These Honored Dead

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  When we reached the Menard commons, I rode past Harriman & Co. at once and was relieved to see it shuttered and unoccupied. Rebecca must be off at another market fair. I had come up with a number of things to say to her to explain our presence, but I feared none would have been satisfactory.

  At Simeon’s suggestion, we started on the far left of the semicircle of businesses and other houses flanking the commons. “Morning, ma’am,” he began, addressing an elderly lady in a nondescript housedress who opened the door of a modest home on the literal edge of town. “I’m Francis, publisher of the Journal, and I wanted to ask you about what happened over at the Widow—”

  The door slammed shut, narrowly missing crushing Simeon’s hand, which he pulled back from the doorframe at the last moment.

  At the next building, a public house, Simeon got through even less of his introductory sentence before the proprietor pulled a long-barreled pistol from inside his dusty frockcoat.

  “You’re the one who’s writing the filth about the dead girl that’s got everyone up in arms?” rasped the man, who had droopy eyes and an enormous, veined nose.

  “I report the news, good and bad,” replied Simeon, holding his ground.

  The man waved his pistol in the air and spat at Simeon’s boots. “Unless you want to report on your own death, you’ll leave my property in the next ten seconds.”

  “In that case,” said Simeon, “I thank you for your subscription and I wish you a good day.” I stifled a laugh as we headed toward the blacksmithy next door.

  “Is he actually a subscriber?”

  “I know the Department delivers a dozen copies to Menard each week,” Simeon said with a casual flick of his hand. “I don’t know specifically who takes them. But I always say, a newspaperman who doesn’t have more enemies than readers is doing something wrong.” He raised his hand to knock but paused and said, “Why don’t you try this one, Speed? You’re the one who claims to have relations with all these people.”

  “I used to have good relations with them, before I began associating with you. You go ahead.”

  We got no further at the smithy nor at the two private houses next in the line. No one wanted to talk about Lilly, especially not to Simeon. The entrance to the stables was a few places along, and I had seen a stable boy moving about, caring for his charges. “Let’s try there next,” I said, indicating the building. “I wager we’re better off finding someone who’s not a regular reader of your sheet.”

  The boy emerged from the stable gates atop a light gray horse. He rode the animal bareback, expertly charting a wide loop around the commons, circling slowly at first but then picking up speed on the last few go-rounds. A half-dozen cows grazed the commons; none of them so much as looked up as horse and boy flew by. We took up a position next to the entrance gates and watched. When they trotted back toward us, the horse glistening with a fine coat of sheen under the midday sun, I called out a greeting.

  “Decided you need help with your horses after all, did you?” said the boy. He jumped down and, holding the gray horse’s lead, started toward the public post where Simeon and I had tied up our rides when we’d first arrived.

  “Water them both, if you please,” I said. “Are you the usual boy here?”

  “Have been the past few months.”

  “I’ve just learned distressing news. A girl I was acquainted with, who lived somewhere about these parts, has turned up dead. Her name was Lilly Walker. Have you heard of her?”

  “A little,” the boy said without looking up from untying our two horses.

  “What have you heard?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “Well, did you know her yourself?”

  “Only times I ever talked to her was when she’d come collect her brother. Jesse. That little fellow likes to pretend to help me out.” I smiled. The stable boy himself was barely larger than the “little fellow” Jesse.

  I followed after the stable boy as he led the three horses back into the yard. Simeon trailed behind me.

  “Do you know anyone who was angry with Lilly?” I asked. “Anyone who might have wanted to do her harm?”

  The boy got to his loose pen and let his horse inside. Then he led Hickory and Simeon’s nag over to an open stall with a water trough and small pile of hay. The boy squinted up at me and asked, “Other than the Widow Harriman, you mean?”

  My heart raced. Before I could say anything, Simeon stepped in front of me and asked, “What’s your meaning, son?”

