Tymber Dalton (3 page)

“You know that nigger did it. That girl didn’t just up and run away! Her parents said she’s terrified of the woods.” Bud Jake, a thick-headed Cracker, drove mule teams for the mining company.

Robert Mallory, the mining operations foreman, tried to restore calm. “Bud, settle down. I sent a rider to Brooksville, he’s gonna bring back the sheriff and we’ll let him take care of it.”

The assembled crowd muttered dangerously, Jake speaking their minds clearer than they cared to. “We need to teach these niggers. They come in here, we tell ’em to leave, and they don’t. Mebbe we need to lynch a few of these niggers and scare ’em out of here!”

Agreement rippled through the crowd and Mallory felt the tide shift against the prisoner. Mallory didn’t believe Ben Caleb, a nineteen-year-old digger for the company, kidnapped the girl. Little five-year-old Lisa Prescott disappeared three days earlier from her family’s house not far from the main mining pit, in the Croom woods near Oriole. Searchers had turned up nothing except a shirt belonging to Caleb.

Secretly, Mallory’s mind leaned more toward the father. Mallory remembered when Tom and Mary Prescott first moved into the old Simpson house only months earlier. Mary was an outgoing, pleasant woman, active in the church. Tom, a retired cattle rancher, was always up for a game of penny poker as long as his wife wouldn’t find out. Lisa was a bouncy, vivacious little thing.

Then Tom changed. Nothing Mallory could put his finger on. In fact, he thought he’d done or said something to inadvertently offend Prescott. Prescott grew surly, sullen, and withdrew from the community—not that they had many neighbors, but they stopped travelling into town. Mary quit going to church, and the few times she was seen she looked drawn, haggard, with dark circles under her eyes.

Mallory suspected something had gone very wrong in the Prescott household, maybe even some buggery. While Mallory wasn’t racist, he knew there were people content to let an innocent colored mine digger hang for a crime they’d committed. Who would the crowd believe? The girl’s “respectable” white father, or the boy?

Mary Prescott wasn’t any help. After the girl’s disappearance Mary withdrew, nearly catatonic, while Tom ranted and raved, his eyes wild and scary as if lit by a raging inner fire.

Mallory’s stomach churned, and his hand drifted to the butt of the pistol slung on his hip. This morning, he was desperately glad he’d worn it. Bud Jake was a stupid, piggish man, always in the thick of trouble and never around to clean up the mess.

Actually, putting a bullet between the drover’s eyes wasn’t such a bad idea.

“You need to calm down,” Mallory said.

“Mallory, you becoming a nigger lover? Is that it?” Jake scanned the crowd, searching for approval.

“Jake, what proof do you have he has anything to do with the girl’s disappearance? There’s no telling what happened. She could be anywhere.”

“We found his shirt not too far from the place. And nobody’ll swear they saw his worthless hide that night. What more proof ya want?”

Mallory got in the drover’s face. “A witness, for one thing. Maybe you don’t approve of the color of his skin, but he bleeds red just like you and me.”

Jake’s sneer turned his already ugly face into an evil visage. “Well now, why don’t we see about that?” Someone cheered support from the back of the mob.

“Why don’t I plug a hole in your thick head and see if I can let out some hot air?” The drover studied Mallory’s face, then stepped back and spit in the dirt.

The mob muttered, like a scared cur thinking about picking a fight with a larger dog, but Mallory felt the tide shift. He played his ace, pulling a bit of local folklore from his memory.

“How do we know this boy had anything to do with it? The house isn’t too far from the mine. It could have been anyone went up there. Or the father. Or maybe she wandered away and got lost. Maybe whatever happened to the Simpson family happened to that little girl.”

Surprised exclamations from the crowd. Although there was never any proof, most locals believed George went crazy and did something unspeakable to his family, then fled.

Assorted voices spoke up.

“The father?”

“Prescott?”

