chickabee-bee-bee-bee', and shaking her head with its glossy black cap.
Teg hesitated at the earth's entrance and gathered the scent of roedeer, crow, rabbit, woodpigeon and the myriad vegetable smells of the wood and moorland. The pigeon, who had nested in one of the few rowans that survived amid the oaks, started her song, 'Cooo-coo, coo coo, coo', repeated three times and ending abruptly on a crisp 'coo'.
Teg was satisfied. She led the cubs into the sunshine, and while she suckled them on a mossy boulder, they kicked their back legs as they drew the milk out of their mother. Teg breathed a sigh of contentment and let her tongue dangle. The woodpigeon gazed at her for a moment then eased the nictating film over its eyes.
After the feeding the cubs played the Life Game. They hissed and spat like kittens, grappling each other and rolling over and over in balls until the one underneath squeaked for
Teg to release him. The vixen was keenly interested in all they did. She remembered how she had learnt the tricks that had honed her own hunting skills, so she twitched her brush and the cubs pounced on the tag as they would pounce on a fieldmouse.
Wulfgar brought them toys: the skull of a fitch, a grouse's wing, a moth, beetles, dead frogs – things for them to carry around in their mouths or strike with their paws. They brawled over the treasures, playing tug-of-war and pretending to disembowel with a feline raking motion of the hindlegs. Teg answered their cries like a cat greeting its owner and her melodious trilling froze the hair on Wulfgar's back.
He laid a rabbit at her feet.
'There can't be many of these left,' she said cheerfully. 'You must have emptied a warren or two.'
The cubs bustled up to Wulfgar and rubbed against his legs. He touched each one in turn with his nose, for they smelt of Teg, but his stomach did not flood with tenderness as it did when he was close to her. The confusion of the wood seemed an extension of his own confusion. Sunlight felt its way through the massed twigs and branches, settling on the grey-green blister lichens and the yellow lichens, burnishing the luxuriant clusters of mosses and wood rush. Everything was tangled and lost within other things: whortleberries and brambles, filmy ferns, honeysuckle, hard ferns, fallen branches, polypody ferns, the carcass of a sheep, spiky tendrils worming into crevices, rock upon rock.
And his mind was in a worse muddle. He tried to concentrate on the Star Place but self-doubt clouded his thoughts. Shamefully he realised he had always been woolly-headed. The stages of reasoning were like stepping stones across a wide river, and he could never progress beyond the seventh. Never. But of one thing he was sure: the beauty of the living world stopped when it reached Man.
Stargrief's hooded eyes made him look very old and tired – a creature closer to death than life. He is already a tenant of the Star Place, Wulfgar thought. One life is enough until you near the end of it. Star Places are born out of despair and bitterness. Despite his love for the ancient dog fox he listened to the Tod Saga with mounting irritation. Stargrief squatted on a fallen tree and said: 'We must follow the Tod Saga in the flow of the seasons. Winter is the moors before Tod. Spring is the birth and re-birth of Tod. Summer is his doghood, and autumn his death and fulfilment.'
Dog and vixen had heard the saga countless times yet never before had it lacked relevance. The cubs were playing hide-and-seek among the boulders close at hand. Brookcelt and Nightfrond fought over a leg of hare and the woodpigeon continued to croon. This is our time and place, thought Wulfgar.
But his doubt had taken a new direction and he lowered his glance and sighed. Teg laughed softly, casting her eyes over the two dog foxes.
Stargrief had read her mind.
'Tod and the Star Place offer hope in a life full of fear and cruelty,' he said. 'If we give ourselves to –
Teg stopped him with a cold chuckle and said, 'We all know that foxes must suffer and die. It has been so for ages. But I don't care about the Star Place – wherever that is. I'm alive and Tod's got nothing to do with it. He doesn't help, he just complicates things. There is me and Wulfgar and the cubs. Maybe I'll be a golden fox like Tod one night and chase golden rabbits over golden fields; and maybe I won't. I'm not interested in what happens when I'm crowbait. Get on with the Now of life is my motto.'
'And the visions?' Stargrief said wrinkling his nose.
'Visions, dreams, runes – rubbish!' Teg snarled. 'You bright pair have a lot in common with the lurcher.'
'And perhaps you are Redbriar's sister,' said Stargrief.
'O get out of my sight – both of you,' she sneered. 'I need more than sunset sagas to put milk in my paps.'
Wulfgar and Stargrief narrowed their eyes and pretended to find the cubs amusing. Dusksilver balanced on her hindlegs and gave Brookcelt a left hook with her forepaw. She had decided the stoat's skull was her property and carried it around in her mouth. The little dogs had given up trying to steal it off her.
'Cubs can be quite boring,' Wulfgar said one night.
'You must make allowances for Teg's condition,' said Stargrief. 'If she had all four of her legs things would be different.'
'I suppose you're right,' said Wulfgar doubtfully. 'But it's 'Nightfrond this' and 'Oakwhelp that' and 'Did you see Dusksilver with that frog's leg?' As far as she's concerned the moon shines out of their behinds. I'm no more than a glorified guest.'
'You sound as if she's your first vixen.'
'She's the first I've ever cared about. I really need her.'
He nuzzled the blackness that was scribbled over with scents. The hawthorns wrote a rounded script on the horizon, stars were scattered across the sky. The foxes walked over the dark moorland in the lovely silent hours before dawn.
Stargrief was panting when they reached the straggling copse below Beardown Lodge but he managed to jump up without warning to catch a moth in his forepaws. He grinned and crunched the insect like a child eating a sweet.
'Pretty good for a bonebag – hey?' he said.
'I bet it's knocked five sunsets off your life,' Wulfgar said.
The pleasant earthy smell of badger set his nostrils quivering. Perhaps if anything the nights of early May were too rich in scent and he recalled how they used to drive him crazy during the first spring of doghood. More pungent than the badger smell was the tang of freshly killed rabbit.
The foxes sat among the bluebells and watched the feeding badger. He was a young boar by the name of Rootscowl. Although he had fought desperately for a mate he was still a bachelor and this did not help sweeten his temper. Placing a powerful forepaw on the rabbit carcass he lifted his white head and grunted, 'Are you looking for trouble?'
The two black stripes that ran vertically from behind his ears almost to his snout made it difficult to see his eyes.
'That's a lot of coney for a small badger,' said Wulfgar. 'Maybe you'd like to donate it to a better animal.'
Rootscowl showed his teeth in a mustelid snarl and said, 'Try and take it – sheep's fart!'
'Well, let's see if you're as nimble as your wits,' Wulfgar said.
He swaggered up to Rootscowl while Stargrief sought a strategic postion behind the badger.
'Rootscowl idn stupid,' the boar said.
Wulfgar looked down his muzzle at him and smiled. But it was no longer fun. It was fox sport but it wasn't funny. Standing on the slope of bluebells waiting for the inevitable to happen he surrendered to emptiness. Briefly the shapes and sounds of the night ceased to be real. Then Stargrief was charging and the badger was swinging to meet him and there was no need for further thought.
Rootscowl lowered his head and rushed at an enemy who was swerving away into the shadows. The badger grunted and turned, slipping on the crushed white flower stems. Both the fox and the rabbit carcass were gone.
'Rootscowl is stupid,' he groaned.
Luckily there were bluebell bulbs to grub and more esoteric badger pursuits to blunt his disappointment.
'The trapper will come one day,' Wulfgar said.
Beneath the hawthorns and hazels the bluebells rose stiffly from a carpet of dead leaves. Stargrief was close to sleep. They had eaten the rabbit and dropped scats near a scenting post. Now Stargrief surfaced reluctantly from his catnap, sniffing the new day in the east.
'This isn't the trapper's hunting ground,' he yawned.
'He's like us,' said Wulfgar. 'He has our cunning.'
'But he doesn't know Rocky Wood.'
'If he wants me badly enough he'll find it.'
'In all my seasons no man has behaved like this.'
'Old fox, I speak the truth. When the cubs are stronger we will go to the Fastness. A man might die hunting us there.'
Birds awoke and gave voice. To begin with, the crows shook the dew from their feathers with harsh caws, then a robin burst into song followed by a woodpigeon and a blackbird. The cuckoo quickly joined in and as the volume increased a thrush poured out a clean torrent of music.
The foxes curled up side by side and sank into the mystery. The chorus was crescendoing. Wrens, chaffinches and coal tits opened up, but it soon became impossible to identify individual voices.
Stargrief was asleep, muzzle pressed between forepaws. And in the river valley the mist hung pearl-grey, luminous, motionless.
Much of what the cubs did was instinctive, but important parts of the Life Game had to be learnt from their mother. The vixen asked Wulfgar to bring her a fresh cowpat.
'Beetles live in the cowpat,' she told the cubs. Lactation was finished and she had mixed feelings about the loss of intimacy with her young.
'Beetles are good.'
She turned the pat over and held the insect in her teeth.
'Chomp-chomp! – good. Now you try,'
Brookcelt took a big mouthful of dung and spat it out. His eyes widened, for his mother had never deceived him before.
'Beetles live in the scat.' Teg laughed. 'Beetles very good. Scat very bad.'
'Bad – ulk!' squeaked Brookcelt.
'Beetle,' said Nightfrond. His teeth cracked the insect's carapace.
The vixen had left the earth and was lying-up close by under some roots. She came to the cubs with great caution, her zig-zag approach bringing her into the wind and around the earth in a circle. She was suspicious of everything and would prick her ears to decipher the different bird calls and cover the ground with her nose before entering the earth. Beneath the boulder-jumble the chamber was untidy but not dirty. The floor was littered with bones, the skulls of animals and birds, wings, feathers, scraps of sheepskin and the odd putrified body of mole, shrew and weasel.
Wulfgar's gifts were dropped near her and wordlessly accepted. She broke up the carcasses and the cubs were given the vitamin-rich entrails and gobbets of masticated flesh. But Wulfgar was not content merely to provide. He was the bold warrior chieftain of an outlawed tribe, yet Teg treated him like a ga-ga vixen. The lizard basking on the dead bracken had more dignity.
The stalking exercises were simple and there was no need to teach the cubs to pounce stiff-legged. The rule was: 'Stalk it – don't charge at it'. Guile was the key word. A fox is born with a head full of cunning but it has to be developed.
'It's a waste of time to chase a flying bird,' Teg said. 'Grabbing them from the grass or the hedge is the fox way. A sleeping bird can be shuttled quickly from roost to fox's belly.'
'But it's hard to see a bird in the dark,' said Oakwhelp.
So Teg showed them how to use their noses, how to choose a thread from the web of smells that spread at darkfall.
One evening Wulfgar trotted in with an old Wellington boot from the rickyard at Cherrybrook. The smell of Man covered it like an unpleasant mould.
'Learn this smell, my little primrose buds,' Teg said. 'Learn and never forget. It is the scent of Man, our great enemy, the great killer of foxes. When your nose brings it to you, run, hide, disappear.'
Like most wild creatures foxes are born without the fear of Man.
'They are the Death Creatures, the bogeywolves,' said Teg. 'All animals and birds fear them.'
And Man set snares and tilled gins. Therefore it was necessary to teach the cubs to recognise the smell of the choking-wire and gin-metal.
'I lost my leg in a gin trap,' the vixen said grimly. 'One careless moment and I finished up a cripple. Many foxes die in the metal jaws. It is a bad death.'
At another mealtime she said, 'Never crawl under wire or roots or branches. Man puts his snares in these places. Wherever it is possible jump over or go around. Remember this and live.'
The cubs sat before her in a half-circle while she spoke the deathless words of the clan. The Fox language was sweet on her tongue. Wulfgar lay on his heather terrace high above her and let the music of her voice warm his blood. The days were long and green; the nights magical. He lived the invisible fox life, coming to Teg when the mist was blue-edged; and their talk was low and tender against the quiet chorus of the cubs' breathing. Then the thoughts that belonged to the kennel of old age were lost in her image.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
SHADOWS
|
The hills darkened slowly. Leaves silvered and blurred again, heavily green. A raw wind swept along the valley. He turned into the evening and carefully sorted through the scents. His coat was drenched with a hard shower of rain. All day the showers had fallen, sometimes far-off, slowly, like shifting columns of smoke. Grass shone across hollows and everything smelt of rain. Then the cloud was moving on and the sun returned as the rain hammered down and died away to leave the moors glittering.
He presented the cock grouse to Teg and watched her clipping the wing feathers tight to the flesh. Nosing through the rough heath over Huntington Warren Wulfgar had surprised the chestnut-red bird in its jag amongst the ling. A peregrine had killed its mate on Easter Sunday and the crows had eaten all but one of her eleven eggs. The surviving egg was found by a stoat who rolled it off under her chin to feed her kits.
'I think we should take the cubs away from here, Teg,' Wulfgar said.
She gave him a quick sidelong glance and asked why.
'I've a feeling about the trapper. And I can't forget the crow omens.'
'Stargrief reckons you see too many shadows. Crows are crows – nothing else. I throw a shadow.'
'My gut tells it differently.'
'But we have everything here – a safe den, plenty of food, water, the lot. The cubs are happy.'
'Nevertheless we are moving,' Wulfgar said. His dark, triangular head tilted and his nostrils widened.
'When?'
'At sunset tomorrow.'
'We are not,' Teg said firmly.
'I'm not arguing,' said Wulfgar.
Teg lifted her upper lip and snarled.
'And where are we going?' she said.
'The Fastness.'
'Is that another of your gut feelings?'
'Yes it is.'
'But the cubs aren't old enough or strong enough to make such a long journey.'
'Very well,' Wulfgar said. 'We go seven sunsets from now.'
'It's so daft,' Teg snorted. 'We hardly ever see men around here.'
'You have my final words on the matter, vixen,' Wulfgar said.
'O I shall follow you, great fox. But you are as stubborn as a crotchety old boar badger.'
He smiled and licked her muzzle.
'You should have mated with Wendel,' he said. The darkness inside himself was diminishing.
They went onto the east slopes of the valley, where the wetness of grass and rock was turned to gold by the setting sun. Another shower fell, a swallow skimmed the river. The moors smelt like a living creature, and if they stood still and listened they could hear it breathing. Dog and vixen were content in each other's company. The bond between them could not have been stronger.
Running on the high ground was the perfect thing, for away from the cubs they could melt into the hush and enrich it with their silence. Her lovely form was all raindrop bright. Her hobbling gait on the steeper slopes made his heart lurch, and her sleekness, her beautiful ears, her delicate muzzle lit by the dying sun would haunt him for the rest of his days.
A few sunsets later he sat beside the West Dart while Teg and the cubs were hard at the Life Game. The vixen was hiding a rabbit's foot among the pebbles and encouraging the young ones to sniff it out.
'The thin fox is the fox with an uneducated nose,' she said. Nightfrond placed his muzzle in the river and got an earful of water.
'The river is alive,' laughed Teg. 'But it isn't an animal. You can't bite it, silly.'
The cub gazed into his own reflection and tried to understand. Brookcelt and Dusksilver came galloping up and bowled him over and a tangle of little bodies thrashed about in the shallows. From a grassy hollow between two boulders Oakwhelp turned a deaf ear and chewed the rabbit's foot. He was almost as dark as his father and half the time he had to be coaxed out of his daydreams.
'He's different,' Teg said. 'He's Wulfgar right down to the tips of his claws.'
The cub stretched and yawned, and a faraway look filled his eyes. Yes, Wulfgar thought with a pang, there I am. He flashed across the seasons to the first spring of his life. Shimmering flowers, birds freckling and blotching the sky, the famished way he loved the dusk. Lying under the fresh bramble leaves, his nose among the dog violets, he listened to the steady pulse of his blood. Back there the grasses bent in a thwack of wind but only if he conjured the memory to the front of his mind and excluded everything else. Then he would see the thick, heavy nests of rooks and hear the cawing. A hushed place and Oakwhelp the small liberated ghost of a lost forever cub.
He closed his eyes and floated calmly on the birdsong. He loved fine weather as all creatures do. The evening rushed into his knowing. A buzzard mewled. Oakwhelp dragged himself through the gap in the drystone wall and ran up the fox path to the boulders and trees. His brothers and sisters scampered after him and Teg leapt onto the coping stones for a better view.
'Don't stray,' she barked. 'Go to the earth and wait for me.'
The untroubled landscape faded and left an ache around his heart.
'They're hungry,' Teg said without looking at him.
The hunting-passion nagged away at her like toothache. Soon she would visit the nearby vole runs and perhaps make a kill. But it was never enough. In her private moments she still made lightning rushes on rabbits and lapwings.
'If you were to die,' she said, 'I would die.'
'And what about the cubs?' he said carefully, dragging his hindquarters in a slow, stiff-legged stretch.
She dived into the shadows. The buzzard called again and between its keening and the murmur of the river came the low music of the pony fillies calling across the wilderness.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
WHEN THE WHIMPERING STOPPED
|
The Devonport Leat followed one of the lower contours of Beardown Hill up the West Dart to the weir under Longford Tor, and from it a walker could look down into Wistman's Wood. But the blond boy had crawled on hands and knees through the shallow waters of the leat until he reached a spot a hundred feet above the foxes. Parting the reeds with exaggerated care he sucked in his breath and held it for a moment.
Three cubs were squabbling where the river curled narrow and low through the debris of last winter's floods. Another cub was just visible by the drystone wall.
The boy grinned and let the air hiss out between his teeth. Then the little red vixen glanced up and seemed to look directly at him and he froze again. A buzzard steered a high course over the valley and left its cat-calls on the breeze. Teg swung her head and sniffed at the noise. The shadow of the boulder came to life and stepped out onto the sward to become a large, black fox.
'Old Blackie,' the boy whispered. 'It's Old Blackie. I've found 'im! Bleddy hell! You're beautiful. Beautiful.'
Excitement loosened his bowels but he fought the urge until his stomach stopped growling. He was ten years old and moved about the moors like a fox. All day he had tramped the heights, robbing birds' nests and catching butterflies. At dawn he had pedalled from Middle Stoke Farm, south of Venford reservoir, to Postbridge where the bicycle had been left in a cottage garden. With his satchel slung across his back he had walked up the East Dart to the great marshes beyond Sandy Hole Pass. Here he had taken the eggs of curlew, mallard and snipe.
