Lenora was unmoved. “It is imperative that I return to my ranch, Doctor Biggerstaff.” She had his word that he would help, and that’s all that mattered. That little bit of encouragement strengthened her to stand her ground. She would stay on her property. Deep down, however, she hoped she wasn’t being foolish when it came to her baby’s welfare. She didn’t feel foolish. She felt desperate.
“Why? Why is it so important to be on your ranch? I would think you’d be lonely out there.”
“I am at times.”
“Then why won’t you stay in town? There’s good people here. They’ll help you.”
Lenora knew why, but it was hard to find the words to explain. Her world was upside down and inside out. Not only did she fear she’d lose the ranch if she vacated it, even temporarily, but being on the ranch was her only remaining semblance of normal living. If she woke up tomorrow to spend the day, and the next and the next, staring at four gray walls in a strange hotel instead of the familiar surroundings of her tidy ranch bedroom, then life truly would be too bizarre to cope. She had to hang on to the routine of the ranch. She had to eat, sleep, and think at home—while she still could. Doctor Biggerstaff genuinely cared about her and the baby, and she was grateful for his concern. But she didn’t care to share with him her poignant need for normalcy, for the comfort of routine. She feared it would sound like she was running from the truth, as if she were striving to create a dream world for herself because the real world she lived in was too painful. She knew that wasn’t true. When the evening shadows crept upon the close of another day on the ranch without James, her doubts of seeing him alive again were strengthened, cord upon cord. She knew the odds. James was probably dead. She wasn’t creating an imaginary world into which her lost husband would inexplicably, miraculously ride. She was trying to preserve a small portion of a real world without him.
“I’m more comfortable at the ranch,” she said. At least it was the truth.
“This goes against my better judgment,” groused the doctor, “but let’s not dally.” He rose from his chair. “There’s much to be done before we get you home.”
Out of habit Lenora started to stand up.
“You stay right there!”
She sat down quickly.
“I’ll get Emmaline to get you comfortable in the spare bedroom while I get everything in order.”
Just then a soft scurrying sound erupted from behind the door to the doctor’s office, where Emmaline Biggerstaff had spent a goodly amount of time eavesdropping. Doctor and patient turned toward the sound.
“That gluttonous cat,” said Doctor Biggerstaff, grimacing in disgust. “Won’t touch mice,” he added, reaching for the doorknob. “Not rich enough for her majesty’s rarefied appetite.”
#
“You doing alright back there?” asked Betsy, turning herself around on the buckboard seat to check on Lenora. The slightly rounded, thirtyish parson’s wife was well shaded from the sun in a plain tan poke bonnet and a long-sleeve, faded gray dress. “I can have the Reverend stop the wagon for a while if you need a rest from all the bouncing.”
“It’s no problem, Mrs. Rose. I can stop now if you want,” chimed Reverend Thomas, continuing to face forward, raising his voice above the racket of the wagon wheels and hooves.
“No, I’m fine. Please don’t stop. I want to get home. The sooner I’m in my own bed the better.”
“True,” said Betsy. She tucked a stray wisp of light brown hair under her bonnet. “Doctor Biggerstaff made me promise we’d take it easy.”
“You’ve kept your promise,” said Lenora, trying to sound cheerful to hide her discomfort and dismay. The Thomas’ sacrifice brought another topic to mind. “Who’s minding the children?” she wondered aloud. The Thomases had five, the oldest, Elizabeth, was just fourteen.
“Lizzie’s capable of keeping them out of trouble for one night. Though if I smell smoke around suppertime I’ll be on one of your horses in a minute and galloping back home,” laughed Betsy.
“I am truly beholden to you and the Reverend.”
“You’re a light load,” said Betsy. “You don’t need diapering, burping, or rocking. And I trust you sleep through the night without demanding to be fed. You are easy.”
