Trail's End

by E. L. Ripley

  “What?” Tom called back absently.

  “That Asher was going to kill Thaddeus?” she asked, appalled. Tom nodded, and she stepped back, covering her mouth with both hands.

  The shapes of the Quakers blurred together against the burning house, and their voices were momentarily covered by a rumble from the sky. Tom felt a prickle and looked down to see the hairs on his arms standing up. His throat was still full of rocks, and there was a curious emptiness where his stomach was supposed to be. He felt light on his feet in a way that he didn’t fully understand.

  The Quakers had quieted at the distant thunder, and for a moment there was just the crackling of the blaze.

  Tom walked past Mary, beginning to push his way through the crowd.

  These people could probably have put out the fire out if they really wanted to. Just like they could’ve stopped that hanging. Just like Tom could’ve done something other than pull that trigger.

  Phillip and others were there with Thaddeus, who stared at the flames in horror. Horror at his brush with death? Or horror at the loss of his home? Horror at what had happened? Horror because there was probably a lot of money in that house, now going up in smoke?

  Thaddeus had seen the kid, dead on his floor. He’d told his people what had happened.

  They had questions for Tom, but Tom wasn’t inclined to answer.

  “Tom,” Phillip said, hurrying toward him.

  “Find me some rope,” Tom replied, still pushing forward.

  Phillip’s dazed look grew only more puzzled. “What for?”

  “A hanging.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Thunder crashed in the dry, heavy air, shutting out whatever Phillip had intended to say. Tom pushed him aside and went to Thaddeus, taking a handful of his shirt and pulling him close.

  The old man tried to form words, but Tom didn’t let him. He didn’t have to. Thaddeus was nothing if not predictable.

  “Why? Why did the kid want to kill you?” Tom said, raising his voice enough that everyone could hear. “Why would anyone want to kill their own father?”

  Thaddeus just spluttered, uncomprehending.

  “You didn’t see the resemblance?” Tom demanded, pointing at the burning house. “Because Mrs. Washburn did. What was her name? The woman you hanged?”

  “Tom,” the old Quaker began, and Tom rammed his knee into Thaddeus’ groin.

  Thaddeus crumpled to the ground with a hoarse gasp, and a cry of alarm went up from the Quakers.

  “I didn’t ask what my name was,” Tom said, standing over the old man. “I asked about her. Hell, do you even remember?”

  Thaddeus hadn’t shot the kid. Tom had done that.

  “Tom!” Phillip was there, but Tom halted him in his tracks with a look. The big man hesitated, swallowing.

  “What was her name?”

  Thaddeus groaned on the ground as the Quakers looked on in horror. They were beginning to edge backward, away from the two of them.

  Only Phillip stayed where he was.

  “Do you know?” Tom asked him calmly.

  “For heaven’s sake, Tom!” Phillip cast about, mortified, but he stood alone. The other Quakers just looked on.

  “It was Vera! Vera Holmes,” a woman shouted, horrified.

  “Holmes,” Tom repeated.

  The body of Ashlyn Holmes was probably nothing but a charred skeleton now. He could see her lying in the back of the wagon they’d shared, with her nose in that book.

  “But, Tom . . . ,” Phillip said desperately, taking a step closer.

  “What?” Tom snarled, turning his gaze on the Quakers, who shrank back. “She had the devil in her?” His fingers closed into fists. “I don’t think so.”

  Thaddeus was trying to inch away, but Tom hadn’t forgotten him.

  “What did you do when you found out she’d given birth to your child?” he asked. “Offer her some money? Try to send her away? She wouldn’t take it, would she?”

  The faces of the Quakers gave it all away. They were shocked and appalled, yes—but the women, at least, they weren’t nearly shocked enough. This wasn’t some revelation to them. The only surprise was in hearing it spoken aloud.