Mallory jumped on the opportunity. “I’ve known Tom Prescott for a while now. Some of you were here when the family moved to town. You can’t tell me Prescott hasn’t been acting strange lately.” Mallory hoped the tide didn’t swing too dangerously in the other direction. He didn’t want Tom Prescott lynched any more than he wanted Ben Caleb to swing.

“That’s right.”

“He’s got a point.”

“So let’s let the sheriff sort this out when he gets here,” Mallory said. “Believe me, if the evidence proves Ben Caleb is behind this, I’ll help tie the noose myself. But do you want the blood of an innocent boy on your hands if we find out later he didn’t have anything to do with it?”

He risked a look at Jake, standing sullenly behind the wagon, kicking at the sugar sand with his old sprung boot.

Mallory played to the crowd. “You don’t have a witness. You don’t have evidence. You lynch this boy, you’re murderers, every one of you.”

Someone in the back of the crowd shouted, and everyone turned. A rider approached, fast and hard. Mallory hoped it was the sheriff, but by the sudden gleam in Jake’s eye he had a sinking feeling it wasn’t.

Jake stepped up to him, and in a low voice said, “Now we’ll see where your fancy talk gets you.”

The crowd parted for the rider. Tom Prescott looked wilder than ever. He leapt off his lathered, trembling horse and ran up to Mallory.

“Is this the bastard what took my little girl?”

Mallory’s heart sank. Someone was getting lynched today, either Ben Caleb or Tom Prescott. Considering the mob’s skin color, Mallory knew who’d be swinging.

Mallory held up his hand. “Tom, you need to calm down. The sheriff’s on his way, he’ll handle this.”

Tom pushed him back. “I don’t want no sheriff, I want to know what he done with my baby!”

The words were right, but Mallory saw Prescott’s wildly gleaming eyes, and knew his suspicions were dead on. Tom Prescott wasn’t concerned about his daughter, just keeping the focus off himself.

He’s gone mad
, Mallory thought. “Tom, we don’t know he did it.”

Jake chose this moment to step in, and Mallory knew Jake had sent notice to Prescott. “Mallory here even accused you.”

With seemingly superhuman strength, Prescott grabbed Mallory by the collar and slammed him against the side of the wagon, knocking the breath out of him. “I didn’t do nothin’!” He turned to the crowd. “Who’s gonna help me? Off to the tree!”

The crowd was first confused, then galvanized against Caleb. The mob, led by Jake and Prescott and buzzing like an angry swarm of hornets, overtook the wagon, pushing Mallory to the side. His protestations were drowned out by the crowd and their horses and the ineffectual cries of Ben Caleb being carted off to his demise.

Mallory chased them down. Too late he reached the juncture at Croom Rital Road where the “hanging tree,” a dead, twisted oak with a branch worn smooth from the ropes of prior lynchings, stood silent sentry. The crowd milled around, staring at Caleb’s hooded body twisting in the breeze. With the heat of bloodlust cooling, a few of the mob looked decidedly ill.

Mallory’s rage exploded. “What, you were too cowardly to face him when he died?” He hurled invectives at them until the sound of approaching riders made him turn.

Sheriff John Babbitt, followed by Mallory’s rider and two armed deputies, pushed their horses flat out. Babbitt, a large man who dwarfed his stocky roan, jerked the horse to a stop and jumped down, his eyes going to the boy’s corpse.

“Bobby, Pete, cut that fellow down,” he instructed his deputies.

The sheriff turned to Jake. “I should’ve known you’d be in the middle of this mess.” Jake started to open his mouth, and the sheriff—who towered over the drover by a good six inches and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds—poked him in the chest with his finger. “Not one word out of you, or you’ll be the next one swingin’ from that rope.”

Prescott skulked on the far side of the wagon, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

The sheriff turned to Mallory. “What happened?”

Mallory gave him the quick version. When he finished, the sheriff turned to his deputies. “Get a set of shackles on that man.” He pointed, indicating Prescott. When they balked, the sheriff barked, “Do I need to give you an engraved invitation? Do it!”

