A Wolf in the Fold

by Ralph Compton

  “I don’t know anything of the sort.”

  “Who else could it be? Have any strangers been seen? By anyone? I tell you in all honesty, Calista, that the tracks of the rustled cattle always lead to the Dark Sister, but our trackers lose them in the canyons. Those Butchers know all kinds of tricks, I would imagine.”

  “I still refuse to believe they are to blame.”

  “Only because you are too kindhearted,” Gertrude said. “But I do not have your tender nature. Even so, you must admit I have been patient with them. I have warned Hannah on several occasions to control her wild brood or suffer the consequences.”

  Again she had blundered. I wanted to kick her.

  “What consequences?” Calista asked.

  “The next time LT cattle are stolen or slaughtered, I will send for a federal marshal or the Rangers and formally charge the Butchers. Nothing would please me more than to see each and every one of them swing at the end of a rope.”

  Calista said softly, “Oh, Gerty.” Shaking her head, she made for the door. “If you will excuse me.”

  We were alone. I stared at Gertrude without saying anything.

  “What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?” She brought her hand from behind her back and held out the poke. “Here you go. Half in advance, exactly as you require.”

  “I’ll count it later,” I said, slipping the poke under my black jacket.

  Gertrude snickered in amusement. “You don’t trust me?”

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Ordinarily I would be insulted. But we will let it pass.” Gertrude put her hand on my arm again and I almost slapped it off. “I expect you to start earning that money, Mr. Stark. And remember. All nine of them, or I won’t pay you another dollar.” Gertrude patted my cheek and went in.

  She would never know how close she came. I had my hand on the butt of the Remington, but I did not draw. Instead, I admired the fading glory of the setting sun, and wished to hell I made my living some other way.

  Chapter 5

  The Dark Sister had a fitting name. From afar, the peak resembled a giant fist thrust skyward. A dark fist, due to a mantle of forest that covered the mountain from the crown to the base.

  A rutted track led toward it across the grassland. The buckboard rattled and creaked without cease. I never had liked riding in a wagon; I liked it even less by the time the buckboard clattered up an emerald foothill to its grassy crest. There, I brought the team to a stop.

  According to the directions Calista had given me, I had miles to go yet to reach the Butcher homestead. It would take most of the morning. I started to reach under my jacket to ensure my short-barreled Remington was snug in my shoulder holster, then elected not to. Some of the Butchers might be watching. I must not do anything to kindle suspicion.

  On the seat beside me was the Bible. I picked it up and held it in plain sight and thumbed the pages as if searching for a particular passage. When I stopped thumbing, I moved my lips to give the impression I was reading. Then I set the Bible on the seat and creaked and clattered on.

  I was alert for not only the Butchers, but for signs of cattle. All the hoofprints I had seen so far were of shod horses. Nor did I come across cow droppings. But that did not necessarily mean the Butchers were innocent. They could easily hide the rustled critters in any of the many ravines and canyons that poked outward from Dark Sister like the spokes on a wagon wheel.

  Hours went by. Then a bend appeared, flanked by thick forest. I don’t know what I expected to see when I went around it, but it certainly wasn’t a sprightly girl of fifteen or sixteen skipping along with the sun playing off her straw hair and her bare feet. She heard the buckboard and turned. I figured she would run off, but she stood there as bold as brass with a smile that would warm harder hearts than mine.

  I stopped next to her and smiled my friendliest smile. “Should I pinch myself or are you real?”

  “I’m real, and you can pinch me instead.” She had a voice like honey and eyes that brought to mind a high country lake.

  “That’s no way to talk to a parson, young lady.”

  She giggled and brazenly devoured me with those blue eyes. “You’re no minister, mister.”

  I was speechless.

  “At least, you’re not like any minister I’ve ever seen. Usually they’re fat or bald or both. You have all your hair and you’re right handsome.”

  Pure delight pulsed through me. But I was supposed to be a parson, so I said jokingly, “I am going to tell your ma on you, young lady.”

