19
The next morning, Jason woke to
horrible news: Ward was dead. He had passed during the night,
Morelli had told Jenny, who was up and awake to answer the door
when he dropped by. Morelli seemed upset, as did Jenny, but Jason,
while he shed a silent tear or two, thanked God that at least Ward
hadn’t suffered at the end. He thanked Him for Ward’s life, and he
thanked Him for Ward’s friendship, and for Ward’s company, even
though it had been short-lived.
And then he prayed that God would let
Davis live, so that he might have the pleasure of executing
him.
He had never felt like this before, not
even when his father passed, and while he couldn’t change the way
he felt, he wondered that he, in fact, did feel that
way.
When he got to the office, Morelli and
Abe had already moved Davis over to the jail, and locked the
patient safely in a cell. Abe, after saying how sorry he was about
Ward’s demise, said the doc had warned him that Davis wouldn’t
regain consciousness for at least two hours or so, which was fine
with Jason. The less time he had to spend in the presence of
Davis’s conscious mind, the better.
He had come to the conclusion that the
man—if he was a man at all—was evil incarnate.
After Abe left, Jason went to the back
room and wept again, crying for Ward, for himself, for Jenny, and
for the town, but mostly for Ward. And then he pulled himself back
together, and vowed this would be the last time he would ever cry
for Ward. The very last time.
But Davis was going to pay, all right,
and pay with his own life if Jason had any say in it. Briefly, he
wished he could make him suffer, then booted the thought from his
mind. Vengeance wasn’t his to parcel out. That belonged to a higher
power.
One whom he fervently hoped was keeping
His eye on the situation.
Morelli’s second stop of the morning
was at the mercantile, where he found the whole family in good
spirits. Baby Sarah was doing wondrously well, and Solomon and
Rachael were well aware of it. Morelli was pleased that what he’d
wished for had come to pass. Time had healed
the infant, time and faith and love all mixed together. He knew he
certainly hadn’t had anything to do with it.
He prayed with the Cohens (although he
refrained from crossing himself until he got outside, in deference
to their beliefs), and while he told them their daughter wasn’t out
of the woods yet, she was well on her way.
The Cohens were delighted, naturally,
and offered Morelli a glass of the sweet wine they favored, which
he accepted. They weren’t aware of it, but he wasn’t looking
forward to his next call. He’d be going out to the wagons to check
on Frank Saulk’s poor, spine-peppered back. He didn’t have much
hope for a positive outcome.
At last, he bid good-bye to the Cohens,
went outside, crossed himself, and set out at a brisk clip, through
the gates.
He found the Saulks’ wagon surrounded
by weeping women and dry-eyed men, doing their best to comfort
their wives. The Saulks’ children were beneath the wagon,
comforting each other, and he found Eliza Saulk in the wagon,
sitting quiet and pale beside her husband’s body.
“Eliza?” he said softly, leaning into
the back of the wagon to get a better look at Frank. Even from this
distance, he could tell Saulk was dead. For one thing there was the
odor, but Frank had smelt of death long before he died. No, it was
the pallor of the body, the utter and compete stillness of it. “May
I come in?”
She nodded in the
affirmative.
He climbed up and officially made
certain that Frank had passed—during the night, he thought—then
covered the head with a sheet and turned toward the new
widow.
“Eliza?” he said again. When she didn’t
reply, he ploughed ahead. “Would you like him to be buried here in
Fury, or out along the trail?”
“Here.” The word was no louder than a
mouse’s squeak.
“Shall I take care of the details for
you?”
She nodded.
He sighed. “All right. Shortly,
there’ll be someone along to take his body to the undertakers, all
right?”
She nodded again.
“You think you’ll be all right, or
would you like me to send one of the town women out to sit with you
and help with the children?”
“I’ll be fine.” She said it without
inflection or emotion or any kind, as if the living soul of her had
died along with her husband, and all that was left was a blankly
animated husk. Morelli had seen grief before, and many kinds, but
nothing like this.
He excused himself and crawled down out
of the Conestoga, telling Riley Havens (who had just joined the
crowd) of his plans.
“Thanks, Doctor Morelli,” Riley said.
They had moved a little way off from the others. “I know you done
the best you could for ol’ Frank.”
“Yes,” said Morelli, shaking his head.
“I just wish it could have been more. Enough to save him, at
least.”
Riley put a comforting hand on his
shoulder. It was something that the doctor wasn’t accustomed to,
especially from anyone except his wife, and it startled him.
Reflexively, he moved away.
“Didn’t mean to . . . Well, I’m sorry,
too,” Riley said.
“Thank you. Well, I’d best be getting
on with my errands for the morning.” He tipped his hat. “Good
morning, sir.”
He walked off, toward the city
gate.
