Hell's Half-Acre

by Nicholas Nicastro

  “You know for a fact that this belonged to the Benders?” Whistler asked him.

  “To a certainty.”

  “Then I’ll be to Independence today. Good day to you, gentlemen.”

  And with that, Whistler was off to launch the posse outfitted by State Senator York. As Leroy had suspected, the Benders had made for Thayer, the closest railhead. The connection between the wagon mystery and the murders moved the sheriff at Thayer to inquire at the train station. There, he found a ticket agent who remembered a pair of “Dutch” women who had purchased four tickets.

  “Would you say these women match the descriptions in the governor’s proclamation?” George Majors asked.

  Though the bill had been hanging on a post in sight of his window for days, the agent regarded it as if seeing it for the first time. Tugging a lip, he shrugged.

  “I suppose they do. To look at them, there wasn’t nothing funny about ’em. It was just that they were confused about the kind of ticket they wanted—­one-­way or round-­trip—­and that don’t happen every day.”

  “They bought a round-­trip?”

  “They did.”

  “The low, crafty bastards.”

  As Leroy and Majors rode home, the latter was full of plans for the constitution and direction of the party they would launch the next day.

  “But the agent says they left by train,” Leroy objected. “They’re likely a hundred miles from here.”

  “Maybe they are. Or maybe that’s just what they want us to think. Nobody saw them get on that train.”

  “Well, I guess . . .”

  “We have to be sure. And there must be a posse,” Majors said, almost plaintively. And of course there had to be one from their town, because it was the place most foully tainted by the Benders’ career. In saloons and upon kitchen tables throughout Kansas, the question was still asked how such brazen atrocity could go on in one place for so long without someone sniffing it out somehow. All the adults in the area were confounded by two equally disturbing possibilities: either their moral sense had become nearly as corrupt as the Benders’, or they were too stupid to suspect what was going on right under their noses.

  One of their defenses was to remark on the “cunning” of the Benders, on the preternatural cleverness they had displayed in duping everyone around them. Of course no one had suspected anything, this defense ran—­what decent mind could plumb the depths of the Benders’ wiles, especially that of she-­wolf Kate, who beguiled men’s loins even as she lied to their faces? It wasn’t the fault of decent folk to fail to imagine the worst in ­people. She might even have been a witch.

  As Majors went on about the posse, Leroy was quiet. The prospect of riding out stirred up memories he sooner have never confronted again. For despite proclamations from Topeka and talk of bringing the monsters to “justice,” he knew what any posse of righ­teous avengers would do if they caught up with the Benders. A shot behind the ear and a shallow grave for each was the most humane fate that awaited them. If he rode out, he would be jayhawking again—­plain and simple.

  He kept his misgivings to himself when they reached Harmony Grove. He continued to nurse them as a party consisting of Majors, Billy Toles and his brother Silas, Moneyhon, Mortimer, Starr, and Lindsay agreed to meet before sunup the next morning, each bringing as many additional volunteers as he could.

  Leroy remained quiet as he went home, took his favorite chair in the parlor, and picked up an old newspaper—­one that thankfully did not discuss the Benders. When he failed to concentrate on the news from Europe, he laid the paper aside, interleaved his fingers and gazed into the cold fire grate. Have I turned coward? he wondered. When the conscience quails so violently, how can a man not suspect his courage? For the sense of inadequacy he felt was not a vague one, but rooted in true and datable events, palpable as the bump on a bone once broken and poorly set. It ached anew every time someone gazed on him with that damnable admiration. The esteem that mocked him for being both unworthy and a fraud for pretending otherwise.

  By chance, his eye rested on a swath of blue silk Mary Ann had left in her embroidering basket. The color took him back to a certain Sunday morning, when Kate Bender had showed up in a dress the same color. Though he never made it his business to notice such things, the robin’s-­egg vision of her would not quit his memory. Nor the twist of auburn against her neck, nor her black eyes turned in his direction, beseeching him from out of their depths. The voids attracted him despite himself; he felt the influence of some planet too shadowy and distant to see.

  The room was darker when he came out of his reverie. Mary Ann was standing there, deep within the room and arms crossed as if she’d been watching him for some time.

  “I never told you the truth,” she said. “I went to see them once.”

  Leroy was surprised. “The Benders?”

  “It was a while back . . . more than a year. I made them a welcome visit, seeing that they were always off on their own. I brought them a pie.”

  “You risked your life for a pie.”

  “Nobody had an inkling of that business then,” she replied, irritated with his masculine obtuseness. “Nothing untoward happened . . . at first . . .”

  He leaned forward in his seat.

  “She showed me all due courtesy, but I could feel there was something amiss,” she said. “The girl was afraid of something in that cabin. So I told her she might always seek refuge here, if need be.”

  “And what reply did she make?”

  “She pretended to take offense. But her true feelings were not hard to feature.”

  “So you’ll have no truck with her being a witch?”

  “I am not Gertrude Dienst.”

  Leroy rose and took her in his arms. Being several inches shorter, he had to straighten his spine to kiss her on the cheek.

  “You credit that girl too much,” he said.

  She smiled. “I say she was afraid, but that doesn’t make her innocent.”