By noon he was jumping the black ditches of Cranmere Pool, and crows, larks, lapwings and golden plover had surrendered prizes for his collection. The egg box was full and he was happy, but while there was still daylight he was reluctant to leave the beloved places. Returning over Cut Hill and Rough Tor he had heard the vixen bark and had come fox-wise along the leat.
'I idn ever going back to Paignton,' he murmured. 'I'm staying here always – for ever. Just me and the birds and the foxes.'
He had been sent to the farm on doctor's orders suffering from what his mother called 'nerves'. Before the end of spring he would be back in the seaside town eating his heart out for Dartmoor.
The clitter swallowed up the cubs, the shadows deepened and a last soft blaze of sunlight touched Longford Tor; then the vixen was gone, running awkwardly on three legs.
'A little cripple!' the boy said. 'Blackie's got himself a three-legged vixen!'
He shivered. The water filled his gym shoes and ran cold around his calves and knees.
'Trust him,' he thought. 'Any old animal could mate with a four-legged vixen but he's got himself a little cripple. He's a proper hero – a spitfire pilot.'
Wulfgar was swift and sure-footed over the boulders. He carried his pedigree proudly up the slope to the ridge, a noble black hunter blurred by the long shadows and the massed whortleberries.
'I can give 'ee a lift to Hexworthy,' said the cider-merchant.
He hoisted the bicycle into the back of his lorry and wedged it among the barrels.
'Idn you a bit young to be trapesing round the moors this time of night? You'm only a tacker.'
'I'm ten,' the boy said solemnly.
'You're him who's staying at Middle Stoke,' the cider merchant said.
The lorry crawled up the hill, coughing carbon monoxide, its headlights settling briefly on the eyes of sheep and ponies.
'Where you been today?'
The boy told him and opened the egg box.
'You gets about, don't 'ee!' the cider merchant said. 'If I was you I'd clean myself up a bit before I got home. You're grubby, boy. Dang me! If I didn think 'ee were a gypo at first.'
'I saw old Blackie,' the boy said.
'Old who?'
'The black fox – the one they can't catch. He's got a little three-legged vixen and some cubs.'
'You lying?' the cider merchant said. He grated down through the gear box and glanced across his shoulder at the boy.
'It was Blackie.'
'Where was he to?'
'Somewhere.'
'O yes,' the cider merchant grinned.
Outside, the darkness was complete. The sky had clouded over and the horizon was hard to detect.
The boy pressed his face against the side-window and said nothing.
'You got the price of a pint, Len?' said the landlord of the Rock Inn.
Scoble's face darkened and he lightly touched his wart, first with one finger and then another, like a man drumming a tune.
'Depends,' he said.
'Have a word with Ernie Claik.'
'Why?'
'It's about old Blackie.'
Scoble tugged at his nose while his flesh goosepimpled.
'The old black bugger,' he said hoarsely.
'He's around,' said Claik. And he tapped his empty tankard on the bar.
'Around where, boy?' Scoble said.
The shilling rolled out of his palm across the counter into the landlord's cupped hands.
'Mild and bitter,' Claik said.
'Around where?' Scoble persisted.
'That's for you to decide.'
The trapper frowned and tweaked his wart between forefinger and thumb. Claik grinned into his pint pot.
'Cheers, Leonard,' he said. 'First today. I don't hold with lunchtime boozin'.'
Scoble watched him drink.
'I hope this idn no trick,' he said in a low, dangerous voice.
'Old Blackie's been seen, I tell 'ee,' Claik said. 'I give a lift to the boy from Middle Stoke last night. Cor bugger if he wadn in a state! Mud up to the eyebrows! Well, he swore he'd just left old Blackie.'
'The boy's mazed,' Scoble sneered. 'They say he walks round in his sleep, screaming his head off.'
'Maybe so, but he saw old Blackie. Loobies have got eyes, Leonard. Anyway I picked him up by Clapper Cottage and he said he'd walked from Two Bridges. Now, if his bike was at Postbridge he must have gone up the East Dart to Sandy Hole and across to the West Dart and down past Wistman's to Two Bridges.'
'And you believed him?'
'I did. His legs was all scratched and he had a girt box of birds' eggs – curlews, peewits, snipe. You don't find they by sittin' on your arse doing nothing.'
He drank slowly and deeply and added, 'Seems like old Blackie's got a mate – a three-legged vixen.'
Scoble closed his eyes and smashed a fist into the palm of his hand.
'Then he wadn lyin',' he crowed. 'The little sod wadn lyin'.'
'How do you know, Len?' said the landlord.
The trapper took something small, dark and furry from his pocket and slammed it on the counter.
'A fox's pad!' Claik said.
'Old Blackie's got a three-legged mate, right enough,' said Scoble with a pale grin. 'I made sure of that. Reckon I'll pay a visit to Wistman's after tea.'
Claik said, 'Why Wistman's?'
'Vixens bring out their cubs at dimpsey. You picked the boy up after dark and he'd walked all the way from Two Bridges. I bet he was under Beardown at sunset. That old wood is handsome for foxes. I'd bet money on it.'
He tossed the pad into the corner and said, 'Go get it, Jacko. Us will have more than a pad before dark.'
'You ought to have been a detective, Leonard,' Claik said, winking at the landlord.
But Scoble had forgotten him. He had some business to do with Bert Yabsley.
Between showers it was very hot and for some reason he could not fathom, Wulfgar was irritable. Teg and the cubs sensed his moodiness and kept away from him. He lay on a rock in the river while the gnats danced round his head and the shadows slowly climbed the hill to Longford Tor. Eventually he got up and drank.
'What's wrong?' Teg said.
He shook his head and yawned.
'Cubs have to be fed,' she went on. 'I told you it wouldn't be any fun looking after a cripple and four young ones.'
'O don't keep on about the cubs,' Wulfgar snapped.
Teg turned away, but Wulfgar ran to her side and licked her ears.
'Tonight I'll go to the chicken runs and kill the fattest bird,' he said remorsefully.
'A rabbit would be sufficient,' Teg smiled.
'You shall have both.'
'Run far,' she said, 'and shake off your mood.'
'At sunset tomorrow we leave for the Fastness.'
'Will that make you happy?'
He nodded and gently placed his nose against her own.
'Go, Wulfgar,' she said in her soft bell-like voice.
As he sped up to the ridge without a backward glance, Stargrief called to him but he did not answer. The sun was immense in the smoke of day's end and he ran on, keeping it on his right shoulder. Down the valley he went to the marsh by Powdermill Cottages, along the lane, over the road and into the dusk that was gathering around Bellever Tor.
Scoble switched off the van's engine at Crockem and put Tacker in the fishing bag. It had cost him thirty shillings to hire the terrier, but if Yabsley had not been drunk nothing would have persuaded him to part with the dog.
The trapper loaded his shotgun and clipped Jacko to the leash. The haze of late afternoon had rubbed the hard edge off distance. Jackdaws flighted in to Beardown Lodge. Rain fell, hissing above the babble of the river; but it did not last long.
Jacko shook himself and whined. His brain had cast its moorings and was nudging the ceiling of his skull. He dreamt the strange red dream of flickering red shapes on the broad delta between night and day. Footprints on the red sands, and the slow curl of the blood-wave carrying him into a dizzy plunge through darkness.
Scoble crossed the river and trudged up to the leat. His old scars ached as day clotted into dusk. Another shower overtook him, pocking the water of the leat, trickling down his neck. Sweat glued his underclothes to his body, but he felt truly elated. There were no birds to sound the alarm and he was walking into the wind. He knew he was going to kill foxes, of that he was certain sure. Yet it galled him to think of their mindlessness. They weren't like people, they weren't afraid of dying. Bloody vermin, he thought. God had an off-day when he made they buggers.
The clouds were blowing away, leaving a clear sky. Teg's chin went up and she smelt the sour reek of the thing she dreaded most. A short, harsh bark sent the cubs scuttling underground.
'Lie quiet,' she hissed. 'Man is coming.'
Dusksilver began to whimper but the vixen said 'hush, hush' and licked the cub's muzzle. The taint grew stronger and terrible sounds crept down through the boulders: heavy footfalls, the whining of the lurcher and the yap of the Jack Russell, the grating voice of the trapper.
'Tod, Tod,' the vixen cried silently from a corner of her spirit.
She was breathing very quietly. Her ears were cocked and her brush was twitching. Then she snarled and the stink of fear broke from her coat. The cubs could not stop whimpering and the loneliness of the sound was hard to endure.
Her eyes flooded with bitterness and she whispered, 'It will be all right. Just don't move.'
The nightmare was coming true but with a sluggishness from which she felt curiously remote. Tacker came at her and clapped down in the gloom and bayed. He was an excellent terrier, trained to locate a fox, not to attack it. Sometimes an animal turned and fought, and only then would the Jack Russell prove his courage.
'Come to heel, Tacker,' Scoble bawled.
The trapper had found two bolt-holes above the earth. The main entrance was big enough for Jacko to squeeze through. Scoble's plan was simple. When Tacker emerged he carried the terrier to the smaller bolt-hole and left him to guard it. Jacko watched him jealously and barked with the itch to be at the killing.
'Wait a minute, boy,' the trapper grinned. 'They foxes idn going nowhere yet.'
He scrambled up to the hole, which brambles and roots partly concealed, and thumbed back the trigger of his gun. The songbirds had stopped singing and Longford Tor was silhouetted against the moon. The dark-smelling wood withdrew into night and Scoble wiped the sweat from his eyebrows.
'Go find 'im, Jacko,' he cried. 'Go in, boy. Go in.'
The strength seemed to drain from Teg. She heard the lurcher growling as he flattened under the pointed boulder at the earth's entrance. Then the dog gave full, savage tongue and gulped the smell of fox. His belly dragged the ground until he blundered into the den and collided with the vixen.
Teg surfaced from her misery and showed him her teeth, but he brushed her aside, cracking his head on the roof. She gripped his cheek and bit through to the gums. Jacko yelped and screwed around, shaking her off with a twist of his neck, but the cramped space hampered his style. Blindly he seized a leg and jerked. Teg screamed and tried to reach the dislocated joint with her tongue. The lurcher closed his teeth half a dozen times on empty darkness. The situation was new to him and he was not happy.
As he crouched there swallowing his own blood, the fox clawed up his spine and ripped one of his ears. He tried to wriggle backwards out of the earth, leaving Teg free to take a neckgrip on Dusksilver and break away. The cubs were whining now. 'I'm not deserting you,' she wanted to say but the words caught in her throat. 'Trust me. Trust me.' She limped up the corridor to the nearest bolt-hole and suddenly Tacker's breath was on her face. The dog barked and sprang at her but she was squirming down again into darkness. A pure, shivering thrill of fear lifted the hair on her shoulders and back. She tightened her hold on Dusksilver and all at once the terror left her.
Jacko was wedged in the main hole, struggling between pain and rage. The vixen ignored him. With a damaged hindleg and a front one missing her movements were slow and deliberate. Up ahead of her was a small patch of moon-silvered sky. Using her back legs she pushed through her pain into the night where the breeze droned in the oak twigs. Sanctuary was close at hand, a deep hole in the clitter, and a vixen and her cubs could lie up on the dry leaves and face any dog. 'Yes,' she sang from that serene inner self that hope illumined. 'First Dusksilver, then Oakwhelp and –
The trapper rose from the shadows and pointed his gun at her. Teg stared fearlessly into death, sorrowing through her quiet anger for the cubs. Dusksilver fell from her mouth and she snarled at the giant figure. Then there was a great noise and a searing explosion of pain and she felt the world slipping away from her. At the point of death her eyes glowed, but only for a little while.
The cub cowered beside her mother's body and buried her face in her paws. Scoble smiled. His fists clenched on the barrels of the twelve bore until the knuckles gleamed white.
The gun swung downwards and the whimpering stopped.
'That's better than chopping off Blackie's front legs,' he said. 'I'm danged if that idn better than killing 'im.'
'I'm glad you came this way,' said Stargrief.
The dog foxes confronted each other on the ridge path. The shrillness in Stargrief's voice disturbed Wulfgar. He dropped the Leghorn and narrowed his eyes.
'The trapper has been to your earth,' Stargrief continued.
'Teg?' said Wulfgar.
'Dead. He killed her and the cubs.'
'All the cubs?'
Stargrief nodded.
'And I ignored the crow omens,' Wulfgar said. 'Tod sent me a sign and I did nothing about it.'
He raised his head and the pain burst from his gape in a long howl.
'My heart is breaking, Stargrief, and I'm … lonely.'
The old fox bowed and Wulfgar rested his chin on the grey neck. To touch his friend somehow made the misery bearable.
'We must go to them,' Stargrief said.
They waded through the grasses to the wood and approached the flat boulder where the vixen and cubs lay. Scoble had stretched them out neatly, like trophies.
Wulfgar stood over Teg, looking down at the cubs, unable to believe his eyes. They sprawled as if asleep, soft and beautiful in the moonlight. And Teg's eyes were two green tears. Tenderness welled up into a sharp ache, and his own tears broke and slowly plodded down his muzzle to splash onto the little vixen. He nudged her with his nose but she would not stir. Then he licked the bodies of his dead mate and cubs, trying to bring them back to life. All through the night he worked, whimpering low in the dreadful loneliness of his grief.
At daybreak he climbed to his feet and Stargrief helped him drag the bodies into the den.
'He has made things of them,' Wulfgar said.
'They are with Tod,' said Stargrief. 'You believe that, don't you, Wulfgar?'
'Yes.'
His face was screwed up with misery.
'O Teg, Teg, sweet Teg.'
'Tod helps us into death,' Stargrief said. 'We are never alone. He has many helpers.'
'Tod has cut out the living thing that was inside me,' Wulfgar said.
The marsh tit began to sing and he hated it for being alive.
'I killed the fat white hen for her,' he said absently.
But Stargrief had returned along some faint bardic trail to a past that was visible only to fox seers.
'She was like autumn,' he crooned, eyes closed, body swaying.
'Leaf-fall brightness
she took from the sky.
From the wind
the sun-sparkle she borrowed.
She has gone.
The leafing trees weep
on bare hillsides.
Leaf-fall brightness
gone with the sun
to the Star Place.'
'Words,' Wulfgar snarled. 'Come and bite the pain out of me, you old fool. Your words are like dead leaves.'
The morning swelled warm and giddy with insect chirr and lark song. Through the haze he ran, but his senses were still busy despite the pain. Despair pursued him like a shadow, and soon he was panting in the heat, drawing deep breaths of dry, windless air. Hunger and thirst were welcome, for they increased the emptiness.
And while he ran he thought he had dreamt her death and would wake up to the squeaking of the cubs. The barren North Moor echoed his distress. He had no love for the shapes and colours and sounds of life. The racing scream of hills ended in a gasp of rock piled on rock. The moan of grass slanting away on the wind was a threnody for Teg.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
Chapter 18
|
'He who catches the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise'
William Blake
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
LONE WANDERING
|
Clouds had gathered and as he swung onto the path the first drops fell in a patter. The distant hills stood grey and silent on the edge of a different world, then a sheet of rain was hiding the rowans. It grew darker and the sky roared. The path to the tor was lit by lightning flashes. He climbed at speed, easily keeping his footing on the wet stones.
And the running brought moments of oblivion. But the heart does not know how to stop loving. The voice of Teg would call back the pain as the landscape returned. Truly there is something that comes from beyond self to dull misery. Days fall and blur the moments of distress and joy, but the greatest love incurs the greatest grief, and to relinquish pain seems a betrayal of the dead loved one.
Yet Wulfgar belonged to the wilderness and he had to be on the move, running, taking food warm and alive. His ferocity was quenched by the act of killing, but only for a while. Teg was always waiting to step into his thoughts. The rabbit died silently in the manner of most wild creatures and he saw her breaking it up for the cubs. Sadness went through him and he squirted a mess of scats onto the heather.
The thunderstorm was spent, the clouds opened and the sky became huge. Rain powdered away in the south, leaving a glitter all down the valley. And beyond the Tavistock-Moretonhampstead road night was fretting like the sea.
He lay in the furze, waiting for darkness to take him.
Deserting the stream he cut across to Higher White Tor, but he was still tempted to go back to the earth and Teg. She is dead, he thought. The impossible had happened. He stood in the path of moonlight between two rocks where the scent of grouse and lapwing was strong. The bumble dors had taken wing to feed on cowpats and pony dung. He ate a dozen and left their shards in his scats.
But the running was a drug, and settling within himself he could float through time. Yet it was unacceptable to think of never returning to the wood.
'Teg,' he cried, seeing her lying cold and alone in the darkness beneath the boulders.
The wet weather passed and the east wind blew, drying the moors, making the hills good places to kennel. Soon Devon was enjoying a heatwave and nights were warm and scented. From dawn to dusk the drowsy hum of insects masked the heather and cotton grass, butterflies brought colour to the countryside and the rattle of dragonflies could be heard over stagnant ponds.
He went to the water and lapped slowly. For the first time since Teg's death he was aware of the evening's splendour. A bunch of ponies trotted along the ridge. Without raising his head he took the air, waiting for the ache to swell …
Mayflies were dancing over the river. They had laid their eggs and would die of starvation after dark. At daybreak they had emerged from the water without mouths. For three years the larvae had lived in the bottom of a pool under Hartland Tor waiting for the sun and the brief fulfilment of egg laying.
Wulfgar teased the odd furze-spike and bits of bracken from his belly fur, using his teeth. The grooming was meticulous, but all the time his yellow eyes with their narrow, brown pupils held the scene, and nose and ears completed the picture.
Skyglit the kingfisher and her mate Lazuli had their nest in a hole in the crumbling bank beside the East Dart. The hen sat on her hunting branch. She was lovelier than a sapphire, her plumage a subtle, greenish-blue and her throat white. The minnow darted through the shallows and she belly-flopped and caught it in her beak, then she flipped back onto her perch and beat the fish against the bark before swallowing it head first.
The cockbird killed another fish and took it to the branch near the nest hole where five young kingfishers sat. He was teaching them to hunt, and although they cried for the stickleback he dropped it in the water and coaxed them to retrieve it.
Wulfgar stretched and walked on with his careful cat tread.
