Sheriff Morris sighed gustily and grimaced. Luke recognized the skepticism in the sigh and the disapproval in the grimace but ignored them. When it came to finding James Rose, Cyrus was skeptical and disapproving of every effort. Luke couldn’t bother reacting anymore. He banged down his cup suddenly, stood up, crossed the room, and grabbed his hat.
“I’m going whether you go or not,” he said, energized by the thought of renewing the search for Rose’s body. “No one will be able to say I didn’t look under every rock for James Rose,” he muttered, more for his own hearing than the sheriff’s. “But first I gotta get something to eat. It’s late, but maybe the Occidental is still serving lunch. I forgot to have Mrs. Byrne pack me something this morning. I won’t be at the hotel long.”
“Get something for Wright, too. I forgot to get a plate for him,” said the sheriff, reaching into his pocket for his tobacco pouch.
It wasn’t the first time Cyrus had forgotten to bring a ration to their prisoner, who was housed in the cramped and dreary hoosegow, a separate building behind the sheriff’s office just big enough for one occupant. Alarmed at Cyrus’ confession, Luke wondered how long it had been since Sam had eaten or drunk anything. It was summer. The man needed water several times a day, and it fell to the lawman in the office at mealtimes to tend to his physical needs. In Buffalo that meant Cyrus was nearly always in charge of that chore. Luke felt bad that he hadn’t followed behind Cyrus this morning, that he hadn’t looked in on Sam to make sure he had a meal and something to drink. Buffalo was too small to have a regular inmate population, so it didn’t have established policies about such things, but that only made it all the more inexcusable to fail to feed the one and only inmate they had. It wasn’t like they had too many jailbirds to keep track of.
“I will,” said Luke, reaching for his hat.
As soon as Luke had shut the door, Sheriff Morris opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out his magazine.
#
Lenora had spent too much time in town. She had other shopping to do beside her business at Aeschelman’s, and she was hungry too, but both would have to wait. With her basket clutched tightly against her body and her reticule swinging against one hip, she hurried to Olathe’s to fetch her horses and wagon and return to the ranch before nightfall. She knew why James had chosen the parcel he had, with its enviable access to the North-East Creek and lush pasture land, but now that it was she and not him having to make the run to town regularly for supplies, she rued his decision to settle them so far from town. In their youthful zeal for a ranch of their own, they had never entertained even a shadow of a thought that tragedy could strike so soon, even before the ranch was legally theirs. Her present distress was not James’ fault; nevertheless she pushed down an unreasonable sense of irritation with him. He may have not meant to abandon her, but she was, in fact, abandoned.
Main Street was quiet. The only people Lenora saw were three little girls playing in the yard of a house near the end of Main Street close by Olathe’s Livery. They were town children, and Lenora did not recognize any of them, not even from church. The girls were jumping rope as she approached, two girls holding each end of the rope while the third girl, clutching her skirts to her body, her long braids swinging up and down, jumped to a bouncy tune they all sang. As she drew closer to them Lenora was horrified to hear their words:
Old Man Rose went out one night.
With his wife had a terrible fight.
Found his body face down in the creek.
Horse tied up and feeling weak.
Who killed Old Man Rose?
Oh who killed Old Man Rose?
Town can’t tell but deputy knows
Why she went to town to buy new clothes.
Rose is dead and his wife won’t speak.
Gonna have a baby at Crazy Woman Creek.
Who killed Old Man Rose?
Oh who killed Old Man Rose?
Lenora felt panic roll over her with the cold, destructive power of a tidal wave. Should she stop and ask them where they’d heard such hideous lyrics? Did she really want to know? What mean-spirited person wrote those awful words? From the mouths of children, but surely inspired by who-knows-who, some wicked, gossiping adult in this unfriendly town.
Once she was directly in front of the girls, she couldn’t bring herself to keep walking. She stood frozen on the dirt path in front of the house, watching and listening to make sure she’d heard right. Seeing they were being observed by an adult, the two girls holding the rope smiled politely, utterly without guile, and one of them waved hello. All three kept on singing their ugly song.