  “I heard Lilly and her arguing all the time. The whole village has. Plenty of days I could hear ’em all the way back here in the yard when they was out on the commons, they was yelling so loud.”

  “What were they arguing about?” demanded Simeon.

  “It ain’t my concern,” the boy said. “I think this girl Lilly didn’t take too kindly to being told how to act by some strange old woman.”

  “She was no stranger,” I protested. “She was her blood, her aunt. She’d saved her from the poorhouse.”

  “If you say so,” the boy said with a shrug. “As I said, it ain’t my concern. Now do you want me to keep charge of your horses for the afternoon?”

  “That’ll be fine,” Simeon said. “Come, Speed, let’s let the boy get back to his chores. We appreciate your time, young man.” He gave the stable hand a half-dime, and the boy touched his own forehead in gratitude.

  Another hour of canvassing the settlement yielded no one else who would talk to us. “Why don’t we eat before hitting the trail for Springfield?” I said. “We could do worse than that public house over there next to Harriman & Co.”

  By habit, when we entered Johnson’s public room I led us to the small table in the corner where Rebecca and I used to sit. When I realized what I’d done, I turned around to find another, but Simeon was already lowering himself into the small chair, and I figured trying to get him to move would prove more trouble than it was worth.

  “It looks like Prickett’s suspicions about the Widow Harriman might be on target after all,” Simeon said.

  “You mean what the stable boy said?” I replied with a dismissive wave. I knew the newspaperman was trying to provoke me. “I don’t put stock in that, and I’m sure you don’t either. Young people are always thinking the adults around them are bossing them without reason. I know I used to.”

  “It sounded a good deal more serious,” said Simeon.

  Johnson came over, nodded with familiarity at me, and promised to return with two ales.

  “But it’s nothing you could print,” I said after he’d left. “That a young woman argued with her guardian—it must happen fifty times a day in Springfield. A hundred. That’s not news.”

  “When the young woman turns up with a knife through her neck it is.”

  “But surely Lilly Walker—yeow!”

  Johnson had returned and now stood beside us; one of the tankards that had been in his hand a moment earlier clattered onto the tabletop, the ale cascading out and spilling all over my riding pants. I looked up and saw to my surprise the innkeeper’s red face was twisted not in apology but rather in fear.

  “I’m going to have to ask the two of you to leave at once,” he said, his voice trembling.

  “Us? But we’ve caused no disturbance,” I said.

  “Nonetheless. If you please.” He held out his arm toward the doorway.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” demanded Simeon.

  Johnson glanced nervously toward the door to the kitchen. “If Mrs. Johnson hears you mention that name in our premises,” he said softly, “a bit of spilled beer will be the least of your problems. Mine too.”

  “Lilly Walker? What does your wife have against Lilly Walker?” Simeon asked. With each renewed mention of the girl’s name, Johnson’s face became more contorted, and he frantically motioned for Simeon to stop talking.

  “I’ve said too much already,” the innkeeper said.

  “If you won’t tell me, I’ll have to go ask Mrs. Johnson
myself.” Simeon rose to his feet, notebook and pencil poised at the ready.

  “Sir, if you please.” Johnson had a panicked look in his eye. “Won’t you leave it alone?”

  Simeon did not budge. Johnson sighed.

  “Very well, if you must know, Mrs. Johnson thinks there was some encounter between me and that wretched girl. Which there wasn’t, of course. I was merely kind to her on one occasion, and she was a friendly sort. Flirtatious, even. But there was never anything else.”

  Judging by the fervor of the man’s reaction, I was skeptical of his profession of innocence. I could tell Simeon was as well. Nonetheless, the newspaperman nodded and resumed his seat.

  “We shan’t mention her again,” Simeon said, “if you’ll bring us a towel, a new glass of ale for my friend here, and two bowls of beef stew. You tell Mrs. Johnson we’ve heard far and wide her stew’s the best in the whole entire county.”