The moors were as hushed as an ocean and a red sun shone from the mist. He came to the farm below Whitehorse Hill and killed a duck. The duck had been sleeping near the stream that falls down Great Varracombe. Its death was silent and left its companions undisturbed.
Pipistrelle bats dodged and twisted around the farmhouse. He trotted up Mango Hill with the duck in his jaws. A dog yelped, a door opened and closed, and presently there was just the sound of his own quick breathing.
Sometimes grief clogged his mind and she would come running across the snow towards him, never to arrive, fading back into his dream of winter. Then he would push his nose into his brush and whimper until sleep washed everything away.
During the day he woke many times thinking she had returned. Larks sang and perhaps a raven would croak overhead. But he was always alone and sleep was the only refuge, and the nightmares were easier to live with than the truth.
One day with the rise of the sun he wandered down to the East Dart a little above Sandy Hole Pass. Marshes enclosed both banks of the river and walking was uncomfortable. It was a landscape of quaking bog where cotton grasses, rushes and asphodel flourished. Cross-leaved heath grew in patches amongst liverworts, sundews, lichens and mosses on the surrounding hills. The wet, acid soil was unkind to both wild flowers and creatures. Lizards and frogs could be detected by an animal with his nose close to the ground, and there was no shortage of dragonflies, dors and bumblebees. But rabbits and fieldmice were scarce, and the snipe were very alert.
Wulfgar ate carrion, sharing the carcass of a sheep with three crows. A welcome coolness fell upon him, and he glanced up and saw a cloud blotting out the sun. Then it was raining in one of those inconsequential showers that quickly give way to sunshine again. He trotted along the riverside while the clouds dispersed and the sky reached down to the horizon, clear and blue. Above the remains of the tin streamer's cottage the air was chilly, and the water sang through the wastes over a bed of rocks and pebbles.
As a yearling Wulfgar had come to Cranmere Pool in the company of Stargrief and they had lain on a peat hag and watched the stars gather round the top of the world. The old dog fox had found Tod there in his first vision and the Hay Tor Clan called it Stargrief's Mire. Even on a sunny day in late spring it was dreary. Many of the hags were taller than a man. They poked out of the maze of peat channels and where they had collapsed and crumbled away there were big ponds of black water.
After dark the lambency of the Star Place raised his spirits. He felt he was in the sky sharing Teg's happiness, warmed by a love too deep for his understanding, and he was ashamed of having doubted Tod's existence. The golden fox fell through the night with a blazing tail and vanished below the curve of the North Moor.
Wulfgar suddenly noticed he was not alone. Another fox sat on the hag across the gut.
'What do the stars tell you, Wulfgar?' the stranger asked.
'You know me?' Wulfgar said wearily.
'Wulfgar of the High Tor Clan of the Hill Fox nation.
Who does not know you?'
'And you are –?'
'I have no name. But I know what it is to run from despair. Once, long ago, I lost a vixen who was with cub.'
Wulfgar nodded but the pain of wanting Teg held back the words.
'I'm looking for Stargrief,' the stranger went on.
'Yes, Nameless,' Wulfgar said. 'You'll find him on the tor against the sunset above Rocky Wood.'
'I'm sorry I intruded.'
Wulfgar lifted his muzzle once more to the stars.
'There is no destiny without heartache, Wulfgar,' Nameless said.
'Words again,' said Wulfgar. He clenched his eyes. Starlight twinkled on his canine teeth.
'You'll get on with the old dog,' he added, heavily sarcastic. 'He has a brilliant way with hot air.'
'What do you want?' Nameless said. 'Someone to lick your muzzle and croon you a lullaby?'
'I want to be left alone,' Wulfgar snarled and he tensed to jump the gut. But the stranger had vanished and there were no tracks in the peat and no tell-tale stink on the air.
Wulfgar shuddered and ducked away and ran from Cranmere, bounding from hag to hag while the dream blazed at the edges and Teg's pain fed his body with a kind of explosive energy. Over folds of darkness he galloped, on to Cut Hill and Devil's Tor and the Cowsic River's source.
Through breast-high mist he ran chuckling at the memory of Stargrief's 'Tod Soliloquy'. Scraggy old fox! But he could rake up sermons better than a rickyard fowl scuffing up worms – and it was well meant.
He crossed Holming Beam giving a wide berth to the stacks of cut peat and raced on down to the Black Brook River, and followed it to the outskirts of Princetown. The huge, featureless lump to the west of him was Dartmoor prison. Tiny squares of light gleamed from the main block, but Wulfgar was among newborn lambs, burning with blood lust.
The ewes bleated and fled before him. He was snarling now and the lamb leapt sideways in blind terror. Wulfgar pulled it down by the shoulder and transferred his grip to the neck. Strong canine teeth crushed the cervical vertebrae and the lamb died.
Wulfgar hauled the carcass to an ash grove and skinned it before sating two hungers.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
RIVER'S END
|
The old man who lived in the cottage on the leat at Tor Royal came to the slopes of Royal Hill to cut peat for his fire. He used a triangular shovel called a budding iron. The turves were trimmed with a long knife after being lifted from the ground on the prongs of a turf iron. They were scattered along a terrace the length and width of a cricket square. Each day the old man carried several loads down to his stack. The 'vag' or top layer of peat burnt cleanly on a fire of furze and the smoke from the cottage chimney carried the tang of Dartmoor to Wulfgar's nose.
He watched the old man toiling up the slope of moor grass and bell heather, then he yawned and urinated on the nearest lump of peat. By the time the man had reached the turves Wulfgar was trotting through the bog cotton towards Foxtor Mires.
Hill foxes have a wide range, but Wulfgar was to wander further than any of his kind had dreamed possible. The good life was found in the pursuit of prey, in the running between sunrise and sunset. 'Living in the sacred manner', Stargrief called it, and he simply meant resisting the heresy of letting the mind lope ahead of the body.
Yet Wulfgar often felt a presence beside him as he ran, something more than his shadow, but he no longer looked over his shoulder to see if she was there.
At Foxtor Mire he stalked a green plover who kept a little ahead of him, dragging a wing. Whenever Wulfgar pounced the bird jumped out of reach. She had a nest full of chicks and was deceiving the fox. He snapped at her and rolled onto his side and pretended to groom the hindleg he had thrust into the air. He was embarrassed but had no intention of betraying it. He worked casually, clacking his teeth on imaginary ticks, eyes closed, ears and nostrils quivering. The green plover kept diving at him until he was sufficiently rattled to move on across blanket bog that quaked and oozed underfoot.
The merlin tiercel had spotted him but only as an unimportant peripheral object. The little falcon came corkscrewing low along the sinewy thread of water and overtook the meadow pipit. Neither bird made a sound in the death tangle. The merlin killed neatly and flashed Wulfgar an arrogant glance before hurrying upstream, the pipit in its talons.
Dartmoor rippled and trembled in the heat. Wulfgar drank the bright water as it glided over bronze-coloured rocks. The merlin was a quarter of a pound of feathered dynamite lost in a vast landscape. Among the cotton grass near his nest he had a plucking post and birds were brought to this stump of granite and butchered. The tiercel's name was Merelord. After decapitating the pipit he presented it to his mate in flight and sped over the sedges to search for more living snacks.
Wulfgar stood in the stream and let the water wash round his chest. The merlin cried kik-kik kik-kik from a blur of slate-blue, white and black. The morning paled. Midges enveloped his head, and he left the stream and crackled through a scimitar of reeds, his paws squelching into the sphagnum moss and lichen. He moved lightly and quickly, scattering meadow-brown butterflies from the grasses.
Two sunsets later, after quartering the Swincombe Valley as far down as the beehives of the Buckfast monks, he arrived at Huntingdon Warren. In the not too distant past rabbits had been kept on the hillsides in long banks of earth and stone to supply Man's table with fresh meat. The warrener's house was in ruins and the artificial burrows were hidden under grass, but the rabbits remained wherever there was a clitter, sharing the crevices with adders and lizards.
Wulfgar crawled into the tangle of dead bracken and furze. He was hungry. Drawing back his lips he squealed like a rabbit in pain, and a doe popped out of a hole and stared towards his hiding place. Soon several nursing mothers had assembled on the sward before Huntingdon Barrow, stamping their hind feet, anxious to know what was wrong. Eventually a buck hopped forward to investigate and never lived to see the new moon firming in the sky.
The track of Redlake Tramway marched down from the old china clay works to Bittaford, a distance of six miles as the raven flies. By dawn Wulfgar had left the track to kennel beneath the oaks of Piles Copse on the West-facing bank of the Erme. He slept soundly until the screeching of a jay brought him back with a jolt to the edge of another night.
He licked the tag of his brush and let the hurt have its way, but he could think quite calmly of her now. The panic that usually gushed with the return of consciousness never troubled him again. He walked to the river and lapped the surface of the pool. Through his reflection he saw the dim skeleton of a pony stirring in the current. The water was the colour of Teg's eyes.
The fox followed the Erme on its flight into darkness. He had no idea where he was going, the river would be his guide. Maybe it would carry him to Teg. He grinned and wagged his narrow muzzle at the stars. Where the river ends a fox may find the truth, Stargrief had said. And the old dog had gone on to speak of the sea where the sun came from. Yes, he would go to it and eat the truth as a sick animal eats grass.
The cattle path beside the water hastened him into the shadows of a wood. He froze and pricked his ears. The otter's head glistened in mid-stream. The animals gazed steadily at each other, then the otter sank and became part of the rushing blackness.
Wulfgar trotted through the woodlands, the night sky broken between leaves above him. He went under the viaduct and cleared a fence to find himself in a vegetable garden. Houses crowded around him and a hen began to cluck. He crept along the wire mesh of the chicken run, filling his nostrils with the smell of the birds. Then they were squawking and flapping and beating against the wire.
Wulfgar jumped onto a high wall and ran along the coping stones. The river poured through the town of Ivybridge, passing rows of terrace houses and the paper mill, catching the glint of street lamps and the gleam of gaslights from kitchen windows. Wulfgar dropped down onto the footpath and was held in the beam of a torch.
'A fox!' the policeman grunted. 'God – you scared me, boy!'
The green eyes vanished. The policeman heard the splash of Wulfgar entering the water and tried to capture him again with his torch, but the fox was under the bridge, paddling downstream.
He was carried beneath the stone arches of two more bridges before he scrambled out and shook himself among the buddleia of some wasteland south of the Lower Mill. Once the town lights were behind him, he sniffed the breeze that was bending the cow parsley and charlock. Cars were roaring up and down the Plymouth Road.
The fox ran on.
He spent a couple of nights hunting the farmland around Ermington. Ducks were killed on the Long Brook and he chopped many rabbits in the fields by Modbury.
The Erme above Sequer's Bridge was a sleeve of clear moorland water, flowing shallow and fast, dancing on a stony bed. Trout dimpled the surface of the pools. They leapt to grab insects and flashed silver in the sunlight. Wulfgar eyed them as he quenched his thirst and inevitably he recalled how Teg had sipped the coolness of the West Dart. But too much was going on to permit brooding. He lay in the ferns while the water skaters moved jerkily on the surface of the pool. Other insects were creeping out of the larval form to enjoy the heat before the dragonflies bustled in and the wagtails came to hawk the quiet reaches.
Wulfgar yawned and revealed the armoury of the slaughterhouse. Without too much effort he could stretch and sniff at the spraint the otter had deposited on the rock below the alder roots. The fish smell did not please him. He glanced up at the leaf-dazzle and caught the eye of the sparrowhawk. The bird was so highly strung it would react violently to the snapping of a twig.
A blue tit cut a yellow and blue curve among the alder leaves. The hawk swished away and a leaf fluttered down and settled on the water.
The fox enjoyed the evenings beside the river. Although moulting had begun, his coat shone and everything about him had a healthy well-cared-for look from whiskers to claws. He was as sleek and lean as the torrent that caught the sun and tossed it about in blinding flashes.
He trotted at the easy hunting pace along the tidal reaches of the Erme to Clyng Mill. It was the green and golden time of late spring in that part of Devon, which is called the South Hams. Watered by five rivers the farmland of small fields, market towns and villages ran to the edge of the cliffs bordering the English Channel. The green was of thick new grass, leaves and flower stems; the gold was of buttercups and dandelions in the pastures.
That night he snatched conies from Torr Down and kennelled among bluebells and campion on the margins of the wood by the farm. An hour before dawn a pair of workdogs out rabbiting put him up and chased him through the trees to the river where he hid in a badger's sett. The bolt-hole led him to the bank above the water. The dogs were still barking but he was no longer concerned as he walked on soft sand. Birds were constantly coming and going. Gulls and shelduck fed in the distant marshes, mallard dropped from the sky. And he heard a new, exciting sound – the boom of surf.
The sky was dark and starry, and the emptiness of the universe made him sad. He had the feeling of swimming in space again. His bones and muscles and coat of thick hair had gone, and he had no more body than the wind.
A line of breakers separated the river mouth from the sea and on either side woods and fields sat in a grey mass on the clifftops. Wulfgar came to the estuary and lapped salt water.
The starlight was paling as the sky on the horizon slowly brightened. He climbed the cliff to a rocky outcrop and lay in a hollow of grass and thrift.
The light of the new day came stealthily. The stars disappeared and little by little things became substantial. The peaks of the waves lifted and fell, white water ruffled the estuary. Then the sun was rolling out of a sea that sparkled, and a great black-backed gull barked and a cuckoo winged across the bluebell slopes repeating its name.
Wulfgar laid his chin on his forepaws and waited for the divine revelation. But nothing happened. The sun climbed higher, the hoppers zithered and larks sang and the sea murmured. Presently he fell asleep.
The yaffle gave its crazed laugh and hopped from branch to branch. Brown-green oak leaves hid it from Wulfgar. He licked a paw and cleaned his muzzle. Above the copse in Fernycombe Goyal the herring gulls swooped, their primary feathers blazing with silver light.
Wulfgar had eaten gull chicks and eggs that he had found on the cliff ledges, and small crabs scavenged from Westcombe Beach. He had also gnawed bladderwrack seaweed for the iodine.
The countryside was crying out for rain, but with the wind blowing gently from the continent the drought continued. Where the tiny green leaves of the turnip crop showed in the dusty soil the cockroach moved like a metal toy. The kestrel dropped and closed his talons on the insect, then he shrugged off the gulls who were mobbing him and returned to his mate and the nesting ledge at Beacon Point.
Running by night Wulfgar came to Loddiswell and the River Avon, where a poacher saw him sniffing round the pigsties. The man had taken a salmon from Reade's Pool. Crouching under the bridge by the mill on the Torr Brook he spotted the fox again as it waded the stream and dived into the darkness.
The hour of dusk pleased him most of all. He felt he had come to the frontiers of something thrilling. The wind had died and the air was loaded with scent. Along the grazing of Buckland-Tout-Saints dusk was gathering, and trees and houses had already been obscured. Cattle lowed, a lamb bleated, and the after-glow of sunset endured in the bottom of the sky. Mist hid the Kingsbridge Estuary and filled the creeks. It was almost dark and the coombs and lower fields were part of the night. Clusters of lights marked the towns and villages and an aeroplane droned against the stars. A shire horse stamped and snuffled and called to her foal. Wulfgar smelt the grassy fragrance of her breath as he descended the goyal.
The running took him in a straight line to the headland. He crossed four streams and many lanes before daybreak glinted on the duckpond of Start Farm. The muscovies paddled slowly through the shallows, dipping their heads into the brown water. Wulfgar stood on his hindlegs and stared at them. But someone in the house pulled the lavatory chain and frightened him. He sat back on his haunches and whimpered and swished his brush. The ducks crowded together and an old drake began to quack. Wulfgar slipped away where the hawthorns linked branches in a green shade …
It was like Sunday morning in Eden. The farmland received the first sunlight. Every year there were young fields under old trees. Men came and went but the fields remained and never decayed.
A crow harassed him as he ran with the stream down the coombe that was dotted with sheep. The scent of the sea lofted from Lannacombe Bay. Wulfgar nosed through the dead fennel, jumped the barbed wire fence and took the path along the edge of the cliffs to Peartree Point.
Badgers had been rooting in the bluebells below Raven's Rock, a great grey crag rising steeply above the sea, and one of their trails led to a terrace high on the cliff face. A fox could crouch there unseen and sleep while the day flowed and ebbed.
And the blaring of the lighthouse foghorn woke him. The moon was full and yellow over Start Point and a thick sea mist stifled the sound of breaking waves. Only the top of the lighthouse was visible. The ridge leading down to the point was bare and serrated. The swinging shaft of light splashed the jagged outcrops like flashes from a welder's torch.
Wulfgar analysed the night air, drinking the smell of gulls' droppings and fish bones, jackdaws, seaweed, thrift and sheep. He was the first of the Dartmoor Nation to make such a pilgrimage. A wry smile creased the corners of his mouth, for Stargrief had got some of it right. The sea lay between all wanderers and the sunrise, but where was the vision of truth? Wulfgar had spoken to the stars and they had remained silent. He was alone, but a dog fox spent half his life without company. It was a good life. Then he thought he understood.
He had come to the sea like the river, shedding a part of himself on the way. The sea would provide no answers, no palliatives. The journey was the thing. In Man's terms he had run fifty miles. He was Wulfgar of Leighon once more and ached for the wilderness of his birth.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
CONSPIRACY
|
The breeze lifted the speckled breast feather cast by Leaf-dancer the kestrel. It sailed across the bracken and foxgloves pursued by a butterfly. A cuckoo spoke and Wulfgar raised his head from the drinking. The morning was dull and overcast but warm. Above the waters of the Leighon Ponds the flags shook yellow flowers. It began to drizzle and there was the smell of rain on dry earth. A thrush sang, the dragonflies tacked and hovered and before very long the sun was shining.
The West Country had entered the third week of drought.
The ponds were the best place to be. Wulfgar lay up close to the water and fed well on young moorhens and ducks. Often he swam to the island of alders and willows when the sun had gone down and the ghost moths danced over the turf. Once he even caught a trout – more by luck than contrivance. Drinking at the slack water near the dam he had seen the fish lying in the shallows and had flicked it out with his paw.
