Vengeance Trail (12 page)

She stood aside and watched as the man cut the clothing from his brother’s back with a small jackknife he produced from his
pocket. After swabbing the wound with a dampened rag, she could see the place where the man had been stabbed high on the back.

The wound glistened bloody in the light, the flesh around it dark purple. Small clots of bloody tissue oozed from it. The
water in the pan swirled pink.

“I’ll need to cauterize it,” Carter said, his face knotted in sweat. “Do you have a flat piece of iron around here?”

She nodded toward a poker standing near a small open fireplace whose fire was little more than glowing embers, remnants from
an earlier fire. “It’ll have to do,” he said.

He rekindled the fire and laid the blunt end of the poker on the burning chunks of wood until the metal glowed orange.

Lowell had lost consciousness, and Carter was glad that he had done so. “Hold his arms, sister,” he ordered the woman. “Even
though he’s out, soon as I lay this iron on him, he’ll come out screaming!”

The cabin filled with the smell of burning flesh and the horrible screams of a man being burnt. The pain had brought him to,
and then sent him back to that deep dark place of unconsciousness.

Afterwards, Carter dressed the wound with a clean pack of white cloth and covered him with the blanket—the part that was not
already bloody.

The whole time the woman had stood watching him in measured silence.

Carter stood, paced the room for a time, and then settled his gaze, first upon his brother’s shallow breathing, and then upon
the woman.

“He’s going to die, I can feel it,” he said.

The woman crossed in front of him, went to the bed and stood beside it, looking down on the wounded man.

“Maybe I can save him, eh?” she said.

“Don’t know how, sister. The blade’s broken off inside him. He’s been bleeding for an hour or better already. Don’t see how.”

“I will need to be alone with him,” she said. “To invoke the Spirits. They will not come if an outsider is here with us.”

“Oh no, sis. He’s in the shape he’s in because I left him alone once already with a woman. I’m not leaving him alone with
anybody!”

“Then he will die, as you have predicted,” she said simply and turned away from the bed.

She looked strange, talked strange, and acted strange. He did not trust her. But still, Lowell was a goner as far as he could
determine. He recalled hearing how people down in this country had strange ways, strange beliefs. Maybe she had some potion
or some strange medicine that these people used to cure themselves. She surely must know something to do if she offered in
the first place. Lowell was dying, and quickly it looked like.

“Alright! Alright! You do what you know how to do to help him. It works, I’ll be owing you.” A burst of unexpected emotion
caused him to consent to the strange, spooky woman.

“Okay.”

He waited outside. The air was warm and humid.
The dog eyed him suspiciously, growled once, and skulked away into the darkness.

He sat on the edge of the porch and made himself a cigarette and smoked it. He could hear the croak of what seemed a thousand
frogs off in the night. Back and forth they called across the black soupy waters of the unseen swamp. There came a heavy splash
in the water and the frogs all fell to silence for a few moments and then slowly began again, like a creaky wheel starting
up.

A second sound began to come from within the cabin itself. A sound like no other he had heard before. A low moaning sound
that rose steadily in pitch. It was the woman’s voice, but not a voice so much as a wailing, a mourning cry. The sound made
his skin crawl.

The sound brought him to his feet. He crossed the porch and peered in the window. Lowell’s bed was completely surrounded by
lighted candles, the many tongues of flames casting his sallow features in ghostly stillness—a halo of peacefulness.

My God, he has died,
thought Carter.

The woman held something in her hand, something that appeared to be the talon of an owl. It was attached to a gourd rattle.
She shook it vigorously over the supine form of the wounded man and chanted something unintelligible.

Her head was cast back, her eyes closed, her body trembling as she stood over the bed. The perspiration on her dark skin glistened
in the candles’ glow. Her upper body began to sway back and forth, her head tossed the raven black hair into flying streamers.
She sang and sang, but in a language he could not hope to understand.

He felt a strangeness come over him as he watched her through the window, felt himself being roused by the gyrating brown
body, by the unnatural sounds coming from her throat. He was mesmerized by the flicker of candle flames, by the peaceful stillness
of Lowell’s youthful face.