  “As you wish,” said Johnson, retreating grudgingly.

  “What do you think?” I asked Simeon a half hour later when we had collected our horses from the stables and sat astride them as they grazed in the middle of the Menard commons.

  “You heard what the Widow Harriman told the sheriff about the girl’s nature,” Simeon said. “I wager there is no shortage of men around here who had encounters of one sort or another with the girl.”

  “And no shortage of wives who bear a grudge,” I added.

  “But can you imagine any of them doing what someone did to her?” he said, rubbing his rough chin with both palms. “Such intense violence. That’s the difficulty.” He paused. “Back to Springfield, then. We’ve learned quite a bit for one day.”

  “You go ahead,” I said. “I’ve a customer to visit up north near Miller’s Ferry. I want to see if I can’t get him to increase his take-up for the harvest season.”

  Simeon stared at me for a moment, then slapped his horse on the backside and headed off on the trail toward Springfield. Hickory and I watched until man and steed became a small, ungainly speck on the horizon.

  CHAPTER 8

  There was no customer near Miller’s Ferry. Instead, once Hickory and I were out of sight of the Menard commons, I pulled her up and we looped around the woods toward the familiar log cabin by the stream just beyond the main settlement.

  Our conversations with Johnson and the stable boy had made it clear there might be a number of persons about who bore ill will toward Lilly. But if my goal had been to establish, for the newspaperman’s satisfaction as well as my own, that Rebecca could not be among them, I knew I had not yet succeeded.

  Rebecca’s house looked deserted when we came upon it. My eyes glanced up to the roof and I saw with pleasure that my patches still held. I’d devised them the prior summer on a sultry evening as Rebecca stood below on the ground, her hair falling beguilingly in front of her eyes, offering alternatively encouragement and direction. She had suggested, laughing, that fixing the new leak in her roof was the price of one more night spent in her bed, and it was a price I happily paid.

  I tied Hickory to one of the birches and walked around behind the cabin. The door to the adjoining barn was secured by a rusty padlock. Rebecca used to keep the key in an eye-level hollow in the closest birch. As I walked over to the hollow, I heard a metallic noise from above. I looked up and gave a little jump.

  A murder of crows, some three dozen in all, lined the upper branches of the birch tree. Three dozen pairs of steely black eyes stared down at me. Their spokesman was on a low-hanging branch and he reproached me insistently: caw caw caw. His fellows clicked their beaks rapidly in concurrence.

  “Quiet down,” I said.

  The birds clicked even louder.

  My hand found the key, just where it used to be, and it turned in the padlock. The wooden door to the barn opened reluctantly. I peered in cautiously at first and saw with relief that Lilly’s corpse had been removed. I hoped Rebecca had given her a decent burial; whatever the imperfections of her life, the young woman plainly merited as much.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I gazed around the small enclosure, not sure what I was looking for but looking nonetheless. The slatted walls were bare. Loose bales of hay lined the perimeter of the room. In the center of the dirt floor, like an awful beacon, lingered an irregular dark stain. I gulped and stared at the shadow of Lilly’s final moments.

  I tried to picture the scene as it had been several weeks earlier. Could someone have attacked the girl outside of the barn and later moved her body inside? The sheriff had dismissed the possibility, and as I looked around now, I couldn’t detect any signs of blood underneath the dirty footprints leading in and out of the barn. Surely, given the amount of blood that had flowed from the fatal wound at her final resting place, moving her injured body would have produced some kind of trail.

  For the first time, I focused on the fact that the bale of hay against which Lilly had been reclined had been positioned to the side of the barn door, and her body had been facing away from the door when we had found it. Someone walking silently might have entered the barn without her knowing it, especially if her perceptions had been dimmed in some fashion. Perhaps she had fallen asleep in the barn and been set upon before she could awake and react. Or perhaps the whiskey Prickett thought he’d detected had played a role.