  “I’d not think what might have happened to you in that place. You were reckless, madam.”

  She disarmed him with a smile and pecked him on the nose. Then she left him alone to ruminate in the fading light.

  He never thought of himself as a man liable to flights of imagination. But the idea of his Mary Ann alone in that cabin, with the creatures that dwelled there, made him shudder. It was almost as frightening as the thought of the Benders free to continue their predations on other husbands and wives and children, merely by outrunning the consequences of their crimes.

  Taking a match from the box in the writing desk, he lit the lamp. It flared, throwing off an infernal glare until he turned the wick lower. When the lamp was set the way he liked it, the parlor was wrapped in warm twilight, its walls remote in the shadows. He could imagine the limits of his sanctum stretching away to a great distance, the mantel clock ticking like the unwinding of the Lord’s celestial mechanism. Filled with the calm of domestic repose, he sat back, wanting no more than to watch the ring of oil smoke collect at the mouth of the glass.

  What horrors existed in the world without his knowledge, he could do nothing. Running down the Benders, however, was an opportunity to make a difference that could be measured in lives. Confronted with that choice, his conscience could permit him none of his weaknesses.

  He found his wife in the kitchen, sitting with a catalog.

  “Majors wants us out before the sun. Can’t say how long we’ll be gone.”

  She searched his face, measuring the depth of his purpose. She shut the catalog.

  “I’ll have the coffee on.”

  THE POSSE RODE the course of the Neosho, watering their horses in the river as the temperature rose to summery heights. They figured the watercourses were a good bet to find the Benders, because the woods along them offered a good place to hide out during the daylight hours. When they were i
n rifle range, they proceeded in single file, with a good distance between the riders in case of ambush. At night they bivouacked under cover, with regular watches set.

  Over coffee and grub they debated what might be in the minds of their quarry. Considering their modus operandi, Junior and the old man were clearly cowards, not willing to risk a fair fight with their victims. It took a fair stretch of imagination to think of them as skilled gunfighters.

  “Even a bad shooter can be dangerous notwithstanding—­if he’s close enough,” averred George Majors.

  “They didn’t just leave their hammers, they left their shotgun,” added Billy Toles.

  “Yar daft,” Moneyhon declared. “With all those souls they planted, you think they didn’t come by a few weapons? They’re ahrmed to the teeth, I say.”

  “Small good it’ll do ’em if they can’t hit a cow from the milking stool,” insisted Billy.

  Leroy was too keyed up to listen to petty squabbles. “There’s merit to all your arguments,” he said, “but no sense in trusting to chance. We’ll take them as if they shoot like the James gang, and that’s that.”

  They proceeded up the Neosho to Iola, and made inquiries there. No one had seen a party matching the Benders’ description, but there was great general interest in recent events in Labette County. Retiring to the local saloon for drinks before heading out, the posse was peppered with questions.

  “Is Kate Bender as comely they say?” the barkeep asked Leroy.

  “Isn’t that a matter of opinion?”

  He poured Leroy another drink, unsolicited. “Sure. But is she?”

  “Would you like her to be?”

  He grinned. “Yes, I would.”

  “Suit yourself, then,” said Leroy, and slapped his empty glass on the bar.

  The twelve of them headed out as the sun peeked over the trees. The sensations of a dawn ride, in force and far from home, transposed Leroy a decade in time. The smell of early morning fires from strange hearths likewise took him back; the wary glances of passersby, wondering at his purposes, were no different than those given before the war. He saw the bodies of the dead Defensives on the prairie. He saw fingers in the grass, scattered like worms from the rain, and the desiccated husk of Ernest Tubbs Junior, reciting Latin nouns of the second declension. He sucked in breath. His horse half turned toward him, perceiving his unease. He leaned down, gave him a pat on the neck. The horse laid back his ears.

  The farms north of Iola were better established than the ones in southern Kansas. There were proper horse fences and consolidation of claims as the first, dilettante stakeholders had sold out to the successful ones. Here and there rose a church with a proper steeple. Though he felt as if riding into his personal past, he was in fact glimpsing the future of his community. The example was steadying, a tonic after too many hints that his home was beyond the pale of civilization. It may well be rude now, he thought, but soon it would not be. It was in the nature of things.

  They reached the railroad, rode along it for a while, then meandered west to rejoin the river. A ­couple of days out from Harmony Grove, their objective hadn’t changed, but their enthusiasm had. Hour after hour in the saddle began to tell on rear ends used to buggy travel. Where the idea of riding down the Benders had seemed a practical possibility from the comfort of their armchairs, reacquaintance with that vast stretch of country cooled their ambitions. What started as a purposeful gallop became a steady walk, then a desultory trudge. For most posses, that was in the nature of things too.

  They turned north as they approached the belt of greenery around the riverbed. The Toles boys posted themselves as sweepers on their left, riding as close to the trees as they dared, as the rest of the group observed from within pistol shot. Leroy watched them close, not adverse to the possibility of finding their quarry at last, finally getting the damned thing over with. But they had no such luck: for mile after mile, the sweepers stared between the trees at a river in spring spate, streaming over empty banks. In one spot a few runaway cows sheltered, leaning against the cottonwood trunks. In another they found an abandoned campsite, its patch of ash neatly ringed by cobbles fetched from the river. Billy Toles stuck a finger in it. The ashes were cold.