With great effort, he pushed himself away from the window and toward the edge of the porch, drank in the night air and steadied
himself. He made another cigarette and smoked it.

“God damn your soul, Johnny Montana,” he said to the darkness. “Damn your soul for bringing my family all this misery!”

He rested his back against the wall of the cabin and felt the heavy weight of the day descend upon him. The woman’s voice
had ceased to wail, but still, he could hear her inside, mumbling something, something in a low soothing voice.

He was bone-tired. He closed his eyes and saw the events of the day there in the dark warmth of his skull.

He awakened to the trilling of birds, to the warmth of sun upon his face. He had fallen asleep there on the porch of the cabin.
His eyes cracked open. He saw a pair of brown feet, then the hem of the woman’s skirt.

He sat up. She had been standing there watching him; for how long, he could only guess. He shook off the mantle of sleep,
rubbed it from his eyes, worked it from his joints by stretching.

“How’s Lowell?” he asked, dreading the answer he would receive.

“He is breathing easier,” she said. “But, all danger has not left him yet. “I have done all that is possible
to do. I have called upon the Spirits. I have invoked the Power. But, his wound is mighty bad.

“I’ll have a look-see for myself, sister.” He entered the small cabin and went to the cot where Lowell lay belly down, his
arms dangling off the sides. His breathing was steady but shallow, and once he moaned. For Carter, it seemed a pitiful sight.

He turned his attention to the woman who stood in the doorway.

“He’s in poor shape,” he said, looking at her as if for confirmation. When none was forthcoming, he said, “This could take
some time—him getting better, or…passing on.” Still, the woman made no comment.

“I’m sorry this all had to fall upon your head,” he told her. “But, like I explained last night, there wasn’t any other choice.”

She moved to the small wood stove where she had been brewing a pot of coffee. The smell was strange.

“Chicory,” she said.

“Look sister,” he said. “I have to ride out after a man I’m looking for. The longer I wait, the less chance there is to find
this feller. There’s already been a long enough delay as it is.”

She offered him sugar for his coffee. He held off.

“I’m willing to strike a bargain with you, sis,” he said, looking around the small spare cabin.

“I’m willing to pay you good money, if you’ll keep Lowell here until he can heal up. It sure looks like you could use some
good money.”

“I’m am not a physician,” she said. “I am only poor Marie, who lives in the bayou, eh. Does what she can, catch the fish,
cook crawdads, eh. What you want from Marie anyway?”

“Like I said,” he continued. “All I want is for you to see to him, change his bandages, take care of him, until he gets better.”

“What if he die, then what?”

“Then…get somebody to help you bury him. Pay them if you have to, I’ll leave you enough money.”

“I don’t know.”

For the first time, she took the time to study this man who sat across from her and demanded so much. He was not a bayou man,
that was easy enough to see from his color. Bayou men were dark, like the swamps—lean, and hard like cypress roots. This man
was big and pink-skinned and had hair the color of old straw. This man did not speak like a Cajun, but his tongue was thick
with accent.

Mostly what she noticed about the man who sat sipping the chicory coffee was that there was no smile to him, no fire down
in his belly.

Her reluctance was beginning to fray his nerves. He was not accustomed to bargaining with women. Still, she held all the cards,
he knew that much. If she refused to care for Lowell, he had little choice but to put him on a horse and find some sort of
sanctuary—but where?

“I could shoot you for refusing to help,” he said, but without conviction.

“You can kill Marie, that’s for sure. But, I’m not afraid of you.”

She saw the helplessness in his expression, the dogged creases around the eyes, the unsteady mouth.

“Well, sister, if you won’t take my money and you won’t take my threats, then I guess I just gather up my little brother and
we’ll be on our way.” He pulled a wad of paper money from his pocket,
peeled off some of it and placed it on the table near her coffee cup.

“That’s for what you’ve done so far, for the night’s stay, and the bandages and the coffee.” He said, standing to his full
height.

