Blind Tiger, page 31
At some point over the course of the night, the kid had begun addressing Thatcher respectfully, which amused Thatcher. He didn’t think Elray was a genuinely bad sort, or ignorant, but more hapless than anything, like he’d had the rotten luck to be born into a family where he didn’t truly fit. Which was probably why he was coming to like the kid.
But now, he followed Sheriff Amos’s lead and gave Elray the silent treatment as he settled in beside him. He didn’t feel like talking just now, anyway.
Their silence must’ve been unnerving, because Elray began to chatter. “Only law I broke was to steal another moonshiner’s whiskey, and how can that be a crime? I won’t see a nickel from that. Plus, I was actin’ under orders to cause pain, but I didn’t raise a hand to nobody.”
When neither Thatcher nor the sheriff responded, he continued.
“Them stills was hid so good, weren’t for me, y’all never would’ve found ’em. Y’all should be thankin’ me, not…” He swallowed. “Not whatever y’all’re plannin’.
“What I think is, what y’all ought to do, is keep me locked up in jail, maybe a jail in a faraway town. Just till the dust settles around here. Better yet, put me on that freight train tomorrow morning, and you’ll never have any trouble out of Elray Johnson again. I have a hankering to see Arkansas.”
Bill drove in stony silence.
Thatcher gazed out the window.
Elray gave up on engaging them and lapsed into a brooding silence.
Although by now they were on the main highway, there was little to see. When they passed the Plummers’ place, Thatcher looked up toward the shack, but it was barely discernible against the black sky.
The day he’d come upon Laurel wrestling with the wet sheet, the sky had been purely blue behind her. She’d made quite a sight, one engraved on his memory. He figured he would think back on it for the rest of his life.
Under his breath, he cursed her.
* * *
“Dammit, Laurel. Your pacing is making me dizzy.”
“The whiskey is making you dizzy.”
Irv lifted the jar toward her. “You should have a snort. Maybe it would calm you down.”
“I can’t afford to be calmed down.”
Since returning home and waking him up to report what she’d seen—and hadn’t seen—she’d been beside herself, unable even to sit. “You don’t know what it was like, looking down and seeing nothing there. Everything just gone.”
While she had been trying to grasp that her friends, the stills, the tent, everything had vanished, out of the corner of her eye she’d caught headlight beams sweeping across the smooth face of a nearby hill.
Not having had time even to fully regain her breath, she’d turned away from the abandoned site and had begun the return trip to the shack in a flat-out run. Most likely, whoever was in those approaching vehicles would spend more time than she trying to figure out what had happened there, and what the implications were. But that was a supposition, not something she could count on, and it was imperative that she not be caught in the vicinity. Not by anyone.
She’d also been frantic to share this news with Irv, who might possibly have some information unknown to her. Her most earnest hope was that he could provide an explanation for the site having been abandoned.
But, to her dismay, after she’d shaken him awake, he had listened to her breathless recitation of facts with astonishing and infuriating calmness. For the past hour, while she’d been whipping herself into a froth, he had grown increasingly mellow by sipping from a jar of moonshine.
“I’m sure Ernie’s got it under control.”
She spun around to him. “If you say that one more time, I’m going to hit you with something. You can’t be sure of anything. They might have gotten away. They might even have gotten away with most of the equipment. But how far could they have gone carting all that?”
“Ernie’s old truck—”
“Yes, Ernie’s old truck.” She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him, hands fisted at her sides. “Why wasn’t I ever told that Ernie had an old truck?”
“Because we had no call to tell you.”
“Until tonight!” she shouted. “If his truck is so well hidden in the hills, maybe they couldn’t get to it. Carrying all that paraphernalia? How could they possibly?
“If the people in the three vehicles I saw launch a search… God!” She resumed pacing and wringing her hands. “Ernie and Corrine could be in custody. Or worse, dead. And any minute now so could we be.”
“I’m sure Ernie’s got it—”
Her glare silenced him.
He used the jar of moonshine to point at the article lying at the foot of his bed. “I still think that could be a message of some sort.”
She picked up Corrine’s workbook and slapped it against her palm. “Of what sort? It’s squiggles and lines.”
“Then why’d you’d bother going in after it and bringing it back? You must’ve thought those hen scratches the girl made meant something.”
