Brokken Knight

by Lynda J. Cox

  “Not bad man.” Ethan agreed and glanced at the candy-maker with a wide grin.

  “Ethan’s been tellin’ me all about the train ride he and his pa had to get here.” Yancy patted the boy’s crown. “Get him started and he’s downright talkative. Seen any chickens here, Button?”

  “Chickens?” Abigail turned her gaze to Ethan with the boy’s mischievous giggle.

  Ethan threw his head back, his nose pointing to the roof of the barn, and twisted his shoulders back and forth in a sashaying motion. “Mean ladies chickens.”

  In an instant, Abigail knew to whom the child referred—the two women who had gotten off the train with Mathew and proceeded to demand if Brokken had a boarding house. A chuckle broke from her. They had indeed walked like puffed-up hens.

  Ethan’s amusement faded. “Mean ladies said bad things. Little girl hungry.”

  Abigail turned to Yancy. McCoury lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Apparently, Ethan hadn’t elaborated on the “bad things” said or who the little girl was. The candy-maker looked across the improvised dance floor to the opened doors at the rear of the barn. He leaned his elbows onto his knees. “Now what is that little weasel up to?”

  She followed his line of sight. Robbie stood just inside the door engaged in an animated conversation with Pastor Grisson. A sigh broke from her. “Mr. McCoury, be polite, please. There are small pitchers here with very big ears.”

  “I am being polite.” He pushed himself to his feet with Mathew’s return. “Doc, I’ll leave your wife and son in your care. I have a rodent problem to deal with.”

  “The sheriff promised me it’s both safe and legal.” Mathew handed a cup of Victoria’s punch to Abigail. “What was that about? Mr...I mean Yank’s comment about a rodent problem?”

  “That.” Abigail inclined her head toward Robbie. She sipped the punch and immediately choked and coughed. “Vic wasn’t totally honest with you. Did you try this?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Mathew sat on the other side of Ethan. “Looks like your friend is trying to cut off Mr. Roden.”

  The lanterns strung around the barn revealed Robbie marching in a determined manner toward Abigail. Pastor Grisson and his wife, Trudy, followed in Robbie’s wake. The small entourage was oblivious to McCoury’s large form advancing in a similar resolute manner toward them. On the periphery of the dance floor, the two hens stood with arms crossed. Victoria emerged from behind her small booth and trotted toward her parents.

  “This can’t be good,” Abigail said. Victoria’s sense of when serious trouble was brewing was seldom wrong. Most of the town’s folk knew of the sheriff’s ability to sniff out trouble and Victoria’s haste to reach her parents didn’t go unnoticed. As surely as a pebble tossed into a pond created ever-widening ripples, all activity gradually came to a halt, flowing away from Brokken’s sheriff.

  Grisson’s demand for McCoury to step aside carried to Abigail in the uncanny silence. Mathew rose and looked down at her. “Why do I have the sinking feeling this involves me?” he whispered.

  Abigail came to her feet, hesitated, and turned to Ethan. “Stay here, please. We won’t leave your sight, but please stay here.”

  Ethan nodded. The flickering lantern light only accentuated how wide his eyes were with an undisguised fear. She paused long enough to brush her hand across his head. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

  She spun around and trotted a few steps to join Mathew. Without a word, she slipped her hand into his, and squeezed his fingers. He didn’t visibly acknowledge her support, but he returned the gesture.

  “Father, if this showdown is because of something Robbie said, you know more than half of what he ever says isn’t true.” A sharp edge knifed through Victoria’s voice.

  “Stay out this, Victoria.”

  Victoria. The only time Grisson used the formal form of her name, he was either angry or disappointed with his daughter. Abigail’s throat constricted.

  The small party halted a few feet from Abigail and Mathew. Grisson spent what felt to be an eternity to glare at Mathew. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mathew’s shoulders tighten and his chin lift, as if he was bracing himself. Abigail bit the inside of her cheek to keep a smile curtailed. If Pastor Grisson was waiting for Mathew to back down, he was going to have a very long wait.

  Grisson gave ground first. His gaze slid over to Abigail. “I said when this man wanted to marry by proxy it was a mistake.”

