A Bad Place to Die, page 14
“We won’t,” he said, patting her shoulder.
Shorty awaited them with lanterns lit, leaving the front door open to catch the breeze. He had a table with dominoes ready and with painstaking exactness led them through the rules of play. Tennie tried to concentrate and forget about what had happened, but she couldn’t seem to block out the soldier’s face in hers, the feeling of his hands around her neck, and she shuddered every time she thought about it. Since only four could play at a time, she teamed with Badger, but he caught on faster than she did. She hadn’t realized there would be so much counting in dominoes, and it pleased her to see how fast the boys could add scores.
“We’ve been trying to keep up with school lessons,” she said, putting her hand down to stroke Bear’s thick fur.
The dog licked her hand, and she rubbed his ear.
“That’s good,” Shorty said, keeping his sharp eyes on what he called the “bones.”
“Aw, schoolwork ain’t no fun,” Badger said.
“Humph, maybe not,” Shorty said. “But when I was with the Rangers, it sure hurt some of the men.”
“You rode with the Rangers?” Rusty asked.
“Yep,” Shorty replied. “The men who couldn’t read or write couldn’t rise up in the ranks. Many a good man felt cheated by not making captain because he couldn’t read or write.”
Tennie felt like leaning over the table and planting a kiss on Shorty’s whiskered cheek. Play slowed down as Rusty and Lucas questioned Shorty about his ranger service—who he rode with, where they went, who they fought. Somehow, he didn’t seem like a fussy old maid anymore.
To Tennie’s surprise, nothing else happened that night, and Jeff came by early to tell them to go to bed.
They thanked Shorty for his hospitality and headed with Jeff back to the jail. “The soldiers are still drinking and spending money,” Jeff explained, “but they’ve had their horns polled and aren’t causing any more trouble tonight. The major asked permission to sleep on the cot in your office.”
“Of course,” Tennie said, relieved there would be an officer in command on the premises.
Jeff stopped at the door. “How did Lucas manage to get to the saloon without Shorty seeing him?”
Tennie paused. “Come along.” She took one of the lanterns hanging from the office wall and led the way to the living quarters and the window in the back. She held the lantern over the window while Rusty demonstrated removing and replacing the bars. They waited for Jeff to chastise them.
“I had a fear of being trapped in here during a fire,” Tennie said.
The only comment Jeff made was to tell the boys to keep their mouths shut about it. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked before leaving.
She nodded. “I think so.”
The next morning, Tennie fried salt pork, putting the slices between biscuits she wrapped in paper, placing them in a poke bag for the prisoners and guards to take with them. The major, angry at the soldiers and upset they were cutting into his leave, sent them, or what was left of them—there was not a spot on their bodies that wasn’t bruised—back to the fort under the guard of a second lieutenant and two privates, none of whom looked too happy at having their leave cut short, either. He said nothing about the blood covering the prisoners, only apologizing to Tennie again. Tennie tried to be gracious, but she wanted them out of Ring Bit.
With their embarrassing comrades out of sight and therefore out of mind, the other soldiers went back to living it up in Ring Bit on Saturday night. Jeff brought in one; the smaller saloons sent another. But other than wanting to fight every man who wasn’t in uniform, they were as polite to Tennie as falling-down-drunk men could be.
She and the boys played dominoes again with Shorty, with Rusty spending part of the night reading the rest of The Three Musketeers to them. Jeff showed up with another prisoner, but this one didn’t have to be manhandled. Tennie rose and went to the door.
“Miss Tennie,” Jeff said. “You’ll have to keep Apache John in a cell tonight for his own protection. Some of the boys have really been deviling him.”
Tennie frowned. The last person she wanted in one of her cells was Apache John. Everything would have to be stripped, boiled, and washed down the next day to kill the lice he carried. Still, she couldn’t refuse him or Jeff.
“Okay,” she said, not feeling the least cordial. “I’ve got two soldiers in one cell; he can have the one farthest away from them.” Jeff had already warned her to keep the soldiers together and out of cells with civilians.