Lenora smiled at Betsy’s effort to make her feel better about being a bother. Town folk—even people whom Lenora had never met—had been more than kind when Dr. Biggerstaff sent the word out that Mrs. James Rose was “ill” and needed tending. Various volunteers had prepared her wagon box to resemble a down-lined nest awaiting a clutch of eggs, with layers of borrowed quilts underneath her and several pillows besides. Reverend Thomas’ lone dappled gray followed behind, tethered to the back of the wagon. The Reverend would return to town after seeing Lenora safely home, leaving Betsy behind until Mrs. Nolan arrived.
From Lenora’s prone position on the wagon floor, she could see the large head of the Reverend’s horse bobbing ludicrously over the rear wall of the buckboard, seemingly supported only by thin air. Occasionally she would make eye contact with the animal, which seemed to be staring at her as though she were a circus freak. She laughed to herself. Her predicament was absurd.
But she laughed between groans. Regardless of the efforts of the well-meaning town folk, in the bouncing, creaking, mercilessly hard wagon bed Lenora felt less like an invalid and more like that little piggy that went wee wee all the way home. Her hips and back discerned every rock, every rut, every bump in the worn path from Buffalo to the outreaches of the Territory. She was terribly uncomfortable, and she couldn’t wait to slide between the sheets in her own feather bed.
Not only was she physically uncomfortable, her limited view from the bottom of the wagon box cut her off from geographical markers, which made the trip endless. All she could see was the wide blue sky of Wyoming directly above the wagon and any bird or flock of birds that had the courtesy to fly directly over the wagon for her personal viewing. Once she saw a horned grebe, its haunting red eyes and black-and-cream striped face clearly identifiable against the pale blue panorama. And then in a rush of whooping wings, a crèche of tundra swans drew near. Lenora heard them before she saw them. And then there they were, directly over the wagon, their long, graceful white bodies soaring majestically, their jet black beaks sharp against the clear sky.
“I feel like a sow being hauled to market,” said Lenora, chuckling. “I’ve never ridden in the wagon bed before.” And I never thought that I’d do it like this. If only James were here. What would he think of his well-turned out, city born and bred wife being conveyed like stinking farm stock in the back of his buckboard? The notion was so funny that she forgot to feel sad at the thought of him.
“Well you don’t look like a sow ... yet,” teased Betsy.
Lenora had confided to her pastor’s wife the true nature of her condition. Both women laughed. Might as well laugh. A moment of merriment was all to be gained from her ridiculous situation.
“And we’re not taking you anywhere but back to your comfy pigpen,” Betsy said, laughing. “Now try to relax. We’re not far.”
Betsy leaned in to her husband and said something, but Lenora couldn’t hear. Sleep was out of the question, so she resigned herself to waiting for another bird to fly over the wagon, congratulating herself each time she identified one. After a while she sensed from her many trips to town that they must be nearing her property.
“Do you see our barn, Betsy?” she said.
“I think so. Another ten minutes or so. Hold on, dear.”
Ulysses would be sniffing the air by now, thought Lenora. The house, the barn, the out buildings, her dog. Knowing that she came so close to being separated from the sweet and simple trappings of home for a season made her appreciate them all the more. But as the minutes passed, it seemed awfully quiet to Lenora.
“Do you see Ulysses?”
“No, Mrs. Rose,” replied Reverend Thomas, raising his voice and turning his head slightly toward the rear of the wagon. He yelled over his shoulder. “He�
��s probably distracted with some critter more interesting than a couple of old folk on a buckboard.”
“He barks to raise the dead when a visitor approaches,” said Lenora, raising her voice also. “He can’t leave the property. He’s chained. You sure you don’t see him? He usually runs toward the road when he hears a wagon.”
“Perhaps he escaped from his chain,” said Betsy, couching her musings as a question. “Probably he saw a playmate to romp with and jerked himself free. He’ll be back soon,” she added cheerfully.
“I don’t see him anywhere,” said Reverend Thomas. “We’re almost there. I’ll search the property once I get you settled in the house”
“Thank you, Reverend Thomas.”
