Authors: Dorothy Garlock
Head bent and shoulders slumped, James went out the back door and McHenry down the hallway to the store.
“Ye don’t have to be goin’ in the store, Dory,” Mag said when she saw Dory’s eyes follow McHenry.
Mag McHenry had been the rock Dory had clung to after her father died. During the days following Mick’s death and when she
realized she was to have a child, Mag McHenry had been Dory’s only friend. She had come to the homestead and delivered Jeanmarie
and stayed to help Dory through the difficult days that followed. Dory went to her now and put her arms around her.
“Dear friend, you must be wondering what happened to my face.”
“The marshal be tellin’ the McHenry it was Milo who hurt ye.” Mag clicked her tongue. “And ‘bout yer Mr. Waller killin’ Sid
Hanes.”
“Milo was the mean one. I wouldn’t have been so surprised it he had been the one who killed those women. It’s hard to believe
it of Louis. He kept that hate bottled up all those years.”
“Ach! It’s sad. George Callahan be a fine mon, but he sired two sorry sons to my way a thinkin’. It seems Louis ha’ been overly
fond a Jean, and he bein’ a lad and all.”
“The Callahan name will sure enough be held up to scorn now. Papa doesn’t deserve that.”
“That be so, lass. Would ye be wantin’ to see Steven?”
“James said that he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s here. Not even the marshal. Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?”
“He be scared, lass.” Mag clicked her tongue as was a habit of hers. “The mon be more dead than alive when he came to our
door. That marshal be snoopin’ round an’ found Steven’s horse in the barn. A bullet dug a hole in the flank of the poor beast.
I think he be knowin’ that the McHenry not be tellin’ all.”
“Will Mr. McHenry get in trouble?”
“The McHenry has broke no law.”
As they talked, they had walked a few steps to anotner door. Mag paused and looked up and down the hallway before she took
a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. They went inside and Mag relocked the door.
Steven lay on the bed, his head elevated by two fluffy pillows. The planes of his face were sharp and boney; his mustache,
usually so neatly trimmed, was long and scraggly, as was his hair. Dory hurried to the side of the bed.
“Steven, my goodness. When James came home and told us what happened, I couldn’t believe that someone would ambush you.”
“Us.
Who else did he tell?” Steven asked anxiously.
“Only me, Ben and Wiley. We haven’t said a word to anyone. Louis is gone, Steven. He died right after James and I got here.”
“I could say I’m sorry, Dory, but it would be a lie. McHenry told me what Louis did.”
“Are you as shocked as I am that Louis was a murderer?”
“In a way. But I sensed something sinister in Louis after Jean died. He changed, and it seemed that all he thought of was
his hatred for Chip Malone.”
“But Mama loved Papa.”
“I know she did. Louis was consumed with a deep-seated anger and was warped where Jean was concerned.”
“James says we’ll bury him at sundown. Steven, so much has happened.” Dory told him briefly about Odette being taken and that
James had killed the two men who had taken her. “I don’t know what will happen when Ben and James see Milo.”
“If ye want ta be stayin’, Dory, I best be seein’ to me brood.” Mag spoke from the end of the bed.
“I should go and let Steven rest. James and I will be back. This morning he said we’d spend the night at the hotel.”
“Dory,” Steven called before she reached the door. “Waller beat hell out of Milo for what he did to you. I never saw a man
take a more vicious beating.”
Dory took a few steps back toward the bed. “He wants to marry me, Steven, and take me away from here. He doesn’t want my shares
in the company.”
Steven chuckled, then winced. “Did you think the only reason a man would want you was for that damn stock?”
Dory answered his grin. “I guess I heard it so often, I believed it.”
“Marry your man if you want to, Dory. But don’t leave just yet. Wait until I’m on my feet.”
“Why, Steven Marz, I’d not think of leaving until you’re on your feet,” she scoffed. “Mama would look down from heaven and
be disappointed in me.”
“Ye be drinkin’ that broth, mon, else I’ll be takin’ a stick to yer backside,” Mag threatened.
“It’s cold, Mag,” Steven complained.
“’Tis yer own fault. ‘Twas hot when Iris brought it. He be better, Dory. He be up to bellyachin’.”
“Ye better be takin’ care, Mag McHenry,” Steven said, using her Scottish brogue. “I be likin’ ye too much ‘n’ be fightin’
McHenry for ye.”
“Ach, me darlin’ mon, ye’re as full a blarney as a Irishmon.” Mag’s eyes were twinkling as she ushered Dory out the door.