  At that, she outright laughed. “Why, Parson, would you have me dragged out to the woodshed and switched until my backside is black and blue? My ma would blister me so bad, I couldn’t sit for a month of Sundays.” To stress her point, she rubbed her backside, then laughed louder.

  “Might you be a Butcher?” I doubted she was a town girl up here on a lark, but with females you never know.

  “Daisy Mae. But most folks just call me Daisy.” She arched a fine eyebrow. “You’re fixing to visit my ma, I take it?”

  “If she is to home, yes.”

  “She’s nearly always there,” Daisy said. “Except for once a month or so when she goes into town for her medicine and whatnot.” She gripped the edge of the seat. “Mind if I ride along? My feet are tired.”

  I did not believe that for a second, but I moved over to make room and in a lithe bound she planted herself next to me. A flick of the reins and we were in motion. “Is it safe for you to be traipsing about by your lonesome?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? I can outrun most anyone or anything hereabouts. And I know this mountain like you know the back of your hand.”

  “Just the same, I gather there’s a lot of ill will toward your family. You should take precautions. Never go anywhere without a revolver or a rifle.” Now why in God’s name was I telling her that? When she was on the list?

  “I’ve never shot another living thing and I don’t reckon to start,” Daisy informed me.

  “But you’re a country girl, aren’t you?”

  “Oh. I get it. That means I must kill rabbits for breakfast and squirrels for dinner and deer for supper.”

  “And chipmunks to nibble on between meals and elk for special occasions,” I bantered.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Parson, but my brothers do all the hunting. Me, I like to plant flowers and heal things.”

  Daisy had such an honest face, it made me wince inside to look at her. “Do your brothers kill the cattle they steal?”

  I nearly lost an eye. She swiped her nails at me and would have clawed my eye to ribbons had I not caught her wrist.

  “You’ve been talking to that mean Gertrude Tanner, haven’t you? She’s wrong, Parson. My ma doesn’t have any truck with stealing.” Daisy crooked her neck to study me. “Is that why you’re paying us a visit?”

  I let go and clucked to the team. “I’m making it a point to get to know everyone in these parts.”

  “You’re saving Ma a trip. She was fixing to come see you.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “I should let her tell you.”

  I glanced up and down the track. We had it to ourselves. My palms itched, but I could not shake the feeling that other Butchers might be watching. Better, I thought, to continue to playact.

  “So tell me, preacher man,” Daisy said, “are you married to the Good Book or are you like the rest of us?”

  Her frankness was unsettling in more ways than one. “That’s not the kind of question a girl asks a man of the cloth.”

  In typical female fashion, she ignored me. “Most preachers are so attached to it, they won’t look at a gal unless she wears the Bible around her neck as proof she has virtue.”

  I could not stop myself. I laughed.

  “Do you always turn the other cheek, Parson?”

  “It’s what the Bible says to do,” I hedged, thinking of my wife and the night I came home to find her in bed with another man. I
didn’t turn the other cheek then. I used a shotgun on him and my bare hands on her, and I’ve never been more ashamed of anything in my life.

  “So my ma keeps reminding us. But we can’t let that awful woman go on accusing us of things we didn’t do. My brothers Ty and Clell and Jordy are for paying the LT a visit, but Ma won’t hear of it.”

  “Your mother is wise.” Several hundred yards ahead the track ended at a broad clearing. I saw a cabin but no sign of life except for half a dozen horses and a dog. “Is that your place?”

  Daisy poked me with her elbow. “Whose else would it be? No one but us dares live up here. They’re too afraid.”

  “Of your family?”

  “No, silly. Of Injuns and outlaws and such. But we haven’t had a lick of trouble except for the Tanners.”

  I glimpsed movement in the trees to my right and then to my left. A young man with a rifle appeared. He grinned as if he were playing a game. My instincts told me he had been shadowing the buckboard for some time. He had the shoulders of a bull and a sloping forehead, and pointed a Henry rifle at me, saying, “Bang. You’re dead.”

  “That’s Jordy.” Daisy grinned. “He sure is a caution.”