Prescott turned to flee, but one of the disgusted mob stuck out his leg and Prescott went sprawling into the sand, sending up a cloud of dust. The deputies were on him, and a struggle ensued. Finally, after Mallory and his rider got into the fray, Prescott was shackled, arms behind him, facedown in the dirt.

Jake stepped forward. “What’s goin’ on here? You got your man. Don’t need no trial either.”

The sheriff turned. “I’ll overlook that comment, Jake, because maybe you’re too stupid to remember what I said about talkin’ a minute ago.” Jake stepped back, and the sheriff addressed the crowd. “Mrs. Prescott started talkin’ this afternoon, after she found out about Caleb. She said her husband had something to do with the disappearance. Didn’t know what, but he went out with the little girl in his arms one night and come back alone. She watched him do it, and when he come back, he threatened to kill her if she talked. She said he’s lost his mind over the last several months.”

“She’s crazy!” Prescott yelled from the ground. “I didn’t do nothin’ to that girl!”

One of the deputies put a boot to the back of Prescott’s head and shoved his face into the dirt. “Quiet, you.”

Two men quickly turned from the group and raced to the tree line, where they retched. Others started talking about lynching Prescott, and Jake, too.

The sheriff pulled his gun and fired a shot in the air, the immediate silence deafening. “There ain’t gonna be no more lynchings today as long as I’m sheriff.” He cast his steely gaze on the now-subdued mob. “I hope y’all have learned your lessons. You just hung an innocent boy.”

A few of the mob members stepped forward and helped load Caleb’s body into the back of the wagon, covering him with an old blanket.

“Get that loony into the wagon, too.” Even bound, Prescott fought like a wildcat. Finally, Babbitt pulled his gun.

Prescott leered up at the sheriff. “Go ahead, do it. Shoot me like a dog.”

The sheriff spit into the dirt. “Don’t I wish I could.” He reversed the pistol and cracked Prescott on the back of the head with the butt, knocking him unconscious.

They tossed Prescott into the back of the wagon with less care than was shown for the dead boy. The sheriff nodded to Mallory. “We’ll get them back to town. Maybe I can get Prescott to talk.” He called to his men to mount up, and Mallory stopped Jake before he could climb up on the wagon seat.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Jake refused to meet his eyes. “Gonna drive the wagon to town. That’s my job.”

“Not anymore. You’re fired.”

“But I live five miles from here!”

“Then I suggest you start walking. I have a feeling people aren’t going to want you living around here much longer.” Mallory tied his horse to the back of the wagon, climbed onto the seat, and followed the sheriff to town.

* * * *

After a few hours of questioning, Prescott admitted he molested and strangled his daughter before dumping her body down an old well he’d found in the woods near the house. After several hours, searchers located it. When they lowered a man down by rope, he received a ghastly surprise.

Little Lisa had landed on top of the nearly skeletal remains of a man. They brought up Lisa’s body—there were quite a few wet eyes at that pitiable sight—and went back down to find out the identity of the other body. Immediate speculation suggested George Simpson. The inscription on the shotgun found with the remains backed that theory.

Thus one old mystery answered, in part.

One of the searchers suggested they bury Simpson and Ben Caleb in a nearby clearing, where small stone cairns sat unmolested. One man remembered that’s where they’d found the remains of a fire during the original search for the Simpson family. A small, blackened child’s shoe haunted his nightmares, and he secretly believed it was the final resting place of Evelyn and her children.

So why not make it a graveyard?

The mine bought a coffin and stone marker for George because he was a white member of the community, and a coffin and wooden marker for Caleb. Mallory fought for a stone marker but was warned not to push his luck. It became known as the Oriole cemetery. When the mine shut down decades later, it fell out of memory.

But the land remembered.

1942

This wasn’t what he’d planned!

Peter huddled in the upstairs closet, the pistol clutched tightly in his hand. Outside, he heard the stairs creaking.

This wasn’t supposed to happen
.
The books didn’t say anything about this!

He closed his eyes tightly and prayed for the noise to go away.

Praying. Ironic, considering what he’d tried to do.