The return jaunt to the shack had seemed more hazardous because it was mostly downhill, and she’d run like the devil was chasing her, which she feared he was. By the time she’d reached the shack, her entire body had been about to give out on her. Muscles, lungs, heart, had been taxed to their limit. She’d collapsed against her Model T, her arms outstretched across its hood, hugging it like a pilgrim at a shrine.
She’d allowed herself one precious minute to slow her heartbeat and breathing. Partially restored, she’d willed herself to move and get into the Model T.
“I was backing into a turn so I could drive out when I remembered seeing this primer on the dresser. I honestly don’t know what urged me to stop and get it.”
She opened the workbook to the page where Corrine had drawn what looked like absentminded scribbles. She realized now that the printing of Ernie’s name seemed beyond Corrine’s present capabilities.
“Is Ernie literate?”
“Yes. He’s no scholar, but he can read good enough to get by.”
“Then maybe this is his doing, and Corrine left the primer where she knew I would see it.”
“Let me take another look.”
She rounded the bed where Irv was semi-reclined and handed him the primer. He studied the crudely drawn etching, tilting both his head and the workbook to various angles. Then a laugh began deep inside his chest before burbling out.
“What? What is it?”
He closed the primer and passed it back to her. “Go to bed, Laurel.”
“Not on your life!”
“Turn out the light. Everything’s fine. I know where they’re at.”
* * *
He refused to talk about it further, saying that morning would come soon enough. Frustrated, but exhausted, Laurel turned out his bedroom light and pulled the door shut on her way out.
Bone-weary as she was, she took a bath before retreating upstairs to her room, where she pulled on a fresh nightgown, took the pins from her hair, and gave it a good brushing. She plaited it loosely into her customary bedtime braid. She was about to extinguish the flame in the lamp when she saw his reflection in her dresser mirror.
Gasping, she spun around, her hand at her throat.
Forty-Three
Don’t raise a ruckus.”
“What do you think you’re doing? Get out of here!”
Thatcher came into the room and quietly closed the door.
“If you don’t leave in two seconds, I’ll shoot you.”
“With what? You keep your pistol in the pocket of your skirt.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve noticed you’re always patting at it.”
Intending to mend and wash her tattered and soiled skirt in the morning, she’d left it on a hook on the back of the bathroom door, her pistol forgotten in the pocket. She didn’t believe Thatcher meant to harm her, but she wished she had the Derringer to reinforce her point about his audacious intrusion.
“As you’re well aware, Irv has a shotgun,” she said. “He’s right downstairs.”
“Sawing logs. I could hear his snores as I passed through the kitchen.”
“If you don’t leave now, I’ll yell for him.”
“No, you won’t. You don’t want me confronting him with this.”
“This what?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he took off his well-worn black felt cowboy hat and set it on a table. Then he took off his jacket and folded it over the back of a chair.
“Pick those right back up,” she said. “I did not invite you to stay. In point of fact, I’m sick of you sneaking around me and my house. What gives you the right to do that, to show up at all hours of the night?”
“When you always seem to be awake. Awake and wound up like a top. I wonder why that is.”
“If I’m wound up it could be because you appear out of nowhere and catch me unfit to receive a visitor.” Yes, this was twice, wasn’t it, that he’d caught her wearing only—
She didn’t finish that thought, because, somewhat recovered from the shock of his being in her house, her bedroom, she realized that his demeanor was particularly solemn.
His gray eyes shone in the lamplight beautifully, but reflecting bleakness. His face was drawn, his expression taut, emphasizing the sharp ridges of his cheekbones. He looked as though he were about to undertake a dreaded task, like someone designated to deliver tragic news. She felt twinges of alarm. Why was he here?
It was then she noticed that his boots had been ghosted over with a fine, chalky dust, and she realized where he had been tonight before coming to her. Though her breathing turned quick and uneven, she struggled to keep her features schooled. She even managed to ask aloud the troubling question in her mind. “Why are you here?”
He reached down to his coat and took something from the breast pocket, then walked over and set it on the dresser. Instantly recognizing a silver barrette, her heart seized up. She swallowed. “I must’ve lost it in the yard.”
Speaking quietly, he said, “I didn’t find it in your yard, Laurel.”