  I brought the buckboard into the clearing in a half circle so that the team was pointed toward the track in case I had to get out of there in a hurry. The dog, a large speckled mongrel, barked its fool head off until Daisy yelled at it to shut up. It contented itself with baring its fangs and growling at me.

  More Butchers came out of the woods. Carson and Sam, I recognized. Another young man about the same age I took to be Kip.

  From the cabin emerged more. First was the older sister, Sissy, I believe she was called. She had blond hair that was not quite as lustrous as Daisy’s. She also had the same blue eyes, only paler.

  The two oldest boys were enough alike to be twins, although it was my understanding they were born a year apart. They were big boned, with anvils for jaws, and held matching Winchesters. I remembered Calista saying one was Ty, the other was Clell.

  Last to step out was the matriarch, as Gertrude had referred to her. Hannah Butcher was as broad as she was tall, and she was not much over five feet, a stout wall of a woman with a wide face and a wide mouth that curled in a smile as she held out a hand as big as mine. “So you’re the new parson. I’m right pleased to meet you. I’m Hannah, as if you couldn’t guess.”

  “How do you do?” Her grip put Lloyd Tanner’s to shame.

  Her offspring had formed a ring around the buckboard and me. Every single one except Daisy had a rifle, and the boys wore pistols, as well, tucked under their belts. Their clothes were home-spun. Only Hannah wore store-bought shoes. Sissy, like Daisy, was barefoot. The males had on moccasins. But not Indian moccasins. These they had made themselves.

  “What are you doing here, mister?” one demanded.

  “Now, now, Tyrel,” Hannah said. “Keep a civil tongue. He is our guest and we will treat him cordial. The rest of you, lower those rifles. Sistine, fetch a fresh bucket of water from the stream. Kip, you go with her.”

  “I don’t need guarding, Ma,” Sissy said. “I can take care of myself.”

  “What with all the goings-on around here lately, you’ll do as I say,” Hannah commanded. She had an air of calm assurance about her. Here was a woman who had lived a hard life. You could see it in the lines in her face. Raising several children, living in the wild, having to fend for herself since her husband vanished, she had to be as tough as rawhide.

  “That is part of the reason I’m here,” I said. “To talk about setting things right with the Tanners.”

  “You’ve got it backwards, Reverend Storm,” Hannah said. “They’re at fault, not us.” She motioned. “But come inside. No need to stand out in the sun unless you want to.”

  I figured to find a mess, but I’d underestimated them. No slovenliness here. Everything was as clean and as tidy as at the LT. Hannah ushered me to a high-backed chair. “This was my Everett’s favorite, God rest his soul.”

  “I was told he disappeared.”

  Hannah’s features clouded. “Murdered, is more like it. My Everett would never leave me so long as he had breath in his body. They got rid of him first to put the fear of dying into us and drive us off, but it didn’t work.”

  “They?”

  “The Tanners. Who else? They have it out for us, Reverend.” Hannah eased into a chair opposite me.

  Her boys and Daisy had filed in after us. Most chose to sit on the floor, their rifles across their laps. Daisy perched on the stones that framed the hearth, her legs drawn up, her chin on her knees.

  “They say your family has been stealing and killing their cattle,” I brought up.

  “Lies, Reverend. All lies.” Hannah appeared more hurt than mad. “But where are my manners? Would you care for refreshments? We have milk, berry juice, or coffee. Goat’s milk, I should mention. Not all folks are partial to it.”

  “You don’t own a cow?”

  “We have no need of one. Cows are just big dumb brutes. Goats don’t take up as much space or need as much feed. We have twenty in a pen out back. I usually let them have the run of the place, but I want them where I can keep an eye on them in case the Tanners try something.”

  “You’re afraid the Tanners will massacre your goats?”

  “Grin if you want. But they blame us for their cows, don’t they? And our goats mean as much to us.” Hannah crooked a finger at Daisy, who rose to do her bidding. “So what will it be, Reverend?”

  “Coffee, if it is not too much bother.”