Lenora could tell from the slackened pace of the buckboard wheels that they were approaching her house. Ulysses should have been dancing all around the front yard, barking his fool head off, begging for his evening meal of kitchen scraps. But there was no sound except the occasional mooing from the barn. It was a contented mooing, not a distress call, which told Lenora that Ben had already milked her cow. The sun was low in the sky, another clue to Lenora that Ben had come and gone. It was late. Ulysses should be hungry. Why couldn’t she hear her lovable, slobbering dog calling to be fed?
The wagon cleared the corner of the house. Reverend Thomas halted Beauty and Beast, set the brake and secured the reins, settling the wagon about fifty feet from the covered porch.
“There’s Ulysses, at your front door. Some guard dog he is, sleeping on his watch,” said Reverend Thomas, jumping down from the wagon to the ground.
Lenora’s heart caught in her throat. Ulysses never slept through a visit by a horse or wagon, especially at suppertime. “Are you sure, Reverend Thomas?” she called from the floor of the wagon box. Instinctively she went rigid, breathing shallowly to better hear any little sound of her dog. But all she heard was the sound of Reverend Thomas’ feet hitting the ground as he jumped from the wagon.
Then the crunch of the Reverend’s boots on dry earth as he approached the house. Lenora waited tensely. Two bats flew over the wagon, their jerky wing movements clearly identifiable against the backdrop of the dusky blue and purple sky.
“What is it, Thaddeus?” called Betsy from the wagon. Her tone, too, was taut with tension.
Lenora recognized the breath of alarm in Betsy’s voice. And when Reverend Thomas didn’t answer his wife, Lenora’s heart beat faster. She didn’t move and hardly breathed, trying to discern with anxious ears what was happening at her front door. Finally she heard the Reverend’s footfall as he returned to the women. His grim face appeared at the side of the wagon box.
“He’s not asleep, Mrs. Rose. He’s dead. Someone…” The Reverend swallowed and, grimacing, reached for his wife’s hand, “someone cut off his head.”
Chapter Fourteen
Plans changed. Reverend Thomas was so shaken by the grisly carnage and the evil message it conveyed, he wouldn’t think of leaving the women alone overnight.
Ulysses’ head was missing. His body lay, lifeless and grotesque, in a lurid splotch of tacky, partially dried blood. Hideous fingers of red-brown liquid ran down the sides of the porch, dripping into Lenora’s flower garden in a gruesome montage of the pure and the vile. Bluebottle flies flit about the carcass, their glistening metallic abdomens and brilliant red eyes creating an unearthly contrast to the drying brownish blood and matted hair of the victim, laying their eggs in utter oblivion of the ghastly events that preceded their call to dine.
An angry thwack of an axe—the bloody murder weapon had been flung into the garden—had killed the animal. This single brutal act should have been adequate to satisfy the most insatiable bloodlust. But who could explain the scorching hatred evidenced in the macabre detail that Reverend Thomas refused to speak of?
Ulysses’ paws had been hacked off as well.
#
No one slept deeply that night. Betsy shared the one bed with Lenora. Reverend Thomas made what sleeping arrangements he could, tossing and turning uncomfortably on old quilts spread on the floor of the front room. Before he turned in he carried Lenora into the house, cleaned up the front porch with rags and water, dug a shallow grave for the remains, and told himself he would search for the missing body parts in the morning, lest Mrs. Rose find them by chance as she walked about her property after she convalesced. Likely scavengers would finish them off before she stumbled on them, but the Reverend was taking no chances. Mrs. Rose had been traumatized enough in the last few months.
Next morning, like a malevolent specter that refuses to vacate its haunt, a sense of the killer’s presence clung to the rooms of the ranch house, greeting Lenora with her first conscious thought of the new day. Someone had snuck onto her property while she was in town. Someone had performed a bloody, evil act upon her innocent pet.
