Bounty Hunter lj-1

by William W. Johnstone

  “Not when it’s something I can do.” He changed course, angling toward the side of the house where the big stump they used for splitting firewood stood. The ax leaned against the stump, handle up.

  “What are you fixin’ to do now?” Emily asked.

  “You said you needed some wood for the stove,” Luke explained.

  “I didn’t say you had to split it!”

  “I don’t mind.” He reached the stump and propped the right-hand crutch against it. With only a small amount of awkwardness, he picked up a piece of wood from the pile beside the stump and set it upright in the middle. Then he took hold of the ax and lifted it one-handed.

  “You’re gonna miss and cut your leg off one of these days,” Emily warned.

  “No great loss,” Luke said.

  “Unless you bleed to death!”

  Luke swung the ax above his head and brought it down in a precise stroke, splitting the cordwood perfectly down the middle. He used the ax to brush the two pieces off the stump, leaned the ax against it, and picked up another piece of wood to split.

  Emily blew out her breath and shook her head in exasperation. “You are the most stubborn man I ever saw, Luke Jensen.”

  And that was a good thing, Luke thought, otherwise he’d probably be dead. The wound he had suffered a few months earlier would have killed him.

  The late summer sun blazed down, and it didn’t take Luke long to work up a sweat. His damp linsey-woolsey shirt clung to his back. He lifted his arm and sleeved beads of perspiration off his face.

  When he’d first started shaving himself again, rather than relying on Emily to do it, he’d been shocked at the gaunt, haggard face looking out at him from the mirror. That man looked at least ten years older than he really was, Luke thought.

  Since then his features had begun to fill out some, and he thought he looked more like himself. Most of the time, the strain of what he had gone through painted a rather grim expression on his face. When he laughed, though, he didn’t feel quite as ugly. Still ugly, mind you, he told himself, just not as much.

  Recently he had stopped shaving his upper lip and let his mustache grow. It gave him a certain amount of dignity, in his opinion, and Emily didn’t seem to mind. How she thought about things had taken on a lot of importance during the months he had spent on the Peabody farm.

  She came down from the porch to gather up the chunks of wood he had split. “Breakfast is ready. Come on inside and eat.”

  She didn’t have to tell him twice, and she didn’t have to help him up the steps. He made it just fine with the crutches.

  He had carved them himself, putting quite a bit of time and effort into it. He’d wanted the crutches to be as comfortable as possible, since it looked like he’d be using them for quite a while. Some of the feeling had started to come back into his legs, enough that he could get around a little with the help of the crutches, but he was still pretty helpless. He didn’t let himself think too much about how long that might go on. He still held out hope that one day his legs would work again, the way they were supposed to.

  Because of that, he’d asked Emily to help him exercise the muscles in them. He knew it wasn’t fair to place that extra burden on her, but she didn’t object. He had seen what happened to Clyde Monroe back home. Doing nothing after his injury had made him worse. Luke wasn’t going to give up like that ... which led right back to that stubbornness Emily had accused him of.

  He fed the chickens and gathered eggs and split wood and hoed the vegetable garden and shucked corn. Anything he could do sitting down or balanced on one crutch, he would do. The work put thick slabs of muscle back on his arms and shoulders and back.

  He was damned if he was going to be useless. He would die first.

  Emily and her grandfather had both asked him if he wanted to send a letter to his family back in Missouri letting them know he was alive. Luke only had to think about it for a second before he shook his head.

  After failing the Confederacy and his friends, he didn’t want his pa and Kirby finding out about that. One day, if what he planned came about, he would return home, but not until he had done the job he had set out for himself.

  Once his legs worked right again, he was going to track down Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey and kill each and every one of them. He knew he probably wouldn’t be able to recover the gold they had stolen—there was no Confederacy to return it to, anyway—but at least he could even the score for what they had done to Remy, Dale, and Edgar.

  And to him.