  “I told you it was my mistake to make, if it proved to be.” Abigail’s courage bolstered when Mathew squeezed her hand, again. “You’re my pastor, not my father. Not my husband.”

  “I cannot and will not marry you to this liar.”

  A collective, hissing gasp sounded in the wake of Grisson’s proclamation. Mathew pulled his hand free. He halved the distance to the preacher with one, long stride. His very posture was as rigid as if he were carved of marble. “Sir, you might be a man of the cloth, but no one impugns my honor.”

  “Didn’t you tell Abigail in your letter that you fought for the Confederacy?” Robbie threw the words out as a challenge. “But those ladies over there heard you tell a good Southern officer you didn’t fight for Jefferson Davis.”

  Robbie stood just behind Pastor Grisson, wearing a grin that turned Abigail’s stomach. Yank was right. Robbie was a weasel. Unless Victoria told Robbie what was in the letter Mathew sent, the only other way the weasel could have known was if he read Mathew’s letter before he delivered it to Victoria and then to Pastor Grisson. There wasn’t a chance Victoria would have shared any of that information with Robbie, and she doubted Pastor Grisson would have, either.

  The silence that filled the barn pressed against Abigail’s chest, slamming in her ears, trying to crush her.

  “I served the Confederacy as best I could as a physician.” Mathew as much as spat the words in Robbie’s direction. “I didn’t fight for Jeff Davis or anyone else. I took an oath to do no harm, so I never picked up a weapon to take another life.”

  “I sure didn’t fight for Mr. Lincoln,” Yancy joined in. He glanced at Abigail and then at Mathew. “I did take up arms to preserve the Union. As the Reb here pointed out, rodent—” He placed a great amount of emphasis on the manner he mispronounced Robbie’s sur name. “—there is quite a difference. Now, why don’t you go crawl back into your hole and let the rest of us enjoy what’s left of this evening?”

  Yancy looked over his shoulder in Ethan’s direction. Mathew visibly relaxed, draped an arm around Abigail’s shoulders, and together they walked back to his son. Mathew released her long enough to scoop him into his arms.

  “How many men did you kill, Knight, with your saws and knives?” Robbie shouted the question across the floor. “Those were weapons enough, weren’t they?”

  Chapter Ten

  Abigail’s stomach roiled with the vitriol in Robbie’s voice. As with every half-truth and lie she ever heard him utter, there was the tiniest grain of truth to the words. Mathew would have worked on men who died from battle wounds.

  “How many, Knight?” Robbie asked again.

  Every vestige of color drained from Mathew’s face. He stiffened with the impact of Robbie’s words against his back and a muscle ticked in his clenched jaw. He shifted Ethan in his arms, as if to hand him to Abigail.

  Before he could tell her to take the boy, she gripped his lower arm. “No, Mathew. He isn’t worth listening to. Come home with me.”

  He inclined his head down to her in degrees. The muscle in the plane of his jaw twitched stronger. In the stunned silence that still held, the sound of his grinding teeth seemed to echo in the sudden stifling air of the barn. Abigail repeated in little more than a whisper, “Come home with me.”

  Ethan dropped his head onto his father’s shoulder, adding his own, “Go home. I tired.”

  Some of the rigidity left Mathew’s frame, though none of his color had returned. He acquiesced with a slight nod and they left the barn.

  The dull thud of their footsteps
into the dusty earth of Main Street vibrated into Abigail as mournful as a funeral dirge. It seemed even the rain frogs had fallen silent for this angry march. The freshly cut pine boards of the façade of the butcher shop glowed in the darkness, appearing like the never-ending pine boxes during the agony of that war.

  A challenging voice cut through the darkness. “You killed so many sawing arms and legs off that you lost track of how many died?”

  Abigail risked a look over her shoulder. Robbie followed them, as did Victoria, and what appeared to be half the town. Victoria she could understand and that her friend followed Robbie frightened Abigail. The sheriff still anticipated some sort of trouble from Robbie. But the rest of those people? No doubt they were expecting some sort of show.

  “Shut up, Robbie.” Victoria’s demand cracked like a whip. “The rest of you, go back to the dance or go home.”

  “You’re a coward and a liar, Knight.”

  “I said to shut up, Robbie.” The murmur of so many voices muted Victoria’s second order to Robbie.

