Williamson, Penelope

by The Outsider

  "My hair, Mose. They cut off all my hair."

  Her hair, her pretty hair, looked like the stubble left in the field after the hay was cut. It had been sheared off so close to her scalp that in places she'd been nicked enough to bleed.

  His hand hovered over her mutilated head, but he pulled it back when she flinched. "Aw, Marilee, I'm so sorry."

  She whimpered and straightened her legs. There was a lot of blood on her skirt.

  Suddenly her whole body jackknifed, and she clutched at her belly. Blood gushed out from between her legs, thick gouts of bright red blood, and Marilee screamed again, over and over again.

  What was left of the haystacks they'd built such a short while ago stood baking and tanning in the heat. Mose walked slowly toward them, his boots shuffling through the grass like an old man's. Each step was an effort and an agony. He kept shivering even though he was sweating.

  A briny taste soured his mouth, the taste that came from tears of rage and pain and shame. He thought he'd taken some bad beatings from his father, but none had ever been like that. Still, the pain and humiliation of being whipped bare-assed with a pair of chaps was nothing to what they'd done to Marilee.

  Lieber Gott, had she screamed! And bled. So much blood, on the quilt, on her dress, on the ground, on the cushioned seat of the shay—they had all become soaked with her blood. He had driven the shay wildly across the prairie back to town, with fear and rage punching his heart, punching, punching, punching, making it flat and hard.

  He'd gone running with her in his arms, still bleeding and screaming, into Doc Henry's house. That was when the doc had told him she was losing her baby, a baby Mose hadn't even known she was going to have.

  The hired gun had promised Mose he would be too raw and sore to ride a horse, but the rage in Mose's heart had made it possible for him to get on his mount and ride back across the valley to the Weaver farm and beyond. The rage made it possible now for him to be walking across the Yoder south pastures in search of Johnny Cain.

  Sheepherders had a saying that trouble never traveled lonesome. And sure enough, Mose saw, trouble had come calling on the Yoder farm today as well.

  Their ewes had managed to find a big thick patch of sweet clover and the silly animals were now proceeding to eat themselves into an epidemic of stomach bloat. Already a good dozen were on the ground foaming at the mouth, their bellies distended and swollen. Four others were on their backs, legs still in the air, stone dead.

  Mose walked up to Johnny Cain, who was kneeling before one of the bloated ewes. "You got to lance 'em when they swell up," Mose said. "Let out all that bad air."

  The outsider slanted an aggrieved look up at him. "I was fixing to do that," he said. And as the man leaned over the prostrate sheep, Mose saw that he did in fact have a bloating lance in his hand.

  He stabbed the lance into the ewe's left flank. She let out a pathetic bleat and expired on the spot.

  "Oh, shit. I've gone and killed her," the outsider said.

  Mose squatted next to the dead sheep, setting his teeth on a moan as the movement pulled at all the cuts and welts and bruises on his backside. He took the bloating lance from the outsider's hands. "Here. Let me do the next one."

  He walked on his knees over to another bloated ewe. He felt along the sheep's flank, searching for the proper point. "It's a bit tricky. An inch or two to the right or left, and suddenly all you've got is a wool pelt and mutton stew."

  The bloating lance was actually a small tube with a blade passing through the hollow middle. He punctured the ewe's hide and rumen with the lance, pushing in the tube, then withdrawing the lance and leaving the tube in place. Hot, smelly air whooshed out of the tube with enough force to fan the hair off Mose's brow. And the ewe got a look on her face of sublime relief.

  Such was the difference between life and death, Mose thought. The difference of an inch or two. He crawled over to the next sheep.

  "Mrs. Yoder, she's the best at poking holes in bloated sheep of anyone I've seen. But young Benjo also knows what he's about."

  "Yeah?" the outsider said. "Well, they all went off and left me alone with the goddamn woollies. The boy's taken MacDuff over to his grandpa's to help with the shearing, and she's gone to help the twins pick over the beans for tomorrow's preaching service soup. So you got to figure with no one but me around something disastrous like this was bound to happen."