They don’t know who I am! And James’ body hasn’t been found! But rather than get involved in a conversation that could lead to the discovery of her identity, Lenora smiled back and continued to Olathe’s as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Chapter Twenty
Luke ate a hot lunch of beef stew and yeast rolls and butter. If he hadn’t been so diligently banking his paltry deputy’s wages, he’d have eaten at the hotel every day. The boardinghouse served plain fare, but it was cheap. When he finished eating and had paid for his meal, he ordered a plate of the same for Sam Wright and charged it to the sheriff’s account.
He left the Occidental Hotel carrying in one hand the tray of still-warm food covered with a white cloth napkin and in the other a tin cup filled with cool water. He walked behind the sheriff’s office to the single-cell, single-window jailhouse. After balancing the cup on the edge of the plate while fumbling with the key ring with his one available hand, he finally managed to open the heavy door and enter the dark, overly warm room—hardly more than a box—that the city fathers had built to house the accused. As he did the noxious odor of unwashed body hit his nostrils.
Sam was awake in the cell, lying listlessly on a dirty bunk, his knees curled up like a child, shirtless, his eyes vacant. He was dirty and unshaven. The skin on his thin, wrinkled torso was glistening with sweat, which trickled between sparse gray chest hairs. On his feet were the fancy tooled boots, which looked even more incongruous on the half-dressed old man than they had when Luke met him, fully clothed, on the way to Mrs. Rose’s ranch weeks earlier.
Seeing Sam’s declining physical state, no matter what bloody crime he was accused of, made Luke ashamed that a fellow human being in his care had gone without, especially someone so pathetic. Soul to soul, Sam was a man just as much as he was, made in His image. It was hard not to look at Sam, though, and wonder again what had brought him to such decrepit condition. Luke promised himself that from now on he would check on Sam several times a day, even though that was Cyrus’ responsibility. It was the only decent thing to do.
“About time,” said Sam, rising from his bunk at the sight of the plate and cup in Luke’s hands. Luke bent low and pushed the food and water through a shallow opening at the bottom of the cell door. Despite his weak state, Sam didn’t hesitate to bend down to retrieve them. Luke could smell the rot in Sam’s teeth as he neared the bars. Sam wobbled as he stood up again, grabbed a cell bar to steady himself, and then fell back on his bunk and started eating.
“There’s laws against starving an inmate!” he groused between bites of buttered roll. “I ain’t drunk nothin’ neither, not since yesterday morning! And I don’t mean liquor, deputy.”
“Sorry, Sam,” said Luke, who was standing upright again. “I’ll look in on you more regularly from here on out.”
“Hmpfh!” grunted Sam, his mouth full of stew. “You’d like me dead. Make you a hero in the eyes of that pretty Rose woman.”
“Shut up, Sam,” said Luke, quickly forgetting any pity he’d managed to dredge up for the smelly sot. A muscle in Luke’s jaw started to twitch. “I brought you the grub. I’ll bring you more water before dinnertime.”
“I didn’t kill her dog!” Sam shoved another spoonful of stew into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing.
“A jury will decide that.”
“You got no proof.”
/> Luke didn’t answer. No use arguing with an old man who’d lost half a brain to the pickling effects of alcohol; the other half was likely defective from birth. Luke turned and started to leave. It was unprofessional for a law enforcement officer to fraternize with an inmate, and this inmate in particular unnerved him.
“You were on her property too!” shouted Sam, standing up now in his agitation and leaning on the cell bars for support. “What will the jury think of that, deputy? No one can prove that you didn’t chop up that dog, just like they can’t prove I did it. Maybe you wanted to scare the hell out of her so she’d come running back to your office for protection. Big, powerful Deputy Davies, savior of buxom widows!”
