Hugh was up on his feet again, holding his nose, staring at his bloody hand as he cursed wildly. Then, like a wounded bear, he lumbered around, groping towards the table. “Kill him!” he screamed. “Kill him!”
Charlie’s eyes widened as Hugh grabbed something and spun back around. He had a pistol in his hands. “No, Hugh!” Charlie jumped in front of Will now, raising his own pistol.
“Get outta my way!” Hugh roared. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“No!” Charlie’s eyes were bugged out with terror.
Now even Riley realized what was happening. “No, Hugh,” he said, jumping forward to grab at his partner’s arm. Hugh threw him off, not even looking at him. His voice instantly dropped to a whisper. “Charlie, get outta my way.” It was more menacing and frightening than any shout could have been.
Charlie was pleading now, his words tumbling out in near sobs. “Not murder, Hugh. You’re getting outta here. But St. Louis is my home. We can’t kill him.” Suddenly he remembered something. He grabbed at his pocket. “Look, Hugh. I got his purse.” Fumbling with one hand, he dumped the money out on the floor and tossed the purse aside. “This is what we came for. You can have it. I’ll take him to that boat captain, like we said. He’ll take him downriver to New Orleans and sell him off to one of them British ships. We’ll never see him again.”
“Charlie, if you don’t move, I’m gonna blow your ugly head off.”
Charlie Patterson had never used a gun. He was a coward at heart, living off what he could steal and pilfer without ever confronting anything that constituted a physical risk. But the thoughts of the gallows terrified him beyond anything else he could imagine. He stepped forward. “No, Hugh.”
Hugh swung the pistol up, cursing and swearing. But Charlie already had his pistol leveled and pointed at Hugh’s chest. He squeezed the trigger and the gun bucked in his hand. Hugh Watson stumbled backwards, the pistol flying from his hand, his eyes wide with shock and surprise. He crashed against the table, sending it sprawling. Cards flew, and the whiskey bottle shattered as it hit the floor.
“No!” Charlie screamed. He was gaping at Hugh, who now lay on the floor clutching at the spreading stain on his chest. “I didn’t want to! I didn’t want to! I didn’t want to!” It was a wild, incoherent babble. He swung around to Will. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Will started to push himself up. His face was as pale as the dusty floor, half from the shock of his arm, half from the horror of seeing a man gunned down a few feet in front of him. Then suddenly he jerked his head around. “Watch out, Charlie!”
Riley Overson’s brain had always moved slowly, and normally he took time to think things through or else trusted Hugh to help do it for him. But now Hugh was lying on the floor with a hole in his chest. Hugh was dead. Something snapped inside Riley and he dropped to his hands and knees and started across the floor toward Hugh’s pistol, sobbing and cursing unintelligibly.
Charlie spun around. “Don’t, Riley!”
Riley was oblivious to anything but the pistol. He reached it and picked it up, his back still to Charlie and Will.
“Don’t be crazy, Riley!” Charlie screamed. “Put it down!”
Riley put one hand against the floor and shoved himself up. He turned slowly, thumbing back the hammer of the pistol in his hand. “You killed Hugh.”
“No, Riley!” Charlie’s drawn out cry was shattered by the nearly simultaneous explosions of both pistols. Charlie’s ball struck first, jerking Riley backwards enough to deflect his shot upward. That round passed harmlessly over Charlie’s head and buried itself in one of the wooden beams above them.
Riley hit the floor with a heavy thud and lay still. Suddenly the silence seemed more intense than the roaring of the pistols. Charlie seemed frozen, in suspension, as he surveyed what he had done. But then it hit him what all this meant. He leaped forward, dropping to a crouch and snatching at the money he had dropped. As he scrambled around for the bills and coins, he cursed God, he cursed Hugh and Riley, he cursed Will, and he cursed his own mother for ever bringing him into the world. Then he leaped up and whirled on Will, waving the pistol wildly. “Up!” he shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Will jumped to his feet, trying to protect his bad arm. “What are you going to do with me?” he cried, the terror tightening his voice into little more than a croak.
Charlie stopped for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth as if the solution might be hidden somewhere in the warehouse. Then he shook his head. “I ain’t gonna kill ya, boy. Not unless you try and fight me. But I can’t have you hangin’ around here tellin’ the law what happened here tonight, now can I?”
