Powder Keg (8 page)

L
ater in the afternoon, after the snow and wind had abated for nearly an hour, we picked up tracks their horses had left in a stretch of powdery snow. No wagon tracks, though. Anybody who lived in the foothills had probably stayed inside that day, fearing the snow.

Because there was no ice on that stretch, we made good time on the snow, leading our horses up the first slope. We’d already made our decision about that night. Jen talked about the cabin we could stay in if luck got us there before full night. We could travel in the dark, with or without moonlight, but the biggest part of the trip would be the next day and we would need a night’s sleep for that.

Luck didn’t hold.

Snow began to swirl again as the long shadows of early dusk began to stretch across the valley below us. The temperature was holding so we didn’t have to worry about frostbite but the cabin she’d talked about sounded a lot better than a jury-rigged lean-to.

My horse began to tire. I held up my hand for us to halt.

I fed my horse, cleaned off the snow, and then led him into some pines so he could get out of the slowly increasing wind for a while.

“How far you think this cabin of yours is?”

She smiled. “You sound like you don’t believe me.”

“I guess I was under the impression that it was closer by than it is.”

“An hour or two at most, if the snow holds off and the wind doesn’t get mean.” She put out her mittened hand. “Would you say a prayer with me? For Mike?”

“You’ll have to say it. I haven’t been in a church for a long time.”

“You never pray?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes, late at night, I suppose. But it’s not exactly praying. I just try to figure things out more than anything.”

“Figure what things out?”

“I’m not sure you’d want to hear it.”

“The war?”

I hesitated. “Yeah.”

“My Uncle Don is like that. My aunt says he still wakes up in the middle of the night. Sometimes he screams and sometimes he gets violent. Gets up and starts smashing things. But when she calms him down he doesn’t have any memory of it.”

“I think you can see too much death and it changes you and you can never be right again.”

She took my hand. “I’m sorry, Noah.” Then: “You ready?”

“Let’s give it a try.”

She said a prayer and she sounded like a little girl
standing on that slope with dusk revealing the stars that had been hiding there all along, bright and perfect and so above the misery below. She was sweeter in that moment than anybody had been to me in a long, long time. And afterward she slid her arm around me and we just held each other as wolves began to cry somewhere deep in the timber.

There are Indian shamans who believe that you can tell a place where great evil has recently occurred. They say that they can see a glow around the top of the site. I’ve been told this by two or three shamans of very different tribes. Each time it was told to me in great earnestness.

I thought of this when I stood on the hill overlooking the cabin in a small bowl-like valley beneath us. We’d worked our way up two long steep slopes, one of which was perilously close to the edge of the trail. Far below us, we could see a tiny cabin flanked by a stretch of pine trees.

I took out my field glasses and looked the cabin over. For some reason, I remembered what those shamans had told me. About evil having a hue in the form of a halo effect.

I didn’t see any glow but I did see a couple of things that simple deduction told me were way wrong.

Two horses lay dead on their sides in front of the cabin. A wagon had been turned over. The storm had been bad in patches but not bad enough to kill horses or pitch wagons upside down.

Before we started down the long slope leading to the flat below, I pulled my repeater from its scabbard.

“Any particular reason for a rifle?” Jen asked.

I told her what I’d seen. “I’d say we don’t need any more trouble but we have to rest the horses and sleeping in a cabin sounds mighty nice right now.”

She nodded to the metal of my rifle barrel, gleaming in the moonlight. “I take it you expect trouble.”

“Not expect, necessarily. But worry about. Something went pretty wrong down there.” I shrugged. “But maybe we’ll be surprised. Maybe the horses ate bad food. Maybe that wagon’s been overturned for a long time.”

“You really believe that?”

“Probably not.”

The trek down wasn’t easy. We walked our horses. The snow was deep and dangerous, had probably accumulated over the previous two or three mountain snows.

Jen fell face first into the snow and I helped dig her out; and a few minutes later she returned the favor.

I kept looking for some kind of ambush. Tired travelers seeing the cabin, disregarding the dead horses and the overturned wagon, decided to work their way down and see what had happened. And maybe get a snug resting place for the night, after all.