  I crouched and looked around the barn from Lilly’s vantage point in those final moments. What had she seen, sitting there against the bale of hay? Whom had she seen?

  “Who’s there?” shouted a familiar voice.

  In one motion, I rose to my feet and turned. Rebecca was standing in the doorway to the barn. There was a shotgun clutched in her hands.

  “Hallo,” I said with a weak smile.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded. The gun in her hands was pointing toward the ground a few feet from where I stood, and while she didn’t shoulder it, she did nothing to lay it down either.

  “I needed to see again where Lilly died,” I said. There seemed no way around it. “I thought perhaps I could find something, something the sheriff had overlooked, that might show who did this.”

  “You shouldn’t have come onto my property without permission. I heard from a neighbor there were two men walking about today, stirring up trouble about Lilly. From the description, I was afraid it was that corpulent publisher. And you.”

  I nodded. “I’m on your side, Rebecca,” I said. “I’m trying to help—”

  “I don’t need your help. Or want it.”

  At that moment, there was a great fluttering behind Rebecca and the crows took the skies as one, screeching in angry tones. Immediately Rebecca swung around, raising the gun to her shoulder and advancing out of the barn as she scanned the horizon. Her finger was coiled on the trigger. I took a few steps forward so I could see out over her.

  Someone or something had unnerved the crows. But the cause of their sudden flight was nowhere to be seen. We were all alone.

  I was about to say as much when Rebecca swung around again. The shotgun was still at her shoulder and this time it was pointing straight at my heart. Less than ten feet separated us.

  “Don’t shoot,” I said, my hands raised over my head.

  There was a beat of silence. The still air between us was fraught.

  “No, of course not,” Rebecca said softly. She lowered the gun and rested it on the ground.

  I became aware that I was breathing very deeply. Rebecca was as well, the captivating curve of her breasts rising and falling with each breath. Her face, made beautiful by the life she’d lived, had a look I hadn’t seen in a long time. And I felt sure my face was a mirror of hers. We took a step and then rushed toward each other, arms outstretched.

  “I think it was the wind,” I whispered as my lips urgently felt for hers. My blood surged; my head pounded. I inhaled the moment deeply.

  “The wind . . .”

  I pulled her toward the interior of the barn, but she managed to shake her head, our bodies and arms and lips stil
l enmeshed, and I realized her meaning at once. She was right; not there.

  So I led her to the back door of her cabin and pushed it open. On the threshold she hesitated, resisting my pull, and said, without conviction, “I can’t, Joshua. We can’t.”

  “We have to,” I whispered as my lips met hers again fiercely. I drew her inside and she did not resist.

  We were silent for a long time afterward, lingering in each other’s arms, unwilling to let go of the precious now. I was transported back to those early mornings in her bed. The touch of her bare skin had been like putting my hand over a flaming candle—unbearably hot yet irresistible. But I knew there was no way to resume our prior relationship. Inexorably, the cold-hearted machinery of time only moves forward, never backward.

  I felt her starting to stir.

  “Rebecca . . . ,” I began.

  “You’re not going to ask me to marry again, are you?” she said, smiling.

  I shook my head. “I’m worried about your safety out here, alone. Someone killed Lilly. Who’s to say they’re not coming for Jesse next? Or you, for that matter.”

  “If anything happens, I’m prepared,” she said. “If it was anyone but you in the barn this afternoon, I would have gladly pulled the trigger. But there’s not going to be a next time. Whoever came for Lilly came specifically for her. They don’t pose a threat to me or Jesse.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “She was my niece.” Rebecca’s eyes flashed in anger. “You never knew her. In truth, I saw a lot of me in her. Just two weeks before she was killed, the three of us had ridden into Springfield for supplies. I kept Jesse with me while Lilly wandered around. Springfield was the largest city she’d ever seen. She asked me afterward about this business and that. She was trying to figure out the aspects of the town’s economy and resources for herself.”