“I won’t say anything,” Will half sobbed. He felt sick to his stomach and weak with fright.
Charlie grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him towards the door. “Come on. We got someone waiting to meet you.”
* * *
The marshall stopped at the door to the warehouse. “Mrs. Steed, I wish we could have you stay outside, but I’m afraid we need you to identify the bodies too.”
She swallowed hard, but nodded immediately. She reached out and gripped Joshua’s arm. “All right.”
Motioning to them all to follow him, the marshall went through the door. As they came inside and paused for a minute to let their eyes adjust to the dimness, the officer spoke again. “It happened sometime last night. The owner of the warehouse wasn’t here, but . . .” He shrugged and moved further inside. He stopped, then stepped aside. The two bodies were laid out on the floor near an overturned crate and a smashed bottle of liquor.
Taking a quick breath, Joshua moved forward and leaned over. After a moment, he straightened and stepped back. Nathan saw that suddenly his breathing was rapid and shallow. “That’s them,” Joshua said tightly. “That’s the men who tried to kill me in Far West.”
He reached back and took a hold of Caroline’s arm. He pulled her gently forward. She stared downward, suppressing a gasp, then averted her head. “Yes, those are the ones.”
“These are the men who came to you in Jackson County?” the marshall asked gently.
“Yes, and that same night my house was burned down. These are the ones. There is no question about it.”
Samuelson looked at the marshall. “Then that’s that,” he said.
The man nodded slowly. “Yes, as far as that goes.” He looked at Joshua. “They’ll not be bothering your family anymore. But . . .” He turned and walked to a crate. He picked up something and brought it back over. “Do either of you recognize this?”
He handed a small money purse to Joshua. Joshua turned it over, then opened it up. It was empty. “No,” he said. “It’s nothing I’ve seen before.”
But Caroline had gone rigid beside him, and there was a soft intake of breath. Joshua turned to her. “Caroline, do you know what this is?”
So slowly it was almost imperceptible, her head moved up and down. “That’s the purse I left the money in,” she whispered. “Will took it from my drawer.”
The marshall looked away. He turned to Samuelson and shook his head. “I don’t have any choice,” he murmured. “I’m going to have to put out a warrant for the boy’s arrest.”
* * *
The door to the coal bin opened, letting in a flood of daylight. Will sat up quickly, blinking at the brightness of the light. A dark shadow filled the narrow frame.
“You all right, boy?”
Will pushed his back against the one empty wall, feeling the grit of the coal dust beneath his seat, but he didn’t answer.
“How’s the arm?”
Will lifted the splinted wrist without thinking and looked at it. “It’s all right, I guess.”
“Good.” The man stooped and set a plate of food on the floor. “Eat up, boy.”
“Where are we?”
The man turned to look out the door. “We’ll shortly be docking at Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in.” He spoke more kindly now. “Wish we could let you off to stretch your legs, but we won’t be stopping long. There’s more ice coming downriver, and we’ve got to keep moving.” Then abruptly he stepped back and shut the door. There was a metallic click as he put the padlock in the hasp.
Will could smell the food distinctly now, some kind of meat and beans, but he ignored it. He could feel the throbbing of the paddle wheels through the bulkhead and could hear the swishing of the water across the hull. Suddenly he dropped his head against his knees. Hot tears scalded his eyes, and his shoulders began to shake. “I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.
Chapter 32
When Jessica and her four children moved to the new cabin where she would teach school, the Steeds decided to once again realign their housing arrangements. Jenny and Kathryn McIntire moved in with Jessica to help with the children in payment for their enrollment in the school. Sister McIntire stayed with Benjamin and Mary Ann; Peter and Matthew were also still there. Rebecca and Derek moved over to stay with Lydia and Nathan.
Lydia was grateful for Rebecca’s and Derek’s company. Not only was Rebecca wonderful to help with the children, but she and Derek were both still so young and so in love and so perpetually optimistic and happy. Lydia desperately needed that right now. There had been no word from Nathan since the letter he had written from St. Louis almost a month before. And in that letter he had said that he had no idea how long it would take for him and Joshua to go to Georgia and look for Caroline, or where they would go if she wasn’t there. But any way she figured it, it would be weeks at least, maybe a month or more.