The episode amused Romany. To him most creatures who were not water gypsies were dull-witted and clumsy. He hauled himself onto the dam and grinned at Wulfgar. Droplets of water fell from his whiskers. He had the head of a tomcat but his ears were small and flat and set far back.
'A fox with a fish,' he chirped. Like all members of the weasel family he spoke Fox with an unpleasant nasal twang.
'I missed the chase, Wulfgar. You can't beat a good chase – that's what I say. The bubbly, rushing thrill of speeding through the coolness. There's no excitement quite like it.'
'The trout came to me,' Wulfgar said. 'I'm not too bright at the underwater stalking. I got it with this.' He held up a paw.
'Lucky it was a trout. An eel would have given you the slip,' the otter said, and he winked. 'Eels are like long, dark streaks of water. You got to grab 'em with your teeth.'
'You're more fish than fitch,' Wulfgar said.
The animals smiled.
'And that trout's a fluke – if you get what I mean,' the otter said.
'Very droll.'
The fish was small and Wulfgar ate it quickly.
'Stargrief tells me you've been to the sea,' Romany said.
'He's back then?'
'Yes – on his hill. He told me about Teg and the cubs.'
'Going to the sea wasn't particularly thrilling,' Wulfgar said, hearing the metal jaws clang on Teg's hindleg. 'You follow a river and it takes you there. Nothing could be simpler.'
'What about the sea?'
'It's big and tastes bitter. The sun comes out of it.'
'Nothing else?'
'Nothing.'
'You have to swim in it to really understand it,' Romany said. 'I was there a couple of winters ago. The fishing was excellent.'
Using his tail as a third leg he stood upright and scanned the dimpsey. Water spilled over the dam in a cascade to fill the smaller, muddier pond.
Wulfgar said, 'Have the hounds been here?'
'Not yet,' said the otter and he dropped back onto all fours. 'They drew the river under the trapper's house but didn't kill. The trapper and his dog visited us back along. Ever since I took a chunk out of his leg the dog won't go near the water. It was very funny. I think they were looking for you, Wulfgar.'
'I wouldn't be surprised,' Wulfgar said. 'This trapper isn't like other men.'
'He caught one of my brothers on Little Two Rivers last spring,' Romany said. 'I fear him more than any living animal.
I suppose you've heard about the lurcher?'
Wulfgar shook his head.
'He chopped a dog fox by Crow Thorn when the bluebells were opening. Stargrief said the fox was called Briarspur. It was an untidy death.'
'One day I shall kill the lurcher.' Wulfgar's words came through his teeth in a grating snarl.
'It isn't possible,' the otter said.
Water puddled under his thickset, short-legged body. His eyes were round and black in a pug face.
'Maybe we could learn something from the hounds and the bogeywolves,' Wulfgar said, sniffing the air that was rich with the dark, leafy smell of the ponds.
'Run and Live is our motto,' said Romany.
'And what if the lurcher could be persuaded to run into trouble?'
Romany shook himself and grinned. Perhaps this fox wasn't dumb. The dark one had always puzzled him. There was a light in his eyes quite different from the mere glint of intelligence. Then he considered another possibility. The death of the vixen and cubs could have unhinged him. Craziness took many forms and grief was one of them. Wulfgar was still fretting for his mate, but the pain was turning to anger. Romany was ten years old and he knew what it was like to nurse the ache of loss.
In the water the dog otter was a different creature. His body tapered away as he swam with swift undulations of the spine. The trout was caught up in the convulsion of underwater acrobatics and brought alive to Moonsleek.
Wulfgar heard the whistle and saw the sun twinkle on the wet head. The otter was stalking a moorhen. The bird was swimming on the far side of the pond and Romany took exact bearings before he sank. Closing his ears and nostrils he moved deep down, but the moorhen had sensed something was wrong. She gave a cry and dashed backwards and forwards. Then the otter had her by the foot and the surface was empty. An expanding ring of ripples broke the reflections of flags and trees.
Wulfgar rolled in the shallows below the alder branches. The night's hunting had yielded fieldmice and lapwing chicks but not in satisfying numbers. He soaked up the early morning sunlight and ran his teeth like clippers through the fur of his underparts. Wasps were snatching caterpillars from the leaves of Jack-by-the-hedges. In the fields of the border country the grass stood higher than a fox, and the clover was in flower. Occasionally rucksacked figures were seen on Holwell Tor, although Man rarely came at dawn or dusk when the animals were busy.
The fox contorted his body and raked his neck with a hindfoot. His tongue lolled over his lower teeth as he scratched long and luxuriously. The wasps continued to devour the caterpillars, slyly searching the undersides of the leaves. Wulfgar's eyes narrowed. He would use cunning, not direct confrontation, so it would not be dog fox against lurcher. The clicketting Fight Ritual could not be applied. Foxes were masters of stealth but never hunted in packs. No, certain tactics could not be applied for hereditary reasons.
Teg's death was his own spur. Other dogs and vixens did not share this intense hatred. Fox would fight fox and any other creature in certain circumstances, but his instinct when confronted by overwhelming odds was to use cunning. There were extraordinary talents to be harnessed, yet how? If he could get the lurcher into the Fastness maybe the treacherous ground would swallow him, as it had swallowed sheep and ponies. He whimpered. In the open the dog would overtake and stop the swiftest fox, yet the animal had to die. The trapper loved it and it was his thing, an extension of his need to kill. The death of the thing would fill its master with pain. He would know the terrible ache that gnawed at the innards. And even if men did not have this capacity for suffering, the dog would be removed from their lives for ever.
He licked the long, black hairs of his brush and drew his teeth through the tag.
'And he's just a four-legged beast like us,' Wulfgar said.
'Not like us,' Thorgil grunted. 'He's got bloody long legs and a big mouth.'
'So has the heron,' said Romany, and Moonsleek sniggered.
'Listen, water weasel,' the badger said. 'You stick to moorhens and minnows. I don't like comedians. Give me any lip and I'll chew off your ears.'
'You take everything to heart,' Moonsleek sneered.
'I've lost cubs in the trapper's snares,' Thorgil said. 'The lurcher helped kill my first mate. I can't joke about it. It sticks in my craw.'
'I'm sorry,' Romany said. 'You're quite right, Thorgil. The lurcher and his master aren't funny. But what can we do?'
'We can kill his dog to start with,' said Wulfgar.
The animals stared at him as they crouched on the moss and lichen by the Becca Brook. The river tumbled through the Leighon Woods in a series of pools and little falls. The rosy glow of day's end stole through the treetops. Over the calmer water the damsel flies drifted and the brilliant blue dragonflies whizzed with the click and rustle of transparent wings.
'How is it to be done?' Thorgil said at last.
'I'm not certain,' Wulfgar replied. 'We can't bite him to death and even you, Thorgil, the toughest creature on the moors, wouldn't stand a chance in a straight battle, so we trap him. We let him destroy himself.'
'Poetic justice,' Romany grinned. 'Trapper's dog trapped.'
'Common sense,' the fox said. 'We don't know how to hunt in packs like bogeywolves or hounds but we could all be in at the kill.'
'Go on,' said Stargrief.
'If he were lured into a cave or a clitter, lots of animals could attack him.'
'And lots of animals would be maimed and killed,' Stargrief said. 'That dog is capable of slaughter on a grand scale. A mad creature is very difficult to destroy and in any case it isn't the way of foxes or badgers or otters.'
'Then we'll make it the way,' Wulfgar said impatiently. 'Once we hunted by day and Man shared the good places with us and took the game and passed quietly through the seasons.
Now we skulk at night and this has become the way, yet when the flea bites we nip it from our fur.'
'Do you think the trapper would leave us alone if we killed his dog?' said Stargrief.
'Things couldn't be any worse than they are now.'
'O but they could! You've never seen a fox-drive with fifty guns and a hundred dogs on the hills.'
'Perhaps it's time to get rid of the trapper too,' Wulfgar said hotly. His voice rose to a shrill, high-pitched bark.
'Such an act of folly would mean the total annihilation of hill foxes – cubs, dogs, vixens. Man is lord of this world, Wulfgar. That's why we skulk and hide and run by night. The bogeywolves had the audacity to take man's sheep and cattle. And it is said they even attacked men, although this sounds too absurd to be true. But they are gone, finished, killed. Man saw to it and he could do the same for us.'
Wulfgar took a deep breath and said, 'I wasn't serious. Don't carp, Stargrief. It's so boring.'
Romany was a good-natured animal, clever but lacking imagination. The trout were ringing the surface of the pool and he itched to be in the water where the real world began.
'Look,' he said. 'Caves and clitters and chases and ambushes are a bit fanciful, a bit foxy if you don't mind me saying. But if you could con the lurcher into the pond, me and Moonsleek would do for him – permanent.'
'Are you sure this isn't a case of phony heroics?' Thorgil said bluntly. 'We want the lunatic dead but he's a more serious proposition than a rat or a fish. He's killed full-grown boar badgers.'
'If Romany can drag down an otterhound and all but drown him, I'm certain both of us could manage a skinny old lurcher,' Moonsleek said.
Stargrief gazed angrily at his fellow animals.
'Tell me I'm dreaming,' he said. 'Bite my brush and wake me up.'
The badger laughed and started to cough.
'We're fighting back, old outlaw,' he said.
'Honouring the ghosts,' Romany added.
'And this really is something we can fight,' said Wulfgar.
'It's not like the hounds or the poisoned rabbit meat or the gins and snares and guns.'
'But we live according to Tod's will. We take and are taken,' Stargrief insisted.
'The world changes with the seasons,' Wulfgar said. 'Surely Tod's will changes too? In the sunsets of long ago the old ways were perfect. Now we talk of the good death and the bad death as though Tod approves. We are hunters and warriors. We should live like hunters and warriors. Tod has spoken to me through the death of Teg. Tod lives in me. I know the lurcher will die.'
'All right,' said Stargrief. 'I'm convinced.'
'Marvellous,' Thorgil said in a tone that implied the exact opposite. 'So how do we get the dog to swim?'
'Leave it to the foxes,' Romany said. 'I'm hungry and the water looks sensational. Moonsleek has to return to the holt and I've got some serious fishing to do. When you come up with something let me know.'
After the otters and the badger had departed the foxes lay in the darkening woodland.
'To drown a dog you must first get him to the pool,' Stargrief said. 'Have you got a plan?'
'The beginnings of one. The lurcher hates us. Therefore a fox could lead him to the water and plunge in and head for the island. Naturally the dog will follow and the otters will do the rest.'
'Sounds fine. I suppose you've worked out how to get the animal to leave the cottage and run across the moors and land up here. Remember, he can outstrip us all – even you.'
'What if we used several foxes in relays?'
'It might work,' Stargrief said. 'But it's risky.'
'Do you know a better way?'
'Perhaps. Simplicity must be the operative word.'
'Tell me.'
'Not until it's clear in my mind and I've made a journey.'
'Do you have to be so mysterious?' Wulfgar said irritably.
'Mystery is my business,' the old dog fox smiled.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
WHAT THE STARS SAID
|
The Becca Brook was actually more of a stream than a river and it was something he could understand and relate to. There were none of the tidal races of the estuary. The little beaches of grit and pebbles were created and destroyed by floods. Below Leighon it ran under a single-arched bridge and away into the trees. Flat reaches of silence lay in shadow and wherever the sky intruded the depths were honeycombed with sunlight.
Stargrief had left the river to meditate and sit on the hilltop night after night while the stars sang to him. Approaching the old dog fox at times like this was quite useless, although Wulfgar fumed with impatience.
'For Tod's sake get going,' he muttered.
His nose was pressed to the brown sheaths of the rushes. The wind having gathered the scents of many flowers raked the water and made it shimmer.
But Stargrief took his time. From the darkness came the whistle of a curlew. The blood curdled into images behind his eyes and across the plain the golden animals ran, calling his name down the ages.
The restlessness would not be shaken off, and as soon as Wulfgar thought of Teg he did something wild – like jumping in the river or leaping up at songbirds or baiting fitches. And it took nerve to worry a stoat who was guarding a family of kits. Chivvy-yick and his tribe would have ripped the fox's throat out given half the chance, but like all the creatures on Dartmoor he was busy keeping his young alive.
For Wulfgar a visit to Emsworthy was too painful to endure. Time had not tarnished the vision of her running over the frosty grass, moon-silvered and eternally young.
One morning he left the ponds and stood for a while by the wall. The dog roses were blooming in hedges all down the road from Haytor Vale to Liverton, and although rain had fallen it was not enough to please the farmers. Now the fine, hot weather was back and the swallows were climbing high to attack the swarms of winged insects, and Wulfgar was happy. He dropped his head and tugged at his chest fur before moving off at the trot.
The moor had covered places where men had once worshipped animal gods. From Hamel Down the haze was setting hard like a far-off island and the hills swam into distances of heat. He had tried to reach them before, but they had retreated to reassemble on another horizon. Always there were the hills like waves that would never break, and he ached for that far-away place sunk in silence.
Slowly the shadows of the megaliths crept across the heather towards him. He lay on the sun-dried lichen watching a tiger beetle scuttle over the stone by his front paws to hide under a leaf of hart's tongue fern. The burring of the honey bees was comforting and summery. About his head hoverflies foraged through the slow drift of sunlight. Less than half a dozen tail lengths to his right a Galloway calf was curled up asleep in the heather under the watchful eye of its mother.
Wulfgar felt reality slipping away again. There was a sense of unbelonging as if he had never been a part of what was going on around him. He snapped at a fly before it could land on his nose. Many flies covered the mummified body of a crow where it rested, among the nearby ling. Sheep, ponies, cattle, crows, foxes – everything came to final rest under the sky. But he had never found the carcass of a man.
The swallow's beak clacked shut on a butterfly. Lower in the sky larks shrilled. He came back from the loneliness. The butterfly's wing settled on the lichen like the tom petal of a musk mallow. Gulls passed overhead, very elegant and white against the blue. Their wing beats were precise and unhurried. Mordo flew above them and cried cronk-cronk to his mate.
'I can find happiness on my own,' the fox cried.
Long after dark he ran up Black Hill and sat in front of Stargrief.
'What do the stars tell you, seer?' he said.
'They tell me Tod is holy,' said the old animal.
'Is he?' Wulfgar said coldly. 'Isn't he fox – like us?
Perhaps we make him holy because we're ashamed of ourselves and don't want him to be like us.'
'Perhaps.'
'And the lurcher?'
'He will die.'
'Soon?'
'Yes. When the rain has fallen.'
'Will I be at the killing?'
'Of course,' Stargrief said.
'Do the stars say this?'
Stargrief nodded.
'Why must it always come from outside?' Wulfgar said.
'Why are we born?' the old fox replied.
It was midnight, but the great summer stars were still ghostly in the west.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
HAYMAKING
|
Sheol flew to the ash tree before daybreak and worked at her wing feathers, lifting each rachis and drawing the barbs through her beak. She preened herself thoroughly, giving soft warbling cries and the occasional croak. Then she began her cawing routine that developed into craark-craark, repeated regularly and monotonously.
Swart had remained at the nest in Crow Thorn. He was unwell after eating a small portion of poisoned meat left near a sheep carcass by Farmer Lugg. The young crows peered vacantly through flat, black eyes and demanded food.
The lump under the blanket squirmed and groaned and an arm flopped over the side of the bed. Sheol continued to craark in her determined, manic way while a glimmer appeared above the tree tops of Yarner Wood. Scoble groped for the chamberpot, threw the covers off his head and waited for the ceiling to stop spinning.
'Craark,' said Sheol. 'Craark-craark'.
Scoble hoisted up his long johns and staggered to the window. Two crows lifted from two ash trees and settled again. The acid stew of last night's cider, pickles and cheese rose from his gut to his throat.
'Lord God no!' he choked. 'God no!'
He belched and waited for the nausea to subside. Jacko pushed out all four of his legs in a self-indulgent stretch and curled deeper into sleep. The trapper gripped him by the tail and yanked him off the bed.
Sheol said craark, and Scoble winced.
The stairs were steep and narrow. He went down on his heels in a rush and sat hard on the bottom step. The kitchen reeked of cider and tobacco smoke. Sweat stood out on his forehead. He passed a hand over it and shuddered. He had surfaced from the awful dream – fox mask, lips drawn back on the crimson froth, the gleaming skulls of sheep, the skeleton of a mule rising from the peat bog, and a hard brown fist pulping his nose. The crow went on laughing.
He rammed home the cartridges and thumbed back the hammers. Crows fluttered on the edge of trouble, bringing death, attending death – crows and rats and foxes.
Opening the door six inches he let in the weak, grey light. The whistle shrilled. 'Over the top, lads,' the sergeant cried. His arse hung out like the neck of a cider bottle. Silver seeds broke from the grass heads and clung to him as he ran. The twelve bore clapped twice and Sheol glided down into the blackness of the wood. A solitary pellet had passed through the secondaries of her right wing. Her heart raced but she was unhurt, and by the time she took to the sky at Drive Lodge she had forgotten the incident.
Jacko padded up to the trapper and thrust his muzzle into his hand.
'Yes, you'm a good dog,' Scoble whispered. 'You'm Leonard's boy.'
The dog slobbered over his fingers.
Using a Wellington boot Scoble wedged the door against the wall. The light was thin and pink now like rosé wine. Garden smells filtered through the crust of nicotine – dry, dusty smells. The dawn was too warm for comfort.
Scoble raked the embers and fed a handful of twigs and sticks to the fire. Then he put on the kettle and wondered how long the drought would last. He was lucky having the well just down the road, for it had never been known to run dry. He rolled the wart on his cheek where the stubble was grey and bristly. Luggy didn't mind the hot spell. His Galloways weren't going short of grub on the Emsworthy newtakes and there was always enough feed up on the commons to fatten the sheep. Watching the steam plume from the kettle's spout Scoble thought about the haymaking. Old Lugg would be in a good mood with the grass so high and the weather perfect. He wasn't tight with his booze or his money either, and they gave you your grub at Sedge Brimley.
It was the first year he could recall when it hadn't rained at haymaking time. He pulled on his corduroys, tightened his braces and buttoned his shirt to the neck. The foxes' masks stared down from the wall. Boiling water flooded the teapot and clouded into a fragrance that the dog could smell. Scoble selected a Gold Flake butt from his cigarette tin. They old foxes would be loving the hot spell, nights being so warm they could kennel anywhere. He used a twig to light up and dragged nicotine deep into his queasiness.
