Horse With No Name (5 page)

Six

“Merrick won't thank you for interfering, Julia
Thom," Betty said as they walked back from Hunter's shop toward
Merrick's office, but she had a big smile on her face. Watching her
new friend torment the normally kind and even-tempered constable
with her meddling had become a great source of amusement for Betty.
She was not a natural meddler herself, but she had no problem
watching Julia get involved where she shouldn't.

"I'm not interfering," Julia countered,
though she knew full-well this wasn't true. "I'm helping."

But Merrick wasn’t in his office. The door
was closed and when Julia marched in anyway the room was quiet and
the stove cold.

So the two friends carried on down the street
and when Betty returned to her store, she winked at Julia and said,
"Promise me you'll tell me what expletive Merrick uses when he sees
you."

"Oh, pffft," was the only retort Julia could
come up with at the time.

The rhythmic clang-clang of Walter Sheehan's
hammer meeting its target found Julia's ears long before she
reached the blacksmith shop. She wondered briefly what it was like
for Walt knowing that everyone in town knew where he was by
following that noise. He was a quiet man, only given to speaking
when he had something to say. And like most quiet people, he was
keenly observant. Though Julia had only known him a few weeks, she
could already tell that very little slipped past Walt. In this way,
he was invaluable to his friend, Constable Jack Merrick.

Julia walked past the sleeping forms of the
three dogs that were never far from Walt's side. The blacksmith
nodded to Julia when she entered the shop but kept hammering for a
moment. The nail he was forming was still red from the fire. Julia
glanced around but Merrick was not in the blacksmith shop.

"One moment, lass," he said.

Originally and recently from Ireland, Walt
was the only man in town who topped Merrick's height. The two men
looked like Grecian pillars when they stood beside one another. But
unlike his friend, Walt had the fair skin and fine, light brown
hair of the Celts. His hands were always dirty; his profession did
not allow him to ever be clean for long. His expression was usually
serious, but when he looked at Julia, a long dormant warmth formed
in his eyes. His nose was slightly too big for his face, but he was
handsome in his own rugged way. There were small lines beside his
clear blue eyes that Julia found charming. Though he rarely
referred to his past, Julia got the impression he'd left Ireland
under some sort of cloud. Twice since she'd arrived in August,
Julia had had a chance to observe this natural observer when he
didn't realize he was being watched. Both times, she'd seen a
sorrow in his expression that nearly took her breath away.

Today though, the big Irishman was all
smiles. Julia waited while Walt put the finishing touches on the
nail, dunked it into the bucket of water beside him, and then
tossed it onto a pile of nearly identical nails in a basket at his
feet. He came around the anvil, hammer still in hand.

"What've you got there?" He nodded his head
toward the glove. It would have taken much more time for any other
man to notice she was carrying it. Walt the Observer.

"I found it at James Hunter's shop."

"Aye?" Walt reached for it, "May I?"

"Of course."

He set his hammer down on the chair by the
front door and took the glove in his own hands, his blackened
fingers holding it gently despite their size and strength. After
running his eyes and fingers over it, and turning it over twice he
handed it back to Julia.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"We found it by itself."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Betty Mitchell and I."

Walt nodded. "Go on."

"We found it by itself in Hunter's shop and
I'm convinced it's not his."

"You'd be right about that. Look at the size
of it. Hunter is a wee little thing. I could snap him in half and
cook him for breakfast." He grinned at Julia. "And I'd still be
hungry."

She smiled. No doubt Walt was right. "It
looks like a ranch hand’s glove to me. What do you think? See
there, where it's been worn in a line?" She pointed to a darkened
stripe that ran across the palm of the glove.

"Reins," Walt said simply.

Julia nodded, "Exactly."

"Well," Walt took in a deep breath and stood
up straighter. He put his closed fists on his hips and arched into
them. "You'd best go talk to the Major-General," he said, meaning
Merrick. "He'll be wanting to know who set the boots to
Hunter."

"He's not at his office. Do you know where he
is?"