  “What?” Tom pressed, staring down at the man on the ground. “What stopped her? Did she decide it was time to end it? She wanted to be the last one. You were in charge, and you could take advantage of anyone you wanted. She wanted it to stop, because even if she kept her mouth shut and went away, it would be someone else next. She wanted to talk, and you couldn’t let her.”

  Mary was there, standing like a statue, clutching her sleeves with a look of simple terror on her face.

  Thaddeus tried to protest, but Tom wasn’t having it.

  “So you called her a witch so no man would believe what she said. If there were any men too blind to see, but I suppose I can believe that. I was blind too. And then you hanged her so any other girl would know just what would happen if she tried to speak up. You people don’t hate outlaws, but you hate witches. The problem is that outlaws are real.”

  A greater silence had fallen over Friendly Field.

  Thaddeus lay there. He didn’t try to deny it; the light of the fire showed Tom’s face clearly. The old man was a fool, but he wasn’t blind. The truth was finally out, and nothing could put it away again.

  “Saul and Jeremiah let you do it. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t stop it. Maybe because you had the purse strings for the whole village, maybe because they couldn’t be bothered. Or maybe you weren’t quite so soft back then.”

  “Tom . . . ,” Phillip said, and there was a hint of something like a warning in his voice, but what was he going to do? He had no gun. None of them did.

  “The only thing I can’t figure,” Tom went on, “is why no one put a knife in you sooner. Your own daughter wanted to kill you, and I don’t blame her. And when it comes to killing, I’m a lot better at it than she was. So if you want to admit what you did, now’s as good a time as any. If you want to get that burden off your soul.”

  But the old man just stared at him, face white but dripping sweat. He wasn’t speaking because he couldn’t. He’d probably managed to fool himself, the way so many people did, that he wasn’t really in the wrong.

  There were children watching, but Tom Calvert wasn’t superstitious. Or sentimental.

  He put his boot on Thaddeus’ throat and pressed down.

  “Tom, stop!”

  Phillip grabbed him, and Tom shoved him off. The other man hit him from behind, tackling him to the grass. Tom wasn’t so much startled as he was disinterested. It shouldn’t have surprised him that the Quakers might object, but that simply wasn’t where his mind had been.

  Now it was.

  What did Phillip want? To save Thaddeus?

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  Phillip didn’t know what to do. What could he do? Arrest Tom? Give him a beating?

  A sermon?

  Tom pushed him off and rolled onto his back, but Phillip was right there at once, holding him down. He was a big man and strong. He was also afraid.

  “Tom, this isn’t right,” he said.

  The sky flashed in the distance.

  Tom tasted copper; he’d bitten his tongue. He politely turned to spit out the blood, then looked up at Phillip.

  “No shit,” he snarled, and struck inside Phillip’s elbow, weakening his grip. He planted his good foot on Phillip’s chest and kicked him off, sending the other man staggering back, arms flailing. Phillip stumbled into the grass, and Tom rose, wiping his mouth.

  Phillip picked himself up, a strange combination of conviction and uncertainty on his face. He didn’t know what he was going to do, only what he wasn’t, and that was to let Tom murder Friendly Field’s last elder.

  Tom advanced on him, and the larger man in
itially started to shrink back—then he appeared to remember he was a head taller than Tom and easily twice as strong. And when he saw that, there was a look of surprise, as though it didn’t make sense that a weak, battered cripple would do such a thing.

  But Tom didn’t really think of himself as a cripple anymore. His limp slowed him down, sure enough, but he’d always been patient in cards, if not in other things. The night was young.

  “You want to protect him?” he asked.

  “We can’t have murder here,” Phillip replied, for lack of anything better.

  Tom glanced at the burning house. “Too late. Even if you didn’t know, you know now. And you want protect him. Not the women he’s hurt. Him.”

  Phillip would’ve replied to that, but Tom had reached him, and he wasn’t interested in discourse. The big man tried to protect his face, but Tom drove his fist into his belly, doubling him over. He struck him in the temple, sending him reeling. Phillip had the presence of mind to lunge forward, but Tom wasn’t about to be tackled again. He planted his foot and caught Phillip trying to hit him low. Tom used his knee again, this time on Phillip’s face and this time without holding anything back.