  Then and only then, when he had reclaimed at least a vestige of his honor, would he return to his family. Until then it was better to let them think he was dead, even though they would mourn him.

  It had to be that way. On his darkest nights, he admitted to himself there was a very strong possibility he would never walk normally again, no matter how much he tried. In that case, he would live out his life on the Peabody farm, unless Emily and her grandfather kicked him out.

  The way he and Emily had started to feel about each other, he didn’t think that was likely.

  And yet that thought tortured him, too. Emily might be falling in love with him—Lord knew he’d been in love with her pretty much from the moment he first saw her and mistook her for an angel—but was it fair for him to saddle her with a cripple for a husband? He wasn’t even sure he could be a real husband to her, although lately he’d begun to feel some stirrings that told him it might be possible.

  Feeling anything below the level of the wound in his back was a good sign. The bullet wound was completely healed. A pale, ragged scar was the only sign of it that remained. Luke hadn’t seen the scar himself, of course, but Emily had described it for him. He could move around now without feeling even a twinge in his back.

  He clumped over to the table Emily had set for three people. Setting one of the crutches aside, he gripped his chair and lowered himself into it.

  Emily poured coffee for him and set a plate of flapjacks, bacon, and eggs in front of him. They ate fairly well, because the Peabody farm had escaped most of the damage and destruction inflicted by the Yankees when they rampaged through the area a year earlier.

  As she sat down opposite Luke, Emily said, “Grampaw told me he’s goin’ to town today, if you need anything.”

  The settlement of Dobieville was about five miles down the road. A trading post was closer to the farm, but Linus Peabody refused to do any business there since a Yankee carpetbagger had taken it over a month earlier when the previous owner had been unable to pay his taxes.

  Luke shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Unless he can pick me up a new pair of legs.”

  Emily frowned across the table at him. “I thought you promised to stop sayin’ things like that.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “I know you think you got to walk again, Luke, and I don’t blame you for feelin’ that way, I really don’t. But you don’t have to. Not . . . not for me, anyway. It ain’t gonna change the way I feel about you.”

  Suddenly the food in front of him didn’t seem so appetizing. He didn’t want to have this discussion. Of course, it was his own fault for bringing it up.

  He looked at the plate. “We don’t need to talk about this. It won’t change anything, anyway.”

  His voice sounded harsher than he intended. He didn’t look up at Emily, afraid he would see hurt in her eyes.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s just eat.”

  Linus Peabody came in a few minutes later. He’d been in the barn, tending to the mules, the milk cow, and the hogs. If he sensed the tension between Luke and Emily, he had the good sense not to say anything about it as he sat down. “Did Emily tell you I’m goin’ to town this mornin’, Luke?”

  “She did, but there’s nothing I need right now.”

  “I was thinkin’ you might want to go with me.”

  Luke frowned in surprise. “To Dobieville?”

  “Yep. Actually, I thought we might all go. Been
stuck here on this farm all summer.”

  Luke glanced at Emily and caught a glimpse of excitement on her face.

  She hurriedly covered it up. “I don’t need nothin’ in town, Grampaw.”

  “Yes, you do. You need to see somebody ’sides a pair of ugly ol’ galoots like me and Luke.”

  “Neither of you is ugly,” she protested.

  “There’s no point in arguing with the facts,” Luke said with a smile. “Neither of us is going to win any prizes for being good-looking, are we, Linus?”

  The old-timer cackled. “The judges’d have to be plumb blind if we did!” Peabody nodded. “So it’s settled. After we eat, we’ll all load up in the wagon and head for town.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Luke had to have some help doing it, but he managed to climb into the back of the wagon. From there he was able to use his arms to pull himself to the front, just behind the seat. Peabody settled down on the seat next to Emily to handle the team.

  Despite what the old man had said, Luke had a hunch there was more to this trip into Dobieville than Peabody let on. He didn’t press the issue, though, as the wagon rolled across fields and along narrow, tree-shaded country lanes toward the settlement.