  "That's sheep for you, all right. Even the Devil couldn't think up all the trouble a woolly can find to get into."

  Mose looked at the quick-draw rig the man always wore on his hip, even here in such a place of peace as a pasture full of sheep. But it wasn't easy getting it out—his own trouble and what he meant to do about it, and the help that he would need from Johnny Cain. So he put the moment off until he'd punctured the last of the ballooning ewes, and they'd herded the band over to a field with less of the tempting clover.

  They stood side by side among the grazing sheep, he and Cain, and still it wasn't easy getting it out. It was strange how he had been able to lance the sheep and talk to the outsider about it as if he, Moses Weaver, were his same old self, when all the while rage and fear and hate were gripping him so he felt brittle inside. It was as if he were two Moses Weavers. One a Plain boy and a sheep farmer, and the other this Mose who was far, far different, a stranger even to himself.

  He cleared his throat. It felt as if he had ground glass in there. "Before now, before you came to be with us, did you do stuff for money? I mean, how much did someone have to pay you?"

  Cain took off his hat and ran a finger around the inside leather, wiping off the sweat. "Pay me to do what?"

  "Kill a man. Kill some shit-eating bastard."

  The words had startled Mose coming out of his mouth. Not the words so much as the fresh rage that scorched them. The outsider turned his head slowly and gave Mose a long, steady stare. He couldn't have helped seeing all the blood before this, but now he looked at it deliberately—not with wild curiosity, more with a mild interest—and waited for Mose to go on.

  "It's not my blood," Mose said. "Mostly not," he amended.

  The outsider turned away as if even his mild interest had been used up. A silence fell over the pasture, a silence that blended with the buzz of the flies around the sheep dung, the caw of a magpie, the raucous breath of the wind. "Who is he?"

  Mose jumped as if he'd just been prodded. "What?"

  "The shit-eating bastard you want killed."

  "He said his name's Jarvis Kennedy." Mose paused, but the outsider's face showed no reaction. "He's the new Hunter stock inspector and he said to tell you Johnny Cain is a dead man, and that all you have to do is choose your moment."

  This seemed to amuse the outsider, for his mouth pulled into a smile. But it was a hard, tight smile so reminiscent of the Hunter hired gun's that to see it again set Mose's belly to churning.

  His raw buttocks burned and throbbed, and fresh tears of humiliation stung his eyes. He would never be able to speak to this man about the whipping, but there was Marilee, and she deserved vengeance. "Also, well, maybe you don't care, but he raped a woman. Miss Marilee from the Red House, who's a friend of mine. They said they were going to teach her a lesson for being with a Plain boy, and then they raped her. So bad she bled and lost her baby."

  "Look at her, the gluttonous fool," Cain said. He was staring at one of the ewes they'd just punctured. "She's back to eating again as if nothing happened."

  Mose had to swallow around the choking lump in his throat. "Sheep have short memories," he said. Not like men. Mose didn't think he'd ever forget what had been done to him on this day.

  But he was beginning to feel foolish, like a child trying to capture the attention of an adult who doesn't even know he's there. He had expected the outsider to be outraged, horrified, when he heard the story of what had happened, but he wasn't. In the Plain community, what was done to one was done to them all. But he'd forgotten that Johnny Cain was indeed an outsider, who would care only about
himself.

  "Of course, you probably just want to go ahead and kill the shit-eating bastard for yourself," Mose said. "For calling you a dead man."

  Mose waited, but the outsider said nothing, and so he had to go on. "But since I want him dead as well, I'm willing to pay you."

  The outsider brought his cold stare back to Mose. "You can't afford me."

  Mose nodded, swallowed. He had figured such would be the case. It didn't matter. Once the gates of hell gaped open, there was no shutting them. "Will you teach me how to quick draw, then?"

  Cain gave a bitter laugh. "I'm beginning to feel like the only whore in town and there's a line forming outside my door."

  Mose wasn't sure what he meant by that, and he didn't care. He was suddenly tired, so tired, and he felt raw all over, not only the places where he'd been whipped. He could feel the rage, and with it his resolution, slipping away. He shut his eyes and made himself think of Marilee, of how she'd looked with her face as white as death and all that red, red blood.