Riley watched him go around the corner
of the gate and disappear, and then he walked back toward the
Saulks’ wagon. He said his “sorries” to Eliza and told her that
he’d talked to the doctor, and then he left her. He doubted that
she’d heard a word he’d said, anyway. Grief had a way of making
people deaf, dumb, and blind, he’d learned, and Eliza was surely
stricken. He sure felt bad for those kids, too, having to grow up
without a pa. Or maybe not. Eliza was not a great beauty, but she
was comely enough. Maybe she could attract another man who wouldn’t
mind raising a dead man’s children.
Oh, well. It wasn’t his place to worry
about that. His job, he reminded himself, his only job, was to get these people back to Kansas City
and civilization. If some of them decided to drop out (as had
Judith Strong, the dressmaker, and Father Micah), that was none of
his nevermind.
Actually, he was about to lose more
folks than he had counted on. The Reverend Fletcher Bean had come
to the decision that he was leaving the West in haste, and that the
people of Fury needed him. The Grimms, owner of the dog Hannibal
and parents of three children, had also decided to stay, provided
they could find a place to set up their bakery. And if they
couldn’t, they were surely going to leave Hannibal behind. He was
proving too costly to feed with their limited means. And Bill
Crachit had come to the decision that at sixteen, he wasn’t up to
making the full journey by himself. He’d rather stay on in Fury for
a year or two, maybe find work on a farm or a ranch, and then go on
back East once he’d saved up some cash and could grow a full
beard.
Riley wasn’t aware of any of this yet.
In fact, only some of the people had made up their minds
completely. But chances were that he would lose a good part of his
wagon train before he left the little settlement of Fury
behind.
Oblivious, Riley walked up ahead to his
wagon, then past it and the gates to check his team. They were
eating well and seemed content, as did his saddle horse. Fury had
been good to the wagon train, and they were about to be good to
Fury.
Once again, Ezra Welk started his day
at the saloon. The town’s beer and whiskey drinkers had him pretty
much up to date on the town’s recent goings-on (whether they knew
it or not), leaving him continually surprised at the activity level
in Fury.
Especially when he had nothing to do
with it.
Usually, he was the one responsible for
any ruckus, and this was a change of pace for him. He was actually
finding it . . . pleasant. He kept one eye peeled in the direction
of the marshal’s office. The boy marshal had ridden out before the
dawn broke to the eastern horizon the day before, theoretically
chasing after Sampson Davis. At least, in theory. Davis had
supposedly shot up the deputy during the night, probably killing
him. Anyway, that’s what the woman who ran the boardinghouse had
blathered on and on about during an otherwise decent breakfast.
Hell. They should have done what had first come to Welk’s mind—just
taken Davis out and plugged him, the ugly bastard.
But then, nobody had asked him, had
they?
He sniffed derisively. Well, at least
it was entertaining. Davis had already killed that lanky deputy,
taking him off Welk’s “possibilities” list. But to look on the
bright side—as his mother always used to say before sending him out
to the woodshed to wait for another one of his father’s
beatings—they’d probably all end up killing each other,
anyway.
He’d already decided to stick around
for the finish.
The Reverend Milcher picked up his
order from Salmon Kendall’s print shop, carried it home, unwrapped
it, and spread the flyers out on one of the pew benches. The blue
paper was just as fine as Salmon had promised it would be, and the
printing, urging people to visit his church on Sunday, was perfect.
Not one word misspelled! It had taken all the change he could
scrape together, but he looked on it as an investment—an investment
in himself, and an investment in the good people of
Fury.
After scraping the papers back
together, he first stood right outside the church’s front door,
handing out flyers and shaking hands with everyone who passed. He
kept his face and demeanor affable, and found it was true—you
did get more flies with honey than with
vinegar!
After a bit, he moved on down the
street and stood in front of the café, where he glad-handed every
passerby, handing out fliers and inviting them to Sunday’s service.
Everyone was so nice! Why, it was positively refreshing! He
reminded himself to pay more attention to the cat. After all, she
had given him the idea, bless her!
It was at about the time that he handed
out the last flier that he noticed the sky. It was darker than it
should have been, filled with black and dark grey clouds where
before there had been only white wisps. A storm was coming, and
coming soon.
The wind was already whipping papers
and bits of detritus along the street. Several of his own fliers
passed him by. He put a hand atop his head to hold down his hat,
then strode back up the street on his long, thin, black-panted
legs, to the church.
“Lavinia?” he called as he climbed the
stairs. “Storm’s coming in again!”
Before the weather turned bad, Deputy
U.S. Marshall Abraham Todd had set out to the north, to visit the
Mortons and make his plea. He was as slicked up as it was possible
to get in Fury, and he had even taken the time to groom his blue
roan to a spit shine. He imagined, as he followed the path that his
Electa had made going to and from the school five days a week, that
he fairly glittered in the sun. At least he hoped he did. He wanted
all the help he could get with Electa’s folks.
He reached the ranch in under an hour.
It lay spread out before him, cupped in a wide valley, with two big
houses and one slightly smaller, three barns, plenty of corrals,
and the sounds and smells of cattle and hogs and horses and freshly
mown hay.