  One of the twins who were not twins cleared his throat. “Want Tyrel and me to drop a deer for supper, Ma?”

  “That’s up to our guest, Clell,” Hannah said. “How late will you be staying?” she asked me.

  I had reckoned on only a few hours. But the better I got to know them, the easier the job would be. “I appreciate the invite. I haven’t had venison in a coon’s age.”

  Hannah seemed extremely pleased. “Good. I’ve been hoping you and me can get well acquainted. I do need your help.”

  “How so?”

  “You said it yourself, Reverend. The Tanners. I want them to leave us be. I want them to stop accusing us of things we haven’t done. If not, worse will happen than already has, and losing my Everett was terrible enough. I can’t bear the thought of losing my younguns as well.”

  “I will do all I can.” The lie nearly caught in my throat, which jarred me considerable. The Butchers were nothing to me.

  “Bless you, Reverend,” Hannah said. “You are a godsend.”

  I could not look her in the eyes, so I watched Daisy put a coffeepot on to brew. But that proved just as unsettling if in a different way, so I switched to the window and pretended to be interested in the woods.

  Hannah was as sharp as my razor. She had not missed my reaction. “I’m sorry, Reverend. Does it make you uncomfortable, my talking like that?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I love my kids, Reverend. Love them more than I have ever cared for anyone, and that includes Everett. Maybe you have to be a mother to understand. But I am scared as scared can be that the Tanners mean us harm.” She bent toward me. “You are the only hope I have of smoothing things over. Will you help us? Can I count on you?”

  When you have told a thousand lies in your lifetime, what is one more? “Of course you can, my dear woman.”

  Chapter 6

  For the second evening in a row, I was treated to a feast.

  Compared to the Tanners, the Butcher clan were simple folk who lived by simple means. But they more than got by, thanks to the bounty the Dark Sister supplied. The virgin forest teemed with wildlife.

  In addition to the venison, served roasted and boiled, the meal included squirrel soup and rabbit on a spit. Corn pone served for bread. They devoured hominy from a giant pot, but I can’t say I shared their enthusiasm. Brown betty was our dessert. The coffee would float an anvil, it was so thick. I ate until I had f
ood coming out my ears and drank more coffee than any of them. Pushing back my chair, I put a hand on my stomach. If this kept up, I would become the fattest Regulator west of the Mississippi River.

  The notion reminded me of why I was there. “I could use to walk some of this off,” I commented, hoping one of them would take the bait.

  The Butchers were still eating. Hannah looked up from her third helping of hominy and said, “Daisy, why don’t you show the parson around?”

  “Sure thing, Ma.”

  As I followed the girl out, I wondered why Hannah chose her out of all the children. It made more sense for Hannah to pick one of the boys. Had she noticed what I had tried to hide? It was hard, as pretty as the girl was, and given the way she moved and carried herself. But it could be I was fretting over nothing. Maybe Hannah just thought I would be more comfortable with one of the girls and picked the one I had ridden in with.

  For Daisy’s part, she was all smiles. The moment we stepped through the door, their mongrel commenced yapping at me, and she went over and kicked it. That quieted him. She led me around back to show off their goats and their garden, nearly a full acre planted with all kinds of vegetables arranged in neat rows. Gardens took a lot of work. It, and the tidiness of their cabin, put the lie to the claim that they were a bunch of lazy no-accounts. They took pride in themselves and their home. A large part of that was probably Hannah, but still, they were not the slobs Gertrude Tanner painted them. But what did that matter to me? I had a job to do. What they did, how they lived, should be of no interest except for how it bore on my work.

  “You sure are a quiet one,” Daisy remarked as we stood at the corral rails watching a frisky mare. “The last preacher I met talked my ears off about sin and the like.”

  “Did he, now?”

  She bobbed her blond head. “He sure did. About the only thing I recollect is him saying that we’re all of us trapped between heaven and hell, and where we end up depends on the life we live here and now.”

  Since I couldn’t think of a suitable quote, I simply said, “He was right.”