  The Quaker reeled back, a fountain of blood erupting from his shattered nose. Eyes out of focus, he fell to his knees, blood streaming down his face to soak into his white shirt.

  Tom caught him by the collar and raised his fist, but his eyes fell on Phillip’s wife.

  She had the kids with her.

  He hesitated, teeth grinding.

  “They shouldn’t be out of bed,” he said finally, and in the perfect stillness the words carried.

  Mrs. Lester’s mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  Tom put his palm on Phillip’s face and pushed the big man over, turning away.

  Thaddeus, with his age and his belly, was no faster than Tom and his limp, but he’d made good time. He was quite a ways off, just a pitiful, shuffling figure in the night, heading for the stables.

  “Go home,” Tom said to the Quakers. “Hide under the covers. Pretend you don’t see or hear anything. That’s what you’re good at.”

  He limped past them, after Thaddeus.

  The stirrings in the clouds were more frequent, and a breeze had risen, just enough to make the air swirl with embers from the house.

  Tom spat blood and didn’t look back, his eyes locked on the figure ahead. He wouldn’t leave the kid’s work half-finished.

  He’d wondered, back on the trail, what it had been when she would get that look on her face and stare into space. He’d always figured it was the past she was looking at; after all, someone so young wouldn’t be making their own way if everything behind them was all perfect. It wasn’t what she’d come from, though—that wasn’t what she’d seen.

  This was what she’d seen.

  She’d pressed him to teach her to fight and nearly gotten herself killed in her eagerness to test her skills. She hadn’t been a fool, just young.

  Tom didn’t have that excuse.

  He stopped and looked back at Mary; she was a few paces behind him, a good distance from the crowd of gawking Quakers. Like Phillip, she didn’t know what to say or what to do.

  So she stood there and looked at him in the dark. Lightning crackled in the sky, and nobody cared. No one could worry about a gathering storm when there was already one in their midst.

  Tom wiped his eyes, and it took everything he had to unclench his jaw and form words.

  “The kid only wanted one thing,” he bit out.

  It was too dark; he couldn’t see her face. In the distance, Thaddeus hauled open the stable doors and vanished inside.

  Mary didn’t follow Tom. The wind was blowing harder now, stirring up dust from the fields. It stung Tom’s eyes, but he didn’t stop.

  He limped to the doors, and he heard the hoofbeats inside.

  Thaddeus burst into the open on the back of a brown mare, and Tom caught him by the belt and dragged him out of the saddle. The old man crashed to the ground, and Tom was thrown from his feet. He didn’t feel his landing, and the darkness that flooded his eyes wasn’t the Idaho night. There was lightning crackling above, and stars swam in front of him.

  He tried to sit up, but the burning imprint of where the horse had kicked him put him back on the grass. The mare was already gone, and Thaddeus was there beside him, groaning.

  Tom started to laugh, but the pain was too much, and he just wheezed.

  This had to be more moving around than Thaddeus had done in years. His arm was broken, and probably some ribs as well, but the old man wanted to live. He was trying to get up.

  Caught between a laugh and something else, Tom rolled onto his front. He couldn’t remember everything from the trail with the kid, thanks to the fever. But he remembered the night Asher had faced down the Fulton brothers at the card table. When it went bad, Tom had intervened. He’d climbed out of the wagon and fallen to the snow, very much a cripple at the time.

  But he’d picked himself up and killed four men to keep the kid safe.

  He never would have believed there could be anything worse than that bottomless black rage that had moved him to pull that trigger, but there was. There was one thing: that same rage, but instead of directed at a man who’d done him wrong, now he had it pointed at himself. Thaddeus dragged himself into the stable, and Tom staggered after him.

  The old Quaker looked back, still trying to crawl away.

  A coil of rope hung on the wall, and Tom looked from it to Thaddeus.

