The Outcasts (17 page)

May returned her gaze and said, “Yes.”

“Would you then travel somewhere to marry him, if he asked you to?”

May peered over Lucinda’s shoulder once more, her eyes exultant, her breath coming faster. “Yes.”

Lucinda ducked her chin, a sorrowful anger narrowing her mouth to an ugly gash, and she reflexively tightened her hold on May’s hands.

At that moment Jane came to stand in the doorway, enraged now beyond tears. She stared hatefully at Lucinda, her arms crossed, her mouth moving as though practicing for an argument.

Ignoring her, Lucinda composed herself and said, “You know that Jane and your father would not allow it if they knew. They think you’re still a child. But I know better. Bill wants this to happen and can think of little else. But if you want to be with him, you must leave with me today.”

“Where will we go?”

“I’ll tell you everything once we’ve left. If Jane asks, we’re simply going for a drive.”

“Is Bill coming with us?”

“He’ll follow after us tomorrow.” Lucinda let go of May’s hands. She reached out and stroked a loose curl from the girl’s forehead. “Hurry now, while your father sleeps. You’ll be back to your family soon, and all will be forgiven once you’re married.”

May looked at her, incredulous. “Why would I ever return to this place?” She turned and ran into the house, brushing wordlessly past Jane, to gather her things, and Lucinda climbed into the buggy to wait.

Bill leaned in and circled his fingers around her ankle with one hand, stroked the calf of her leg with the other. He told her where to meet him in Galveston once they had made the ferry passage from Morgan’s Point. They would stay for only a day in Galveston and then go on to New Orleans. The grip on her ankle tightened painfully and he said, “I’m counting on you, Lucy.”

When May climbed into the buggy next to Lucinda, she was carrying a small bag, which she quickly threw to the floor. She turned to Bill, offering her mouth to be kissed, but Lucinda struck at the horse with the whip, and the buggy lurched up the road.

Within half a mile, they saw a man riding towards them leading two mules. He nodded in their direction as he passed and Lucinda recognized the hostile, close-set eyes of Jacob Purdy, Bill’s “surveying” partner. Where Innis Crenshaw was, she didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. After a few miles of traveling southeast, towards Morgan’s Point, she made several switchbacks along the paths running through the sprawling Allen cattle ranch, eventually heading the buggy in a northwesterly direction, towards Houston.

Lucinda had expected May to talk on and on about her excitement over her marriage to Bill, and she’d prepared herself for hours of girlish silliness. But surprisingly, May was mostly silent, her mouth curling in secretive smiles.

When Lucinda stopped the buggy briefly to allow May to get out and stretch her legs, she was tempted to whip the horse and drive off, leaving the girl to make her own way back to Middle Bayou. But Lucinda had formulated a different plan for May as she lay sleepless in her bed during the early-morning hours.

She shared some water and biscuits taken from the Wallers’ home and carefully began to lay out the journey they were about to make.

“We’re going to Houston,” Lucinda explained. “There you’ll board a train, and then in Hearne you’ll take the stagecoach to Fort Worth.”

“By myself?” May asked, her eyes widening in fright. “But I’ve never traveled alone. I’ve always been with Father. I wouldn’t know what to do—”

Lucinda reached out and squeezed one of May’s hands to silence her. “Listen and I’ll tell you all you need to know. I traveled by myself when I was younger than you and it was the greatest adventure of my life.”

May was quiet, but her mouth was downturned, her brows knit together. Her eyes worriedly scanned the prairie, and Lucinda knew that her shortsightedness rendered the surrounding grasslands watery and indistinct, making her all the more vulnerable in unfamiliar territory.

“Have you ever been on a train?” Lucinda asked, tamping down her sympathy for the girl, tearing her eyes away from the frightened face at her shoulder. May shook her head and Lucinda smiled. “It’s like flying. The passengers who travel on the rails are the most refined of people. And the view from the windows, May. It’s as if you’re watching a never-ending tapestry unspooling before you: fields and towns and people working on their farms, tiny from a distance, like dolls. All viewed from your comfortable coach.”