Walt jerked his head to his left, indicating
the building next door, which was the other half of his business,
the town livery. "Earl's got a bit o' a cough so he's ministering
to him. Babying him, more like." But he smiled as he said it.
Animals were one weakness of Walt's that Julia had noticed. He was
friend to every dog and horse in town. Even the backyard chickens
loved him. The three dogs of unknown origin who hung around the
blacksmith shop and livery all day were no exception. They watched
Walt's every move with the adoration of apostles.

"Thanks." Julia turned to leave the darkness
and heat of the forge.

Walt picked his hammer up off the chair.
"When he starts yelling I'll come and rescue you."

"Rescue him, you mean," Julia said,
smiling.

Big men need big horses, and Merrick's grey
gelding was no exception. Earl was, at minimum, seventeen hands
high and had feathered feet that were larger than Julia's head.
Like Merrick, he was intimidating to look at but as gentle as a
kitten when you got to know him. Merrick and his horse were a
matched pair; both strong, steady, with even tempers and endless
stamina. Earl was a little quicker to display affection,
however.

When Julia poked her head over the half-door
and greeted the constable and his ailing animal, Earl gently pushed
Merrick out of the way and stepped over to greet her. He lifted his
head over the door so Julia could rub his nose and cheek and
whisper sweet nothings to him.

Merrick let this go on for a few moments and
then asked, "Are you two about done?"

Julia grabbed a carrot out of the basket at
the front of the livery. She broke it in half and held one piece of
it out to Earl on her flattened palm. The crunching noises that
issued from the big grey's mouth sent a frisson of pleasure through
Julia.

Julia's own horse, Stanley, a paint horse
with intelligent eyes and a curiosity that was never satisfied,
just like his owner, poked his head out from his stall as well. His
mistress walked down the center aisle of the barn and gave Stanley
the other half of the carrot. With both horses happily munching,
Merrick came out of Earl's stall.

He was wearing his usual dark suit, although
at the moment his jacket was off and hanging from a hook on a post
nearby. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and was putting
the lid back on a tin of ointment that smelled strongly of menthol.
His vest was a little scrunched up and his hands looked a shiny
from the ointment. Merrick glowered at Julia briefly, but she
didn't take it personally. She had the sense she ruffled his
feathers somewhat. He turned and walked all the way down the aisle
to the tack room and disappeared inside. When he reemerged seconds
later he was rubbing his hands on an old piece of cloth, removing
the greasy liniment.

"Is Earl okay?" Julia asked.

"He'll be fine. He's just got a bit of a
cough. It's almost gone." Like most men, Earl was probably loathe
to admit he needed any special care. He withdrew his head back into
the stall when he recognized Julia was out of carrots.

Julia came right to the point. "I found
something." She held the glove out to Merrick.

The constable draped the cloth over the top
rail of an empty stall and took the glove from her. He was quiet,
turning it over just as Walt had done. Then he looked up at Julia,
a hint of amusement in his eyes, "It's a glove."

She smiled. "Thank you for that."

"What's significant about this?"

"I found it at James Hunter's shop."

"And it's not his." This was a statement, not
a question. "Just the one?"

Julia nodded. "I think it could belong to the
man or men that attacked him."

Merrick handed the glove back to her.
"Perhaps."

Julia's brows came together in a look of
concern. "Are you going to look into it?"

"No," Merrick began unrolling his sleeves and
buttoning them at the cuff. "It could have been dropped by
anyone."

"But look," Julia pointed to the glove's
palm, "Walt and I think that's the mark a reign makes. Whoever's
glove this is works with horses. It could belong to one of the
drovers from around here."

Merrick stood frozen while working at one
cuff button. "'Walt and I'?" he asked.

Julia looked at him defiantly. She stood up a
little straighter. "Yes. Walt and I discussed the glove just now. I
found him next door before I knew you were here."

"Huh," Merrick began rolling his other sleeve
down, "Well then, I will leave it to you and Walt to figure out who
the glove belongs to."