  "He raped my friend and, with or without your help, I'm going to kill him for it."

  The outsider moved so fast, Mose didn't see him coming until the man's hand was already gripping his neck, pushing his head up, and Mose was staring into eyes that were as lifeless and hard as blue glass.

  "First," Johnny Cain said, "you are talking too stupid to live, boy. Second, I don't give a tinker's damn about you or your whore and her trouble. But Mrs. Yoder seems fond of you, and so for her sake I'm gonna give you one lesson with my Colt. One lesson, and what you choose to learn from it will be your own business."

  Cain let him go, stepping back. "Are you ready?"

  Mose nodded, stretching out his neck. He tried to hide his trembling. His legs suddenly felt so weak, he wondered how they were holding him up.

  The outsider slipped his revolver from the holster and held it out to Mose butt first. Mose reached to take the gun, when it seemed suddenly to come alive. It spun around in the outsider's hand, a flash and blur of black metal. Mose heard a loud click, and he was suddenly looking at the black bore of the Colt's muzzle.

  Slowly, slowly, the muzzle came up, until it was pointed between Mose's eyes. And Johnny Cain was smiling that smile, the smile of a man-killer. "What are your favorite flowers, boy?"

  To Mose's bitter shame, he felt his whole body begin to shake. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited, waited. Then the sense of the man's words finally penetrated his fear, and he understood that Cain wasn't going to kill him, had never had any intention of killing him.

  He jumped anyway, though, when Cain released the hammer. He opened his eyes in time to watch the revolver slide back into its holster. Cain had already turned his back on him and was walking away.

  "Wait!" Mose lurched forward, grabbing the outsider by the arm.

  Cain wrenched out of his grasp and whipped around, his hand falling to the butt of his Colt in a movement that was as instinctive to him as breathing.

  Mose raised his hands in the air and backed up a step, but he wasn't going to give up. "I'm not stupid, Mr. Cain. I know what you were trying to teach me with that lesson, and it doesn't matter. I want Jarvis Kennedy dead."

  "No, you don't." Cain's eyes were wide and dark now, and he was breathing so hard he was almost panting. "You'd only be sorry for it afterwards, or dead yourself."

  Mose shook his head. "I won't be sorry. I want that son of a bitch to pay for what he's done. You're making the same mistake everybody does, you think that because I'm Plain, I'm also ignorant. I want Jarvis Kennedy dead, and I know what it's going to take to make that happen."

  The outsider lowered his head. When he raised it a moment later, his face looked gentle, almost sad. "It ain't about ignorance, Mose. It ain't even about innocence. There's plenty more lessons I could teach you. Like how to move quick and aim straight. And if you didn't prove out in the quick-draw department, I could teach you how to do it ruthless and dirty. How to get the drop on a man so's to shoot him in the back before he even knows you're there. I could teach you all that and everything else I know about killing, and you still wouldn't have what it takes to go up against a man like Jarvis Kennedy."

  Mose's face felt wet, and he knew it was from tears. He thought he'd been crying for a good while now. "What does it take, then, damn you?" The hot tears filled his eyes and splattered onto his cheeks. "Just tell me what it takes."

  The outsider's gaze was focused on the distant mountains, stark and sun-haloed against the sky. Mose didn't expect an answer, but he got one.

  "Nothing. It takes feeling nothing inside except it's either him or you. When you can empty your gun into a man's belly with the same amount of feeling it takes to step on a cockroach, then you'll have what it takes to survive."

  He swung his eyes back to Mose, and they were empty, and so was his face.

  "But something happens to you," said Johnny Cain. "Something happens and even surviving stops mattering so much anymore, and all you feel most of the time is nothing."

  Johnny Cain walked away from him then, and Mose let him go. But after a few steps he stopped, stood still a moment, then slowly turned back around.

  "I guess I am sorry a little bit about your friend," he said. He sounded surprised.

