“Darling, it smells like a Presidential kitchen in here,” he said, sipping the last drop of whiskey from his cup. “I am often astonished at the miracles you produce from such simple means, but tonight you have outdone yourself.”
Katey smiled and swept her hand through her hair. “I suspect you are trying to lure me into some state of compromise with all that fancy talk, mister.”
“I would have to be robbed of far more faculties than my ability to breathe in order to not have designs on relieving you of your clothing.” He reached out to pinch her bottom. Katey laughed and swatted his hand away before lifting a sizzling tray from the oven.
She tasted the meat and frowned. “It needs something more.”
“I could sneak onto the Johnson’s farm and steal away with whatever you desire. That would be proper compensation for the way that rascal takes such longing glances at your backside. However, I cannot fault the man for his obviously excellent taste in women.”
Katey laughed, then said, “You stay right here and rest. I know just what I need.”
He unscrewed the cap on a bottle of whiskey and filled his cup up once more. “It is getting dark. Do not wander off far.”
Katey Halladay went down the back stairs of the house and passed by her modest garden, seeing nothing that caught her interest. She headed through the thicket that separated their property from the tall electronic fence surrounding the entire mining colony. Katey passed the blackened corpse of a dead leaper that had gotten too close to the Perimeter’s lethal current. The towers powering the Perimeter were set at quarter-mile intervals and crackled with so much energy that it filled the air and made all the hair on her arms stand up.
She saw Deputy Tilt Junger and his younger brother, Walt, standing in front of the nearest tower, both of them too focused on its key-grid to notice her approach. Tilt was a senior deputy assigned to maintain the fence and patrol the outer perimeter. Walt Junger had just joined the force. “Hey there,” she called out. “Trouble with the tower again? Any chance you can make it less noisy? Between Royce’s coughing and that damn thing, I can’t get any peace.”
Both men turned to face her as the security gate slid open and a party of Beothuk warriors came through. Katey screamed in terror and Walt shouted, “Get home, Mrs. Halladay!”
Tilt Junger shoved Walt out of the way and charged toward Katey. “Stop right there, woman!”
Katey dropped her basket and ran, screaming for her husband.
“Shut your mouth!” Tilt shouted, ripping a long skinning knife from his belt while he ran.
Walt watched his brother disappear around the bend and said, “Let her go, Tilt!” There was no response. The last of the Beothuk came through the gate and assembled into formation.
Their leader wore cords around his neck adorned with feathers and long, curving fangs. His chest was criss-crossed with scars that covered his lean, muscular torso. The others ducked into the tall grass, but the leader stood straight, surveying the settlement. Katey Halladay screamed in the distance and the savage looked at two of his men, who took off after her, into the thicket.
“Uh, excuse me,” Walt said. He held out his hand, “I believe my brother made an agreement with you boys regarding payment.”
The Beothuk looked at Walt, and the young Deputy put his other hand closer to his gun. Finally, the leader removed a small sack from his belt and dropped it into Walt’s palm.
Walt untied the drawstring and shook out several small rocks into his hand. They were the size of marbles and glittered in the sunlight. It was enough severian to keep the entire Junger family wealthy for generations.
The savage leader watched Walt tie up the bag, then muttered something and spat on the ground at Walt’s feet. Walt looked down at the gob of spit next to his boot and shrugged, then turned and headed after Tilt to show him the bag that contained their entire future.
***
“Got you!” Tilt shouted, swinging wildly with the blade and catching Katey Halladay across the neck. Blood squirted out of her and she collapsed at the edge of her garden, staring at the back of her house.
Katey squirmed in the dirt, making wet, gurgling sounds while Tilt bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “It’s your own fault. I told you to stop. I’d have just tied you up until we was finished or something but you wouldn’t shut up.”
She dug long gullies in the dirt with her boots, squirming as the last of her life leaked out of her. Tilt brushed her hair out of her face and said, “Just try and be still now, Mrs. Halladay. It’ll all be over soon.”