He instantly felt right at
home.
He dismounted in front of the house
Electa had told him belonged to her folks, tied his horse to the
rail, and climbed up the steps. He stood there a moment, shifting
from boot to boot, tugging at his vest, and nervously clearing his
throat before he raised his knuckles to rap at the
door.
It was immediately answered by a small,
attractive, grey-haired woman, who smiled at him and said,
“Yes?”
“Would you be the Mrs. Morton who’s
Electa Morton’s mother?” he asked. He could barely get the words
out, and for a second, he thought he was going to choke on his own
tongue.
But she seemed not to notice his
discomfort, and replied, “I am, indeed. And you must be Marshal
Abraham Todd, from Prescott.”
He felt his head nod. “Yes’m, that’s
me. I wonder, could I speak to you and Mr. Morton? About
Electa?”
She opened the door wider and stepped
back. “Do come inside, son.”
Nobody had called him “son” since
Hector was a pup, and he sort of liked it. He went inside and
followed her down a wide hallway, then turned to the right, into a
large parlor. There sat (he supposed, at any rate) Mr. Morton,
reading a newspaper.
Mrs. Morton said, “He’s here,
dear.”
The paper lowered, and he got his first
glimpse of Electa’s father: a rugged man, serious in spirit and
probably honest as the day was long, with greywhite hair and a long
beard to match. He was dressed in a farmer’s togs, overalls and a
plaid shirt, and wore the farmer’s badge—a tan line straight across
his forehead, where his hatband stopped.
The hat itself hung neatly on a peg
beside the doorway he’d just come through. Which served to remind
Abe that he was still wearing his. Belatedly, he swept it off his
head, then ran his fingers through his hair to put it back into
order.
Mr. Morton had apparently been sizing
him up, too, because in lieu of “hello,” he said, “Well, you look
the part anyway, young man.”
Young man? Nobody had called him that,
either, not in a year of Sundays! He said,
“Sir?”
Morton swept his hand toward a side
chair. “Rest your bones, boy. I understand that you want to talk to
me about Electa.”
Abe collapsed into the chair more than
he sat in it, and said, “Yessir. First off, I want you to know that
I’m a deputy U.S. marshal, and I make good money, enough to support
us both and then some. Got some money saved, too, up in the
Prescott Bank. Got near about four thousand dollars, by my
reckoning. My folks came from Massachusetts and their folks came
from England, and they moved to California when it was still under
Spanish control. That’s when they had me. I grew up on stories
about Zorro and Joaquin Murrieta and the like, cause my pa worked
as a manager on a big hacienda for several years.”
He stopped to catch his breath, and
when he did, Morton asked the big question: “And how do you feel
about Electa? Do you love her? Promise to take care of her come
drought or famine, hell or high water?”
Abe swallowed hard. He said, “Mr.
Morton, I love your daughter with all my heart, and the rest of me,
too. I’d die for her, but I’d rather live with her as man and wife.
With your permission, of course, sir.”
There. He’d said it. Filled with relief
as well as a sickening sense of dread, he leaned back in the chair,
and let out a light-headed sigh.
For the first time, Morton smiled. He
leaned forward in his chair and said, “You’ll do fine,
son.”
Abe passed out.
When he came to, it was to Mrs. Morton
pressing a damp cloth to his head and soothing him with her voice.
He couldn’t make out what she was saying, yet, but it sounded nice.
And then, remembering why he’d ridden out here in the first place,
he sat bolt upright, startling Mrs. Morton as well as
himself.
“Did he say yes?” he said, not sure
what was dream and what was reality.
Mrs. Morton smiled softly. “Yes,
Abraham, he said yes. Would you like a glass of
water?”
Abe nodded. “Yes ma’am,
please.”
She disappeared in the direction of
what he assumed was the kitchen, and returned with a tall glass of
water, complete with—ice?
He stared at it. The glass was
cold.
“We bring it down from the high
mountains,” she explained, as if anyone could do it. “And we store
it in a cellar under the house. I understand that Miss Krimp, in
town, has much the same arrangement.”
Abe wouldn’t know, but he nodded and
muttered, “If you say so, ma’am.” He seemed to have lost all his
sense of authority the second he stepped over the Mortons’
threshold. This was no way for a Deputy U.S. Marshal—one with
twenty years of experience and over seventy-five arrests to his
credit, no less—to behave!
He stood up, his hat still in his
hands. “I’d best be getting back to town, if that’s all right with
you, ma’am.”
She laughed. “Don’t call me ma’am, son.
You can call me Mother Morton if your mother is still living, or
just Mother if she’s passed.”
Abe managed a smile. “Mother Morton,
then.”
“Excellent! Now, that wasn’t so hard,
was it?”
Grinning, he shook his head. “No,
ma’am, not hard at all. A real pleasure, in fact.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Come
along with me, then, Abraham,” she said, ushering him away from the
front door and deeper into the house, toward the cellar steps. “I
want to send a little something along to Electa with
you.”