  It was a good test of how well his back actually had healed. The wagon wasn’t in the greatest shape, and its ride was pretty rough, even on level ground. But he didn’t feel any pain in his back, and that was encouraging.

  The mules didn’t get in any hurry. The trip to town took more than an hour. Luke was tired by the time they got there, but he still wasn’t hurting.

  Dobieville had a wide main street running for several blocks between businesses, along with a couple side streets lined with houses. The steeples of the Baptist and Methodist churches stuck up above the trees on the edge of town. Some of the businesses had been burned when the Yankees came through, but Dobieville had gotten off with less destruction than many Southern settlements.

  Several of the businesses that had been burned were being rebuilt, Luke saw as Peabody sent the mules plodding along the street with the wagon rolling slowly behind them. The sounds of hammering and men calling to each other as they worked filled the air.

  But Luke sensed something was wrong about what he was hearing, and after a moment he realized what it was. When the workers raised their voices to talk, it wasn’t in the slower, softer drawl of Southerners, but rather the hard, brisk tone of folks from up north.

  Those were Yankees rebuilding those businesses.

  Carpetbaggers.

  He had heard Peabody talking about greedy opportunists from up north swarming in all over the South. He saw for himself what was going on. It wasn’t just the carpenters. Men in derby hats and gaudy tweed suits and cocky grins strolled along the town’s boardwalks, cigars clenched at jaunty angles in their teeth. All Luke had to do was look at them to know they were Yankees.

  The true citizens of Dobieville knew it, too. Luke saw the glances filled with resentment, anger, and fear the townsfolk cast toward the newcomers.

  Blue-uniformed soldiers lounged here and there. Yankee troopers stood in every block, not necessarily doing anything, but their mere presence was a bitter reminder that the Confederacy had been defeated and the Southern states had been forced back into the Union at gunpoint, after the spilling of rivers of blood.

  Peabody brought the wagon to a halt in front of Connally’s General Store. He turned on the seat and said to Emily, “Go on inside, gal. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “What about Luke?” she asked.

  “I’m all right sitting back here. It’s too much trouble for the two of you to help me down and then back up again.”

  “No, it’s not,” she argued. “You came to town so you could see something different from the farm.”

  “And so I can.” Luke smiled. “I can see just fine from right where I am.”

  “Oh, all right.” Emily climbed down from the wagon. “But if you change your mind, we can get you out of there and you can use your crutches.”

  “I know,” Luke assured her.

  She still looked a little puzzled, but she went on into the general store. Peabody sighed and turned more on the seat to say quietly, “I wanted a chance to talk to you while Emily ain’t around, Luke.”

  “I thought that might be the case. What’s wrong, Linus?”

  Peabody let out a disgusted snort. “What’s wrong? Just look around you, son!”

  “You’re talking about all the Yankees?”

  “Soldiers and carpetbaggers alike. They’ve moved in like a swarm of locusts!”

  “What did you expect? We lost the war. They can do whatever they want now.”

  “They could treat us with some respect,” Peabody said as fierce anger edged into his voice. “Instead they’ve just bulled their way in, run folks off, took over businesses . . . What you’re lookin’ at, son, is the beginnin’ of something that may turn out to be even worse ’n the war itself.”

  “I don’t see how that could be possible.”

  “You just hide and watch,” Peabody said. “Them Yankees got the idea they can waltz in, grab what they want for themselves, and grind the rest of the South into dust under their heels. And they’ll laugh at us while they’re doin’ it.”

  That was probably right, Luke thought. That was exactly what the carpetbaggers intended to do, and they had the Yankee troops to back them up on it. “Why did you want to show me this?”

  “Because there’s gonna come a time when we may have to fight for what’s ours. So far the Yankees ain’t come anywhere near the farm, but one of these days they’re liable to. And I don’t intend to just let ’em take it away from me.”

  “You didn’t support the war,” Luke said. “They should leave you alone.”

