The Return of Caulfield Blake (3 page)

“I've sworn to do my duty,” Blake declared. “I will.”

“Duty! That's what Austin did.”

“He did your biddin', Simpson. He'll hang for that. You valued the feel of gold coins and Yankee bank notes above a man's life. Now the law's callin' for payment.”

“You can't hang my boy.”

“I'm not. The law will.”

“If Austin dies in the morning, I'll see you pay for it. You brought him in. People will remember that. You rode young Henry and Matthew to their graves as well. You've got boys, Blake! How'd you like to see them swinging from an oak limb?”

“You watch your words, Simpson! You'd not care to have this hornet buzzin' around your head. I sting hard.”

“I swat the likes of you into the dust every day, Blake. I sent your daddy to an early grave, and there are spades aplenty about. I can bury you easy enough.”

“Can you?”

“Watch me.”

Even now, after seven long years, Caulfield Blake recalled the fire in Simpson's eyes. The memory of that time remained sharp. It was, after all, etched deeply in his heart.

Blake left the jailhouse early, but a squadron of cavalry guarded the doors. Soldiers patrolled the streets like an occupying army. Bitter townsfolk stared at the shiny brass buttons and recalled sons and husbands who'd fallen at Vicksburg and Chickamauga.

“Pa, don't go back to town,” seven-year-old Carter pleaded that night after a silent dinner. “I hear people talk. They say they'll hang others if Austin dies.”

“It's my job, my duty,” Blake explained. But Carter was eaten by a hundred nightmares, and the words of his father had no effect.

“You never asked to be sheriff,” Hannah complained. “I never wanted it. Lord knows I gave you up to duty four long years. That's enough to ask of any woman. Give them back their star. Leave the soldiers to finish it. They will, you know.”

“And if the people try to stop it? The soldiers have rifles. Those are my friends in town. Can I stay out here and leave 'em to die?”

“What do you think will happen if you go? Don't you know Colonel Simpson blames you for Austin's capture, the trial, the hanging? Those people you call your friends aren't going to watch that boy hang and forgive it. If they can't avenge themselves on die soldiers, they can easily enough find you. And us.”

“Hannah?”

“I've seen mobs, Caulie. I watched some of these peaceful neighbors of ours tear apart a Comanche boy Ben Stovall knocked senseless during the war. You'll be killed, and for what?”

“I have to do it, Hannah.”

“Stubborn! You always have been, but this time you're risking everything. Carter and little Zach, too. Get Dix and Marty to go along.”

“I won't bring trouble to my friends.”

“No? Just to your family?”

“Hannah, that's not what I mean.”

“Then hear me, Caulie! If you ride into town tomorrow, don't bother coming back. There'll be no place for you. For too many nights I went to bed expecting to hear in the morning that you had been killed in Tennessee. I won't go back to that, not ever again.”

The words tore at him, sliced deep into his heart.

“You can't mean that, Hannah. You . . . I love you. You mean the world to me.”

“Then stay.”

“You know I can't do that.”

“Then go,” she'd said, her eyes turning dark and stormy as never before. In saying it, she'd retired to their bedroom and thrown his clothes in a chest which she dragged onto the porch.

They spoke a final time the next morning. The words were little different, though.

“You go and do your duty, Caulie,” she'd spoken with stinging fury. “And afterward you find another place to come home to, because you won't be welcome here.”

He'd saddled his horse and ridden off with nary a farewell wave.

She'd been right about the town. An angry mob gathered around the oak and watched as Caulfield Blake escorted a sobbing, trembling Austin Simpson to the makeshift gallows. Nearby Henry Simpson huddled with Austin's dainty wife and young son.

“There'll be a price paid for this murder!” the old man cried out. The people murmured their agreement, and a few stones flew toward the gallows. A line of soldiers leveled their rifles, and Blake pleaded for peace.

“We'll settle with you later,” someone bellowed. A stone clipped Blake's shoulder. He swallowed the pain and fought to maintain order. A graying cavalry captain motioned to the hooded hangman, and the trap sprung. Austin Simpson fell quickly, and the murderer's neck snapped abruptly.

“Thank God it's over,” the captain mumbled.

But it was anything but over. The soldiers loaded Austin Simpson's body in a wagon, then marched back to the courthouse. Blake had already handed the captain his badge and was headed for his horse when a pair of Simpson hands stepped out of the shadows. Another and another arrived afterward. Soon a dozen men collected in a circle, and suddenly fists came from everywhere.

Blake only felt the first few punches. Soon his eyes were swollen closed, and the blows of planks and toes smashing ribs and legs were beyond him. He drifted off long before Henry Simpson arrived with a can of blue paint to pour on the motionless body of Caulfield Blake. He never saw the small boy spit or the ashen-faced widow curse.

For two days Caulfield Blake was as good as dead. He regained consciousness in the half-completed barn of Marty Cabot.

“Thought you dead for certain this time, Cap'n,” Marty said with the same broad smile that had been directed at federal cavalry fleeing from Brice's Crossroads a decade earlier. “They did you up fine. Took Dix and me three hours to wash all that blue paint out o' your hide.”

“Paint?”

“Colonel Simpson's notion, I suspect. Don't try to move just yet. Half your ribs must be cracked. They broke your nose again. Left leg's a little sour, too.”

“Hannah?”

Marty hadn't answered for a time. When he did, the pain from his fractured ribs and aching head ebbed as a new wave of sorrow overwhelmed him.

“She won't come, Cap'n. Says she said all that's to be said. Doesn't mean it, though. I could tell she's hurtin' for you.”