Apache John went along with them quietly. When the soldiers saw him, they raised a ruckus about being in the same jail with an Indian, but Jeff ordered them to shut up. Apache John acted like he heard nothing, walked into the cell, pulled the blanket off the cot, and placed it on the floor, where he proceeded to lie down without a word to anyone.
Jeff shrugged. Tennie locked the door and followed Jeff downstairs.
“John doesn’t live here in town?” Tennie asked as they walked back to the station.
“No, Winn Payton lets him live in a tiny shack on his place,” Jeff said. “Say, I think I saw that little Mexican tonight, the one you patched up here awhile back.”
“Poco?” Tennie asked in surprise. “He didn’t come by to say hello.”
“That’s gratitude for you,” Jeff said, leaving her at the station door.
The major wanted to sleep on the cot again. Tennie wasn’t sure how it would look having a strange man, and a handsome young one at that, sleeping on the cot in her office two nights in a row, but she wasn’t thrilled about having more unruly soldiers upstairs, so she agreed. Besides, she thought, she had three chaperones and anyone could look in the window at any time during the night and see the major sleeping alone. With other soldiers running loose in town, Jeff hadn’t told her not to, either.
However, she offered the major breakfast before releasing his men. He was a lonely young man, far away from home, and she felt sorry for him. He had been a West Point cadet, and the life he had to live on the frontier of Texas was so wildly different from the one he had back East, he was eager to talk about his home to anyone with a sympathetic ear.
Tennie listened, learning all about his father, his mother, and his sweetheart.
When at last he left the table to get his prisoners, they found Apache John awake and sitting on the floor, staring at the wall.
Tennie sighed. She unlocked the door to the cell the soldiers were in, telling the major good-bye and good luck.
They left, and she returned to Apache John’s cell, unlocking the door. “Mr. John, you are covered in lice, and I don’t want someone with lice sitting at my table. If you want my boys to help you bathe and delouse your hair, we’ll do that. I’ll boil your clothes for you, too, if you want me to. Otherwise, you’ll have to take your breakfast outside in the back.”
Apache John looked straight ahead. “Breakfast in back.”
“Okay,” Tennie said. “Suit yourself. I’ll have it out to you directly.”
She followed Apache John down the stairs. The major had not left, however.
“Miss Tennie,” he said with concern. “You don’t intend on feeding that Indian, do you? You don’t have to do that.”
Apache John went out the door as if they were speaking about someone else.
“It will probably be the only decent nourishment he gets all week,” Tennie said. “The corn he lives on comes liquefied in a bottle. Now, if you’ll excuse me. . . .”
The major surprised her by grasping her hand and kissing it. He reddened, and clicking his heels together, bowed and turned, marching out the door.
“Good heavens,” Tennie said and went into the kitchen.
The boys were almost as enthralled to be around a real live Indian as they were to be around a former Texas Ranger. Tennie prepared a plate of eggs and fried salt pork for Apache John, hoping he could keep it and the biscuits down. Handing the plate to Lucas, she warned him and the other two boys, “Don’t sit too close to Apache John. I don’t want lice jumping from him onto you.”
He could not only keep what she put on his plate down, he demanded seconds. Using his fingers, he ate hungrily from both plates. Grunting as he handed the plate back to Lucas, he left without giving so much as a nod of thanks.
“Don’t worry,” Tennie muttered to his retreating back. “I’m getting used to gross ungratefulness.” She remembered as an orphan, how much she’d hated being forced to make huge shows of gratitude for what amounted to a little of nothing. It shamed her she had expected the same thing from other people.
That afternoon, Tennie went for a walk by herself, escaping to the only place she knew she could be alone, the cemetery. She sat down on the ground with her back against a tree, looking out over the green grass covering the graves and the crosses placed above them. She put her head down and cried and cried and cried.
That evening, she explained to the boys what they would have to do.
“Don’t you think we ought to tell Mr. Jeff and Mr. Lafayette, and just let them handle it?” Rusty asked.