  Peabody waved a gnarled hand. “This ain’t about the war anymore. It’s about greed, pure and simple, and the chance for a bunch of no-good skunks to grab what ain’t theirs.”

  “And you want to know if I’ll stand with you against them?” Luke couldn’t keep the dry, acid tone out of his voice.

  “I’m just sayin’ you may have to make a choice,” Peabody snapped. “Legs or no legs.”

  Luke sighed and nodded. “You’re right, Linus. I’m sorry. I appreciate you bringing me to town today and showing me what we may be facing. It’s always best to know when trouble’s coming.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And as for whether or not I’ll be with you when that trouble comes . . . you ought to know the answer to that. You saved my life, you and Emily . . .”

  “I know how you feel about her, too,” Peabody said. “I’ve seen the way she’s started lookin’ at you lately. I ain’t sayin’ that I like it—”

  “I’m not exactly the man you had in mind for your granddaughter. I know that.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re a good man, Luke.” Peabody clapped a hand on Luke’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know that, too.” He wrapped the team’s reins around the brake lever. “Now, I’m gonna go and help Emily pick up a few supplies. Sure you’ll be all right out here?”

  Luke nodded. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Okay.” Peabody jumped down from the wagon and went inside the store.

  Luke looked around at the bustling settlement. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the Yankees, he would have said Dobieville was well on its way to recovering from the war already.

  Unfortunately, under the surface, the truth was that Dobieville was well on its way to being gutted by the carpetbaggers.

  Peabody was worried their greedy reach would extend outside the settlement, Luke mused. The old-timer was probably right about that. Even though the prospect worried Luke, too, he didn’t see what an old man, a girl, and a cripple could do to stop the arrogant outsiders who now held power in the South.

  Peabody wanted to fight if the carpetbaggers came for his property, and he wanted Luke to fight with him. If it came down to that, Luke knew he wouldn’t turn his back on the
two people who had saved his life. But if that happened, there was a very good chance he and Peabody would wind up dead, leaving Emily alone and defenseless . . .

  Or else she would take up arms, and the Yankees would kill her, too.

  Maybe the best thing to do, Luke thought suddenly, would be to pack up and leave at the first sign of any Yankees trying to take over the farm. It would mean running from trouble, which stuck in his craw worse than anything. Peabody would probably feel the same, but it might be the only way to save their lives.

  The frontier was a big place, with lots of room for folks to settle and start new lives. Luke thought maybe he could even swallow his pride and return home to the Ozarks, taking Emily and her grandfather along with him.

  He took a deep breath. No use getting ahead of himself. At the moment, things were all right. Maybe they’d be lucky and it would stay like that.

  As he mused, a couple Yankee soldiers came along the boardwalk toward the general store. They stopped and propped their shoulders against one of the posts holding up the awning in front of the store. One of the troopers, a wiry little man with dark hair, glanced at Luke and then looked away, obviously uninterested in him.

  The taller, brawnier soldier, with bushy side-whiskers and a thatch of straw-colored hair sticking out from under his forage cap, fastened a cool, appraising stare on Luke.

  Keeping an eye on them without drawing attention to himself, Luke tried to ignore them.

  A short time later, Emily and her grandfather came out of the store. She was carrying a crate of supplies, while Peabody had a bag of flour slung over his shoulder. As they moved to place the supplies in the back of the wagon, the big trooper straightened from his casual pose.

  “Hey, Reb”—he directed the harsh words at Luke—“what kind of man sits by and lets a girl and an old geezer do all the work?”

  Peabody turned toward the soldier and snapped, “Who you callin’ an old geezer, sonny?”

  Emily put a hand on her grandfather’s arm and asked the soldier, “Just leave us alone, why don’t you?”

  “I wasn’t talking to either of you.” The Yankee soldier pointed at Luke. “I was talking to that big strapping specimen of Southern manhood.” A grin stretched across his rough-hewn face. “But I guess he’s like the rest of those Johnny Rebs . . . just a lazy coward.”