When he had finished coughing he put on his boots. The morning's glow had taken on a ruddy tinge. Scoble sat back in his armchair and waited for the tea to brew. And he thought about Wulfgar, assembling the familiar daydream, lavishing attention on detail until the creature stepped alive and glowing from his head. The black fox had been spotted at Ivybridge and down by Start Point. Scoble sighed tobacco smoke. But Old Blackie would be back round Holwell before long. Foxes were sly but not that sly. They had their roots – leastways, Old Blackie did. And I'll have the bugger stuffed, he thought. He can stand on the mantelpiece and listen to they vixens screechin' – only he won't be going nowhere no more.
He poured the tea and drank it without milk or sugar. The birch twigs flared and hissed on the fire. Down at Yarner Wells the cock was crowing.
The copse grew thick on the slopes. Along the lap of the coomb were good fields of grass, their hush held firm by hedges of may and blackthorn. Looking beyond Sedge Brimley Farm the eye was carried over great distances of hills and valleys to the mist guarding the sea. The faintest of winds delivered the hot reek of the piggeries and the kindlier smells of middens and shippens.
The lane to the farm followed Lansworthy Brook down to Horridge Copse and was overhung with old beech trees. Sedge Brimley was a forgotten place. A hound weather-vane swung above the thatch. The house was dirty-white, half-hidden in trees. Elderberry bushes shaded the dairy and behind the house stood an orchard thick with cow parsley and nettles. Logs and kindling littered the yard and fowls ranged everywhere.
Lugg emerged from the hayshed rubbing his hands together. For once things were going right. His three-year-old South Devon steers would fetch a proper price at Ashburton, and the sheep had dropped a big crop of lambs on the Duchy newtakes. Nothing on God's earth could prevent a bumper hay harvest. The three fields would see him comfortably through next winter. The grass was tall and silver-seeded, perfect for the cutting.
A cuckoo said cuck-uckoo in a lazy, idiotic way. Among the tiny, green-white flowers of the goose grass hanging over the hedge in curtains the honeysuckle and dog roses fumed. The whole of the border country was rich with wild flowers. Red sorrel and moon daisies waved in the hay fields but the real colour of early summer was green. The copse of oaks and beeches was as green as a sea cave.
Things went on in the hayfields that Lugg knew little about. Fieldmice with their blunt heads and short, hairy tails stole through the grass stems, avoiding the shrew runs. The barn owls killed many creatures there by night and the kestrels visited it daily. Members of Chivvy-yick's tribe also used it as a living larder, while Gnashfang the weasel hunted mice underground, in the galleries where the drought had not penetrated.
'There idn a lot of dew, dad,' George Lugg said.
He clamped his father's fist round a mug of tea. A haze covered the sun and Lugg squinted at the sky, noting the high-flying swifts.
'Best get they horses out,' he said. 'Scoble and Yabsley will be here soon and I idn payin' good money for them to stand round doing sod all.'
'Scoble must have had two gallons of rough last night at the Rock,' George said. 'I bet he's still got his head down.'
'You don't know him like I do, boy,' said his father. 'He's a worker. He'll drag Yabsley from between the sheets.'
'If Joan don't haul him in too,' George laughed.
'God! If her idn randier than a rabbit! Bert's getting more than his share of home comforts.'
'And so's a few others,' said the elder Lugg. 'Her was like it at Sunday School back-along – sweet as can be, hair done up in a pink ribbon, white frock and granny's Bible, and no knickers.'
The van was left under the beeches by the linhay. Scoble and Yabsley scuffed up the dust as they walked. Ahead of them the dogs parted the wayside nettles with their bodies to sniff the exciting smells and cock their legs. Scoble wore an old straw Panama that made his ears stick out. He moved heavily, the light sliding along the curve of his scythe and twinkling on the point. Every so often Jacko stopped and looked back to make sure he was still there. The strange, masked brightness of the morning had men and animals screwing up their eyes.
George Lugg led out the first pair of horses and the mowing machine. Another team had been borrowed from West Horridge. The farmer and his son would cut the two small fields leaving the large one by the brook to the hired help.
'Dew's light enough,' Yabsley said taking the reins.
'Reckon it'll be a scorcher when the haze lifts,' said George, and he opened the gate.
'Cuttin' grass is thirsty work,' Yabsley said.
'There's a barrel in the barn,' Lugg smiled. 'My brother down at Bickington let me have some of the rough he got from his Kingston Blacks.'
'That's cider sure enough,' said Yabsley with sincere reverence.
Marsh marigolds crowded in the corner of the field by the stream. Partridges whirred away low over the far hedge and Scragg the heron hoisted himself up from the water on his big, grey wings. The dogs, who were old hands at the haymaking, lay around and waited for the first swath to be cut.
'Before I forget it, Leonard,' the farmer said, 'I'm losing poultry and down at Sigford they'm missing a duck or two.'
'Old Blackie's got it in for you, boy,' Yabsley said. 'He's smarter than a commercial traveller.
The metal bars were lowered and the cutting knives set about an inch from the ground.
'Was it the black sod?' Scoble said, pushing the wart into his cheek.
'Who knows?' said Lugg. ''Tis fox and a bugger that likes chicken. Red or black I idn happy with him on my place.'
'I'll look into it,' Scoble said. 'Fowls have been taken from Yarner Wells. Only I'm certain it idn Blackie. It's not his style.'
'Will you ever catch him, Leonard?' Yabsley said innocently.
'Yes,' Scoble said. The confidence in his voice impressed the men.
'Mind 'ee don't catch you, boy,' said Yabsley.
The trapper rubbed a handful of wet grass on his scythe blade and began honing, moving the stone firmly to and fro.
'It's just a matter of time, Bert,' he said. 'I got the vixen and cubs. One day Old Blackie's luck will run out and I'll have him – wire, gin, dog or gun, I'll have him.'
'Don't let Colonel Shewte hear 'ee, Leonard,' Lugg said. 'Us don't want to upset the Squire.'
Colonel Shewte lived at Lansworthy House, and like most of the local gentry he rode to hounds and respected the animal he hunted.
'He'll be round today,' Lug went on. 'He haven't missed a haymaking yet. Come dinner time we'll see him.'
'They'm all as wet as ducks' arses,' Yabsley said.
'Who?'
'The so-called bloody gentry,' Yabsley snorted. 'They don't know how to peel a spud or tie their own bootlaces.'
'At least they'm honest and fair to deal with,' Lugg said.
'And life can be hard if you cross one.'
The stone purred along the edge of the scythe.
They worked with the effortless rhythm of true peasants. The mowing machine sailed along behind the roans and the knives moved quickly from side to side, clipping the grass, laying it in a swath. When the knives became blunt Scoble put on a fresh bar and sat under the hawthorns sharpening the dull edges with a file. The haze endured for most of the morning to create a sticky heat, but as the sun climbed to noon the sky cleared.
'Christ it's hot!' Bert Yabsley said.
He left the mowing machine and came into the shade. Scoble swung his scythe at the grass growing tight against the hedge where the knives could not reach. Gnats hummed in to greedy on his face.
'I could drink a duck pond,' Yabsley continued. The terriers stood on their hindlegs and placed their front paws on his thighs. Their mouths were open and they were panting.
'They'm thirsty!' Yabsley said in a tender voice. 'Look at their little eyes. My kids look at me like that when they'm ill.'
'They're animals,' said Scoble. The sweat dripped off his nose.
'What about your Jacko?'
The lurcher lifted an ear and whined. He had sprawled in the white bed straw and foxgloves, but on hearing his name he arched his back and yawned. Then he shook himself. For the first time Yabsley saw the meanness and strength of the creature. It seemed to stare through him into places where thought had no right to trespass.
'What about that wicked bugger?' he said.
'He's a dog,' said Scoble.
'Dang me if you idn as cold as yesterday's mutton, Leonard.'
'Animals is animals. We ride them and work them, and hunt them and kill them and eat them. God intended for it to be that way. The Bible says so.'
'You idn a churchgoer, boy.'
'No, but I believes. Church is just another house. There's more of God in my garden than you'll find in Buckfast Abbey or Exeter Cathedral.'
'Get home, do! You're a bloody pagan, Leonard.'
Scoble pecked at his wart with a fingernail and lidded his eyes.
Presently the farmer's youngest son came down to tell them dinner was ready. The boy unharnessed the horses and gave them their feed. He was glad to be home from school for the mowing.
'Don't let 'em drink too much water,' Yabsley said.
'Want to give 'em some of your scrumpy, Bert?' the boy grinned.
'Mind I don't give 'ee a big ear,' Yabsley roared from the centre of a smile.
If was a short walk back to the barn. Normally the haymakers ate in the field, but Lugg had made the mowing a special occasion. His wife brought the pasties – or oggies as they were called in Devon – to the barn. Lugg drew off a half-gallon enamel jug of scrumpy from the wood and filled the men's pots. They drank in deep gulps and the fowls gathered round them waiting for crumbs.
'Bloody beautiful,' Yabsley whispered.
'The Kingston Black,' George Lugg said proudly.
'Agricultural wine,' the farmer said, smiling at his own wit.
Scoble ate slowly, cramming great wads of pasty into his mouth. Although the barn was cool the sweat still poured off him.
'You're giving that oggie hell, Len,' Yabsley said. He nudged George. 'I don't suppose you do a lot of cookin' at home.'
The trapper's eyes were becoming used to the half-darkness. He looked up and saw the barn owls crouching on the beam against the far wall. The soft keening of the owlets was almost drowned by the clucking of the hens and the leathery rustle of their feet in the straw.
'What did you say?'
'Mind you don't eat your fingers, boy,' Yabsley said. 'If you had a woman at Yarner's Cott you'd get oggies every day and somethin' better at night.'
George fluted through his nose into his cider pot making the pale yellow liquid bubble.
The old owls were clacking their mandibles. Why don't you fly off? Scoble thought. The young ones will grow on your strength, then desert you. If the vixen hadn't bothered about the cubs she could have escaped. He remembered the river and the liquid rustling of the grass, and the sky too hot and cerulean to be English. Half of him was scared and the other half excited. Then the noise and the filth and the death. And men died to save their comrades, strangers dying for strangers. They forgot their wives and families, forgot their sweethearts and took shrapnel for some stranger on the wire. His upper lip curled. Lose a leg, gain a medal – Shit! Shit on King and Country.
'Leonard.'
Scoble belched and drank another pot of cider in one go. The jug was refilled and went the rounds. The terriers dashed among the fowls, but Jacko sat beside his master and growled.
'Ever had a woman, Len?' Yabsley said.
Like a badger, Scoble thought, never lets go. Like to see him on the end of a Prussian bayonet, pig on a skewer, a big fat target.
'Why?' he said.
'Only askin'.'
'Women are like tapeworms,' Scoble said.
'We all had mothers, boy.'
'Us didn't have no say in the matter. Wives is different.'
'You have to earn your oats,' George Lugg said.
The farmer cleared his throat and looked down at his boots. Things had gone too far.
'Will it be gins or snares, Leonard?' he asked.
'Snares.'
'Idn it hard to get a fox in a wire?'
'Not if you know how.'
Yabsley glared at him and said, 'Give us some more of that scrumpy, maister.'
The trapper stuffed his face with pasty and shrugged.
The jug passed from hand to hand and the air was filled with the chaff of small talk. Scoble sat gazing at the owls.
Colonel Shewte and his daughter made a brave show of interest in Lugg's affairs. The workers sat at attention and their speech became as stiff as their backs. The gentleman's platitudes merged with the clucking of the hens and the softer more distant summer sounds. The tall, flat-chested girl wore a flower-print frock and sandals, and a tortoiseshell slide in her hair, which was the kind of dull brown that few men notice.
'Weather couldn't be better, Lugg.'
'No, sir.'
'Many partridges?'
'A few, sir – more than last year.'
'Good show.'
Weather's on our side, sergeant major, the subaltern said. Cricket weather, he smiled. And the sergeant major smiled, although he came from Liverpool and had never known anything but poverty and hard graft. Get the men away quickly, the subaltern said. His light, lounge bar accent had the flesh crinkling on Scoble's neck. Give 'em their due, Corporal Wellan said. They know how to die. Yes, Scoble thought, and they've got something to die for. Their England, their cricket, their woods and fields and rivers.
He glanced up at Shewte. He was his father's son, and no mistake. Scoble tilted his pot. Lieutenant General Shewte had been an even more imposing figure. He too had come down to Sedge Brimley for the haymaking. Leonard's father had been impressed. And the Lieutenant General had packed old labourers and their wives off to the workhouse, yet the poor had never condemned him or remarked on the inhumanity.
'Is the cider good, Scoble?' Colonel Shewte said briskly.
'The best, maister.'
'And the foxes?'
Scoble did not flinch.
'Out and about takin' lambs and chickens and things.'
'We'll let the hunt know. Foxes are the hunt's business.'
'Yes, sir.'
'We'll get Old Blackie for you, Scoble,' the colonel smiled. 'Stick to the small beer. No more cubs and vixens.'
'What do'ee mean, sir?'
'No more foxes.'
'Bible says we got dominion over the birds and the beasts. Don't that apply to foxes, sir?'
'This is Devon, not the Holy Land, Scoble.'
The trapper opened his cigarette tin.
'In Genesis it says there was a Garden of Eden. Well, I got a garden. The Bible don't say the Moors of Eden – just garden. And I reckon there was foxes in it.'
'We must be off, Lugg,' Colonel Shewte said, turning his back on Scoble and smiling now at the farmer.
'Will you have some cider before you go, sir?' Lugg said.
''Tis a pressing of Kingston Blacks.'
Colonel Shewte held up a hand and politely declined.
Striding along the lane beneath the beech leaves, he said, 'What do you make of Scoble, Jenny?'
The girl frowned.
'He has a parochial imagination, Daddy.'
'So has God, my dear. So has God,' the Colonel chuckled. 'But never mind, we must look after the foxes.'
A goldcrest sang from the clustered white florets of cow parsley. It was seeking insects. Printed on the air behind father and daughter was the rasping chirr of the mowing machine, then Lugg's voice bellowing at his youngest boy, telling him to 'get out of the bloody seat and let the horses rest'.
'When's your American coming down, Jenny?' Colonel Shewte said.
'Soon – next week some time.'
'You like him, don't you?'
'Very much.'
'He's not too keen on hunting, I believe.'
'No, but he's not a crank. I suppose the war has put a lot of people off blood sports. Richard is just a nice human being.'
She smiled and suddenly looked very pretty.
Lugg wandered over to Scoble while the last swath was being cut.
'Best forget the snares, Len,' he said sheepishly. 'Shewte knows what you did at Wistman's.'
'So?'
'So I don't want no foxes trapped on my land.'
Scoble parted his stubble with a fingertip to get at the wart. The horses plodded towards him. He lifted a shock of grass on his boot and let it fall. The field was whispering.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
BEAST OF THE EARTH
|
At last the drought ended and the wind went round to the west. It rained slowly in showers that cooled the air and made everything fresh and pleasant. Heavier downpours swelled the streams and raised the level of the ponds, and the hiss of raindrops hitting the water became a familiar sound.
There was a loneliness about the Leighon Ponds and the Becca Brook that surpassed all the country Wulfgar had visited. Often the hush enclosing them was intense, punctured by the cry of a moorfowl or the croak of a raven. It was the dream landscape and in the early part of the day he moved like a sleepwalker letting outside forces guide him. Everything conspired to create the timeless quality – the rise of fish, the fall of a leaf, the flags curling at the tips in the breeze.
'And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so.
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.'
Scoble shut his Bible.
'Over the beast of the earth, Jacko,' he said. 'That's foxes, boy – and idn I a man? It don't say gentleman – just plain, simple man. If the toffs can kill him with their bloody hounds I can trap him.'
He hacked a point on the stake of the heavy fox snare. He was happy, and Jacko, sensing his mood, became playful. When Scoble was calm the hot screw rarely turned in the dog's skull, but the visions of horror lay in ambush and there were times when he had to go and lie in the wood stack, tearing at the bark with his teeth, letting the madness escape through his nose in a whine.
Scoble put half a dozen of the heavy snares in the sack and ran an expert eye over the rows of potatoes. Under the ash trees at the far end of the garden he had a keeper's gibbet reserved exclusively for members of the crow family. The carcasses of magpies, jays, carrion crows, rooks and daws hung in decomposition. Scoble gathered maggots from the birds to use as bait for the illegal taking of pheasants.
The ferrets, which scowled at him from the wire netting of their hutch, were sleek and fit. He fed them on rabbits in fur, chickens' heads, entrails and birds in feather, but they were never permitted to overeat. Every thing and every creature in Yarner's Cott was put to good use, a lesson he had learnt from his parents in a home where he had been treated like a possession rather than a child. His character had been formed by those early years of drudgery and loneliness.
The jill ferrets clutched the wire and stood upon their hind feet to greet him.
'They'm worse than you for rabbits, Jacko,' Scoble murmured. And the dog thought he was growling and laid back his ears.
After the rain had fallen the night became still again, and an unknown living something moved through the rushes and plopped into the water. Romany was scrunching an eel on the dam, when his mate whistled to him from the margins of the wood.
Wulfgar came down Black Hill at speed trying to contain his frustration. Stargrief had gone off without a word like a true mystic. 'I'll give him one more sunset, Wulfgar thought, then we'll take the dog my way.'
But he loved the old fox and was merely voicing his impatience.
The rooks in Holwell's beeches had finally stopped cawing. Softly burning Antares hung over Rippon Tor and a moon big enough and bright enough to please all predators rose above Haytor Down. Soon it was high over Leighon and mirrored in the ponds. A barn owl drifted along the brook and became one with the silence.
He lapped the current as it sped babbling over grit and pebbles. Tongues of silt and storm debris shaped the flow. Beneath the oaks were mossy boulders, uprooted trees and torn branches. Here the Becca ran in a freshet, moon-speckled. Eels flickered in the shadowy deeps, dragging their silver slackness over rocks that had been polished and rounded by water. The bends were thick with jetsam.
Having successfully stalked moorfowl he came to the pool below Leighon House. The deep belling of a hound carried across the lawn, then stopped as though someone had comforted the creature.