“I will take care of him,” she said. “That fellow, he cannot go out. Such a thing would kill him.”

Carter blew a sigh of relief. And for once in his life, he felt grateful for another’s help.

“Thanks sis.”

“You sit and have some cooking before you so first, eh?”

He was anxious to get started, but a warm meal seemed too much to refuse.

He finished the last of it, noting the bite of its flavor.

Swiping at his plate with a piece of hard brown bread, he cleaned the last of the meal.

“You are lucky you did not come to old man Thibideux’s place up the road there,” she said, pointing with her nose. “He would
have shot you,
Bang, Bang, Bang,
and then asked you what you want.” Her laughter filled the room.

“I guess we could not have afforded anymore bad luck than what we’ve had lately,” he said. She was surprised to see him smile,
even though it was a faint one.

“Mr. Thibideux sounds like the kind of fellers we got back home in Autuaga County.”

“Where is that place you say, eh?”

“Oh, it’s a ways from here. A place called Alabama.” He found himself enjoying her company, her conversation, her questions.
“It’s where me and Lowell lives.”

“What you do in that place?”

“You mean what kind of work do we do?” She nodded. “Well, we have us a hog farm, more than two hundred head on about one-hundred
and sixty acres. It ain’t bottom land though, but it’s good enough for raising hogs on.”

Half of what he said was foreign to her, but she enjoyed the way he spoke of this Alabama.

“How you have so much land, eh?”

He scratched the stubble of beard growth on his cheek and realized that it had been some time since he had attended to his
daily toilet. The sourness of his clothes was also apparent.

“Who this fella you after, eh?”

He pushed his plate away. His pile of crawdad shells was twice that on the woman’s plate and he realized how hungry he had
been.

“The feller’s name is Johnny Montana. He murdered our pap. Killed him over a handful of cards.”

“So, you chase after this fella what killed your pa-pa,” she said, her eyes wet with curiosity. “And when you catch him, then
you take your revenge, eh?”

“That’s about the size of it, sister.”

“You call me, Marie, eh?”

“Sure, sure.”

“What if this man he kill you first?”

“Well, it ain’t going to happen that way, Marie. I’m going to catch him and kill him, and that’s going to be the end of it.”

Her question had added to his own doubt about the mission he had set for both him and his brother.

Ever since the gunfight of the night before, he had turned the whole thing over in his head. A part of him was willing to
give it up, to turn back. As much
as it seemed unlikely, he found himself missing home and even the dern hogs.

The guilt of such thoughts nagged at him like a bad tooth.

For several long minutes he sat there in silence. Finally, the woman spoke.

“Well, you had better not be wasting so much more time in this place if you are going to catch that fella and kill him, eh?”

“I reckon so.” He stood and walked to the bed where Lowell lay curled up in a peaceful sleep.

Turning to the woman, he said, “I’ll leave his horse. You know anything about caring for horses, Marie?”

“Of course,” she said. “Marie know about all creatures, not just people, eh.”

“That ol’ mare’s pretty content just to graze, but a bag of oats now and again might not hurt her.”

The woman nodded.

“Well, that’ll ’bout do it then. I get back this way soon’s I can. You tell Lowell what I’ve done, once he comes around.”

She watched him from the porch until he was gone.

They had continued to ride in a Northeasterly trek and were now nearing the southern most portion of the Llano Estacado—the
Staked Plains.

Treeless and void of all life it seemed, except for the vast fields of yuccas, their tall bone-white stalks shifting in the
wind, the Staked Plains seemed a desperate stretch of land.

Pete Winter had crossed this land once before, and remembered it as merciless. There was some water, but it was hard to find.
There were a few spreads, but few and far between.

It was known mostly for two things: badmen and renegade bands of Comanches. Because of its hostile nature, only the evil intentioned
found it to be a place worth habituating.

The Comanches had once roamed this land with impunity. Great horse men, and proud, they were a force to be reckoned with by
any invader. But a fierce and pitched battle at Adobe Walls, in which they suffered immeasurable losses, announced their end
as commanders of the Plains.