And run right into the gun sights of road agents. That was the kind of lure a lot of them favored.

“I’m starting to get a bad feeling about that cabin down there, Noah.”

“Me, too.”

“I don’t want to turn back but I think we need to be ready to shoot.”

I nodded.

A clear night then, even the cold tolerable, we should have been happy to find the cabin. But we both knew better.

The first horse lay a hundred yards east of the cabin. I left my own horse and went to have a look at it. I found what I expected to find. The animal had been shot twice in the head from a fair distance.

The other horse lay closer to the cabin. It had died the same way. In the moon glow its rigid form, including the frozen red blood on its neck and head, had an ugly beauty to it. Even the splattered shit, splattered on dying, was somewhat redeemed by the snow. Something you’d see in a painting meant to shock.

Jen stood quietly by, her expression shifting from anger at the death she saw, to eyes closed in a prayer said silently.

Then we stood together, facing the cabin; the dark and quiet cabin, a crudely built arrangement of logs and finished lumber. No windows. No smoke from the chimney. No sound but our own horses snorting and fretting while they stood ground-tied behind us. They were responding to the deaths of their own kind. Even though the dead animals were snow-covered and the blood hardened, our horses were aware of them and were spooked.

My voice was startling in the enormous silence: “If anybody’s in there, come out with your hands up. My name is Noah Ford and I’m a federal agent. I just want to know what happened here.”

The slight wind provoked ghost dances of frolicking snow, merry mountain ghosts who disdained any knowledge of the carnage there—and the carnage I expected to find inside.

“Maybe they’re afraid to come out,” Jen said.

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe nobody’s in there.”

“Maybe.”

“You get real quiet when you work.”

“Uh-huh.” Then: “I’ve got a railroad watch here and when I see a minute’s gone by I’m going to start emptying my rifle into the door there. You can make this a lot easier for everybody if you just come out.”

“You really going to fire into that door?”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

I hadn’t pulled my watch out. I had no idea how long a minute was. I’d just fake it.

“We don’t even know who’s in there. Maybe somebody completely innocent.”

“Look. Maybe somebody’s in there who saw Connelly and Pepper and can tell us something about them. I’ve already given them warning inside. If they’re so innocent, why didn’t they answer?”

“Maybe they’re wounded.”

“I’m going to put the bullet high into the door.”

“It could still hit somebody.”

I got mad and didn’t try to hide it. “You’re so worried about your brother, why are you so worried about who’s inside?”

“There’s just no sense in hurting somebody who didn’t have anything to do with taking Mike.”

I was sick of arguing. I put the bullet where I said I would. The echo was enormous. Wolves cried again.

We stood in the snow, waiting.

I cupped my hands around my mouth. “The next time I’m going to put a lot more bullets into that door. And I’m bound to hit you sooner or later. So come out now, just like I told you.”

At first, I couldn’t figure out what the answering response was. A large bird of some kind? A wounded animal?

“It’s a child, Noah.”

“You sure?”

“I’ve probably been around a lot more kids than you have.”

A wind whooped up. Sparkling spirals of snow danced around us again.

“Could be a trap. Somebody just pretending to be a kid.”

“Lord, Noah, it’s a kid, all right? I know a kid when I hear one.”

“Then I need to go up to the door.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. You stay here with your carbine. I’m going to work off the side of the door. Roll in front of it and kick it in as I’m rolling past. You be ready to shoot whoever appears in the doorway. If they’re carrying a gun.”

The sound came again.

A child was crying. No doubt about it now.

“Let me go up there.”

“Jen, we know there’s a kid in there. But that’s all we know. Somebody else could be in there, too. And a kid could always kill you, too.”

“I’ll go. You cover me instead.”

That probably wasn’t a tale I’d tell later on. The night I stood by and let a woman do my job for me.

Yep, didn’t have any idea who was in that cabin but I let the gal go in. Why get my own ass shot up? Just send the gal in there.

You don’t hear talk like that in a dime novel. If you did, the readership would go way, way down.