And now their departure from Missouri loomed closer every day. That frightened Lydia more than she could bear to contemplate. She knew that she would have Derek and Matthew to help her. It wasn’t that she felt abandoned, but it was not the same. She still felt that she was facing it all alone—trying to decide what to carry and what to abandon, crossing two hundred miles of open prairie in the depths of winter with a baby and three other children, the oldest only seven. She needed Nathan—to lean on, to complain to when she had to put on a brave face for everyone else, to snuggle against when there was no other safe place in all the world. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes and she looked away, lest Rebecca should see them.
But Rebecca was dressing baby Elizabeth and finding her hands full in doing so. Elizabeth was eight months old now and had mastered crawling in the past two weeks. She was faster than a frightened kitten and could scoot out from under your grip in a flash. As Rebecca reached for her booties, she twisted away.
“She’s getting away,” squealed six-year-old Emily, giggling as she grabbed one of Elizabeth’s legs and pulled her back.
“You little mouse,” Rebecca laughed. “You’re getting too quick for your own good.”
“She not a mouse,” little Nathan said. He had turned three in October and had mastered a glare that would freeze an avalanche in its path. He leveled it at Rebecca now.
Lydia laughed in spite of herself. She brushed at the corners of her eyes, then turned around. “No, Nathan, Elizabeth is not a mouse. Rebecca didn’t mean it.”
He looked at his aunt, still openly offended. Rebecca was appropriately contrite. “I’m sorry, Nathan. Elizabeth is not a mouse.” She finished putting on Elizabeth’s booties and turned her loose for Emily and Nathan to chase after. She stood up, looked at Lydia, then looked again more closely. “Are you sure you won’t go visiting with Jessie and me?” she said.
Lydia hesitated. Normally being out with the other sisters was something she enjoyed. But Emma? Mary Fielding Smith? Sister Rigdon? All that would do is remind her all the more keenly about missing husbands and lonely women waiting for them to return. She shook her head. “No, I—”
There was a step on the porch, followed immediately by a knock at the door. Lydia turned. “Come in,” she called.
It opened immediately and Jenny McIntire entered. She had a knitted scarf wrapped around her face and gloves on her hands, but her cheeks were still pink, which highlighted her freckles and her blue eyes and made her seem two or three years younger than her seventeen years. With a joyous shout, Emily and Joshua and Nathan leaped up and ran to her, nearly bowling her over. In the two weeks since the McIntires had come, Lydia’s children and Jessica’s children had fallen in love with Jenny and Kathryn. The two sisters were wonderful with the children, and the children adored them.
“Hello,” Jenny said, laughing as she let them wrestle her to the floor.
“Emily,” Lydia called, smiling. “Nathan. Let Jenny up, for heaven’s sake.”
Reluctantly they backed off for a moment, and Jenny stood. She unwrapped the scarf from around her face, then turned to Rebecca and Lydia. “Sister Lydia, Jessie sent me over to watch the children.”
“She did?”
“Yes. She wants you to come right over. Amanda Smith and another family just got in from . . .” She hesitated, trying to remember the name.
“Haun’s Mill?” Rebecca filled in.
“Yes, that’s it. They just arrived. Jessica was so excited to see her, she dismissed school. But she wants you to come, right now.”
Rebecca swung around. “Oh, Lydia, please come. Jessie says Amanda is the most wonderful woman.”
Lydia nodded. She had never met Amanda Smith, but Jessica’s accounts of Haun’s Mill and what had happened there were filled with references to Amanda Smith. Lydia untied her apron and tossed it aside. “All right, let’s go.”
* * *
“Well, I’d not be a truthful woman if I told you it has not been a terrifying experience.”
Jessica sat by Amanda’s side on the sofa. With much of the furniture smashed or stolen by the militia, Mary Ann, Lydia, Rebecca, and Sister McIntire all sat in a half circle on the floor facing the sofa, listening intently to Amanda.
“The Missourians have been back a dozen times or more, telling us that if we did not leave the state immediately, they would kill us all.”
“That’s what they’re saying to everyone,” Mary Ann said.
“I know. We kept telling them we’d move as soon as we could, but there were three families of us with wounded men or boys who couldn’t be moved. We had no choice but to stay. We told them that over and over. It made no difference to them.”