“I had feared he’d die while I was diggin’ the bullet out of him. It is good he be feelin’ up to doin’ some joshin’.”
“He’s usually so serious. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard him tease before.”
At the door leading into the store, Mag paused. “Ye know, lass, the news be sweepin’ the town like wild fire when folks be
seein’ yer poor face.”
“I know, Mag. But I’ve done nothing wrong and I don’t feel I should hide. What happened was done to
me.
The person who did it should feel the shame. If someone should ask, which they won’t, I’ll tell them who beat me.”
Mag chuckled. “Ye be more like yer mather every day.”
“You couldn’t say anything that would please me more.”
Dory longed to tell Mag about Ben and the new happiness that had come to her. But there was no time. As she followed her into
the store, the first thing she saw was Ben, arms crossed, one shoulder against the wall. His head was bent and he was watching
as Odette worked with a button hook on the soft kid shoes she had put on Jeanmarie.
“Mama! Look! Papa buy me new shoes.”
Dory looked up at Ben and joyous tremors fluttered inside her.
“Oh, Ben.
Red
shoes?”
“She likes them.” His face was wreathed with smiles and his eyes danced with laughter.
Ben and James climbed up and out of the hole they had dug and sank down on the grass near Wiley. The old man was whittling
on a stick with his pocketknife. A chaw of tobacco bulged his cheek.
The quiet was absolute.
“Not a damn soul offered to help dig this hole,” James said, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. A slight breeze felt cool
on his face.
“Folks are pretty well worked up over this.”
“I don’t blame them for that, but hell, they don’t have to act like the rest of us Callahans have smallpox.”
“What’d the preacher say?” Wiley asked.
“Nothing much. Said he’d read a scripture if we wanted. I told him Dory’d want to do it proper.”
“The marshal was in the store asking a couple of fellows about a horse in McHenry’s barn that had been creased by a bullet.”
Ben took off his hat, placed it on the ground beside him, and mopped his forehead with a kerchief. “He said McHenry told him
it wandered in. He asked who it belonged to and if it was saddled. He seemed to be a hell of a lot more interested in that
horse than in Louis.”
“Maybe he’s got a line on something. He said he wanted to talk to Steven about what happened the night Milo and Sid came to
the house. I don’t know what the hell for. He talked to Tinker.”
“When I told him about it the day he stopped at the house, he seemed to think that as long as Sid shot first and either Marz
or Tinker backed me on it, I’d be in the clear.”
“There isn’t any reason for him to hang around now that Louis confessed to the killings.”
“I wonder why he didn’t kill Dory. He had plenty of opportunity.” The thought tightened Ben’s nerves and he ground his teeth
each time he thought of it.
“It’s somethin’ we’ll never be knowin’,” Wiley answered. “When he’d go off for a day or two, ever’body thought he was out
spying on Malone.”
“Speak of the devil—here he comes.” James got to his feet and put on his hat. “Malone’s got the damnedest habit of showing
up where he’s not wanted.”
“Chip’s all right. He ain’t never done ya no harm.” Wiley folded his pocketknife and put it in his pocket.
“Yeah? What about last spring when he put a jam on the upper river so his logs could hit the fast water first?”
“That was business. Ya’d a done the same if’n ya’d thought of it.”
“How could we do that when we’re up river?” James glared at Wiley and the old man glared back.
Ben stood and leaned on the spade he had been using to dig the grave and listened to Wiley and James argue. Only men who were
fond of each other would be so blunt. It had been that way between him and Tom Caffery.
Chip Malone and a thin, bowlegged man with a large handlebar mustache left their horses at the edge of the church grounds
where Wiley had left the wagon and walked through the acre of gravestones to where James, Ben and Wiley waited.
“Howdy,” Chip said. “Need help?”
“We’re all done, but thanks,” James replied.
“I’m surprised by what has happened. I would never have suspected Louis.”
“Surprised, but not sorry,” James said with raised brows.
“Hell, no! I’m not sorry for
him.
I’m sorry for the women he killed. He got what was coming to him. Saved the town the trouble of having to hang him.” He looked
over at the man with him. “Dave, meet James Callahan, Ben Waller, and the best damn smithy in the Bitterroot, Wiley Potter.
Dave Theiss is a friend from over east of Coeur d’Alene.”
“Pleased to meet ya.” The men shook hands. Dave Theiss raked Wiley with sharp blue eyes. “The best smithy, huh? I’ve done
a speck of that myself.”