She glanced over and saw that the girl’s expression had changed from fear to rapt attention. Lucinda then described to her the wonders of rail travel, the excitement of arriving by coach to a city filled with theaters, shops, grand hotels, and beautifully dressed men and women. She was indiscriminate about weaving in descriptions of buildings or events she had seen in various cities and towns. May could not know that the picture Lucinda was painting was more than a little untrue.

“You’ll have a first-class ticket with money for food and drink, which you can buy on the train from the most cunning little tea cart. In Hearne, you’ll board the stagecoach to Dallas and then go on to Fort Worth.”

May’s face fell again at the mention of the stagecoach.

Lucinda exhaled sharply, her face disapproving. “Frankly, May, I’m disappointed in you. Bill and I will be only a day behind.” She paused for a moment, as though hesitant to reveal more. “He wanted to surprise you by arriving with a trousseau, and he needs my help to do that. He’ll be very pained. He thought you were an adventurous girl.”

May linked her arm with Lucinda’s. “I’ll go,” she said, uncertainty in her voice. “I’ll go.”

They arrived in Houston at midday and Lucinda purchased a first-class ticket at the station. She also bought a suitable traveling dress for May and dinner at a hotel, where she wrote down meticulous directions for the exchange to the coach in Hearne. She gave the girl money from the dwindling supply of stolen coins in the tapestry bag.

When the train was ready to depart, Lucinda embraced her former student and helped her as she stepped onto the railcar.

May turned and said, “Soon we’ll be sisters.”

Lucinda’s smile faltered. She looked at the girl in the ill-fitting, hastily bought dress and for an instant fought a powerful desire to pull the girl from the train, tell her that a mistake had been made, that they were leaving instead for Galveston. But she remembered the blushing, triumphant smiles on May’s face that morning. She steeled herself by replaying the memories of May and Bill standing together, the girl’s eager eyes filled with adoration, Bill’s gaze flooded with simple lust. She willed herself away from tender thoughts by imagining herself supplanted by May, deserted and left behind. May was resourceful, young, and beautiful. She would survive.

Lucinda smiled encouragingly. “You must now call me by my Christian name.”

May peered nervously from the window, calling out, “Good-bye, Lucinda, good-bye,” and they waved at each other until the train had pulled away.

Lucinda stood on the platform for a while, pondering how best to get rid of the horse and buggy, finally deciding to sell them at the stable. The train to Galveston would not leave until the next morning, and she could use the money. None of it would matter, though, once Bill met up with her carrying bags of gold coins. He would be disappointed, and perhaps angry, that May had slipped away from him; however, she knew he’d get over it, and soon.

She took a room in a hotel for the night and dosed herself heavily with laudanum. But it was hours before she could sleep, her eyes open and filled with images of May stepping off the coach in Fort Worth in a few days’ time, being stared at and scrutinized by men who would be astonished that such a beauty, barely more than a child, would be making her way through town unescorted; seeking out the boardinghouse that Lucinda had assured her was respectable; presenting herself finally to the boardinghouse mistress, a woman by the name of Mrs. Landry.

Lucinda’s last troubled thought before the laudanum did its work was of May handing Mrs. Landry a sealed letter of introduction that read, simply,
Call us even.
Lucinda.

W
hatever was in the open wagon sitting at a distance on a path off the main road had brought a small group of men and women crowding around it. It was still early morning but the sky was a clear, unhindered blue, and the clustered figures were lit by the strengthening daylight.

Nate perched on the lower branches of a tree, the only place that offered him an elevated view across the expanse of dried prairie fields, and watched them through the field glasses. Dr. Tom had not wanted to ride into Middle Bayou so exposed, risking being shot by McGill or his men from some homesteader’s attic.

Dr. Tom stood below, peering up at him through the branches. “Well?” he asked.

“There’re some settlers gathered around a wagon looking at something.”

“A dead something or a live something?”

Nate looked for a few moments longer, taking note of the large turkey buzzards perched on the roof of the nearest house. “Can’t tell for sure, but I would guess dead.”