Two savages ran up behind them and stopped at the sight of Katey. One of them said something in their twisted, guttural language that Tilt took to be some sort of insult. “You rust-colored sons of bitches got something to say about this?” They stared back at him with cold, blank expressions. “She’d have alerted the whole damn colony you were here. Action had to be taken.”
A bullet caved in one of the Beothuk’s face’s. The report of Doctor Halladay’s rifle echoed from the back porch, and he shot at them again. Blood and tissue from the Beothuk warriors sprayed Tilt, who raised his hands to shield himself. A bullet stamped Tilt’s kneecap, blowing it to fragments and knocking him backwards in the dirt. Halladay stopped firing and ran to Katey’s side.
“Son of a bitch!” Tilt shouted, struggling to prop himself up on his elbows. The pain in his leg was like a hot knife stuck under the bones of his knee. He turned to look at the others and saw that they were dead. Tilt slid backwards on his rear, trying to make it into the thicket while Halladay was bent over Katey’s corpse.
A gunshot struck Tilt in the right hand, shattering his fingers. Tilt screamed, “Wait a second! Wait!”
Halladay picked up Tilt’s skinning knife from the ground. It was still wet with Katey’s blood. He went toward Tilt, who moaned and tried backing away. Halladay stabbed the knife halfway into Tilt’s thigh and said, “You move another inch and I will make you a eunuch.”
Tilt flopped on the ground like a fish and gasped, “Stop! For God’s sake, Doc, I’m a lawman. I need a doctor, and if you help me, I’ll make it worth your while.” He pointed at the bodies of the dead savages, “It wasn’t me that killed your wife. Try and have a little perspective here!”
Halladay turned to look at the Beothuk just as Tilt reached for the handle of his gun. He nearly had it unholstered when Halladay touched the tip of the knife to Tilt’s adam’s apple. “You most certainly do need a doctor, Mr. Junger,” Halladay said. “I believe I am just the man to perform the particular surgical procedures you require. Let’s see if you can try and stay still now.”
3 . Legends
By morning, the dead were tallied and packed onto wagons for transport to the Willow Funeral Home. Old Man Willow directed the drivers to the side of his house to wait until he could figure out where to put them all. The barn at the rear of the property was already full.
Anna Willow looked at the crowd gathered in her front yard through the kitchen window while she made breakfast for Jem and Claire Clayton. The Sheriff left them there when he dropped off the body of Frank Banner.
Jem sat on the front porch watching the wagons arrive. Anna tapped on the window screen with her fingernails and said, “Why don’t you come inside, Jem? These biscuits are almost done.”
Jem shook his head from side to side, seeing that another wagon was coming. People in the crowd gasped as it rolled past, and some of them covered their faces and sobbed. When Jem saw Mrs. Katey Halladay sprawled out in the rear carriage he started to tremble. Anna dropped her things and went outside to grab Jem by the shoulders. “All right, honey. It’s all right. Let’s go,” she said. She pulled him inside and shut the door. Little Claire was sitting on the floor, sorting through a pile of dolls that Anna had pulled out of the closet. “Into the kitchen, both of you. It’s time to eat.”
At noon, Sheriff Sam Clayton came down the road toward the Willow home in a wagon of his own. He guided
the destrier through the crowd, giving people a chance to get out of his way. “Who you got there, Sheriff?” someone called out. “We already counted everyone up.”
“It’s those God damn savages!” another shouted.
"Those sons of bitches don’t belong here, Sheriff!”
“We’re gonna string them up by the fence to show the savages what happens when they come onto our land.”
Billy Jack Elliot pushed his way past the other onlookers and stood in front of the Sheriff’s destrier, forcing Sam to yank the reins. Elliot wrapped his hand around the destrier’s bridle and said, “You ain’t gonna bring them savages into this place of mourning, Sam.”
