by Ed Gorman
She watched Sam watching this. He seemed moved by everything. She even thought for a moment that she saw his eyes dampen with tears. It was one of those moments—so sweet, so peaceful, so tranquil. It seemed that nothing could possibly be wrong anywhere in God's world.
And then he was helping her up to bed. It was so odd. She'd been sitting at the table talking to the girls about snow—it had become their obsession— and then . . . And then Sam had to help her up the stairs. So queer. As if the wine for dinner had suddenly made her very, very drunk . . . sleepy. But she'd had less than half a glass.
And then she was in bed . . . sleeping . . .
Wind.
Panic: disorientation. Where am I? What happened?
Headache.
Dry mouth.
Drugs . . . yes.
Her inclination had been to think of the dinner wine. There was the culprit. She wasn't much of a drinker.
But no . . . this was more like the aftereffects of the sleeping-potion the doctors had given her after Courtney's birth. The grogginess . . . the slight feeling of nausea . . .
Wind again.
All she wanted to do was relieve her bladder and sink deep into sleep again.
He drugged me. Sam drugged me. But why?
Even through the blind, numbed, disoriented feeling of the moment the realization of it made her fight her way to wakefulness.
Have to wake up. Find Sam.
Walking was almost impossible. She kept slumping against chairs and bureaus and walls as she took one small step at a time. She found the pull cord for Irene the maid. Then she staggered on into her private toilet and began soaking her face in water standing in the basin.
Irene came quickly. And departed quickly, headed downstairs to make coffee, and a lot of it . . .
Aggie found the letter in the study. Her name was on the front of it. She was just awake enough for it to make terrifying sense . . .
* * *
Lawrence Dodd got to the hotel room a little early. He was always early. It was part of his professionalism. He'd assassinated seven men since the start of the war and he hadn't yet come even close to getting caught.
He kept the lamp off. He knelt by the window. It was cold enough for frost to rime the glass along the window casing.
He kept studying the place where Kimble would come out around nine,
following his speech, on his way to the mayor's house where a reception was
to be held. A carriage would pull up. Kimble would start down the front steps.
And then Dodd would kill him that simple.
An hour after he'd gone to the window, there was a knock on the door, startling him. Who the hell would be knocking? Who knew he was in here? He had a bad stomach. Acid immediately began scouring it.
The knock again. A soft knock. As if the caller didn't want to be heard beyond this one door.
Maybe something has happened. Maybe the police have learned about tonight. Maybe I'm not supposed to go through with it.
So many thoughts, doubts, suppositions prompted by the knocking.
Shit. He had to go to the door. Find out what was going on. For now, he had to hide the Sharps.
He looked around in the dim light from the street.
Another soft knock.
The closet. He'd put the Sharps in the closet.
He brought his Colt with him to the door but even with that, the other man didn't have any trouble slashing the barrel of his own handgun down across Dodds's face and knocking him back into the room. Nor any trouble knocking him out.
Nor any trouble tying him up and gagging him.
* * *
The buggy ride helped considerably. The harsh, cold weather completed the job of waking her up. The coffee had helped. The cold air was even better.
Downtown was crowded with vehicles of every kind. Police were everywhere. Bands could be heard in a variety of hotels. Both political parties were anticipating victory—or pretending to, anyway. She hitched her buggy, took her bag, and walked the remaining two blocks to the hotel. This was as close as she could get. Gunshots could be heard as she walked. The frontier mentality was still with them: when you were happy, you shot off guns. The police could arrest you but they had to catch you first.
The lobby was packed. Men in muttonchops and vast bellies stood about with huge glasses of whiskey in their fat pampered hands. Their women were almost elegant in gowns that displayed their bosoms to best advantage. The six-piece orchestra played one raucous tune after another.
Nobody noticed her. Just one more person. Pretty as she was, she was still unremarkable in this crowd.
Sam had been helpful enough to put the room number on the map he'd drawn. She had little trouble convincing the desk clerk that she was to meet her husband here. He gave her the spare key.
The hotel had emptied downward. All the rooms seemed to be empty. As she walked along the sconce-decorated halls, she heard nothing but the pounding music from the lobby. Not even New Year's Eve could be noisier than this.
When she reached the room, she paused. Took a deep breath. Said a hasty prayer.
For the first time, she was thankful for all the noise. It allowed her to slip the key in the lock and turn it without being heard.
The gun was in her hand as she walked inside.
A man was on the bed. Bound and gagged. Sam was just turning to her now. He sat in a chair at the window. A Sharps leaned against the wall. He'd have a good, clean shot from here. And in the clamor downstairs, he'd have an easy time getting away out one of the rear exits.
He'd planned well.
She shut the door. "I'm taking you home, Sam."
As she spoke, she thought of the words in the letter he'd left.
Dear darling Aggie:
I wanted to give you and the girls a good memory of me. The last few days have been wonderful. But now I have to be a man of honor and avenge my brother. Avenge my country which is, and will always be, the South. I don't expect you to understand—even though you, too, have lost a brother, you have not lost honor. I should've worn the gray just as he did. This is my only chance to make up for what I failed to do. All my love to you and the girls
—Sam, forever.