  Mathew halted, so angry he visibly shook. “Take Ethan home.”

  “Mathew, no,” Abigail pleaded with him. “Don’t. Please.”

  It was as if she hadn’t spoken. He pushed Ethan into her. She wrapped her arms around the boy to keep him from falling. Mathew turned on a heel to face Roden.

  Abigail growled under her breath. “Stubborn.”

  “I sorry,” Ethan said.

  “Not you, sweetie.” Abigail remained a few paces behind Mathew.

  “Mathew, go home.” Victoria gestured away from the Brokken Arrow Ranch and toward the main part of town.

  “Sorry, Sheriff, I can’t do that.” Mathew’s head never even tilted to Victoria. It appeared his gaze had locked onto Robbie.

  Now that they had reversed the retreat, and Mathew aggressively advanced on him, Robbie didn’t appear so confident. His gaze darted between Abigail to Mathew and his hand twitched over his holstered gun.

  Thomas Reed, the new cook at Molly’s Corner Café, separated himself from the rest of the crowd. “Hey, Rodent.” Reed stopped and stood far enough from Mathew’s progressing form that he forced Robbie to move his head from side to side.

  Sudden, intense nausea filled Abigail, leaving her light-headed and compelling her to halt for fear of dropping Ethan.

  “The sheriff told you to shut it.” Reed held up his arm that had been amputated just below the elbow. The long sleeve of the shirt had been pinned back to his shoulder. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish, but I can tell you, those doctors saved my life. If a doc like him hadn’t sawed part of my arm off, I would have died from gangrene.”

  Robbie snapped his head to Reed and drew his revolver in the same motion. The muzzle aimed into the cook’s chest and Robbie held it there, without shooting. Reed raised both arms in slow deliberation. A collective gasp rose from the citizens, but Mathew still didn’t stop advancing.

  “Bad man,” Ethan whimpered, the words shaking nearly as much as the child did. Abigail pressed Ethan’s face into her shoulder. She stared at Victoria, willing the sheriff to do something to stop Robbie.

  Robbie waved the revolver between Mathew and Reed. “How about I shoot your other arm, Thomas, and then we can see if he’s as good as that doctor who saved your life?”

  Victoria pulled her own weapon. The hammer jacking back sounded as loud as if she had fired the gun. “How about I blow a hole through your head, Robbie? Holster that thing, now and don’t you try no border roll, either.”

  Abigail’s stomach twisted with painful knots as it seemed neither Mathew nor Robbie paid the least attention to Victoria.

  “That makes you the biggest toad in the pond, doesn’t it, pointing a gun at two unarmed men?” Mathew stopped less than a foot from the end of Robbie’s revolver.

  “He’s only partially unarmed.” Robbie jerked the muzzle at Reed. “I can make him fully unarmed.”

  Although Reed reared back, Mathew seemed totally unfazed. “Yeah, you’re real brave.”

  The muzzle snapped back to Mathew and Robbie took a step forward, pressing the revolver to Mathew’s chest.

  “Doc, back up. He ain’t worth dying for.” Reed hadn’t moved, hadn’t lowered his arms. “We both know he ain’t.”

  “Where’d you get the laudanum, Roden?” Mathew’s accusation growled over the distance.

  Abigail was certain her heart was lodged so tightly in her throat she was going to choke. Ethan’s whimpering cries rasped in her ears and his frightened tears scalded her through her shirtwaist. Other than Mathew and Robbie, no one seemed to be even breathing, as if they were frozen watching this grotesque drama playing out.

  A single click cracked as loudly as thunder, followed by a second click.

  Abigail held her breathe.

  “All I gotta do now is squeeze.” The words sounded as a taunt.

  “You’re brave, as long as you have enough laudanum in you and you’re holding a gun.” If Mathew felt any intimidation or consternation with the muzzle pressing against his chest, he never revealed it. “I can smell the laudanum on your breath, and your pupils are constricted. In this light, they shouldn’t be. That’s what it takes for you to screw up enough courage to threaten an unarmed man?”