  Marilee opened her eyes onto a paper trellis of ribbons and roses. There was many a day she had opened her eyes to such a sight, but she knew—even before she felt the aching, hollow emptiness in her belly—that this day was different.

  She turned her head. Luc Henry was standing over her, frowning down at her and looking worried. This pleased her, for it meant he must care for her at least a lime. But then he was a doctor, and there was that sensitive part of him that cared about the whole world.

  He eased down onto the bed beside her, the tick rustling and sagging beneath his weight. He picked up her hand.

  "Marilee..."

  Her throat hurt, and she had to swallow. "The baby's gone, isn't it?"

  "I'm sorry."

  She pressed her head back into the pillow, squeezing her eyes shut. A sob exploded out of her and then another. "Oh, God," she cried, trying to push herself up. She wanted to be held, she wanted it so desperately, and his arms did come around her, holding her, and she clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder as the tears and sobs ripped out of her in shuddering heaves.

  After a while she subsided into shudders and little hiccupping breaths. "It hurts, Luc. It hurts so bad."

  "I know, I know." He held her tighter for a moment longer, then eased her back down onto the bed. "I'll give you one of my herbal infusions, in a moment." He summoned up one of his sweet, crooked smiles. "And maybe some patent medicine, too, just to be safe."

  Her hand fluttered weakly up to her head. "They cut off all my pretty hair."

  He wrapped his finger around a single curl that fell over her ear, giving it a gentle tug. "It'll grow."

  She bit her lip as a fresh bout of tears, hot and salty, flooded her eyes. "He wasn't content just to put his cock up inside me, Luc. He had to go shovin' his six-shooter up in there as well. He ripped me up pretty bad, didn't he?"

  "You'll be some time in healing, Marilee," Doc Henry said, but he averted his face, and she knew it was to hide his thoughts.

  And so it was a long time before she was able to find the courage to ask him if she would ever be able to have another baby. And it was a longer time still before he spoke, and before he did, she saw the answer come first into his eyes, and that was when she began to cry again.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was hot.

  Blistering, sweat-cooking, drought-making hot. Hot winds shriveled the grass and licked at the water holes, drying them up. Clouds of dry alkali dust washed the blue out of the sky and turned the sluggish Miawa Creek the color of dirty soapsuds. Not a drop of rain fell to pock the ground. And it was still only the second week of June.

  It was hot, and it was shearing time.

  Noah Weaver watched the sheep come waddling, one by one, out of t
he bathing pool, water-laden and staggering with it. He thought if he heard someone say that it was hot as a cookstove one more time, his head might just explode.

  It had been hard work this year, damming up the low-running creek and scooping out a puddle big enough to make a woolly bath. But a clean crop fetched higher prices, and at least in this hot weather the sheep would be dry enough to shear in no time.

  Samuel Miller, who had the enviable job of standing knee-deep in the pool and watching to make sure none of the sheep rolled over and drowned, tossed a smile at his brothers. He pretended to wring the sweat out of his beard. "Judas. It's hot enough to make the Devil feel t' home, ja?"

  Abram laughed, but then his face sobered quick enough.

  "It's a drought we're in the making of. You tell me if we're not."

  Sol nodded, his mouth so tight it all but disappeared into his beard. "It's as hot as a cookstove, it is."

  Noah clamped his own lips together and forced himself to take a deep breath through his nose. He tugged on his hat, half afraid his head really would explode. He reminded himself to think of these days as a trial sent by the Lord to be endured with meekness and humility. God was testing him, saddling him with scorching days, a drought, and Johnny Cain, all in one summer.

  He had been looking forward to this day, though. The day they sheared Rachel's sheep. He had made the outsider a promise—ach vell, you could call it a challenge, wicked though that might be—that the man wouldn't be able to last through a day of sheep shearing. Noah knew the outsider fancied himself tough, that he took pride in his toughness. Sure enough, the Bible was right when it said that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

  Noah looked across the pool to where the outsider was trying to nudge a reluctant yearling into the water, and he smiled. You'll not last the day, outsider. Might be you'll not even last an hour. And then we'll see. We'll see what my Rachel has to say to that.