  They went on, thoughts turning to the prospect of lunch. It was therefore with some air of unreality that they saw Billy’s brother, Silas, shout and point downstream. Out came the pistols and rifles from their holsters; gone was good order and discipline. Leroy felt his heart scaling his rib cage as the posse converged on the spot where Silas spun his horse and whooped. Was it to be as easy as this?

  They had found a camp of one tent, with a small fire burning. Two men were sitting as their biscuits baked in a pan greased with bacon. Their gun belts were hanging from a branch, pistols still in their holsters. Neither moved to retrieve them as the posse approached.

  “Morning!” said the one.

  “Howdy do, boys!” said the other.

  Reining up, Leroy had a good look at them. They didn’t have the look of tramps: both were lean of face and more or less clean-­shaven, and their equipment was in reasonable shape. Their mounts were fine quarter horses, well-­cared-­for. There were two men in sight, but three horses.

  “Good morning,” replied George Majors. “Pardon us for dusting up your camp.”

  “Not at all,” said the one, waving an absolving hand. “I am Mr. Morris, and this is Mr. Crane.”

  “Pleased to meet you. We’re up from Labette Township on peace business. Have you seen four Dutch traveling together, two men and two women? One of the men would be hirsute and ugly, one of the females young and handsome. They are most definitely dangerous.”

  The men looked at each other.

  “Can’t say we have, sorry.”

  “Well, if you happen upon them, here are the particulars . . .”

  Majors held out a copy of the governor’s proclamation. Rising to take it, Morris glanced at the reward and whistled.

  “Two thousand! What’d they do, blow up a train?”

  “Read on and you’ll see. Good day now.”

  “Would you like to break your trip with us? We got enough coffee.”

  “Much obliged, but we have outlaws in our sights.”

  Majors was turning away when Leroy asked, “I see you’ve got three horses. Someone else with you?”

  Messrs. Morris and Crane smiled at each other in a manner Leroy found disturbing.

  “Well, that depends on your definition of ‘someone,’ ” replied the former.

  “Can’t see that’s our business, Leroy, when these gentleman aren’t the Benders . . .” said George carefully.

  But it was too late: Leroy caught sight of a face peering from between the tent flap. As he stared, the face gathered substance as it found the light, manifesting at last as a girl’s.

  “Well hello there!” said Mr. Crane. “You’ve decided to join us, I see . . .”

  The newcomer was a Chinese. Leroy could not confidently discern her age, but by her slimness she seemed no more than fifteen. Her face was pale, her features fine, with her nose slightly turned up at the tip. Her long hair, tied off at the end with a piece of burlap, was the kind of gleaming black that shone blue. In those coarse circumstances, he would have called her pleasing to look at—­if not for the unhealed cut at the left corner of her mouth, and the bruises around her neck.

  “Gentlemen, this is Ah Quim. A partner of ours.”

  “That really her name?”

  “She answers to it for sure. Show the boys, Crane.”

  Mr. Crane nuzzled the fire with the toe of his boot and kicked out a smoking branch.

  “Ah Quim! Fetchee!”

  Regarding her companions and the posse with equal wariness, she crawled through the flap. Rising to her bare feet, she revealed she was wearing nothing but a threadbare chemise and an incongruously ornate set of petti
coats, like something stolen from a French bordello. Messrs. Morris and Crane watched her with almost parental fondness as she bent, plucked up the branch by the not-­glowing end, and brought it back to the fire. From her grimace Leroy could see the wood burned her fingers, but she delivered it without a making a sound. When she was done she turned to go back to the tent, but Mr. Morris held her by the arm.

  “Gentlemen, our partner is most dexterous. Now that you’ve seen her, would any of you care to partake?”

  Leroy forced himself to be civil. “Are we to believe this young woman is here by choice?”

  “Why don’t we ask her? Ah Quim, are you restrained here in any way?”

  The girl looked down, muttered something in Chinese.

  “What’s that prove?” Leroy demanded.

  Mr. Crane raised his arms in a gesture intended to indicate the entire world. “As you can see, she is not tied up, and there are no walls around our camp.”

  “That was not my goddamned question.”

  “Mr. Dick, a word please!” Majors interjected.

  Leroy leaned over in his saddle, spat, and steered his horse next to him.

  “What are you doing, Leroy?” Majors whispered. “What business is this of yours?”

  “If that girl is anything other than a kidnap, I’d go home right now.”

  “So what? Throw a chip and you’ll hit a chink whore in any of these camps. You think they’re all here by choice?”

  “Can you see the bruises? On her neck?”

  “Every minute we stay here the Benders get farther away. Remember them, the Benders?”

  “George—­”

  “Keep this up and maybe you should go home. Explain it to Mary Ann, your particular interest in ‘Ah Quim.’ ”

  Majors looked to Morris and Crane. “We’ll be on our way now,” he told them. “If you see the party we’re looking for, be sure to get word to a peace officer.”