Wulfgar had reached a place where the river seemed to have fallen asleep. He made scats on a boulder that served as a scenting post and cleared the arching root of an oak in one leap. The wire noose jerked viciously at his neck and cut into his windpipe. His body was thrown horizontal and slammed down on the ground with a thump. A great surge of panic flooded his gut, spreading like frost through his nervous system. His feet scrabbled for purchase and he tried to leap up and out of the snare. The wire bit into his throat, dragging him back. His tongue showed between his teeth and he retched. The motion loosened the wire a little and he was able to take air in quick gasps, but any forward movement threatened to choke the life out of him. Slowly he inched backwards. Then the noose opened a fraction and he sucked in a deep draught of the night, which was now rank with the stink of his fear. The panic gushed out in a steady pumping of urine.
He lay and thought about the problem. He had seen many rabbits in the wire and their hysteria had always made matters worse. The harder they struggled the tighter the snare became until they blacked out and died.
Moving backwards on his belly he located the stake. It was as thick as a pony's fetlock and had been driven to the neck in the hard ground. Wulfgar gnawed at the wire, but it grated on his molars and would not part as the bramble snarls parted. Then he considered digging out the stake but any effort brought a savage reaction from the snare. Closing his eyes he gave a wail of despair that lofted to a full-bodied howl.
'Is there anything I can do, friend?' said a shrill voice at his side.
Chivvy-yick grinned and chittered and jigged about in the restlessness of his joy.
'Want me to loosen the wire with me strong little teeth?'
Wulfgar smiled despite the noose.
'Loosen my throat, more likely,' he said.
'Dear O dear! – don't old Canker Head trust Chivvy-yick? Ain't he grateful?'
'Don't play games with me, man's scat.'
The stoat laughed at this tremendous insult.
'You ain't in no position to be nasty,' he said. 'There ain't no foxes round to back you up, and that loud-mouthed vixen is just a kennel for grubs now from what I hear. Miss 'er, do you, Canker Head?'
Wulfgar growled and flung himself at the stoat but the snare plucked him from the centre of his pounce, leaving him choking and writhing in the grass.
'That was truly funny, Canker Head,' Chivvy-yick guffawed. 'Snares suit you. Rot my bones! – if you ain't more comical than a drummer in a wire! What a pity you crossed Chivvy-yick. Twice, if I'm not mistaken.'
'The third time could be fatal.'
The fitch rippled through the grass and sprawled before him and began to lick the black tip of its tail.
'How come a smart fox like you got his head in a noose?'
Wulfgar recovered his breath but was loath to waste it on the fitch.
'OK, Mange Bag,' Chivvy-yick said. 'There ain't no love lost between us but I don't do the trapper's dirty work like them ferrets. What do you want me to do?'
'No tricks?'
'No tricks. I spit on all foxes but Man is Man.'
He shut his eyes, drew down the corners of his mouth, shook his head and shuddered.
'There is a badger in the sett higher upstream,' Wulfgar said. 'He's my friend. He and the sow could dig out the stake.'
'Great diggers and burrowers and miners are the brocks,' Chivvy-yick agreed. 'And Thorgil is the best of the breed. I'll fetch him if you agree to one thing.'
'Very well,' Wulfgar said.
'No more coney-snatchin' off fitches. Never. Not ever.'
The fox nodded.
'Don't go away,' Chivvy-yick grinned. 'I won't be a jiffy.'
It was most unfitchlike behaviour and the stoat's departure left Wulfgar both perplexed and guilt-ridden. The short June night was nearly done. He yawned and the wire cut into his flesh. The stars had become feeble, like glow-worms.
He fell asleep without laying his brush across his nose.
The sharp stab of pain brought him back to consciousness with a jolt that nearly throttled him. Chivvy-yick had bitten the tip of his ear. Blood pulsed freely down the side of his head into his chest fur.
The fitch rolled around in the throes of helpless laughter and the rest of the stoat pack jeered at Wulfgar.
'O I do like foxy's collar,' Shiv cried.
'He looks like a rat on the keeper's gibbet,' said Flick-Flick.
'Like a ferret on a lead,' Snikker crowed.
'I bet three drummers to a dead dog old Canker Head really thought I was going to get his mate the brock,' Chivvy-yick gasped. 'Imagine – a nice bit of hope to brighten his misery. Heroic little me would arrange for Scat Stink to escape from the wire – despite all the aggravation he's given me.'
He bared his fangs and narrowed his eyes.
'O no no no! It could not be done. Never, no, not ever. Chivvy-yick went and got his nearest and dearest. A fitch can't gloat alone. Stoat gotta share a good gloat. A stoat gloat. Yik-yik-yik.'
Wulfgar gazed placidly at him. Day was breaking and he felt close to death, but he would not sacrifice his dignity in a slanging match.
Though I may die
the grass will grow,
the sun will shine
the stream will flow.
The words of the prayer came from the living world beyond himself. He felt he had drawn them from the air, like breath.
Soon the fitches grew bored with the mocking and taunting. At Slickfang's suggestion they played the Blood Game, darting in to nip an ear or a paw, or to close their teeth on the fox's brush. Wulfgar found it more difficult to endure the humiliation than the pain.
And lying close to the ground he dreamt of Teg and remembered how they had comforted each other. Oakwhelp and the other cubs would be waiting in the golden field. All the heroic dog foxes would gather and he would walk beside Tod through the radiant places. But not yet, another voice cried inside him. The sweetness of the new morning was too good to leave.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
TREACHEROUS CONTRIVANCES
|
Higher up, the water frizzled in grit-choked runnels, and jets spurted between the boulders. He stirred and the pain pounced. Green leaves climbed in cliffs heaped with the noise of insects and birds. The light had broadened and distant things were visible. Briefly the rain soaked the trees, dripping through the foliage. The wind swept up on the shower and lifted the end of it as it would belly-out a curtain.
The stoats skipped around him, breaking the heads off the dandelions. The grass was full of the heavy, gold flowers. Wulfgar felt the familiar ache of regret. He had been careless with his life but now he cherished those little eternities of running on high ground. He pressed his nose to the earth, which smelt of the past.
'This one's got coney blood in him,' Chivvy-yick sneered. 'You'd get more fight out of a blind kitten.'
He jumped onto Wulfgar's back and cried, 'Behold, Mighty Fitch on the dung hill.'
The stoat pack hissed, then they were colliding with each other in a hotch-potch of limbs and bodies, but only for a second. Something landed in their midst and there was a silent explosion of fitches. Chivvy-yick departed furtively, avoiding the russet blur that streaked after Flick-Flick. The stoat twisted and screamed. The fox sprang, claws spread wide and fell on him, holding him pinned. Fetid breath was against his face. Once more he screamed, but the fox closed his jaws on the stoat's neck and the struggling ceased.
'Let the rest of the cowards run,' the stranger said. His words rumbled up from his throat.
He was a great, gaunt animal with a scarred head and a rip in his right ear.
'You are in a bad way, friend,' he added gently.
'It could be worse,' said Wulfgar. 'What do they call you, stranger?'
'Killconey. I've come from the country up beyond the Black Mire, near the sea that swallows the sun every evening.'
'I am Wulfgar.'
'Have you prepared to meet death, Wulfgar?'
'Yes – but it wasn't easy with the fitches swarming all over me.'
His heart sank and he whispered, 'Is it nearby?'
Killconey gave him a slow nod.
'A man is coming up the river. He has a dog. They will be here shortly.'
'I can smell them,'Wulfgar said.
'Has Tod been good to you?' asked Killconey.
'Nearly always,' Wulfgar smiled.
His blood ran thin and cold. The fear leaked from his fur and stank like sackcloth soaked in urine.
A stick cracked under someone's boot and a man coughed.
'I daren't stay any longer,' Killconey said.
'No. You must run. I'm grateful for what you did.'
'I won't be far away if it's any comfort.'
Wulfgar managed another smile.
'Go quickly,' he said. 'This is something that has to be done alone.'
And I won't die cowering like a rabbit, he thought. The hill foxes will remember me. His hackles stiffened and he grunted through his nostrils, sounding like a badger.
The dog scampered up the path and began to bark.
The young American was glad to get on the train and shake the dust of London off his shoes. He had done all the things he had wanted to do. He had seen the sights and eaten seafood at the street stalls and drunk Guinness at the Prospect of Whitby, but the old city with its bomb scars and double-deckers was only an interlude.
The Torbay Express thundered across the shires, building up steam, pushing through the showery June day into the West Country. After Somerset there were small red fields among the greens of woods, corn and pasture, and as the train approached the cathedral city the foothills of Dartmoor were clearly visible.
He got out at Exeter St David's and collected the spaniel from the guard's van. The dog belonged to friends who were holidaying in the States. They had insisted he make Aish Cottage his home until the fall. On leave from the Air Force he had stayed in pubs and farmhouses. The moors were one of two good things to come out of the war. The other was Jenny.
Propped up in the back of the Shewtes' Humber Snipe he let her do all the talking. She still looked like a little girl. Sometimes the leaf-dazzle parted and sunlight flooded the car. Then he remembered her serenity back in those days when Dartmoor was the summer place on the edge of the nightmare. Now there were no more missions in Flying Fortresses so loaded with bornbs they could hardly take off. But he had come through it all.
Looking out of the window he saw the River Teign glinting among the trees.
Aish Cottage stood small and whitewashed in the beeches above the Becca Brook. Up the hill was Beckaford Farm and a mile to the north lay the village of Manaton.
The Shewtes drove away leaving him to unpack his gear and sort through the wildlife books he had bought in town. The spaniel romped on the lawn that needed cutting, birds sang and the beech leaves rustled in a low, watery way, like a stream flowing.
OK, his father had said – go to England for five or six months. Get it out of your system. He was puzzled and Richard never tried to explain. Montana was just about the greatest place on earth, but Dartmoor was the dream. It was like a piece of music and he wanted to hear it through to the end. Then he could go home.
Later he drank whisky and took his book out into the evening to catch the last of the sun. He wanted to sit in the long grass and read that passage from Anna Karenina where Levin mows the meadow with his peasants. The great literature went well with the sound of the trees and the solitude. Maybe he would put on the Berlioz seventy-eights, or maybe he would write a poem.
The dog came up to him wagging her tail. And after dark he sat on the sofa listening to the Fantastique while moonlight slanted through the window. It made him think of Walden and Thoreau and Wordsworth's poems of the imagination. Towards midnight he took the dog through the oaks to the river and walked its banks as far as Becky Falls.
The night was calm and starry. He knew the stars well but they looked fine without the flak or the white slashes of tracer. Antares glowed softly in the south, and all the obscene human deaths could not cancel out its beauty.
He sat on a boulder and the spaniel laid her chin in his lap. A cockchafer bumped against his forehead, once, twice, four times, and the water spilled white and loud over the rocks. Moonlight lay fragmented on the floor of the wood. Sitting there he thought about the things he had done. Being a survivor gave you an edge over your fellow creatures. His own company was enough. He didn't want anymore bullshit or dirty jokes or empty laughter. He wished to hell he hadn't promised to dine with the Shewtes the following night. Small talk was a kind of insult to the men who had never come back from the raids over Germany.
When the shower woke him he was lying on the moss beneath a holly bush, and day had broken. The sky above Great Houndtor was pale blue blotched with big grey clouds. Raindrops rattled on the leaves and hit his face. It was cold. He pulled the collar of his old tweed jacket up to the lobes of his ears and the dog planted a splathering kiss on his nose.
They went with the path up the side of the river. A blackbird alarmed and the shower petered out. Through the trees on his left he saw the house at the top of a sweep of lawn. The dog ran ahead of him and disappeared behind some boulders and gave tongue. Richard crouched to avoid the branches of the oak and saw the fox. The spaniel was barking furiously now and made token lunges at the trapped animal. Wulfgar faced her silently. He had encountered liver-and-white spaniels before. They were noisy but not too dangerous. The fox got to his feet and wondered how he was going to fight the wire and the dog.
'Stay, Meg,' Richard said.
The spaniel clapped down, whimpered, and looked over her shoulder at the man. Richard slipped out of his jacket and when he held it in front of him like a matador's cape, Wulfgar growled and fidgeted despite the wire. The fox leapt backwards in a contorted arc that fell apart in mid-air. He was choking to death. The noose had lacerated his throat. He beat at it with his paws, then the coat covered his head and the man was holding him tight between the knees, almost cracking his ribs. Fingers fumbled the wire and Wulfgar snapped and bit one of them clean through the nail.
'Easy, fella,' Richard grated.
He tugged open the snare with both hands and Wulfgar wriggled free. The fox ran blindly until the coat jagged on a root and was ripped off his head. He shook himself, laid back his ears and climbed the slope of oaks and boulders. The spaniel sent a single, defiant bark floating after him.
Using a rock, the American smashed the top of the stake and removed the wire.
'Away with your nets and traps and snares and treacherous contrivances,' he murmured.
Pythagoras knew his stuff. Someone ought to write it on the sky in letters the size of the Empire State Building. But he was no longer angry when he picked up the dead fitch. He examined it from fangs to claws before stowing it in his coat pocket.
Crouching at the pool he washed his damaged finger. Beneath the surface were pebbles of many colours – buzzard brown, rust, bronze, white, ochre. Close to the bank the shillets were half-hidden by drifts of grit. A little dark fish called a miller's thumb shot away, and above the water the midges and caddis flies rose in tribal dance. The morning was made for living things.
'I saw it but I don't believe it,' said Killconey.
He had finished licking the wounds on Wulfgar's body that the dark fox could not reach.
'Of course he didn't mean to free me,' said Wulfgar.
'Then it was an accident?'
'What else? Maybe he wanted me alive.'
Killconey shuddered. 'That would be worse than a bad death.'
'Stargrief says many animals are kept in captivity.'
'But why? Do they eat us?'
'I don't know. Men aren't like animals.'
They had come onto Hamel Down and were lying in the sun above Grimspound.
'I feel as if I've got a chicken bone stuck in my gullet,' Wulfgar said. 'Tod, it's sore!'
Killconey grinned.
'Will you stay to see the lurcher die?' asked Wulfgar.
'No. I'm not of your clan. It's your business.'
'Where are you going?'
'Here and there.'
'If you pass the ponds look out for me.'
'Run with your head high, dark brother.'
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
A TRUE ANIMAL
|
Under Greator Rocks was a meadow that always escaped the mowing machine. It was very small, bounded on three sides by woodland and on the other by the Becca Brook. Wulfgar visited it often for the mice and conies. In the wind the grass became waves of silver light, hollowed here and there with shadows that quaked and rocked and tossed out handfuls of larks.
On quiet days the rustlings betrayed mice and voles, birds, lizards and snakes. They threaded through the foxtail grass and meadow soft, making the field scabious and poppies shake. The scabious was a sturdy, lilac flower, a little lighter in colour than the meadow-crane's bill. When the wind laid back the grass the sun caught the flowers and set the goat's beard and buttercups glinting yellow. Sometimes the rustle among the packed stems was an adder swallowing a lark nestling.
The American had learnt to keep still for long periods. He came to the woods and river without the spaniel and waited for things to happen. Once he saw Wulfgar on hindlegs in the meadow catching moths, and near the end of June he glimpsed the otters fishing the big pond. He did not come frequently because he was afraid of alarming the wild creatures. He had also rediscovered the North Moor and its stretches of true wilderness.
The raven said cork in his deep, cheerful voice, while Stormbully and Fallbright soared above him to an immense height. Rain had beat down all day, but the evening was clear and warm. The moorfowl led their second brood across the pond. Romany had killed a few of their tribe but this family had nested safely in the lower boughs of an alder.
The dipper popped out of the Becca Brook and sat on a stone and watched the moorfowl. His nest was in the bank nearby. At dawn Romany had come close to seizing the dipper as the bird strode through the current like a tiny man walking with head bowed into the wind and rain.
'Have you seen the Yank?' Lugg said.
Scoble yawned and said he hadn't. The shearing crew had visited Sedge Brimley. The grey-faced Dartmoors from the border grazing, and the hardier Scottish Blackfaces driven down from the moors, had surrendered their fleeces. Lugg and his son were on the 'shorts', pouring double Johnny Walkers into themselves and trying not to look smug.
'Well, this Yank lives down Beckaford way,' the farmer continued. 'He was a bomber pilot, so they do say, and he's taken up with Jenny Shewte.'
'And he idn all there,' George cawed. 'Dang me! – if he idn more than a bit crazy.'
'Anybody who's sweet on the Shewte maid have got to have some thatch loose,' said Scoble. 'There's more tit on a grasshopper than her's got.'
'That's as maybe,' said Lugg, 'but Yanky's always trapesin' about the moors at night, talkin' to himself and singin' and what have you. That's what they'm sayin' all over.'
'He's against huntin', too,' said George. 'Bugger! – you should have heard un sounding off at the Kestor the other evening. He's against hunting, shooting, fishing, trapping – every-bloody-thing. He went white as a sheet when Ernie started jawin' about the otter hounds.'
'Probably a vegetabletarian,' his father growled. 'Bleddy foreigner.' He glanced slyly at Scoble and added, 'Be you goin' to have a short, Leonard?'
'I'll have a rum with 'ee, maister.'
Using the fat tip of his forefinger he stroked his wart and thought about the newcomer and the smashed snare-stake. The wisps of dark fur had been Blackie's, he felt it in his water. He recalled the stink of fox and the broken dandelions, and he had been worried in case it was hunt folk who had set the beast free. The rum was a trickle of warmth in his stomach. Thank Christ it was the Yank. His upper lip curled. Blackie had the luck of Old Nick. It was black looking after black, but luck only took you so far. Ted Yeo went right through the war – the Somme, Ypres, the lot – and not a scratch on him. First day back on the farm he slipped on the muck in the yard and cracked his head on the water-trough. Scoble snapped his fingers and smiled. Dead as a doornail.
Wulfgar sensed Stargrief's presence before the air confirmed it.
'I'm not alone,' Stargrief said.
He hesitated among the reed tussocks.
'I can smell dog,' Wulfgar growled, puffiing out his fur and lowering his head.
Queenie the collie crept nervously from the reeds and crouched beside Stargrief.