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Sure you can. You’re better with a gun. But this is a child and I’m better at talking to her. Or him. A woman’s voice is a lot more soothing than a man’s.”

She was probably right.

“So cover me, all right?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Don’t worry, Noah. I won’t ever tell anybody about it. I know how it’d look to that big strong male club you belong to.”

She hefted her carbine, tugged up her mittens, and then set off for the cabin. The kid had made no other sound.

I sighted my rifle.

Jen didn’t do any of the gymnastics I’d had in mind. She just trudged up to the door, stood to the side of it and knocked.

“I want to help you, honey. Why don’t you come out? I have a friend who doesn’t trust people very much so maybe you should put your hands in the air, too, so he can see that you aren’t planning on shooting anybody. He can’t help it. It’s just the way
he thinks. Now come on out, honey. We want to help you.”

Two, three silent minutes passed. The door stayed shut. Jen looked back at me a couple of times. I couldn’t read her expression from where I stood.

“Honey, please make things easy for all of us. Just please come out here and have your hands in the air. Then we’ll talk and my friend won’t have to shoot anymore.”

This time, it wasn’t just crying. The child was sobbing.

“Honey, can you hear me?” she asked.

Faint—a different sound. A word I couldn’t understand.

Then: “Y-yes, I can hear you.”

“I want to help you.”

“I’m scared now.”

These words I heard only because I had moved closer.

“Will you open the door and let me in?”

“What’s your name?”

“Jen. That’s short for Jenny. Do you know anybody named Jenny?”

Long pause. “Back in Illinois I did.”

“Is that where you’re from?”

“Yes.”

“We could talk better if you would open the door, honey.”

“My mommy said I shouldn’t open the door for anybody.”

“Where’s your mommy now?”

“On the floor.”

“Is she asleep?”

“The man hurt her. He made her get naked. She told me not to watch. He made her get naked and then he did things to her. And then he started hitting her real hard.”

Jen hung her head after the girl spoke. Not easy hearing a little girl describe the apparent rape and beating of her mother. But Jen recovered quickly. She showed me a face of such murderous anger that I knew my impression of her was right. This wasn’t a woman who let go easily. This was a woman who would hunt you down.

“Please open the door, honey. I’m with a lawman and we both want to help you.”

“Are you a lawman, too?”

“No, but I’m with a lawman.”

“She’s helping me,” I said. “So it’s safe to let both of us in.”

The easiest way to get in was to kick the door in. Didn’t look like it would take all that much. But the girl needed to trust us and kicking in the door wasn’t going to help things.

“You won’t hurt me?”

“No,” Jen said. “We want to help you. What’s your name?”

“Clarice.”

“That’s a beautiful name. Now, Clarice, why don’t you open the door so we can help you and your mommy?”

“You promise you won’t hurt me?”

“We promise, Clarice,” I said.

After a long silence from inside, the door latch was raised and the door moved slowly inward.

A skinny blond girl, couldn’t have been more than
seven or eight years old, in pigtails and dungarees and a heavy red sweater stood in the doorway. Her hands were an even darker red—blood red—than her sweater.

As soon as I reached the doorframe, I smelled it. Butchered meat. Human, animal. The stench is similar.

Jen reached in and put her arms out to Clarice. Clarice came to her. Jen lifted her up, hugged her, carried her out into the night. “Maybe some fresh air will help.” She looked at me when she said it. I didn’t need to ask what she was talking about.

The only interior light was spill from the moon. The odor was so bad I had to hold my breath for a time.

I found a lantern. Took a stick match from my pocket. Got it fired and got the lantern glowing.

I didn’t go to the woman right away because I’d stumbled against something at my feet.

He’d been wearing a heavy red sweater like his sister’s, dungarees, heavy winter boots that laced up to near his knees. His right hand clutched a bowie knife. There was no blood on the blade. He was a towhead like his sister, two years older or so. There was no help for him. His wide-open eyes stared up at the roof of the cabin. Clarice must have felt the loss of her mother to the degree that she’d forgotten her brother entirely. Or maybe she couldn’t own up to what had happened to him.