  “Did you think you’d never have to settle up?” he asked.

  It was a foolish question, though. Of course Thaddeus had. The man could delude himself into anything. He could tell himself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and then he would believe it. He wasn’t to blame; the devil was.

  Tom hadn’t sensed the guilt in him because there was none. It had always been someone else’s fault.

  Not Tom, though. Tom’s mistakes were his own, and he was learning to keep them close, because if he didn’t, he had a tendency to forget.

  “Forgiveness,” the old man choked out desperately. “We are taught to forgive in the face of repentance.”

  “You can twist that book to suit anything,” Tom told him tiredly. “Something tells me repentance wouldn’t stick.”

  “Freedom is only found in forgiveness,” Thaddeus said desperately.

  “Oh, I forgive you,” Tom wheezed, lifting the rope from its hook. “Seems like the kid couldn’t, though. It’s her business I’m here on, not mine.”

  He prepared to cast the rope over one of the beams, but something on Thaddeus’ face made him look over his shoulder.

  For the second time that night, there was a blade coming toward him and no time to get out of the way. Tom didn’t have his derringer this time.

  He raised his hands to protect himself, and hot blood dotted his face. He fell back against the wall, his eyes taking in Phillip and the sickle, its point buried in the wood. Blood dripped from it.

  Severed pieces of rope fell, and blood streamed freely from his right hand.

  A moment ago, Phillip had been committed to action. He’d swung that sickle at Tom’s back like he meant it. Maybe it was the sight of the blood, or what was left of Tom’s hand, but something had changed.

  Tom leaned against the wall, feeling the warmth from the blood spread along his arm, trying to breathe with his injured ribs, watching the other man just stand there. It was a sad sight: Phillip with his muscles and his bloody face looking so lost.

  Without breath, with his hand like this—Tom didn’t know that there was anything he could’ve done, but Phillip didn’t make a move.

  Maybe that was what made them different. Tom could draw blood without batting an eyelid. Phillip couldn’t.

  A wave of dizziness came over Tom, and that just made him angry
. He straightened up, keeping his eyes locked on Phillip’s.

  “You just want things to stay the same,” he said.

  The big man swallowed, still in a daze. “We—,” he began.

  “They can’t,” Tom snarled, and that woke Phillip up. Tom didn’t care how hurt he was, or how strong Phillip was, or what any of these Quakers wanted.

  “Tom—,” the other man tried to say as Tom looked down at the sad remains of his hand.

  “Phillip,” Tom interrupted, surprised at how calm his voice sounded, “I’m going to count. If you’re still here when I get to three, your kids are going to grow up without their father.”

  There it was, just for a second, as though he’d forgotten the beating he’d gotten a minute ago. A look of skepticism on Phillip’s face, but that didn’t linger when Tom looked up. He didn’t have to count; Phillip glanced past him at Thaddeus, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, and then turned his back.

  Tom watched him go, and he heard the door bounce from the jamb behind him. Thaddeus had gone out the rear door.

  Tom had told himself that it was his trigger finger that had gotten him into trouble. Now that finger and a couple more were lying on the floor of a stable in Idaho.

  His rope was all cut up and bloody; it wouldn’t be hanging anyone, and he couldn’t tie a noose with one hand.

  Tom snorted and looked toward the back door, still swinging.

  The old man could run. They would see who tired out first.

  Tom reached up to grip the handle of the sickle with his left hand and wrenched it free of the wood.

  The dust and the wind surrounded him as he emerged into the night. Thaddeus was ahead, stumbling into the fields, tripping and staggering among the potatoes.

  He kept trying; no one could deny that. But Tom knew better than most that there were things that couldn’t be escaped, and tonight he was one of them.

  He walked among the plants, and Thaddeus fell, but kept scrambling until he couldn’t anymore. He turned to look back, trying to find the breath to speak up over the howling wind.

  “Stop,” he called out. “Stop!”

  Tom stood over him. They were a long way from the village, deep in the fields, and no one would interfere now.