'Calm down and let me speak,' the old fox said.
'Next time speak before you run off on your bardic quests,' Wulfgar said. 'I'm not interested in the ancestral stuff. I want the lurcher dead.'
'Would tomorrow morning be soon enough?'
Wulfgar sat up and glanced down his muzzle at the collie.
'And will "it" help?' he said pointedly.
'Queenie will help,' Stargrief said. 'Without her it won't be easy.'
'She has been Man's thing. Why should I trust her?'
'I trust her. She is an animal now.'
'But the lurcher is a dog. Could you betray a fox? Could you betray one of your own kind?'
'There are dogs like the lurcher who slave for men and there are dogs like Queenie who live in the sacred manner.'
'It's true,' said Queenie.
'Has the lurcher ever done you any harm?' Wulfgar said.
'Not yet – but he might. And Stargrief has been good to me.'
'Queenie will bring the lurcher to the ponds,' said Stargrief.
'What if she crosses us and joins forces with the dog?'
'What if I turn into a sheep and offer you my scats?' Stargrief said impatiently. 'What if the Tor got up and ran?'
'If the lurcher is mad I'll be in danger all the time,' Queenie said. 'He may kill me before we get halfway to the ponds. I'm gambling my life. For my sake I hope he sees me as a bitch, not a victim. Being an animal I don't feel safe with him loose.'
Her obvious sincerity brought a smile to Wulfgar's lips.
'Are you thirsty?' he asked.
The collie nodded.
'Come and drink,' Wulfgar said. 'The otters will be busy in the pond soon. It might be better if they met you now rather than tomorrow. The sight of two dogs coming down the hill unannounced would be a bit too much.'
He had eaten more than his usual amount of red meat, finishing off with a couple of frogs whose back legs had been devoured by a stoat. He sat cleaning himself beside the Becca while the dipper flitted in and out of the water.
The last remnants of daylight faded. Moonrise silvered the sky, and the moon edged up and cleared Holwell Tor. In the heronry below Great Houndtor Scrag tucked his beak under a wing and slept.
Wulfgar looked at Stargrief and said, 'If you had told me what you were up to I would have greeted Queenie with more than raised hackles.'
'I had to find her and speak to her,' Stargrief snapped. 'I couldn't prophesy her willingness to help.'
'Why not, you're a prophet aren't you?'
'He's not always this stupid,' Stargrief told Queenie as they came to the water. 'He gets irritated because I am what he will become. Sometimes he peeps at me and sees himself five years from now.'
'Only if Tod's got a weird sense of humour,' Wulfgar laughed.
Queenie certainly smelt like an animal and, unlike the lurcher, no Man odours clung to her. She settled as the foxes settled among the alder roots and told them about her life on the farm.
'I wasn't an animal,' she said. 'I really was a thing – like the mowing machine and the threshing machine, like the horse, the sheep and the cow. I was given very little to eat and worked from dawn to sunset. Then the farmer took away my pups and beat me when I howled for them at night. Now I make my own life according to the seasons.'
'It was the way when Tod stalked the moors,' said Stargrief.
They all spoke the canidae argot. Out in the pond the otters whistled and splashed.
'To walk in freedom is enough,' said Queenie.
'It's the only thing,' Wulfgar said.
'You were born to it,' Queenie smiled. 'I returned to it. It is my great adventure.'
Romany came lolloping out of the water and shook himself. Then he laid the trout at Queenie's feet.
'Dog eat trout?' he said.
'I eat anything,' said the collie.
'Trout isn't anything. Trout is otter food and otter eats only the best.'
'Damned good fish,' Queenie agreed, taking a mouthful.
'Later on I'll get you a coney,' said Wulfgar.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
BY FOX CRAFT
|
Stargrief and Queenie left for Yarner Wood at daybreak. The collie bitch was fit and lean from living wild and Stargrief had difficulty keeping up with her. They ran along the old granite tramway as far as Haytor Ponds and cut across the heath to pick up the Manaton road. From Ullacombe way a dog barked incessantly, and the east wind that usually meant fair weather carried the noise far over the in-country.
The animals did not speak as they took up their positions. The vague, dark world of early morning opened to the flood of sunrise. Slates glinted on the roof of the cottage, and a glimmer of leaves spread over the wood. Birdsong swelled and the first bees burrowed into the foxglove bells.
Stargrief jumped onto the top of the hutch, surprising the ferrets who started to snake up and down, more curious than alarmed. Stargrief jerked back his head and let out a tomcat screech that seemed to hang on the air and fade away like smoke. Ceaselessly he repeated the cry until Scoble appeared at the bedroom window. The trapper ran his tongue over his lips. One shot would lift that skinny old fox clean off the hutch onto the collar of a lady's coat, but a few stray pellets would also take care of the ferrets. Stargrief looked up at him and barked. You're asking for it, boy, Scoble thought. A kamekaze fox, like them bloody mazed Japs.
'Us won't disappoint un, Jacko,' he whispered.
The lurcher followed him downstairs and stood raking fleas from behind his ear. The stiff hind foot moved in a blur.
'Fox, Jacko,' Scoble said, flinging open the door. 'Get 'im, boy. Show un who's boss.'
Dizziness climbed to the dome of Jacko's skull. He saw the fox on the ferret hutch like an object seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He flew towards it and leapt the wall as the white-tagged brush vanished into the leaves. A jay looped up through the branches, its sudden chatter perforating the dog's brain. Agony was driven hard into each tiny hole, making Jacko whine and bang his head on the trunk of an oak. The fox was running down the path where it curved and became lost in shadow. Jacko raced after him. He would bring the fox back dead to his master, lay it at his feet and get the 'Good Jacko – Lovely Jacko' treatment.
The bend surprised him. He fought the camber without success and skidded hard into the foxgloves and nettles. Anger screwed back his lips. Red is dead. When a creature turned red it had to die, it was the sign. The stars said so.
He regained the path effortlessly. A creature sat on the mud ahead of him. Jacko snarled and raised his hackles. The fox had changed into a collie dog.
'How you do that?' he cried.
'How I do what?' said Queenie.
'Turn into dog.'
For a moment Queenie was tempted to pretend she had magical powers, but maybe Jacko wouldn't be sufficiently impressed. If you are crazy a fox is a fox no matter what it looks like. Queenie shuddered. To think logically was to place her life in the lurcher's jaws. Keep it simple, she thought, think mad dog.
'I am dog – collie to be exact. I always have been,' she said.
'No,' said Jacko. 'You fox. Stars tell me. Stars don't lie.'
He crept towards her with the terrible, deliberate gait of a hunter preparing to spring.
'Stars don't lie,' Queenie agreed. 'But we don't always hear them correctly. There was a fox. He went down rabbit hole. You'll never catch him. Come and smell me, Jacko. I really am dog. Nose don't lie.'
'How you know my name?' the lurcher said. Queenie noted with relief that his hackles had dropped.
'Every dog on the moors has heard of the mighty fox fighter. You have killed more foxes than I've had bones. I bow to your bravery, cunning and speed.'
She inclined her head and Jacko trotted up to her and made a thorough examination.
'You dog all right,' he said, licking her under the tail. 'Why you come looking for me?'
'Stars tell me to. They say Jacko lonely. He need a good mate – a dog to give him plenty little Jackoes.'
'Lurcher mates with lurcher,' Jacko said haughtily. 'But you a good bitch. I let you be my friend.'
'It's a great honour. My name is Queenie.'
'OK – we run together, Queenie. Stars say we go to open places. You do as you're told and everything will be like the puppy time.'
He escorted her out of Yarner, across the tableland of furze and heather to the slope that swept up to Hay Tor. Jacko was happy. His master had given him freedom, and the stars were kind, not like white hot claws digging into his mind. Queenie was O.K. – maybe later he would kill her and send her to the stars. They'd like that, for he had never sent them a dog to play with. Endlessly the larks shrilled. The lurcher and the collie loped along, following the sheep paths through the deep bracken.
When they drank at Hay Tor Ponds they saw newts among the jumble of sunken roots. Swiftly a cloud passed over the sun, then another. Jacko cocked his leg against the rusty iron winch and watched the dragonflies whizz past his head.
'There was a black fox at the big pond before daybreak,' Queenie said. Despite her courage and sagacity her voice shook. Jacko flashed her a malevolent glance.
'He wasn't like ordinary foxes,' she went on. 'He sat by the water and just stared at me.'
'And you did nothing?'
'I was scared, Jacko. I'm only a simple collie.'
The red gut burst behind his eyes and inundated the world. The red dog stood shivering beside an expanding pool of blood. Not yet, the stars crowed. Wait, Jacko. Good boy, Jacko.
'Show me black fox,' he said.
'But he'll be gone by now.'
He uncoiled and caught her off-guard at the end of a spectacular leap. Queenie lay staring breathlessly up into his mouth.
'Stars tell Jacko what to do,' he growled. 'Jacko tell you what to do. Take me to black fox.'
The red mist billowed and gaped to reveal the sun. They climbed the path out of the quarry and ran shoulder to shoulder to Holwell Tor. A panic-stricken flock of Scottish Blackfaces stampeded before them, with the pale, embarrassed look of all shorn sheep. And quite casually the stars ordered Jacko to kill, so he cut his way through the animals, using his fangs like a saw-edged knife, making fierce, slashing strokes. One ewe stood her ground to protect her lambs, and Jacko tore out her throat and grinned at Queenie. His lips were crimson with the blood that dribbled down his muzzle.
'Stars need lots of sheep,' he gasped.
A man shouted. The dogs turned towards the sound and saw a distant figure running though the whortleberries under Hay Tor.
'Pity the stars didn't see the man before you killed the sheep,' Queenie sighed. 'Sheep-killing means plenty trouble.'
'I am magic dog,' the lurcher cried. 'No man will ever harm Jacko.'
'I believe you – but let's get out of here.'
'Now Jacko show you how to kill fox.'
From the reeds and marsh grass they were able to scrutinise the big pond. A fish rose and ringed the surface. Fat summer clouds sailed over Greator Rocks, higher still were the mare's tails of stratus, but in between lay broad patches of blue sky.
'OK, collie bitch,' Jacko whispered. 'Where's fox?'
'He was down there by the willow,' said Queenie, feeling her innards slowly somersault. 'I thought he'd be gone.'
'If he don't come pretty damn quick Jacko send you to stars.'
The lurcher flattened his ears and grinned. The red collie grinned back, and red of many hues marbled the sky. Leisurely he gathered the cuckoo-spit off the grass stems with the tip of his tongue. The frog-hoppers had left small white gobs of it everywhere.
Queenie regarded him in disgust.
Rain fell hard and cool but the shower did not last more than a few minutes. Half the sky remained blue and sunny, and while the drops splattered on the pond the house martins visited it by the score, hitting the surface with a splash time after time.
'Maybe black fox turn into bird,' Jacko laughed. His mind was on fire, cooking in his skull.
The shadow grew legs and slid from under the trees. Small leaves silvered in the wind that blew away the last of the shower. The shadow had pointed black ears and a bushy tail. It stopped on the sward where the otters came to roll and play.
'Die, black fox,' Jacko snarled.
A jolt of anger numbed his brain, and ten strides brought him to the sward. The agony fell away from him and instinct measured the distance between himself and his prey, but the black fox was curving out over the reeds into the pond. Jacko splashed after him, the blood-lust eclipsing all his fears and anxieties. He knew he had the strength and the speed to overtake the fox who was swimming with head held high. O how his master would love him and give him the good tasty things off his plate, and the stars would sing lullabies and make the pain go for ever.
The water was soft and cool. The deep thrusting of his forepaws carried him closer to the fox. Kill the fox, kill the collie, kill the sheep. Kill-killy-killy. O Jacko do cracko the old foxio. Sharp and savagely relentless, like gin traps, the otters' jaws clamped on his hind feet and the sunny world vanished. Jacko twisted and fought to bite the animals as they pulled him down. Water filled his windpipe, and he coughed and writhed and tried to kick for the surface. Briefly the sunlight flashed like a shoal of silver fish above, then he was choking and gulping more water. One by one the stars exploded and vanished, leaving a warm and inviting darkness.
Jacko stopped struggling and sank into it like a puppy dropping into sleep, his mouth and eyes open wide. His legs no longer twitched. He stared from nothingness to nothingness, and the otters swam away trailing little bubbles.
'I thought it would take longer,' Wulfgar said.
The dim shape of Jacko's body was visible just under the water, grey and still.
'It probably wasn't so quick for him,' said Stargrief.
'I know what you mean,' Wulfgar said, remembering the snare. 'But one moment he was there behind me then he was gone. I had imagined a great fight.'
'Like the fights in the clan sagas?' Stargrief grinned.
'Yes.'
'When they turn this into a saga it will become a great fight.'
'Poor Jacko,' said Queenie.
The foxes looked at her.
'He was mad,' the collie continued. 'But perhaps I'd be mad if I had lived with the trapper. Don't misunderstand me – he had to die. If he had killed any more sheep we would all be wiped out. But he was born an animal. Man made him a thing. It saddens me a little.'
'He nearly had Moonsleek,' said Romany. 'His death makes me feel good.'
'Yes, he turned a lot of seasons red,' said Stargrief.
'He died by fox craft,' Romany said. 'Teg will be pleased.'
Wulfgar stared into the depths where the ghostly dog floated, and the old loneliness clenched round his heart. A martin hit the pond and cut through the sunlight again, trailing droplets of water, and as Wulfgar lifted his eyes to follow the flight the vision of his place appeared against the distance. He glided over the snowfield towards the mountains, a beautiful vixen trotting at his side.
'Teg,' he murmured.
But it wasn't her. He turned in desperation and said, 'I can smell approaching rain.'
Romany sniffed the morning.
'I believe you're right,' he said. 'Even though the wind comes off the sea it has a wet feel about it.'
'What's troubling you, Wulfgar?' Stargrief said quietly.
'Nothing. Go back to your bardic dreams.'
'Sometimes I wish I'd never wake from them,' said the ancient dog fox.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
THUNDERY WEATHER
|
The cows were standing in a daydream. Scoble worked his way down the Becca Brook below Holwell and the cattle ignored him. It was a sticky day. On the roof of Holwell barn the swallows were sunbathing. Many young birds were on the wing, swooping over the massed foliage where the hush was silted with insects.
Scoble took off his panama and fanned his face with it. From a line two-thirds of the way up his forehead the skin was very moist and white, and he looked as if he were wearing a red mask. Bloody daft dog, he thought, sticking the hat back on his head. Idly he wondered if the lurcher had killed the fox, for Jacko had been missing two days. Funny old fox! What made un plant his arse on the ferret's hutch? Mazed four-legged vermin, you couldn't fathom them out. His fingers found the wart and stroked it.
The Becca Brook divided to enter the pond. Scoble stopped among the alder saplings on the island and checked the mud. Romany's spoor ran along the water's edge and the otter had dropped his spraint on a rock in midstream. The spraint and the tracks were fresh. Scoble squatted in the grasses, which the sheep and ponies had clipped, and watched and listened.
Above the reeds the crows fluttered up and down. Occasionally one or the other stayed down for a long time.
They said craark in thick contented voices. The glinting blackness of the birds belonged to the thundery weather. He saw the gone-forever crow gripping the mule's intestine with black talons and tugging off a strip with its beak, very clinically and powerfully.
'Christ!' Scoble breathed. 'Jesus Christ!'
He splashed through the shallows and broke into a run.
Swart and Sheol stopped worrying Jacko's carcass and retreated through the tree tops of the lower pond. The trapper was mouthing obscenities as he reached the patch of sward. Jacko lay almost totally submerged, with only the tips of his four feet showing above the surface.
Scoble waded into the pond and retrieved the bloated animal, then he sat cross-legged beside the body. The wounds left by the otters showed red and white amongst slate-coloured hairs.
'You went down fightin',' Scoble said. 'Jacko is a good dog – yes, he's handsome.'
Gently he trailed his fingers along the dog's muzzle. What did Yabsley know about love? It wasn't proper to jaw about it. Some things were spoilt when you talked about them. The dog knew he was loved, that was enough. Leonard and Jacko and all the good days after the conies. He sniffed and fumbled for a cigarette. Soddin' foxes. O yes, they were watching him, he could feel them out there. His flesh crawled. Between the leaves the sunlight twinkled as though on bright eyes. Old Blackie was across the water grinning at him, and a thrill of hatred had him gritting his teeth. As for the scrawny old fox on the ferret hutch, what the hell was he about, caterwaulin' like a vixen on heat?
'No,' he whispered, shaking his head in disbelief.
But if they could gang up to kill a coney they could do the same for a dog. Old Blackie was built like a wolf, and two or three foxes working together might do for a lurcher. Jacko was strong and fast but not too bright, not any more. He was like a windfall from the keeper's gibbet, buzzard bait. Scoble curled his upper lip. The crows had made mulberry smudges of the dog's eyes.
He placed Jacko in a hollow and collected rocks from the river bed to build a cairn over the animal. It was better than a hole in the vegetable garden, better than a grave in a military cemetery. He could lie close to things and sort of be part of what was going on. Why make it easy for the worms?
At last it was finished. He nipped the end of his cigarette between forefinger and thumb. A few shafts of sunlight hit the Holwell side of the valley and slowly faded. The wind had gone round to the west and a dark, moving curtain of rain hid Emsworthy. Swart and Sheol joined the daws on Greator Rocks.
The trapper walked across the boggy ground to the path that led up to Black Hill. As the rain swept in behind him, it drove through his shirt and vest and made the brim of his hat hang limply down over his eyes.
It was cool and quiet in the bar of the Star Inn at Liverton. A fly beat against the window that was open wide enough for the breeze to find its way in. The hedge beyond was buried under honeysuckle, and the scent clung to the tongue like the memory of a rich drink.
Richard Williams drew a deep breath and turned the pages of his bird book. The bar was West Country in a drowsy, guileless way. It had not been tarted up to lure the tourists. Small, low-ceilinged and clean it allowed the imagination to wander off undisturbed into reverie.
He sat at a bare, wooden table in the corner taking in the country scents and the smell of beer and cider. Summer lapped around the pub, and the bright hush of the July afternoon was riddled with the chirping of sparrows and the burring of bees.