“Chip said it, I didn’t,” Wiley snorted, in spite of the pleased look on his face. “But Chip ain’t knowed fer stickin’ ta
the facts.”
“Wiley and I go back a long way. My pa tried to hire him away from George Callahan, but the old goat wanted a half-interest
in the business before he’d make a move.”
“There ya go. See what I’m tellin’ ya?” Wiley said to Theiss.
“Sure do. You got to take what old Chip says with a grain a salt.”
“This will go hard with Milo.” Chip turned a serious face back to James.
“Yeah. It was always him and Louis against the rest of us.”
“Most folks hate Milo’s guts anyway. What Louis did won’t help matters any.”
“I don’t give a goddamn about Milo.” James picked up a shovel and sank the blade in the pile of dirt beside the hole. “I’m
going to bust his head wide open when I see him.”
Chip laughed. “You won’t find anything in there but hot air.”
Ben squinted at the sun. “We’d better get back and wash up if the burying is at sundown.”
Wiley drove the wagon that carried Louis’s body to the graveyard. Ben, Dory and Odette followed in McHenry’s buggy. The McHenry
girls had offered to keep Jeanmarie, and Dory was grateful her young daughter would be spared the ordeal of seeing a body
put in the ground. And, it was a rare treat for the child to be with other children.
James, on horseback, rode beside the buggy. As they rounded the corner to enter the main street, Chip Malone and his friend
Dave Theiss fell in behind the buggy, and James moved back to ride beside them.
“What’er you doin’ here?” James growled.
“Payin’ my respects.”
“That’s a pile of horseshit.”
“Yeah, it is.” Chip’s eyes scanned the two dozen or more men that lounged along the street.
“Well—?”
At that moment a clod of dirt hit the box in the back of the wagon. Then a barrage of clods were thrown. One hit the horse
pulling the buggy. The frightened animal danced sideways and tried to rear. Only Ben’s strong hands on the reins held him.
Chip spurred his horse ahead to face a group of angry men. Theiss moved up beside the buggy.
“You stupid bastards! If you hurt one of those women or that man driving the wagon you’ll get my quirt across your back.”
Chip’s strident voice carried to every man on the street.
“He’s a goddamn murderer!” a man yelled.
“Yeah, he
was,”
Chip replied. “And he’s dead. You’re not going to hurt him with clods.”
“He’s gettin’ a decent buryin’. It ain’t right after what he done.”
“They’re burying him. What did you expect them to do— drag him out in the woods and let him rot?”
“He ort ta be drawn ‘n’ quartered!”
“You want to do it, Tidwell? After he’s buried I don’t give a hoot in hell if you go out there and dig him up. But he’s going
to be buried, so pull in your horns and act civil for a change.”
James edged his horse between Chip’s and the crowd. “I don’t need you to fight my battles,” he said low-voiced.
“It wasn’t for you, hot-head, it was for Dory. Now get on before you get them more riled up than they are.”
Seething, James fell in behind the buggy. “You’re pretty high-handed, Malone.”
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
“This is no concern of yours.”
“I guess not.”
“They why are you here?”
“You’ll find out.” They were at the edge of town. Chip looked over his shoulder to see if they were being followed. “Do you
think Milo will show up?”
“Doubt it. Young McHenry went up to the mill to tell him. Tinker said when he sobered up this morning he lit a shuck. He knows
I’m going to beat his brains out.”
“What’s he done now?”
“None of your business.”
Chip grinned a lopsided grin and shrugged.
Wiley stopped the wagon at the edge of the graveyard and climbed down. Dory and Odette stood by while the men pulled the box
from the wagon bed. With Ben and James on one side and Chip and Theiss on the other they hoisted the box to their shoulders
and carried it to the open pit where the minister waited with Bible in hand.
“Now you know why we came,” Chip said in a low tone to James as they lowered the box onto the ropes Wiley had laid out on
the ground.
“I’m obliged,” James growled grudgingly.
Dory stood with Wiley and Odette while the men, using the ropes, lowered the box into the gaping hole. She felt neither sorrow
nor hatred for the man they were burying. If she felt anything at all, it was a sort of vague relief that she no longer had
to fear his outbursts nor endure his insults. Dory had half expected Milo to show up at the graveyard and cause trouble. She
wondered now if that was the reason Chip Malone and his friend had come. It certainly wasn’t out of respect for the dead.