Sam looked down at Elliot and said, “Old Man Willow can only make so many caskets, Billy. Get your hands off my animal.”
Old Man Willow came out of the house with his hands raised like a preacher’s, “Everybody settle down! This is my property and I’ll decide what happens.” The funeral director was only ten years older than Sam, but was bald as a bowling ball and the sun had turned his skin the texture of leather. Erazamus Willow patted his rotund belly and fingered the buttons on his vest as he looked over the crowd. He went down the steps toward Sam’s cart and looked in the rear at the savages stacked on top of one another in the back. “Not too sure about this, Sam,” Willow said, holding his hand over his eyes as he looked up. “Seems to me those bodies aren’t fit to lay with the ones we have in the barn already.”
The crowd murmured in agreement.
“I understand your feelings,” Sam said. “That’s why I’m going to wait until all our people are properly situated before I ask you to attend to this lot.”
“Please tell me why in the world we’d extend them that courtesy, Sam?”
“Because I intend to return them to their people, and it would be unseemly to bring them back all bloody and bullet-ridden.”
The entire crowd roared and several husky miners ran forward to grab the ankles of the dead savages and yank them from the cart. Sam vaulted over the back of the cart and landed with his Colt Defenders aimed square in the faces of the closest men to him. “Hands off. We clear?”
Billy Jack Elliot came around the side of the cart toward Sam, with several men following. “You can’t take us all, Sheriff.”
The front door of the Willow house crashed open and Jem Clayton came through, shouting, “Any of you two-bit yellow-belly rock breakers so much as takes a step toward my daddy and I’ll kill every damn one of you!”
Sam looked up at his son and said, “Get your ass back inside, Jem.”
Billy Jack Elliot lunged at Sam’s guns. Sam turned aside in time and cracked the butt end of one of his pistols across Elliot’s face and dropped him to his knees. Elliot hunched over and clutched his nose with blood squeezing between his fingers. He spat two teeth into the red clay and moaned.
Sam looked down at Elliot and sighed. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and pressed it against Elliot’s face. “Hold that tight to your face, Billy. Keep your head tilted back.”
Two men came forward and took hold of Elliot, helping him through the crowd. Sam shook his head and said, “Now can everybody else just go home for a little while? There’s been enough bloodshed today and for right now, I think we all need to be with our families.”
The crowd began to disperse and Jem came down from the porch to wrap his arms around his father’s waist. “I need you to get back in there and shut the door, Jem. Lock it and don’t let anyone in.”
“But it’s over. They’re all leaving,” Jem said. “It’s over.”
“Listen to me when I tell you, nothing is ever over.”
Old Man Willow looked up on the porch and lifted his glasses. Anna Willow was standing there with one of his hunting rifles at the ready. “What, exactly, did you intend to do with that, young lady?”
Anna’s eyes were fixed on Sam and her fingers were white against the gun’s stock. “I wouldn’t have let anybody harm you, Sheriff,” she said.
Old Man Willow patted Jem on the shoulder. “Go on inside, boy. Let your father be for a moment. I won’t let anything happen to him.”
Jem sulked as he went up the porch steps, holding the door for Anna but she did not move. Old Man Willow said, “That means you too, missy. The Sheriff don’t need any admirers right now.”
Anna’s face flushed as she raced into the house and slammed the door shut behind her. Old Man Willow chuckled, “I reckon she’s sweet on you, Sam. Has been ever since that trouble with Zeke.”
“She’ll develop better taste in men when she grows up, I’m sure.”
“Her mother didn’t, thank God,” Willow said. “I was able to fool that woman into thinking I was the only man worth marrying on this miserable rock. Ever since she passed on, it’s like all the goodness went out of the world with her. But still, I have learned to respect her memory without feeling like I’m haunted by it.”
“We having a discussion about one thing while talking about another, Erazamus?” Sam said.
“Loneliness makes a man do strange things, Sheriff.”