"Go home, Aggie," Sam said gently. "Take care of the girls."
"I'd rather kill you myself than have you disgrace your daughters this way. They'll pay for this the rest of their lives, Sam. You don't seem to care how it'll be for them to have a traitor as a father."
"Traitor!" he said. "I'm not a traitor. I'm a patriot."
"You live in the North, Sam. Your girls are Yankees. And they always will be."
He stood up. "I have to do this, Aggie. I have to."
But she stood unwavering. The gun pointed right at him. "Don't fool yourself, Sam. I came here prepared to kill you if I had to."
"You kill me here, the police'll know what happened anyway."
"Not if I take the Sharps and let that man on the bed go. I take it he's your replacement."
Sam started walking toward her. "You won't be able to kill me, Aggie. I know you. You're not violent. And besides, you love me."
"Just stay there, Sam."
But he kept coming, obviously sure of what he was saying. "You won't be able to do it. So why not just hand me the gun and leave? I'm going to do this no matter what."
She raised the gun so that it pointed direcdy at his chest. "Stay back, Sam. Stay back."
And then he lunged for her.
Overpowering her was easy. Getting the gun away was another matter. As they wrestled for it on the floor, she kept it tucked under herself so that his fingers couldn't quite reach it. He offered her no mercy. He hit her as hard as he would a man he disliked.
Then the gun sounded, muffled by the fact that he was lying on top of her when the weapon discharged. He knew almost at once that she was dead. The death spasm had been unmistakable. And now she moved not at all. He pulled himself away from her. Felt her pulse. None. The gun had fired just a
s the band music had swelled. The sound of the firing easily would have been lost.
He stood up. Stared down at her. Wife. Mother of his children. He knew that he loved her but at the moment it was an abstract feeling, one far less vivid than the hatred he bore. Someday he would revile himself for what had just happened on this hotel room floor. But for now, there was the task at hand. Kimble should be leaving the hotel in less than ten minutes.
He grabbed his Sharps and went to the window. He thought of his dead brother and his own disgrace.
Soon now, he thought. Soon now.
Love and Trooper Monroe
Until Monroe started killing rattlesnakes, nobody had ever paid him much attention.
Monroe was a pudgy, twenty-three-year-old recruit from Ohio. He had been with the U.S. Cavalry four years now, usually working at the tasks the Captain gave only to those troops he didn't consider important.
Such as killing rattlers.
C Company had been a dusty month on the march and had two days ago worked its way down mountainous hills to a valley bright with a silver river and sweet with cottonwood trees. The area met the Army's qualifications for a proper camping ground: wood, water and good ground.
C Company needed a rest and Captain Lionel Marsh knew it and so he instructed his men to put in here several days.
Everything was fine. The valley offered antelope, elk, buffalo, wild turkey, black-tailed deer, wild goose, plover and duck. There were even wild bullberries, from which you could make simple jelly, which went especially well with turkey.
The Captain slept in his wik-a-up. He cut some willow saplings, stuck them straight up in the ground, wove the ends loosely together on top, then threw two saddle blankets over the top. He had his own little apartment, which was where he spent the entire night, with troopers standing guard till dawn. (Regulation tents were available to the Captain of course; he just felt hardier adopting the methods of the plains Indians.)
The other troopers weren't so lucky. They had to sleep on the ground, and because of the river, which had been at flood levels not so long ago, rattlesnakes were everywhere. Nobody wanted to fall asleep with poisonous vipers crawling around in the darkness.
So after dinner, four men, including Monroe, were dispatched to cut and tear away reeds and grass, and to beat the ground with long sticks that resembled knotty Irish walking canes, so as to drive the snakes away.
They killed as many as possible, and Monroe proved to be the best of the four. Some he shot; some he stomped on with his heel, shattering their heads; some he crushed with big rocks that he dropped like bombs.
A young Kentucky recruit, fascinated by all this snake-killing, stood close by keeping count. After the four men had returned to the light and warmth of the campfire, the kid from Kentucky claimed that Monroe had killed sixteen rattlers, far more than any of the others.
And so for the first time, many of the more important men became aware of Monroe. They congratulated him across the flickering fire, and said with all genuine humility that they sure as hell wouldn't want to have to kill rattlers, what a hell of a job that would be, and Monroe was one brave and inspiring cuss all right.
But it wasn't the officers Monroe wanted congratulations from.
On this seven-week march to a fort on the farthest frontier, the Captain had seen fit to bring his nineteen-year-old daughter Mae. She wore not the gingham dresses and bonnets of the day but rather the corded pants and cotton shirts of day workers. Nor was there any beauty to be found in her face, which was round and very nearly ugly; nor her body, which was, to be kind, thirty pounds overweight, with none of the excess distributed in any fetching way at all.
To most of C Company she was every bit as invisible as Monroe himself, and it was this very fact that caused Monroe to fall in love with her. It was his feeling that he had at last met the woman who was proper for him, to whom he would pledge his love, whom he would ask for children, and whose cool hand would lay on his fevered forehead when death came sometime in the unimaginable future.