  Victoria met Abigail’s gaze across the short distance separating them, and then she took a step closer to Robbie. Slower than Abigail would have expected, Robbie twisted his head to the sheriff. In the instant his attention wasn’t on Mathew, Reed launched himself at Robbie as if he had leaped off a horse onto a maverick calf. Mathew grabbed Robbie’s wrist, wrenching his arm down and behind his back. Reed’s momentum carried all three men to the ground.

  The strange immobility holding the town’s citizens captive shattered with the loud bark of a solitary shot. Several women screamed, and Abigail couldn’t swear she wasn’t one of them. She started forward, only to halt when Yancy appeared out of nowhere and caught her arm at the elbow.

  “Give Button to me before you go rushing over there.”

  She handed him the boy and paused just long enough to thank him before she ran the several feet to Mathew. Victoria pulled Mathew to his feet by the back of his collar. Blood covered the lower half of his shirt front. Abigail skittered to a halt, her hands flying to her mouth.

  Mathew looked down at himself and held his hands out to her. “It’s not mine.”

  Abigail flung herself the final few feet at Mathew. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she buried her face against his shoulder. “What were you thinking?”

  “I honestly wasn’t.” Mathew gently pried her arms loose but didn’t extract himself from her embrace.

  Robbie’s wailing shout echoed off the façade of the buildings. “He shot me.”

  Abigail lifted her head from Mathew’s shoulder as several voices turned into a cacophony. Thomas Reed also appeared to be uninjured. Victoria pulled Robbie to his feet, eliciting another wail from him.

  “I can’t walk!”

  With a deep sigh, Mathew broke Abigail’s embrace. “Sheriff, I haven’t had a chance to inspect the medical facilities at Dr. Bailey’s home—”

  “You ain’t touching me.”

  Victoria shook Robbie as if he were a misbehaving child. “I’ll take him over to the jail. Bring whatever you think you might need to treat a flesh wound.”

  Reed inclined his head to Robbie’s backside, and then looked up at Mathew in slow degrees. The corners of his mouth twitched with a barely contained grin. “It doesn’t appear to be life-threatening, Doc, but then I’m no expert. I’ve known a few people who had their brains in their posterior.”

  MATHEW EASED THE BACK door open. Exhaustion thrummed in every fiber of his body. An empty ceramic cup sat on the table, ghostly in the low-pitched lamp light. He dropped Sam’s medical bag onto the counter and picked up the coffee pot, swirling the contents to determine how much might remain. Not sure if he wanted a cup of hours old brew, he returned the pot to the s
tove top.

  “It should still be warm. I brewed it only an hour ago.”

  Startled, he turned toward Abigail’s voice in the darkness. She emerged from the hallway. His gaze drifted down her—past her hair unbound and draping her like a shimmering silver-gold shawl, to the lace of her night-gown peeking out at the wrists and hem of the faded calico robe she wore, to her bare feet—and back to her face. “Where is Ethan?”

  “I finally got him asleep on the davenport in the parlor.” She paused at one of the ladder-back chairs and gripped the top rail of the back. “Did you even consider him when you decided on a showdown with Robbie? He could have killed you and Ethan would have seen it.”

  Mathew raked a hand through his hair and wrapped his fingers around the back of his neck and squeezed, hoping to alleviate some of the tension driving white-hot shards into his skull. “You’re angry.”

  “Angry?” Her voice didn’t change in volume. “I’m furious. What were you thinking?”

  “It’s been a long day. Can we talk about this in the morning?” Long day was an understatement. Had it really been just that morning he’d accepted a double eagle from a total stranger? “I just want to know where you want me to sleep so I can do that.”

  “You’ll sleep outside on the porch if you think this will wait until the morning.” The volume increased slightly, and a harsher snap entered the words.

  He lowered his hand, shrugged out of his frock coat, and draped it over the back of a chair. “You’re sounding like a shrew.”

  “A shrew?”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. He’d already inserted his foot into his mouth. He may as well chew on it and savor the taste. “A shrew. A harridan. A nag.”

  He regretted the words as soon as he said them. Her head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. She blinked once, opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again to gulp in a deep breath.

  “I’m a nag? Because I’m concerned with how upset Ethan—your son—was when he saw all that blood on your shirt? Somehow that makes me a nag? He was so upset that he cried himself to sleep in my arms.”