"Good heavens, Constable Merrick, what's
gotten up your nose this morning? I didn't think you'd be so
petulant."

"Not petulant, Miss Thom, just busy. I've got
paperwork on my desk that's about to swamp me, brands to check on
several different ranches, and just for fun I thought I might have
a stab at trying to find out who attempted to attack you the other
night. If that's all right with you. So if you don't mind, I'll go
take care of some of those things and leave you and Mr. Sheehan to
discover just who the rightful owner of this glove is."

Julia's back was up now. She felt as though
Merrick was attacking her for no good reason. "What about James
Hunter? Isn't it also your responsibility to find out who attacked
him? What if whoever it was comes after someone else in the
community?"

Merrick pulled his jacket off the hook with a
sharp jerk, "Not that it's any of your business, but Mr. Hunter is
not cooperating. I've spoken to him twice so far today and he won't
answer any of my questions. Swears he's got amniotic
something-or-other."

Julia stifled a smile, "I think you mean
amnesia."

"Whatever. The point is he won't cooperate so
there's not much else I can do. Without a witness or, heaven
forbid, any details about what happened, my hands are tied. Now, if
you'll excuse me."

Julia stepped aside to let Merrick pass. The
constable sailed down the aisle and went out into the light outside
without looking back. Julia turned and looked at Earl, who stood
with his eyelids half-closed. "He's not an easy one to manage, is
he?"

Seven

Through the large front window of the store, Merrick
could see Betty Mitchell sweeping the day's dirt into a pile in the
center of the room. He walked past once, stomping down the wooden
sidewalk as though he was rushing to an emergency. When he got to
the end of the row of shops, he hopped down onto the street and
turned right, without thinking or knowing where he was going. He
walked up the slight incline that occurred in this part of the town
center. When it rained, this sloped street became a river; he could
still see the furrows in the dirt from the last big storm they'd
had. Soon it would be snow they'd be contending with and his job
would become that much more challenging. The previous winter had
been hard on everyone; several people had moved away, back to the
coast where the climate was milder and where amenities were easier
to come by. Living out here in a new province, with the paint
hardly dry on the few buildings they had, was not easy.

But Merrick loved it. He loved the wide open
space and the feelings of possibility and opportunity available to
him. As a boy growing up on a farm in the Ottawa valley, he had
known from a very early age what his future held. He and his
brothers would take over the farm from his father, and they would
work the earth until they died. Someone, probably his mother, would
find him a wife, and they in turn would produce children that would
do the same as their parents had done.

By the age of ten he couldn't bear this idea.
It stifled him, made him feel a panicky sensation. He felt like
there were birds trapped inside his chest anytime he thought of his
future. By thirteen he had started talking to his brothers about
it, wondering if they felt the same way. They looked at him like he
had two heads. His oldest brother, Daniel, was courting a girl and
planning to marry her. The look of peace and satisfaction on his
brother’s face whenever he talked of his future made Merrick
question his own sanity. Why couldn't he feel that way? It would be
so much easier if he did.

He waited for the feeling of panic to go
away. Waited to feel like Dan did, and like Michael did as well,
who’d married a year after Dan. Waited to feel secure and satisfied
and pleased with the bounty that surrounded him. For it was true
that the Merrick farm was one of the most successful in the valley.
Callum Merrick often repeated the story of starting out with
nothing and buying his first small plot of land with the wages he'd
scraped together working several jobs. The elder Merrick had worked
incredibly hard and had prospered. The man didn't know the meaning
of a day off, or even an hour. And he’d married a woman with a work
ethic just like his. They were good people. Not affectionate or
nurturing - who had time for that? But Jack Merrick had known he
was loved.

So why did he want to leave it all
behind?

He had never been able to reconcile that
question inside himself. It just was.

The day after he turned sixteen, he kissed
his mother goodbye, knowing it was not likely he would ever see her
again. She was the only one he told that he was leaving. He felt
she deserved to know; he couldn't just up and disappear on her.