On the table were some old copies of John Bull and Picture Post and a tattered Field left behind by a shooting gentleman. The cryptic taste of the scrumpy cut through his thirst. He was very hungry and kept looking towards the kitchen, thinking that perhaps he should have ordered more than half a mutton pie and peas. Meg pushed her nose into his hand. Dog and man had walked a long way with an eye on the weather. The farm labourers and unemployed standing at the bar had nothing to say to him. The book in front of him was a discreet plea for privacy, and the last thing he wanted was inane chat, although sometimes he could not help eavesdropping.
The sky darkened and there was a noisy downpour. He lowered his cider to the halfway mark. His enjoyment of Dartmoor had been tarnished by finding the fox in the snare. He had tried to tell Jenny about the brotherhood of the living and the dead who had dreamed of Utopia. It sounded odd and sentimental – the kindness and compassion that they had hoped would embrace the whole of creation – but the old ways continued, they couldn't change them. The jungle path meandered right back to the gates of Eden. Maybe he had returned to the company of men too soon. Rain falling on the extravagant greenness seemed appropriate. Hope was slipping from him again as it had done on grey days above grey, anonymous German cities.
A young woman brought the meal to his table. Her hair was darker than honey and piled on top of her head. She had a fulsome beauty with a suntanned face and large white teeth, and involuntarily he placed her beside Jenny. But the image of the Shewte girl caused no tremor in his blood. Not so long ago he had needed that bland, sexless quality just as some men had turned to the Virgin Mary. It was a war thing.
He quarried into the pie.
Lugg and his son George had taken a truck full of wethers to Newton Abbot market. They had met Yabsley, Claik and Scoble on a pub crawl and all five of them returned the worse for drink to the Star. The trapper had not said much throughout the morning, but Yabsley was in full song, roaring good humour and reeling off the jokes. They stood at the bar in their braces and shirt sleeves while the cider barrel tap squeaked. The rain had stopped and steam was rising from the stony forecourt.
'Old man Hannaford's gone, then,' said Yabsley.
'Get home, do!' said Lugg. 'When did un go? I was havin' a pint with un last Thursday up the Rock. He didn look poorly.'
'They called the doctor in Tuesday. Seems his heart was conkin' out. 'How long have I got?' old man Hannaford says. 'About five minutes,' says the doctor. 'Idn there anything you can do for me?' the poor old boy says. Doctor looks at his watch and says: 'I could boil you an egg.'
'You mazed bugger, Bert,' laughed the farmer.
'Is old man Hannaford really dead?' said George, wiping the tears from his eyes.
'Dunno,' Yabsley smiled. 'Should be. He's touchin' ninety.'
The trapper sat down and folded his arms on the table. He might have been invisible for all the interest he created among the farmworkers. It was a situation he relished. He was thinking of Jacko, remembering how he used to knead the dog's chest, absently, by the fireside, hour after hour. Yes, you'm a handsome boy, Jacko. Dead, shrivelled, wet, under a pyramid of stones. Bloody fox. Bloody murderous fox. He lifted a buttock and broke wind.
Yabsley guffawed and said, 'That's the most intelligent remark you've made all day, boy.'
Scoble swallowed cider and rolled his wart. The figure in the corner was silhouetted dark against the window.
'Poor old Leonard's lost Jacko,' Yabsley continued. 'Tell 'em how it happened, Leonard – go on, boy. Don't be shy.'
'Blackie killed un,' Scoble said. His voice was low and dry. 'Blackie and two or three other foxes.'
'Four foxes?' Farmer Lugg grinned.
'The same buggers who killed your ewe above Holwell,' said Scoble.
'Do 'ee say so?' Lugg said, no longer smiling.
'Ripped out her throat. They'm hunting in packs now, I tell 'ee. It's Blackie. He's regular bloody wolf.'
Richard Williams left his table and came to the bar.
'The sheep was killed by a dog,' he said.
Lugg placed his empty glass on the counter and looked down at his boots. The American gazed steadily at George.
'I was coming off Hay Tor. A big, dark grey dog was running wild with a border collie. The big dog attacked the sheep and put one down. The dog could have been a lurcher.'
'You'm a liar, boy,' said Scoble. The colour drained from his face.
'Jacko was a big grey dog,' Yabsley said.
'And he never killed no sheep,' said Scoble.
'I saw the incident clearly through binoculars,' Richard said.
'You idn a fox lover by any chance, be'ee, Yank?' Scoble sneered.
'Sure, I got an animal out of one of your wires, Scoble – and I'd do it again.'
'Maybe you won't get the chance.'
'It doesn't alter the fact that your dog was a killer. I watched it. It had done it before.'
'How would you know? You've only been in the country five bloody minutes.'
'We've got dogs like that in Montana.'
'Bigger dogs I expect, boy,' Scoble said. 'Everything's bigger and better over there, idn it?'
His face had turned grey.
Richard Williams shrugged and shook his head and turned to go. Lugg caught him by the arm. 'Was it the lurcher, sir?' he said.
'A long-legged, grey dog running with a collie,' said the American. 'Have a look at the sheep. Foxes don't go for the throat. And this creature wounded several others. The collie sat and watched him.'
'Jacko never went with no other dog,' said Scoble.
'How do 'ee know if you weren't there?' said George.
'There's a collie stray up over Challacombe,' Claik said.
'You're a clever sod, Yank,' Scoble whispered. 'You don't miss much do 'ee?'
'I'm glad I didn't miss the fox in your snare.'
'The black fox,' Scoble said.
'Yeah – old Blackie.'
The trapper was on his feet with surprising speed for a big man. His lower lip trembled.
'If you hadn't let that black bastard go,' he cried, 'Jacko would still be alive.'
The punch came up and over like the conclusion of a swimming stroke. Richard took Scoble's fist on the palm of his left hand and held it there. It was an old man's fist, with fingers discoloured by years of grubbing in the soil. Bert Yabsley grabbed the trapper's free arm. Scoble stood quivering, his jaw thrust out, his eyes wide and staring. Like a trapped savage, Richard thought. Is fortitude sufficient? What do we achieve by integrity and courage? Men crouched like this in the mouths of caves, growling at the night that had been deformed by their own fear. Nothing had changed. Only during the spate of human inner-ugliness and folly was nobility of spirit revealed – briefly, like a candleflame in a storm. And it wasn't snuffed out by an overload of horror but by the everyday ordinariness of life.
He went into the sunlight calling Meg to heel. Big John Constable clouds were piling up in the west, but the wind had slackened. Roses bulged on the whitewashed walls. Game fowl scratched around in the orchard. At the bottom of the meadow was a gathering of lofty elms, and grasses and wild flowers pursued the stream he could hear babbling beside the hedge. The afternoon was very hot.
He walked the tension off, dredging up lines of Wordsworth as he tramped up the straight road to the village.
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times
The still, sad music of humanity …
Yeah, the old poet was on the ball, but reality had so many faces. The 'central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation' was his, now, in the lane whose hedges were heavy with convolvulus and honeysuckle. By Christ, he thought, I've earnt it.
A man came out of a field gate leading a couple of work horses. The great Shires with their chains clinking and rattling lumbered away towards the approaching storm.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
KILLCONEY AGAIN
|
Dartmoor lay hushed beneath a sky overspread with banks of nimbus cloud. Thunder raced in a cracking boom from Hay Tor to Longford Tor, again and again. Sheep and ponies stood with bowed heads as the rain fell in great heavy drops, battering the heather and bracken. Spray danced around the birches and rowans, leaves were torn off, grass and flowers were flattened. In black columns the rain exploded on the surface of the roads, and the Becca Brook swelled, running white-clawed among the boulders and the colour of cider and ale along its deeper reaches.
By mid-morning the storm had passed. A multitude of scents rose from the earth, the sun shone, the road steamed. The dark masses of bracken glittered, and rivers ran fat and silent, their waters clouded with silt and dead leaves. Daws came to bathe at Dead Dog Pond, jumping into deep water, jacking continuously in the playful manner of their kind. Wulfgar watched them and thought of food.
Raindrops slid down the tall, flat-bladed spikes of grass that thrust in tussocks from the heather. He drank at the pond. A trout hung motionless close to the reeds, its black back dotted with red spots. Gold glistened on its flanks.
'Do you fancy the old otter fodder?' said a familiar voice at his shoulder.
Killconey shook the rain from his fur and grinned at him.
He was very dishevelled and muddy.
'You look like a newborn rat,' Wulfgar said.
'And you look better without the coney collar.'
They lapped water together while the daws continued to swim and jangle.
Later, Killconey said, 'So the lurcher got chopped.'
'Not far from where you're standing.'
'Yes, I heard. Stargrief told me. Tod! – but he's shrewd!
How old is he?'
'He's coming up to his ninth winter.'
Killconey wagged his head and whistled through his teeth. He had a fresh scar on his upper lip.
Wulfgar frowned at it.
'You've as much chance of seeing nine winters as I have of flying to the moon.'
'The poodle came off worse,' Killconey laughed, caressing the scar with the tip of his tongue. 'It surprised me while I was asleep in a ditch by the road. Then I surprised it.'
'Have you eaten?'
'Beetles, a worm or two. If you can suggest something more exciting, I'm your animal.'
The dog foxes trotted to Haytor Down a little to the west of the Quarry Ponds. Shrews had their runs in the long grass and bracken. They fed on woodlice, harvestmen, spiders, beetles, moths and worms, eating their bodyweight of insects every day. The thick cover of high summer protected them from hawks and owls.
Wulfgar and Killconey took the ancient fox trail through the bracken to the whortleberry bushes. Moving leisurely up the slope under Hay Tor they ate scores of the blue-black berries, then flopped in the bell-heather, pressing their muzzles into the purple flowers. Insects zithered and chirred, and stonechats gave cries like pebbles being knocked together.
The day was climbing to the heat of noon. Ponies drifted between Saddle Tor and Hay Tor. And Wulfgar thought of Teg. To have ended such a morning beside her would have been ravishing.
'I saw something comical a few sunsets ago,' said Killconey.
Wulfgar closed his eyes against the glare and tried to forget the flies that were tormenting him.
'A hare attacked a dog – a spaniel, your spaniel, the one who had a go at you when you were in wire. I couldn't stop laughing. There was this great, overgrown coney practically hanging off the fool's arse. The man was waving a stick and bawling.'
'Did you find the leverets?' Wulfgar yawned.
'I had a peep but the man saw me and I ran for it.'
Returning to the Leighon Ponds they killed and ate some young rabbits in the rowans by Holwell Clitter.
'You'll be moving on,' said Wulfgar.
'Come dimpsey. I've got itchy feet. Why not join me, Wulfgar?'
'I don't feel the need. At the moment this place provides all I want. Perhaps in the winter.'
Moonsleek and her cubs were frolicking in the water by the island.
'Didn't you take a mate last winter?' Wulfgar said. Killconey nodded.
'The hounds got her. I found her in a ploughed field. They had cut off her pads and brush. Are those the only parts of us they eat? I don't understand.'
'Fitches will eat just the back legs of frogs,' Wulfgar said lamely.
Killconey followed the otters with his eyes as they swam into the reeds.
'The dog otter has wandered off,' Wulfgar said, happy to broach a new subject. 'Moonsleek was beginning to make life uncomfortable for him. Most she-animals seem to get like it when they've got young.'
Killconey curled up and hid his nose in his brush.
'Summer isn't a good time for otters,' he murmured. 'The hounds were on Big Two Rivers yesterday. I saw an otter take to the water.'
'And?'
'I don't know. Men come, we run, otters run, rabbits run – every animal runs.'
There was no more to be said.
|
A Black Fox Running
|
Brian Carter
|
[
"animal fiction"
] |
[
"foxes"
] |
CHANGES
|
The foxes settled contentedly into the flow of the season. It was still a time of plenty around Hay Tor. St Bartholomew's Day had passed and the barley at Sedge Brimley stood ready for harvest. The in-country was a patchwork of tawny and yellow fields cast haphazardly among the greens. On Dartmoor clusters of red berries hung from the rowans and the purple of bell-heather mingled with the rose and pinks of other heathers. Here and there the startling green of sphagnum clothed soft ground. The days were still hot but the nights had drawn in.
Now the wandering was good. Killconey had claimed a territory for himself on Hammel Down, but like Wulfgar he preferred to be alone. Once in a while the foxes' paths crossed and news was exchanged, though Stargrief came less often to the Leighon Ponds. Sometimes Wulfgar caught a glimpse of him on Black Hill, but he was difficult to approach. The abundance of insects meant he could feed close to his kennel and spend most of the night communing with the universe. To what end? Wulfgar thought.
Lately the vision of the pure white place had risen from many a twilight. He kept searching for Teg on the snowfields, but it was always the strange vixen running through the dream to greet him. Before anguish could set in he would recall Killconey's stoicism and clench his teeth and let the evening crowd his consciousness.
Since Jacko's death Scoble had become even more of a recluse. He came out at dusk and walked the high ground with his shotgun hoping to blast Wulfgar. Every so often he spent the night beside the Leighon water, which the animals called Dead Dog Pond to commemorate Jacko's drowning, and he left poison bait in the valley and tilled gins where the foxes ran.
But Wulfgar was hunting the border country that Scoble seldom visited unless there was farm work to be had. He laid up in the wood by Bagtor Mill and terrorised the duck who used the pool.
One of Moonsleek's cubs ate Scoble's bait and died painfully under the alders. The grieving otter bitch led her remaining young downstream the same night and made a new home on the River Bovey. Mordo and Skalla got at the cub's body before the trapper did his morning rounds, and by the time the man arrived the pelt was useless. The ravens climbed high out of gun range and beat up the valley.
Without a dog Scoble took fewer rabbits, and foxes who would not have stood a chance in Jacko's company slipped away unnoticed when danger threatened. Scoble brooded about it in his kitchen and drank scrumpy and became morose. He had to get another dog but there would never be another Jacko.
'Poor old boy,' he slurred. The cider loosened his teeth and his bowels, but his hatred remained firm-set.
One morning he found Meg the spaniel throttled in a wire among thick gorse close to Holwell. The dog had taken to running with the beagle bitch from Leighon and Richard Williams was used to her being out half the night.
Scoble's first impulse was to toss the animal in the pond but he had enough common sense to realise how stupid such an act would be. He couldn't afford to have every hand raised against him. So he took the carcass to Holwell Clitter and dumped it in one of the crevices. Then he smoked a Gold Flake and waited for his limbs to stop shaking. He had to be at Sedge Brimley after breakfast. Lugg's barley was ready to reap. He chuckled and tapped his fists together. If it wasn't sheer bloody poetry! The Yank had got Old Blackie out of a wire but he couldn't save his own dog! Nature could play funny tricks.
He stretched and felt the hair stiffen on the nape of his neck. There was no need to turn and look up, but he did. The dark fox stood on the edge of the tor by the Scots pine that grew out of the quarry face. For a long time Scoble and Wulfgar stared at each other while the hatred crackled between them. Eventually the trapper gave a cry and covered his face with his hands.
'You,' he sobbed. 'You. You.'
His palms were wet with snot and tears. He snuffled and rocked to and fro. Charlie the mule and Jacko would help him. O yes, you bastard. He could see the two skeletons galloping side by side out of some foggy autumn night, hunting the fox to its doom, their white, fleshless jaws pulping the backbone, sending the vermin down to hell.
When he peered through his fingers, Wulfgar had vanished. The pine tree shivered in the wind that was pushing big innocent clouds across the sky.
'He ought to do it for nothing,' said George Lugg. 'I bet that wadn the first sheep his bloody dog's killed.'
'You've only got the Yank's word on it,' his father said. 'It idn evidence.'
'Us saw the ewe, father,' George said. 'Yank was right. Foxes don't kill like that.'
'All right, all right,' Farmer Lugg said soothingly. 'But the lurcher's dead and all this yap won't bring our sheep back.'
'No, and it galls me. I reckon Scoble knew all along and was takin' us for a ride.'
'Now why would un do that?' said his father patiently.
'Well, the great cake idn sixteen ounces to start with. He's scrumpy-puggled. All he can think of is bloody foxes.'
'I expect it's his didakai blood,' said Yabsley, hitching up his overalls.
The Luggs waited to see if he was serious.
'I idn leg-pullin', boys. His old mum got put in the family way by a gypo. I suppose her did more than cross his palm with silver.'
'Her should've crossed her legs,' George said and Yabsley grinned.
'Leonard's late,' said Farmer Lugg. 'It idn like him.'
'He'll be out after foxes, maister,' Yabsley said.
'Us had better start,' Lugg sighed. 'Pity though. I wanted to put a new bit of corrugated on the linhay. That storm back along nearly ruined the hay.'
The barley field shone in the sun and Scoble could hear the harvesting machine as he tramped down the long meadow by the copse. Whirling wooden slats were pressing the stalks against the blade. The barley was grabbed, bound and shuffled out in a line at the side. Yabsley crooned to the horse and gently flicked the reins. The Luggs stood the sheaves in stooks and the farm collies chased the rabbits, which were bolting in all directions.
Scoble stopped and put a match to his cigarette, and he had a clear mental picture of Yabsley perched on the harvesting machine like an overweight Ben Hur. Endlessly taking the piss out of me and Jacko, he thought. Yabsley's never done nothing except flap his big lips.
He spun on his heel like a soldier and headed back up the slope to the lane. At dusk he would try the ponds again or maybe hang around Yarner Wells for the chicken thief. When I get Old Blackie I'll have un stuffed sure enough. He'll go to the Rock Inn and stand behind the bar among the whisky bottles. Caught by Leonard Scoble – that's better than havin' your name on the cenotaph. People looked at things in pubs, but cenotaphs were long forgotten except for one day a year.
Moonsleek slid into the water crying for her dead cub. Three small wet heads bobbed along with the current behind her. Romany shook the eel and dropped it at his feet.
'She doesn't come any more when I call,' he said. 'She carries an emptiness only the lost cub can fill.'
'I'm sorry, Romany,' said Wulfgar. 'The trapper has been busy lately with his snares and gins and poison rabbit!'
'We gave you the lurcher and Man took our cub. You foxes haven't brought us much luck.'
Wulfgar felt they had strayed into areas where words were redundant. Romany lowered his eyes, placed a paw on the eel and began to feed.
|
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