Luke was so annoyed at what he was hearing he wanted to slam Sam’s ugly head against the bars. He turned back to him, contemplating how to answer his outrageous charges while somehow managing to strive for control, to try and blunt the sharp spears of his anger. It would be so easy to put this disgusting human being to death. What good had he ever done for anyone? He’d terrified a young widow and murdered her only remaining companion, an innocent, trusting dog. Probably wanted to ingratiate himself with Mrs. Rose to convince her to hire him as a live-in foreman. Then he’d have his way with her. Worthless bag of bones. Hard to understand why God allowed him to take up space on his green earth.
“You got more reason to kill that dog than I do,” spat Sam, growing bold after seeing that he had the deputy’s attention. His tone was a tat softer than it had been at first though, likely a defensive reflex brought on by the murderous look in Luke’s eyes.
“I didn’t have any reason to kill Ulysses. He was an innocent animal. But you,” Luke said, breathing heavily and clenching his fists to keep them from doing something unforgivable, “are a different matter. Now eat your dinner and pray to God I didn’t poison it.”
Sam glanced suspiciously at the plate in his hand. Luke turned then and left the jailhouse, taking care to lock the outer door behind him securely. He strode to the front of the sheriff’s office, poked his head in the door, and abruptly told Cyrus he was ready to go. Then he and Sheriff Morris saddled their horses and started toward Ebenezer Church on the outskirts of Buffalo.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nothing struck the lawmen as unusual as their horses stepped onto the hard packed, well-trodden earth that surrounded Ebenezer Johnson Christian Church. Luke and Sheriff Morris rode their horses to the church steps first, because that was their ultimate destination. But they saw only bare and weathered gray wood planks, nothing worth their ride from town, so they decided to search the entire area on horseback. If that didn’t net them a clue, they would dismount and investigate on foot.
All was as quiet as expected for midweek; services were held only on Sundays. The horse stables behind the church were empty. The only sign of life in the vicinity was a family of sandy brown Mountain Plover that had built a nest in short, brown grasses behind the stables. The small, black-beaked birds with the skinny black legs and white breasts had set up housekeeping in that particular area of the church property because it was dry and sheltered, but mostly they were drawn by the dainties served in the dining hall—flies and other insects hovered around the stables. When the lawmen rounded the corner of the building, the family of five ground birds scattered as one into the clear, late afternoon sky.
Still on horseback, the men slowly wandered to the picnic area where they rode between the rows of wooden benches and tables, looking for any evidence, no matter how small, on the ground or furniture that would lead them to Rose’s body. Finding nothing out of the ordinary there, they rode up and down the sparse rows of Ebenezer’s little fenced cemetery. Few trees in either area gave them relief from the sun, and in both places they found everything tidy and in order. Aleida Aeschelman’s burial mound had settled some since her internment in the spring. Someone, probably her grieving husband Faustus, had recently laid flowers at the base of her modest tombstone. The flowers were wilted but still held the blush of their original poppy yellow coloring.
“Cemetery looks alright,” said Luke, looking around from atop his stationary horse.
“Yeah, quiet as a graveyard.”
“Let’s take a look at the outhouses,” Luke said, ignoring Cyrus’ sarcasm.
Sheriff Morris rolled his eyes and exhaled noisily through his nose. Luke regretted his decision to invite Cyrus along. Nevertheless the two men sauntered to the extreme rear of the church property. Because he was the younger of the two and lowest in rank, it fell to Luke to dismount and peer down into the two-seaters, which he had done in the spring as well in his initial search for James Rose’s body. Luke didn’t expect to see anything other than he’d seen before. His expectations proved correct.
It was a small church on a small piece of property. There was no place else to look for evidence of James Rose’s remains, so it was time to return to the church steps and begin their search on foot. They dismounted, tied their horses to a stout branch of a tree that shaded the picnic yard, and headed for the front of the building.
“Feel foolish out here, searching for a ghost,” said Sheriff Morris when they cleared the front corner of the church. He spat on the ground. “We’re wasting time. James Rose’s body went down that creek, I tell you. Some wolf got what the fish didn’t want. There’s nothing left of the bragging bastard.”
Luke looked at the oozy blotch of spittle Cyrus had deposited on the ground. “Cyrus, have some reverence. This is the Lord’s property.”