“Like?”
“Like going off into Beothuk country with the bodies of a bunch of their fallen sons. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that’s the behavior of a man that wants to come see me again, but on a more professional basis, if you understand my meaning.”
Sam Clayton fished a pouch from his pocket and pinched off an inch of sweetweed. He tucked it into his lower lip and sucked on it until he had a mouthful of juice to spit into the dirt. He chewed for a moment then spat again. Finally, he said, “Nope.”
Old Man Willow sighed, “I should have known better than try to wear you down, Sam. Meet me around the back with these fellers and we’ll get them down into the cooler. Then you can go on and get cleaned up for supper. Anna will burn the house down trying to fix it and still keep an eye on you if I leave you out here. Come on. I’ll get the gate.”
***
That evening, Sam sat on the Willow’s front porch bouncing Claire on his knee. His rifle was propped against the handrail, within reach. He told her a story about princesses and castles as the sun lowered over the horizon and painted the landscape in hues of red and gold. He kissed her forehead. “You know, you’re my princess, right? You always will be.” He lifted up her chin and gave her a kiss on the lips, tickling her with the scruff on his chin until she squirmed and tried to get away.
Sam set Claire down on the porch and sent her inside. He saw Jem standing in the doorway. He held out his hand and waved for the boy to join him. “You look like a man with something on his mind, son.”
Jem shrugged and looked down at the porch’s floorboards. “I keep seeing it.”
“Which part?”
“The look on that savage’s face when my gun went off.”
Sam nodded silently and rocked back in the chair. “Someday when you’re an attorney out on some big Metropolis-Class planet, you’ll look back on all this with amazement, I bet. All this fighting and killing over what? A barren bunch of land with the misfortune of having some of the rarest stones in the galaxy buried underneath it.”
“What if I said I’m not going anywhere? Maybe I’ll be a Sheriff just like you.”
“Just like me?” Sam said.
“That’s right.”
He smiled and pulled Jem close to him, lifting the boy onto his lap. He grunted and said, “Won’t be long before you’re too big to sit on my lap.”
Jem put his head on his father’s shoulder and didn’t speak. Sam played with the boy’s hair and said, “Why are you moping? I won’t be gone long.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
Sam put his head against his son’s shoulder and said, “I don’t know why I’m about to tell you this, but here goes. That security gate was opened from inside. I checked it after we chased the Beothuk back through it.”
Jem’s eyes widened. “Why would somebody who lives here want to see the place attacked?”
�
��Probably the two most dangerous qualities a man can possess, son. Stupidity and greed. Put them together and it's bad news, every time. I need you to keep your eyes on the place while I’m gone. Tell me what you hear.”
“When you get back, I’m going to help you figure out who did it and we can put them in jail.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Sam said. He kissed the top of Jem’s head and told him it was time for bed. Jem helped him collect his gear and set it by the entrance so Sam could get dressed at first light and ride out.
“Goodnight, Pa,” Jem said.
Sam put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and stopped him from going up the stairs, “When I get back, we’ll ride out to the canyon together and get a few leapers. We’ll camp out and cook ‘em over a pit. Claire can stay with these folks. Just you an’ me.”
“You promise?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s better than a promise.”
***
Several hours later, Jem Clayton heard his father downstairs strapping on his guns and riding gear. He listened to Sam’s spurs jingle on the floorboards and the slow creak of the front door open and shut. Jem went down the stairs to peer through the window, watching as Sam climbed onto the back of his massive destrier.
In the years that followed, Jem relived those last moments of his father riding away. He sometimes convinced himself that Sam stopped and waved at him before departing.
In reality, Sam Clayton thought his children were both asleep inside the Willow’s house, and he didn’t want to disturb them. He rode his mount around the back of the house to hitch the cart containing the dead bodies of the Beothuk warriors.
Guns of Seneca 6 (Chamber 1 of the Guns of Seneca 6 Saga) Page 2