But days passed into weeks, and Hannah never came. Bones mended, and spirits revived, but Hannah never relented.

“There's mighty bad blood about,” Mary explained. “Cap'n, maybe we ought to take a ride out west, run down some mustangs, sell some to the army and maybe buy some acreage up north, maybe on the Brazos.”

“She doesn't want me back.”

“She never said it so I'd believe it, Cap'n.”

“She doesn't have to,” Blake had said sadly.

“She told me plain enough. On the Brazos, you say?”

“Plenty of buffalo up there, or so I hear. Mustangs that can chase your heart to Colorado.”

It had sounded good, a fresh start. And if he hadn't looked behind when he crossed the Colorado, it wasn't because he hadn't left anyone or anything behind. His heart would always be there, his heart and his blood. Even now he ached with a longing to feel Hannah's gentle hands in his own, to touch the boys, to share his heart with that other part of himself left so long ago back on Carpenter Creek.

“Ben, Frank,” Blake said, turning to the two young men at the corral. “I've got to ride down south for a time.”

“What?” the first one, a thin-faced eighteen-year-old named Ben Harris, asked. “We've got a dozen horses to deliver to the Kensingtons next week. And four promised to Major Plumb.”

“Captain,” the second man said, walking to the gate, “how long'll you be gone?”

“A week, maybe more. Could be I won't make it back at all.”

Ben started to say something, but the other man, Frank Parker, gestured for silence.

“Captain,” Frank said, “we been riding out there three summers now. You knew my daddy. When a man rides with me, his troubles come to be my troubles. I never knew you to get a letter from Simpson in the summer.”

Blake frowned. Frank Parker wasn't more than twelve when the Simpson trouble had occurred. The young man would soon turn twenty and was as ready to take up arms as the brother who'd fallen at Johnsonville in '64.

“No, it's your place to stay here,” Blake said. “This is a personal thing.”

“Kensington won't be any too pleased you left us to fill his contract,” Ben complained. “He'll likely want to cut the price.”

“You leave that to Frank,” Blake said, spitting away the last bit of tobacco juice from his morning plug. “Walt Kensington will deal fairly with you if you take him twelve good mounts. And you will.”

“Captain . . .” Frank began.

“You two'll do just fine,” Blake told them. “You're both good men with a rope. And if I don't make it back . .

The three of them sat stone-faced a second as Blake tried to complete the thought.

“We'll make out,” Frank said. “Even if I have a skinny no­account like Ben here for a partner.”

Ben started to object, but Blake turned and started toward the house. A few moments later Blake reemerged from the cabin with blanket roll, a knapsack, and two saddlebags. Frank helped saddle a horse, and after another uncomfortable silence, Caul­field Blake mounted a big black stallion and splashed his way across the river, bound for the Colorado and the town he thought he'd left behind forever seven years ago.

No one walking the streets of Simpson forgot that dusty July afternoon that Caulfield Blake rode into town. He was no ordinary man. His six-foot two-inch frame gave him an appearance larger than life as he sat atop his great black stallion. A week's growth of beard made his face seem dark, menacing. Those piercing blue eyes that had alternately struck enemies with fear and comrades with devotion swept the streets, observing everything, noticing even the smallest detail. Long strands of dark brown hair sprinkled with traces of gray curled under and around a faded brown leather drover's hat.

He wore buckskin trousers and a cotton shirt, a combination which seemed strange to the onlookers. Around his waist was a black Confederate officer's belt, with its accompanying Colt revolver resting on his right hip.

If the town seemed preoccupied with Blake, Blake was no less taken aback by the town.

“It's changed,” he mumbled as he nudged the horse toward a brightly painted building with a hand-lettered sign over the door,
STEWART'S.
Sitting on a bench beside the door was a small blond boy of ten or so. Blake climbed down from the horse, tied the reins to a post, and approached the boy.

“Dix around?” Blake asked.

“Out to the ranch today,” the boy said, shrinking back from Blake's steellike gaze. “Got business with him?”

“Might have. Let's see now. You'd be ten April last, as I recall. Your papa named you Charles, but it's likely come to be Charlie by now.”

“You know Papa?”

“About since the first time he threw me off into the creek down in Siler's Hollow.”

The conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a girl. She had her brother's fair hair and deep brown eyes, but her face revealed suspicion and suggested caution.

“Can I help you, mister?” she asked.

“And you'd be Katherine,” Blake said, moving the boy forward with a weathered right hand as they entered the store together.

“And who might you be?” she challenged. “I got no uncles, and I don't take to liars.”

“Or baths, either, as I remember. I'll bet they call you Kate.”

The boy nodded, and Blake's eyes brightened. The beginning of a smile appeared on his lips.

“Just who are you?” Kate asked, retreating to where a shotgun rested beside the cash drawer back of the counter.

“Let's see if I can help you figure it out. There was a man here a few years ago. You used to complain about his mustache. Made it tickle when you kissed him.”

“Lots of men have whiskers.”

“Well, that's true enough. But how many know about that little heart-shaped mark on your . .

“Stop right there!” she said, her face growing bright red. “I don't see how you could know about that.”

“Oh, I might could if I had to give you a bath. You weren't too agreeable to it, I admit, tossin' soapy water in my eyes, bitin' my fingers.”

“You're him,” she suddenly blurted out, trembling.

The boy seemed confused, but Kate walked briskly to an old desk beside the window and took out a yellowing photograph. Five soldiers sat together under a Tennessee oak tree. Kate pointed to the tall, dark-haired young man in the center. Blake nodded.

“Uncle Caulie,” she said, wrapping both arms around his dusty waist and hugging tightly. “I remember.”