“I can’t leave him.”
“I don’t want you to. Go fetch him. I’ll untie Rigby.”
Doreen walked outside as Natalie ascended the staircase. She placed her hand on the knob to Jake’s closed nursery door but let go to take one more look outside, this time an elevated peek at the grassland and trees that clogged the area in between the house and where Doreen saw the abandoned wagon. And she saw movement in the brush.
Natalie walked downstairs and called outside.
“Doreen, I need your help in here for a second, if you please.”
Not thinking anything of it, Doreen again lashed Rigby to the post.
“What can I do for you?” she said as she walked inside, but did not see Natalie.
“Step in and calmly close the door.” Natalie’s voice came from the back of the room, but Doreen couldn’t figure where.
“O-kay.” Doreen did as requested.
“I’m in the stairwell. They can’t see me.”
“Who can’t see you?”
“Two men, outside—don’t look. I’m guessing they’re men. Whoever it is, they’re sneaking up on us.”
“And why would they be doing this?” Doreen kept her back pressed to the door.
“Beats me, but Noah not being here, his wagon where you said it was,” Natalie trailed off before saying, “Stay away from the windows. Don’t tip ’em off.”
“Where’s your baby?”
“Still upstairs.”
Doreen looked around the house and gripped the leather strap of the bulky tan satchel she wore over her shoulder like a purse. “Go get him.”
“And go where?”
“Natalie, you don’t know me from one of them whores that works in town—but I need you to trust me. Most importantly, do not wake the baby.”
Delbert Johnson, flat on his belly, scuttled to the perimeter where tall brush gave way to the Chandler property line.
“I go in the front, you in the back,” Johnson said to Sam, who kept pace by his side. Both men kept six-shooters holstered on their right hips. “I hope you don’t have any problems shooting a woman.”
“For what that Diggs guy is paying, I don’t,” Sam said. “But why we gotta go shooting them right away if Chandler ain’t here?”
Johnson stopped mid-crawl.
“What are you saying?”
“I mean, let’s face it, that young lady who’s visiting looks mighty pretty to me, if you know what I mean.”
“You sick bastard.”
“Sick? Nossir,” Sam said. “No sense in wasting our time sitting around and waiting for Chandler and the woman to show. Why not entertain ourselves? Look, I’ll keep watch in case they pop up. You do the same for me when it’s my turn.”
“That girl is kinda cute.”
“Looks tough to me, like she’s got a little fight in her. We could tie her up, gag her. I like that.”
“All right, listen.” Johnson thought it through another few seconds. “We tie up Chandler’s wife and kid.”
Sam did a double-take. “I ain’t screwing no baby.”
“No, moron. I mean if Chandler figures out we’re in here and hunkers down in the woods to take shots at us, we can use his wife and kid to get him to surrender.”
“Oh.”
“As for that tasty peach that walked in? I ain’t got no problem screwing and shooting her. Can’t have witnesses, after all,” Johnson said. “You ready?”
“More than you know.” Sam sprinted around the back while Johnson charged the front porch and kicked open the door, pointing his drawn gun at emptiness.
The interior wasn’t separated by walls, but stood open, supported by beams. The sofa, kitchen table covered with food, the stove, all were in view.
“Coming in. Don’t shoot.” Sam appeared through a back room that led sideways into the kitchen.
Both men, standing directly opposite each other, eyed the staircase.
“Ladies,” Johnson began. “We know you’re in here. We’ve been watching you for a while. We ain’t here to kill you.” He nodded at Sam.
“We ain’t,” Sam said.
“I know you have a baby in here and we don’t want to start shooting.” Johnson looked above the fireplace and saw the empty rack. “But we will, especially seeing that we know you’re armed.”
Nobody responded.
“All right then,” Johnson said. “The more we have to look for you the angrier we’ll be. Come on out.”
Nothing.