Dr. Tom motioned him down and stood for a while with his back braced against the tree, his breathing labored. When Nate had lowered himself to the ground, Dr. Tom told him, “I believe I’m going to let you take the lead on this one. I’m feeling a bit hollow.”

Nate took in the pallor of the ranger’s face, the pouches beneath his eyes swollen like bruises from a fight, and knew it was more than just the laudanum.

Soon after Crenshaw’s torture and hanging, Dr. Tom had slipped off his horse onto his knees, violently heaving the contents of his stomach onto the ground. He had then climbed back on his horse, wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth, and said, “George used to marvel that I could doctor with a cool head and a steady hand, even with blood up to my ankles, and yet still get weak-kneed after hanging a man who deserved it. But I always sensed that when you willfully kill a man, even for righteousness’ sake, and start feeling all right about that, it’s time to find different work.”

Nate lifted his chin in the direction of the wagon. “Why don’t you stay here and let me go talk to them.”

In response, Dr. Tom mounted his horse and told Nate, “It’s hard to ask questions and keep a vigil at the same time.” Leading Crenshaw’s mare, he followed after Nate at a gallop across the fields towards the settlers, who scattered briefly at their approach. Some of the men had rifles, which they raised defensively. Nate thought that as a whole they looked astounded, and a few near terrified.

Nate stopped at a distance and shouted, “Texas law here. Don’t go poppin’ off.” He announced their names and purpose and waved at the men to lower their guns.

They rode closer and saw two men, one young, one older, lying faceup in the wagon, both dead, both bloodied and covered by a quilt pulled up to their necks. Two women, a mother and daughter, Nate guessed, were wailing in grief, grappling to hold on to the young man’s hand that had slipped over the edge of the wagon.

A settler with the girth of an accountant stood behind the crying women and stared into the wagon, his fine suit covered with clay mud that had dried to a chalky film.

Nate legged himself off the horse and motioned people to clear a path. He climbed into the wagon and hunkered down, pulling the quilt off the dead men. His actions brought a collective outcry from the gathering and a frantic, hysterical pitch to the women’s keening. The younger victim had been shot through the chest; pieces of rib showed from the wound made by a shotgun blast. The older one had been shot in the gut with a pistol, and his face was nowhere near peaceful. Nate turned back to the crowd. “What happened here?”

“My son was murdered.” The large man crossed his arms protectively in front of his own chest.

Nate motioned for his partner to climb up into the wagon, and, after briefly waggling the stiffened joints of the men’s hands, Dr. Tom said under his breath, “They’ve not been dead but a few hours.”

Nate asked the grieving man, “What’s your name, sir?”

“Euphrastus Waller.” Pointing to the corpse of the young man, he said, “That’s my son, Elam.” Spittle hung in threads from his lips, and the rawness of it made Nate want to turn his head away. “He was paralyzed, confined to a chair,” Euphrastus added, almost as an afterthought.

Nate turned a questioning eye to Dr. Tom and pointed to the mud evenly caking the bottoms of Elam’s shoes.

“Who’s this?” Nate asked, indicating the other dead man in the wagon.

“His name is Bedford Grant.” A pale, straw-haired young woman stepped forward. “I’m Jane Grant, his daughter.” She had been crying, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed, but to Nate she seemed very much in control of her emotions and looked more angry than stricken.

Dr. Tom nodded at the wound in Bedford Grant’s stomach and said, “Calling card from McGill.”

Euphrastus Waller’s legs gave out, and his wife and daughter rushed to his side. They struggled to keep him from falling, but the women sank along with him onto the road, their full skirts ballooning out and settling heavily into the dirt. Some of the men moved in to help him to his feet again.

Another settler, his left arm missing from the elbow, moved closer to the wagon and came to stand next to the Grant woman. He hovered by her side, and for a moment, Nate thought he was going to put his one good arm around her.

“Who’re you?” Dr. Tom asked.

“I’m Robert McKenzie. I own a farm just up the road. A man came to Middle Bayou a short while back. Said his name was Bill Carter. He claimed to be the schoolteacher’s brother.”