Why? Was it an act of vindication against her? Against James? Certainly not against Ulysses. He was chained most days. What possible harm could he have caused another rancher’s herd or flock? And why kill him in such a gruesome way? What kind of person would do such a despicable thing? What did it mean? Hatred? Anger? Resentment? Jealousy? Someone, Lenora thought with horror, had actually been pleased to inflict a violent, bloody death upon a guileless animal, knowing that Lenora would return home to find the aftermath. It was all so intentional, so calculated, so designed to shock and upset.
If that is what the killer had intended, he had been eminently successful. The weight of the bloody, evil deed pressed heavy on her chest, her mind absorbed with the significance of it. She wondered as she lay there—growing uncomfortably warm under the heavy cotton quilt while hazy streams of light shone through her bedroom window indicating it was past morning chore time—if she would ever feel peaceful and safe again while alone on her ranch.
“Lenora,” said Betsy, opening the bedroom door tentatively to see if the invalid was still sleeping, “Good morning.”
“Good morning to you,” said Lenora brightly. It was way past her usual rising time. She was wide awake.
“I thought you’d be coming around by now. Your breakfast is ready,” she said, her head peering around the edge of the door.
“Come in, Betsy,” said Lenora, pushing aside disturbing images of her decapitated dog and the evil thwacks that had severed his head so violently.
“We thought it best to let you sleep in,” said Betsy. She walked toward the bed with a plate of biscuits and jelly in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. A plain linen napkin lay across her arm. Steam rose deliciously from the heavy cream-colored mug. “It seemed the best plan under the circumstances.”
Lenora knew intuitively that her pastor’s wife wasn’t speaking about her delicate condition, but rather the bloody scene that had shocked them all when they arrived at the ranch early yesterday evening. Betsy’s face was somber, her normally jovial aspect subdued by the gravity of the find. She too must feel the presence of the specter. She spoke in hushed tones, as if she were afraid the unseen visitor was still around and might hear.
“Thank you,” said Lenora, pushing herself into a sitting position. She smoothed her hair. She wasn’t accustomed to being seen by anyone first thing in the morning, other than James, without first performing an elaborate toilette.
“Here,” said Betsy, leaning over to put the biscuits and coffee down, “I’ll leave these on the nightstand. I’ve already put some warm water in the pitcher,” she motioned toward the wash stand at the far end of the room, “for you to clean up.”
“Thank you.”
“And remember what Dr. Biggerstaff said about staying off your feet,” she said, pointing to the bordeloue next to Lenora’s bed, “no privy.” She moved toward the door. “I’ll leave you for a few minutes so you can freshen up, then I’ll come back and we can chat while you eat your breakfast.”
“Good idea,” said Lenora, pulling back the too-warm bedclothes and swinging her bare feet over to the edge of the bed. “Just give me five minutes.”
A soft knock at the door.
“Come in, Betsy.”
Betsy sat down gently on the side of the bed.
“Where’s your plate?” said Lenora, reaching for hers.
“The Reverend and I already ate.” Betsy folded her hands on the lap of her gray dress, the same frock she had worn from town the day before. She sat silent and stiff, observing Lenora as if she had something heavy on her mind.
“My chokecherry jelly must have not set well on your stomach,” Lenora said, wryly. “Tastes pretty good to me, though.” She smeared a red blob of jelly onto the remaining half of one biscuit.
“Your jelly is delicious. Better than mine.”
“Etta Nolan taught me to how to make it. But you didn’t come in here to talk about my jelly,” said Lenora, noting Betsy’s somber demeanor. “Is something wrong?” Her mind flitted to James’ Brahman steers and the other stock in the barn. Oh no! Surely not—
“No, nothing,” said Betsy, somewhat hastily. “All your Brahmans are just fine. Chickens too.”
Lenora sighed gustily.
“Everything on your property is just fine. Reverend Thomas made a thorough inspection before breakfast.”
Betsy kept silent, however, about what he had found that wasn’t fine as he walked abroad the ranch. Two of Ulysses’ paws had been flung willy-nilly into high grass behind the barn. The other two paws and the animal’s head remained missing. Likely they would be found, he had said, after the vultures started circling.
Crazy Woman Creek Page 13