The men looked around the small house for any place that could hide a body. Johnson fixated on a steamer trunk placed against back wall running perpendicular to the sofa. A yarn blanket had been draped over it for decorative purposes, but Johnson figured the trunk was there because there was no place else to put it.
Sam eyed the staircase by the fireplace and also spotted the ladder leading to the loft, from which a brisk shuffling sound filtered down. Sam cocked his gun.
Johnson turned and approached.
Sam mouthed: I’ll go up.
Johnson nodded, revolver at the ready in case he needed to follow.
The wooden ladder consisted of eight rungs and Sam easily climbed them. And there, on the bed, sat a shaking Natalie Chandler, cradling a swaddled bundle for dear life to her chest.
“Where’s your friend?”
“Don’t hurt my baby.” Her lower jaw trembled.
“I won’t if you tell me where the other lady’s at.”
Sam approached, causing Natalie to recoil.
“Now let’s not go waking the baby, miss,” Sam said. “Tell you what, why don’t you hand it over to me and you can climb down the ladder?”
“You ain’t touching my baby.”
“Fine. But we seem to have hit an impasse.” Sam stealthily dropped to the floor and looked under the bed, seeing nobody hiding there. This, too, caused Natalie to scoot farther back on the bed. Sam sprung up just as quickly as he fell.
“As I was saying.” He scanned the room for any nook or cranny that might obscure a body. “I can’t allow you to sit up here while my partner’s all alone downstairs. So you’re gonna need to come with me.”
“Who are you?” Her voice quivered. “What do you want with us?”
“Knowing either ain’t gonna do you a bit of good. But getting your pretty ass downstairs will. Or would you prefer that I take your baby to provide some incentive?”
“You ain’t touching my baby.”
“I don’t really want to. But can you get downstairs while holding it?”
“I’ve done it many times,” Natalie said. “Back up, give me room.”
“No funny business.” Sam displayed the weapon.
“Not with him in my arms,” she said.
“Delbert!” Sam said. “Chandler’s wife and baby’re coming down!”
She deftly descended using her free hand and stood in front of the fireplace, glancing back and forth from Sam, who followed her down, to Johnson, who stood by the staircase, periodically glancing up the steps.
“I ain’t fucking around, lady,” Johnson said. “I know that other bitch has the long gun. She better show herself and quick.”
“Or what?” Natalie kept track of Sam’s gun, which he still pointed in her direction, but not square on her body.
“Listen to her, Del,” Sam chuckled. “This one’s frisky.”
“She left through the baby’s upstairs window,” Natalie stammered. “She’s probably halfway to town right now.”
“Funny,” Johnson said. “I didn’t hear any horses running away. I didn’t hear any people running away. Did you, Sam?”
“Nossir, I didn’t.”
“That tells me you’re lying,” Johnson said. He, too, aimed his gun at her, but eased it toward the staircase as he placed a foot on the
bottom step.
“You got eyes everywhere, huh?” Natalie said. “We got ’em too. She snuck out just as you boys were kicking in my doors. That’s why you didn’t hear her on the roof. It ain’t that far of a drop.”
Johnson took it in—she made some sense. It was possible.
“All right, even if you ain’t shitting us, I know I didn’t hear no horses.”
She said nothing.
“Watch her, Sam. I’ll go up this time.”
The stairs creaked under Johnson’s footsteps. Nat concentrated on Sam. She heard Johnson fiddling with the nursery’s doorknob—at the same time Sam heard a soft thump coming from the steamer trunk. And he grinned.
“Thought so,” he said to her. “Looks like you delayed the inevitable of us finding her. But I do appreciate you and the youngster sitting out in the open for me. Makes the job easier.”
He looked at the trunk and back to Natalie.
“I want you to walk slowly to the other side of the trunk where I can keep an eye on you. Do it now.” He motioned the gun toward the trunk and she begrudgingly obliged.
“Step back a few feet, don’t crowd me,” Sam said.