Tennie sighed. “Believe me, I would like nothing better. But it is not their responsibility. It’s my responsibility. And I have every intention of deputizing you, so it will be your responsibility, too.”
“Deputizing us?” Rusty asked.
“Are we getting paid?” Lucas wanted to know.
“Unpaid deputies,” Tennie stressed. “This time, you are going to be working on the right side of the law instead of against it.”
They went over her plans, making suggestions, helping her modify them into something that might work. A sheet over the window was deemed too flimsy and might show a shadow, better to hang a quilt instead. What chair would he insist on taking? He could possibly have any three, but Tennie had to be in one in particular, preferably the one directly across from his. Badger and Lucas would have to practice. “But not upfront where anyone can see,” Tennie said.
For the early part of the week, they waited. The boys were not inclined to roam all over town and stayed nearby, visiting with Big Mike and Shorty, playing with Bear, and practicing their sword fighting. Jeff came by and wanted to know why Lucas hadn’t brought them any bottles, and his brothers hastily helped him gather the loose ones thrown around town and take them to the back door of the Silver Moon. Lafayette stayed away, and Tennie felt alternately grateful and disappointed.
On Tuesday, Tennie met the stage, but Packer Jack had no word for her. On Wednesday evening, Rusty told Mike he wanted to saddle the buckskin to hunt coyotes. Instead, he waited for hours at the boulder on the road between Ring Bit and Cat Ridge. At midnight, following Tennie’s directive, he gave up, coming back home.
Every day, Tennie cooked massive amounts of food. Delectable pies and cookies had to be made, consumed, and more made again. She and the boys ate whatever they could to keep the food from spoiling, only so she could cook fresh the next day. Shep Davis from the Bar S came by with Honey Boy and Two-Bit to say howdy, and Tennie fed them so royally they had trouble getting up from the table, they were so stuffed.
“I thought some ladies I knew on the wagon train were coming to visit,” Tennie improvised. “But they must have been held up.”
“Lordy mercy,” Shep exclaimed. “How big a’ heifers are these women?”
On Thursday, Tennie waited outside for the stage. As soon as she saw Packer Jack’s face, she knew he had news. She ran up to him before he even had time to dismount.
“He was at Brushwood day before yesterday,” Packer said, climbing down from the stagecoach. “He should be coming this way this evening or tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Tennie said, gulping in nervousness. She thrust a poke bag full of cookies into Packer’s hands.
He protested it wasn’t necessary, and Tennie said she knew that, but she appreciated his help. He started eating the cookies and left off further protesting.
Tennie did not think Packer Jack told anyone else Harden Kane was on his way to Ring Bit, but by noon, the town had all but shut down. The saloons would stay open during the Apocalypse and the Second Coming, but every other business, including the butcher shop across the street locked its doors and put a CLOSED sign up. Even Mike, who normally kept both of his big doors open day and night, shut them. He and Shorty, at separate times, told the boys to get inside and stay inside, instructing them to have Tennie lock the door.
Rusty had kept his buckskin tethered to the yard in the back, telling Mike they wanted the horse to eat the grass down. At dusk, just as the sky was beginning to darken, he slipped out the window and rode away.
Tennie sat the table, half hoping Harden Kane was coming so they could get it over with and half hoping he wouldn’t. Her hands shook as she lit the lanterns. “Are you ready?” she asked Badger and Lucas.
“We’re ready,” Lucas said, giving a solemn nod.
“We’ve been practicing,” Badger added.
In less than an hour, Rusty was at the window, taking the bars down with excited hands. “It’s him!” he whispered. “There’s no mistaking. It’s him.”
“Okay,” Tennie said. “Remember, stay in the back until you hear my signal.”
“Okay, okay,” Rusty said, helping her out the window and onto the horse.
Tennie had her hair down, her full pink skirt and petticoats spread over one side of the saddle. Only a blind man would mistake her for anything but a woman on a night with a Comanche moon.