But if Mae sensed any of this, she certainly didn't let on.
Many times Monroe had gone up to her to offer a hand with her saddle, or an extra ax with firewood, or an extra cup of water when she stood baking in the hot afternoon sunlight. But at these times, even if she muttered a thank you for his offer, she seemed unable to bring him into any focus, as if he wasn't quite there at all. Just the way most of C Company treated him.
He wanted to take her and shake her by the shoulders and say: Don't you know we're fated? Don't you know I lie next to the campfire at night dreaming of how you'll look in your white wedding dress? Don't you know that we'll have a family together?
But it was sadly clear to him that she understood none of these things and that was why he developed the idea for rescuing her.
Monroe loved to read the yellowback novels wherein lowborn young men cadged themselves dreamy wives by rescuing them from some terrible fate—the sinking canoe, the runaway horse, the lustful clutches of the dastard.
And that was just what he planned to do in the morning when Mae, as always, took some of the cooking utensils down to the river bank to scour with sand and water.
Dinner that night consisted of what was called sonofabitch stew, a young calf slaughtered to render not just beef but a stew that consisted of cut-up heart, testicles, tongue, liver and marrow gut, and which some, though not all, considered a treat.
"You men, goodnight," Mae said, standing on the edge of the fireglow.
They answered in ragged chorus, officers and enlisted men alike, "Good night, Miss," all except for Monroe, who waited till the others had finished.
And then his Good Night rose like a piece of music above the mutter of the men, above the shush of the river and the call of the coyotes and the banter of night birds, "Good night, Mae; good night."
And he knew there were tears in his eyes because all his life, and a hardscrabble farmboy life it had been, he'd waited to feel not simply the coarse urgency of lust but the gentle noble warmth of true love. As in the songs of Stephen Foster and a hundred yellowback novels.
He would set a rattler on her tomorrow, and then rescue her at the last terrible moment, and then she would have no choice but to look, to really look, at the young man who'd saved her, the young man she would then love forever.
* * *
Monroe spent the first part of the morning with the horses. When they were in the fort, the soldiers of C Company spent an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon grooming their animals. The Army wanted man and horse to function as one, and indeed some men became so attached to their animals that they managed to keep the same animal for the full five years of enlistment. On march, it fell to men like Monroe to keep the horses healthy and reasonably clean and content.
Around nine-thirty, the heat of the day still stinking of breakfast smoke, Monroe saw Mae, dressed in her usual costume of corded trousers and cotton workshirt, start gathering up pans and taking them down to the riverbank, where she squatted next to the swift blue water and scrubbed out the metal insides with rags and sand.
Monroe let her make three trips and then he moved, dropping the currycomb to the ground, walking quickly down near the water.
He didn't have to wonder where he'd find a rattler.
There was a thick undergrowth twenty feet to the right of where Mae squatted. Hit the growth with his stick and a rattler was guaranteed to appear.
He hadn't planned on being scared.
He felt like some kind of criminal. He felt as if everybody was staring at him.
But it would be worth it.
Soon, Mae would not only know of his love for her; she would realize her love for him.
Mae sang a Stephen Foster song. She had a high, almost fragile voice, one every bit as lovely as the sunlight golden on the surface of the river.
He looked upslope, to make sure nobody was watching. Then he looked to the river again to make certain that Mae was properly busy with h
er pots and pans.
Satisfied that now was the proper time, he began beating the undergrowth with his stick.
In moments, a rattler appeared, a timber rattlesnake, stretching maybe five feet in length as it wriggled angrily from beneath the prickly gray bushes, the numerous rings of old skin on the molting indicating that this was an older fellow, the loose, horny rattle at the end of the tail already making deadly noise.
Monroe knew he had to be damned careful. This wasn't going to be an easy one to pick up.
But, knowing that at any moment another trooper could walk down here, and knowing that at any moment Mae could get up and leave, he leaned down quickly, feinted to the left and then jerked abruptly back, faking the snake into striking in the wrong direction, grabbing the rattler safely behind the head.
The thing wriggled and rattled and Monroe wondered for a terrible moment if it might not jump from his grasp.
Now he had to move even more quickly, to within ten feet or so of Mae, where he'd drop the rattler on the ground and shout for her to watch out. Then he'd kill the rattler and be her hero.
He flung the snake.
It tumbled in the air twice, slow-motion, before landing.
But as it started to reach the ground, Monroe saw that he had underestimated the reach of the snake. It would land only a foot or so from Mae.
Even before the snake touched down, Monroe cupped his hands and shouted "Mae! Mae!"
But by the time she turned, it was too late.
The rattler hissed, then struck her in the arm just as the startled Mae turned to see what Trooper Monroe was yelling about.
He would never forget the look on her face at that moment: confusion and fear as she turned to see the rattler arcing toward her, then shock as the snake implanted its venom through its long, hollow teeth.
"Mae!" Monroe cried, running toward her. "Mae!" he shouted as the snake, satisfied, undulated its way to the relative safety of the underbrush.