The huge trunk’s two front latches dangled down, and that proved to Sam the woman was scrunched inside. He stooped and slid his fingers under the corner of the lid and held his gun at the ready, quickly flipping up the lid to discover a wide-eyed, cooing baby named Jake.
“The hell?” Sam, confused, stood straight up, and, distracted, pointed the gun away from the defenseless child.
“You ain’t touching my baby.”
The last thing Sam saw when he looked at Natalie was the area of the blanketed bundle supposedly comforting the crown of the baby’s head—only the crown exploded in tatters and a bullet flew through Sam’s forehead and out of the back of his skull. The dead man crashed against the wall behind him, his head cracking wood, leaving a trail of brains as his body slid to the ground. Using her free left arm, Natalie unwound the bundle of blankets to reveal the Remington revolver Doreen kept handy in her satchel.
The gunshot triggered Jake’s shrieks.
“Sam?!” It was Johnson.
Natalie knew she had seconds to scoop up her crying son and abscond through the back and into the woods.
She fled through the back door and heard Johnson jumping down the stairs.
Good Christ, Johnson thought upon seeing Sam’s slouched corpse. But he didn’t dwell on it. He stood in the rear doorway and spotted Natalie, who wore a white dress, skimming through the first few trees of the bordering forest.
He coolly aimed his gun, waited to make sure he lined up his shot just so, and fired.
The bullet cut into her right hamstring, and her scream sent the nearby woodland creatures scrambling. Mindful of her precious cargo, she did not fall, but slumped against a tree, cradling Jake, whose crying escalated to hysteria.
“You sneaky bitch!”
She winced as Johnson stomped to come get her. She’d dropped Doreen’s revolver and tried picking it up before Johnson grabbed it and stuffed it in his belt.
“Let’s go!” He seized her forearm, almost yanking it away to allow Jake to fall.
“I can’t walk!” She screamed over her baby’s wails.
“Neither can my dead friend! The only thing keeping you alive is if your damn husband arrives and gets ideas of being a hero. Now move! Back inside!”
He pushed her toward the house and her bad leg gave. She crumpled to her knees and deliberately forced herself to collapse on her back so as not to crush Jake.
“Leave us alone!” She rocked to her side, shielding her baby as best she could from her tormenter.
He kicked her in the ribs—hard enough to hurt—to compel her arduous crawl home. And then fear struck him.
“Dammit, I’m out in the open!” He spastically snapped his head in all directions, looking for a woman aiming a gun at him, for he knew she must be near.
Natalie lurched and propelled herself closer to the home. Dirt stained her dress, and brown dust shrouded her face as she coughed. No matter, she kept Jake close to her but could not quell his screaming.
Now paranoid, Johnson bounded in front of her and stood in the back door’s archway.
“Move!” His voice echoed and dissolved to the point where all he heard were her labored grunts and the sizzling blackened skin of a roasting turkey that was way past due for a turn on its spit.
Sweat needled his eyeballs and he slammed the butt of his gun into the doorframe.
“Faster!”
“I moving as fast as I can!”
He purposefully aimed his gun off to Natalie’s side and fired, the bullet kicking up dirt, some of which smacked her crying face.
“Move your ass, bitch!” Johnson abruptly turned inward and scoured the downstairs to make sure the woman had not returned and was waiting to shoot him in the back. He heard something in there. He knew he did. Or did he? Johnson’s breathing heightened. He popped his head back outside and continued berating Natalie.
“Faster, or I take another shot closer to the baby!”
“Don’t!” She held out her open hand to fruitlessly shield them.
“Then hurry!” Johnson had no clue whether anyone could hear the commotion. Chandler and Toby’s wife were on foot, making it easier to sneak up on him. And there was the goddamn woman.
Where could she be?
And the answer flashed through his mind once he caught sight of a small dirt footpath, made over time by back and forth trips to the outhouse.
You sneaky whore.