“This is dirt,” said the sheriff, kicking the ground with the toe of his boot. They stopped at the church steps. “And it’s all his dirt, as I see it.”
Luke decided to drop it. It wasn’t just the constant spitting. Like an old married couple, lately it seemed that all the sheriff’s personal habits irritated him. Most of all, it rankled him to no end that his boss never made anything but derisive comments about Mrs. Rose. Luke’s outburst in the office earlier today was mere venting, a chance to let out a little of the steam that had built up like a pressure cooker inside him. But he hadn’t let it all out. He pursed his lips and bit back the blistering retort that rose to his mind. It was useless to argue with Cyrus. He saw things his way and that was that. Besides, they had important work to do.
They stopped in front of the weathered wood steps that led up to the side-by-side sanctuary doors, where they’d begun their search, and stood there, staring.
“Nothing here,” said Sheriff Morris, casting his eyes about the church steps, his disgust evident by his tone.
“How about those bushes,” said Luke, pointing to large hydrangeas thick with foliage and snowball blooms on either side of the steps. “You take that one and I’ll search the other.”
“Alright,” said Sheriff Morris.
They used their arms to pull back upper branches and squatted and looked under the lowest branches of the leafy white hydrangea. They dropped to a prone position to look deep inside the bushes, their center stalks obscured by broad leaves and enormous blooms. After scarcely a minute Sheriff Morris grunted and lifted himself to a standing position. Luke was still squatting on the ground, peering through branches.
“This is harebrained,” said the sheriff as he swiped dirt and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “Rose left his horse at North-East Creek. If you insist on continuing this goose chase, we should do it over there. We’re wasting time here.”
“Dunn’s kid found his watch right here,” said Luke, pointing to the steps and standing up from where he had been pawing the bush. “And we still don’t have the body. This is the most logical place to keep looking for other evidence that could lead us to him. Maybe that’s why someone left the watch here, to point us to something else.”
“It’s suppertime. I’m going back to the Occidental.”
“We haven’t searched inside yet,” said Luke, looking at the sanctuary doors. He took off his hat and started to swat at the dirt on his shirt and pants.
“If James Rose�
��s body is in there,” said the sheriff, jerking his bare head toward the doors, “he’d be singing in the choir by now.”
Luke took a deep breath and put his hands on his hips. “We’re obliged to conduct a thorough investigation, Cyrus. We’d be negligent if we didn’t search the sanctuary.”
“Fine, go on in. When you see James Rose floating around the ceiling, throw a rope on him and drag him back to town. I got business with him.”
“Two sets of eyes are better than one,” said Luke, barely managing an even tone. He was determined to not get into it with Cyrus, though his ire was rising like mercury in August, clear to the back of his neck.
“That’s true, ain’t it?” said Sheriff Morris. “But extra eyeballs only help with things you can see. We’re talking about ghosts, and they’re invisible, so having me with you won’t help your odds, will it deputy?”
Luke huffed noisily, gave his pant leg one last swat with his hat, smashed it onto his head, and started up the steps of the church. At the top step he put his hand to the weathered brass door handle and turned it. Strangely, the door was locked.
“Well, well,” said Sheriff Morris, smarmy as ever. “Old Man Rose locked us out. Must have heard us crawling around out here looking for his goddamn carcass. Poor damned soul. Can’t abide the thought of being resurrected only to be condemned to living with that overdressed, whiny female. Hell is better.”
“That’s enough!” shouted Luke, descending the steps in one quick movement. “Enough!” He stopped directly across from his boss, fists raised, ready to knock the lights out of those smart aleck eyes. The thought was most appealing.
“Hmpf,” grunted the sheriff. Ignoring the imminent threat to his life, he bent over to pick up his hat, which had fallen off his head when he was on his belly under the bush. He slapped the hat against his thighs to shake off the dust as Luke had done. Then, still clutching his hat, he stood up straight and faced Luke, unfazed by the outburst from his deputy, who was at least a head taller. Finally he said, “Appears that all the stories I hear around town about you and the Widow Rose are true.”
Crazy Woman Creek Page 21