CHAPTER 14
Tennie rode toward Cat Ridge, her hands shaking so much she could hardly hold the reins. She kept the horse at an easy plod—there was no hurry. In the moonlight, she could see the figure of a rider approaching. When he caught sight of her, he reined his horse in, placing one hand near the butt of his revolver before continuing, but she kept her steady pace, willing herself to be calm and remember death only came once.
“Mr. Kane?” she asked when she reached him.
He pulled in the reins, halting his horse. “Who wants to know?”
Tennie reined her horse so it could be in line with his. “I’m Tennessee Granger, the new town marshal of Ring Bit,” she said, making her voice a shade more feminine. “I’d like to ride with you a spell and ask a few questions of you.”
She could feel, rather than see, his perplexity. He put his heels to his horse’s flank, and she joined him, matching her horse with the slow pace of his.
“I heared they got a woman marshal,” he said. “You ain’t armed, are you?”
“No, I’m not armed,” Tennie said.
“What do you want to ask me about?”
Tennie had thought long and hard how to approach Harden Kane, and she still wasn’t sure. But the truth seemed the best place. “There’s something going on in Ring Bit, and I don’t know what it is. The town is awful, and it’s not just all the saloons. There are saloons in most every town in the West, but none of them seem as bad as Ring Bit.”
She had his attention, puzzled though it was. “It is like there is a cancer that needs to come out. But I don’t know what it is or where to look. Or if I could even do anything about it.
“Your attorney told me you figured you were framed because men thought you heard something you shouldn’t have.”
He grunted. “My attorney! That shyster got me a year and a half in prison.”
“He believed you, you know,” Tennie said. “He told me he thought you were entirely innocent of stealing the saddle.”
That seemed to surprise Kane. “He told you that? Really?”
Tennie nodded. “Yes. Really. He said you told him you walked in on a group of men in a room. Was it in the Silver Moon?”
“Nah,” Kane said. “It was in one of those little saloons down from it. I was looking to go to the back to the privy and took a wrong turn. I was slightly inebriated. That’s lawyer talk for drunk.”
Tennie gave a brief smile. “Who were the men? Did you recognize them?”
He reeled off names, all the men on the town council who had visited her at the ranch and a few others she had a nodding acquaintance with.
“And you can’t remember any word you heard them say?” Tennie pressed.
“Nah, lady, I was too soaked.”
Tennie sighed. “Well, it was worth a try, anyway. Whereabouts are you from, Mr. Kane?”
“I’m from all over the place, but most of my raising was in Kansas. Bloody ass-backward Kansas. My last known address was cell number three hundred and twenty-five in Huntsville.”
Regretfully, Tennie knew nothing about Kansas. She wracked her brain trying to think of something to say to keep the conversation going. Hadn’t Two-Bit once mentioned he came from near Huntsville?
“I heard there are a lot of beautiful pine trees in Huntsville, but it’s very humid,” Tennie said.
“Oh, my God, lady. You have no idea. And ticks! Every time they put us to work in the fields, I came back pulling more ticks off me than a dog has fleas.”
He warmed to his subject, and Tennie had no trouble keeping him talking about how horrible prison life had been. Unfortunately, that got him started on how he was going to kill the lowdown skunks who put him there.
They were approaching the edge of town. “Have you had supper?” Tennie asked as innocent as she could. This was the crux, the moment when everything would swing one way or another.
“Not really,” he said, suspicious. “Why?”
“I have supper on the table in the office. Just some ham and potatoes. A little fresh okra and black-eyed peas. Some light bread. A couple of chess pies and a few cookies. I have three stepsons, but they decided to leave early to visit friends. Now I’m stuck with all this food.” She prayed God would forgive her lies, and Harden Kane would believe every one of them.
He eyed her in suspicion, but the desire for woman-cooked food trumped his doubts. “Who’s there? In the jailhouse?”
“Nobody. My prisoners only come in for the weekend.”
He grinned, and Tennie almost wished he hadn’t. “All right.”
They dismounted near the water trough to let the horses drink, and Tennie prayed Big Mike was not watching. After the horses had their fill, they walked to the hitching rail in front of the jail and tied them there.