Jane made an ugly sound through her nose. “I don’t believe it for a minute.”

Nate stepped down from the wagon. “Why’s that?”

Her lips twitched in outrage. “Miss Carter, if that was her name, was an adventuress posing as a teacher. She and Bill Carter were after something they thought my father had.”

McKenzie added, “Yesterday, another man showed up on horseback leading a mule. He told Miss Grant that he was Bill Carter’s surveying partner. The Grants took these people into their home. We entrusted our children to that woman…”

“Nate, we need to move this along.” Dr. Tom climbed from the wagon, impatiently muttering, “Less hide and more meat.”

Nate asked the woman, “What were they after?”

She buried her chin in her neck. “I wouldn’t like to say with everyone listening.”

Dr. Tom abruptly motioned the settlers to move away from the wagon, directing them to see after the Waller women, who had elevated their agonized crying to a more frenzied level.

Jane waited for Dr. Tom to join them and said in a quiet voice, “My father uncovered a few gold coins on an island he owned in the bayou. Bill Carter believed there was more gold and tried to make my father say where it was buried…” She paused, staring at the bodies in the wagon.

Dr. Tom placed a hand on her arm. “What was the schoolteacher’s first name?”

“Lucinda.”

Dr. Tom nodded to Nate and asked, “Where are they now?”

“Miss Carter took my sister, May, yesterday morning in the Wallers’ buggy to Morgan’s Point for the day. They never came back.”

“And Bill Carter?” Nate asked.

“Gone. I don’t know where.” She ran one sleeve across her eyes and nose. “They must have taken my father from the house to the river sometime before this morning. That’s where his body was found. I slept at the Wallers’ last night. I couldn’t abide being in that house alone with those men. Mr. Waller was going to confront them today for my father’s sake, but it was too late.”

Her anger was turning again to tears, and Nate gave her a moment to collect herself.

Dr. Tom asked, “Did they get your father’s gold?”

She raised her chin and smiled tightly. “There was no gold.”

Nate thought he had misheard. “What’d you say?”

“There was never any gold.” She took a few breaths, ran her tongue over cracked lips. “Last spring, my father found a few old coins while clearing the island for planting. There are legends here about Lafitte’s treasure being buried in Middle Bayou. My father believed that he had discovered a part of that treasure. He spent months digging but found nothing more. Once he realized the island was empty, he went to Harrisburg and put about the story that there was gold waiting to be found, hoping to sell the land to someone fool enough to believe it. But he talked to the wrong people. I was the only person who knew the truth.”

“Why was
he
shot?” Dr. Tom asked, jerking a thumb at Elam Waller.

“I don’t know.” Jane brushed her fingers nervously across her face. “There was no reason for him to be shot. He was in the parlor in his chair when I came to Mr. Waller with my fears, but then…he’s always in his chair. He can do nothing else.”

Nate watched her nervous hands and in that instant a thought came into his head that she was lying about Elam Waller’s helpless state. The young man’s shoes were muddied as though he had walked along a soggy riverbank. He asked her, “Who found the bodies? Did anyone see the murder?”

“I did.”

Nate turned towards the voice and saw a black man in work denim approaching them. He was short and broadly muscled, with a meandering scar, like earthworm castings, across one side of his face.

He stood in front of Nate with what looked to be part of a plow harness across his shoulders. “I’m Tobias Kennedy. I live here.” He nodded at the bodies in the wagon and said, “I know how they come to be killed. I saw it. I helped bring the wagon to gather the bodies.”

Dr. Tom asked, “You want to tell us what happened?”

Tobias looked at Jane and then motioned for Nate and Dr. Tom to follow him some distance away. “There’s another body,” he said.

“Another body?” Nate asked, reflexively scanning the surrounding fields. He nervously chewed at the skin on his lips, confounded that one sparse settlement could support so many tragedies in one morning.

“Bill Carter?” Dr. Tom asked.