His eyes followed the trail, which arched rightward, about one-hundred feet to a building like the one Noah had occupied when Diggs and his men attacked Toby’s farm.
The sun, still high in the sky, flashed onto it, casting a shadow that pointed toward Johnson like an arrow. He swore that movement from within broke the sunrays that slipped through the slats. Or were his nerves causing him to see things that didn’t exist?
“Stop!” He pointed the gun at Natalie. Jake had quieted down to mewling. “Stay there. Do not move.”
Still standing in the archway, he watched her until he was certain she understood his seriousness. Then he focused on the outhouse.
I know I saw something moving in there—I know it. Aw, fuck it.
He unloaded the rest of his bullets into outhouse, taking care to fire at various heights to make sure he hit whoever might be inside. Natalie, her body physically spent from crying, just watched. The gunshots again sent Jake shrieking.
Johnson ignored it. He reloaded his gun with bullets from his belt, and before approaching the outhouse fired three more shots into it.
He prayed she was in there just to make his brain less scattered. He had to be quick, knowing Chandler might still be out there. Johnson charged the outhouse, swung open the door, and fired three bullets through the back of the empty building.
“Dammit! Where are you, bitch?!” His voice echoed across the brush.
Natalie felt relief, for in truth she knew not where Doreen Culliver went after she indeed snuck out of Jake’s window, shotgun in tow, as the two men breached the house.
It was supposed to be easy! Johnson thought. Two weak women! Now Sam’s brain is sticking to a wall! I feel like a sitting duck! I feel … sick.
Tough and burly Delbert Johnson couldn’t keep his stomach from doing somersaults—that’s how badly the prospect of being target practice for a woman he fantasized about raping not fifteen minutes earlier had bothered him. At least he was in the right place.
“Keep where you are, bitch,” he snapped at Natalie, who finally comforted Jake into quietness.
“I gotta puke,” he groused to himself.
He stumbled into the outhouse and leaned over the hole to heave and in less than second a double-barreled shotgun bl
ast from within the pit removed his head.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Deputy Eric Harrison knew gunfire—he heard the rat-tat-tat shots of Johnson’s six-shooter a half-mile away from the Chandler homestead. He spurred his horse to a full gallop by the time the shotgun boomed.
He tied his horse to the post where Doreen lashed her rig and ran around back, and put his hands in the air when he saw an injured woman cradling her baby, sitting next to a headless body, and pointing a revolver at him.
Neither said a word—Natalie because she didn’t know what to say, and Harrison because he didn’t know what to think, especially upon seeing in the outhouse two hands do a jack-in-the-box from the hole only to vanish back into it.
“Get me out of here!” came a woman’s scream from within the outhouse.
“Stay there!” Natalie screamed at Harrison as he stepped forward.
“I’m Eric Harrison. Uh, I work with Noah—I was invited here. Are you Natalie Chandler?”
“Yeah.” She kept Johnson’s gun trained on Harrison.
“You’ll forgive me for saying, but this is not the way I envisioned us meeting.”
“You armed?”
Harrison looked at his hips. “No ma’am.”
“Turn around, all the way.”
Harrison did at a snail’s pace so she could see he hadn’t stashed a piece in his backside.
“I don’t know what you think I’m here to do, but I can guarantee that hurting you or anyone else ain’t part of it,” he said.
“All right. Slowly.”
“Natalie, get me the hell out of here,” Doreen Culliver’s disembodied voice screeched. “The stench is killing me, and the last thing I want to do is faint.”
Harrison did as Natalie wished and kept his strides slow.
“I’m not sure what I’d like to know first,” he said. “Who’s the guy missing a head? Or who’s the woman that fell into your outhouse?” He saw Jake. “The baby?”
“He’s fine,” Natalie said and lowered the gun to Johnson’s body. “That man there came here to kill us. So did the man who came with him. He’s dead inside. I don’t know who they are.”
“I see.” Harrison continued into the outhouse and stared into the hole.
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