“No, he’s long gone. It’s Carter’s man. He’s still lyin’ in the river. What’s left of him. The men here just didn’t want to say so in front of the women.”

“Who killed him?” Nate asked, wondering just how high the body count was going to get.

Tobias pointed to Elam Waller and said, “He did.”

Nate shook his head. “Didn’t Euphrastus Waller just say that Elam was a useless cripple?”

Tobias dropped the plow harness to the ground. “Listen here. I served with the Thirty-Third Colored Infantry out of South Carolina. You know what I was? A sharpshooter. I got the best eyes in this whole part of the world.” He pointed to the settlers still gathered, their collective gaze on the three of them. “They told me I had to be lying. But I told the truth. I know what I saw.”

Nate nodded and said, “Show us.”

He and Dr. Tom mounted their horses and followed after Tobias, who walked the path towards the bayou. As they rode Tobias talked, turning his chin from side to side, throwing his words over his shoulder.

“I spent last night at the river. I’d put down catfish lines. This time of year, no mosquitoes, the air’s cool, I often sleep out. Pull in my lines before dawn after the catfish bite. A few hours before light, I hear men coming up to the clearing. I’d already doused my lantern, but there was a moon and I hid back in the brush. There’s no good reason for people to be up makin’ so much noise at that hour, especially angry white men in the jug.

“I hear old man Grant’s voice and two other voices I don’t know. But they’re arguin’ all up the path. They’re carryin’ lanterns, and when they get into the clearing, I see Mr. Grant and Carter with his man as surely as I see you.”

After that, Tobias continued his walk in silence until they reached the clearing. Nate and Dr. Tom dismounted and stood at the edge of the riverbank, looking at the blood and footprints left in the mud, while Tobias walked up and down the bank, peering into the water.

“There he is.” Tobias pointed at something floating in the river, caught in some reeds. “Gator got him. Dragged him off the bank.” He waded into the river to midstream carrying a long branch. The water came up to his chest but he moved easily, and after a few tries, he snagged the floating object and pulled it behind him out of the water.

It was a man, or the top half of a man; the legs were gone. Dr. Tom kicked the truncated bundle over and said, “Jacob Purdy. McGill’s man.”

Tobias watched Nate stone-faced as he stumbled away, gulping air and swallowing the bile rising in his throat. Nate had seen dead men before, mauled and mangled, but they had been mostly whole. Behind him he heard Dr. Tom ask, “You want to tell us now what happened?”

“Grant was drunk,” Tobias said. “So drunk he couldn’t hardly stand. Carter kept at him to say where on that island over yonder his gold was buried.” He pointed across the water to a promontory of land with steep clay edges and a dense stand of elm. “Kept goin’ on about the gold. Finally, Carter quit yellin’ and pulled a pistol. Threatened to shoot the old man if he didn’t talk.”

Tobias raised his chin to a bloody patch on the bank. “Grant fell on the ground pleadin’ like a man who knows his time is near, and I hear a voice say, ‘Hold there.’ I see a man walk into the lantern light and it’s Elam Waller, so help me God, carryin’ a pistol in one hand. Elam walks right up to them, within a few feet. Carter’s taken by surprise, ’cause he’s only ever seen the boy in a wheeled chair. Carter’s man pulls up his shotgun and,
blam,
both guns go off. Young Elam goes down hard and the other man staggers off into the water holdin’ his throat.

“It spooks Carter but he says to Grant, ‘We have your daughter. You don’t tell me where that treasure is, I’m goin’ to kill her myself.’

“Grant is crawlin’ on his hands and knees cryin’. Says there is no treasure. Never was one. That’s when Carter leans over the old man and shoots him in the belly. He stands for a while just watchin’ Grant die. Then he rides away. I stayed hidden for a good long while before I had the legs to go get help. I’ve seen some bad things, but I never saw anyone so keen on watchin’ someone die before.”

Tobias pulled a derringer out of one pocket and handed it to Dr. Tom. “Mr. Elam’s gun. I know that boy was a cripple. I never saw him so much as move a finger, but he reared up out of those weeds and died to help Mr. Grant.”