She didn’t need to ask where he had found it. She knew. But she brazened it out and made an offhanded gesture. “Then it probably isn’t mine.”
“I’ve seen you wear it in your hair.”
“Lots of women have that same clip. Hancock’s sells them. Six to a card. You didn’t need to bother to return it.”
“Actually, I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got something to tell you.”
“About a hair barrette?”
“Have you seen Chester Landry around?”
The question was out of context. She replied with exasperation. “No. I told you it was doubtful I would.” Thatcher didn’t look convinced. She added, “I don’t know the man. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Was the O’Connors’ trip up to Ranger successful?”
He was intentionally trying to rattle her. She couldn’t allow being caught off guard. “Very.”
“They didn’t encounter any problems?”
“In fact they did. They sold out of pies in a matter of minutes and left some of the roughnecks disgruntled. I need to bump up production.” If her flippant answer annoyed him, he didn’t show it.
“How’s Corrine working out?”
Involuntarily, she glanced at the barrette and could have kicked herself for doing so. “She’ll be able to do more when her arm gets stronger.”
She could tell by the way Thatcher was looking at her that he knew she was hedging every answer to these questions. On the surface they might seem casual and random, but she knew they weren’t.
“Do you know Elray Johnson?”
That query genuinely threw her. “His name is vaguely familiar. Is he one of the—”
“Notorious clan, yeah. His cousin Wally was murdered recently. Elray discovered his body.”
“That’s it. I remember reading his name in the newspaper. What about him?”
He told her about the teen’s aborted attempt to steal a horse from Barker’s stable. “I took him to the jail and summoned the sheriff.”
“That doesn’t seem fair. You caught him before he stole anything.”
“But I sensed that he had something else on his conscience. Turned out, I was right. He confessed to stealing crates of corn liquor from a competing moonshiner.”
Those twinges of alarm became outright pangs. She was trembling on the inside, but managed to keep her voice steady. “From what I understand, that happens routinely.”
“This theft might’ve been routine if it had stopped at that. But it didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Last night, Elray and his cousin, Tup, went back to the same still. A decision they came to regret. There was an incident.”
Her heart in her throat, she asked, “What kind of incident?”
“One that warranted investigation. Tonight, when Sheriff Amos organized a team of deputies to return to the scene with Elray, I was more or less recruited to go along.”
That was the convoy she’d seen. Thatcher had been among those who’d discovered the location of their stills, and there he’d found the barrette she’d given Corrine.
Feeling that her silence might be a giveaway to her mounting anxiety, she said, “Like at Lefty’s. You were roped into taking part in the raid.”
He gave a mirthless smile. “Literally this time.” He told her about lassoing Elray. “But that’s neither here nor there. He was pressured into leading us to the site. Seemed like we covered miles of wilderness on roundabout roads. I thought the kid had been lying. But no, we found Cousin Tup.”
“At the still?”
“In a hole in the ground with his arm mangled so bad you couldn’t identify it as a human part.” His eyes holding steady on hers, he said, “It had been snared in a bear trap.”
By now her heart was pumping so hard, she thought she might faint. By a sheer act of will, she contained a sob pressing at the back of her throat. “That’s horrible,” she said hoarsely. “Was he dead?”
“Last I heard, he was still alive but short one arm.”
The strength to stand up deserted her. She sank down onto the end of her bed and hugged her elbows close to her body. “How awful.”
Thatcher sat down in the rocking chair in which she had planned to spend hours rocking Pearl in her lap, reading to her from storybooks, loving her. She had attached a cushion to the chair’s back, so she’d have something to lean her head against during nighttime feedings that had never taken place.
Thatcher placed his head on that cushion now and closed his eyes. “Whoever was operating the stills—there were at least two of them—had cleared out, taking everything with them. Setting that trap to catch a man stealing moonshine seemed extreme, a cruel thing to do.
“But,” he continued on a sigh, “Tup had stolen from them, and had gone back with every intention of stealing again and then destroying their property. He and Elray had been ordered by the family head, Hiram, to rain down hell on them. If they hadn’t caught Tup in that trap, if they hadn’t cleared out, chances are good they would be dead.”
He rocked two or three arcs. “I used to think the difference between right and wrong was clear-cut. Law and justice meant the same thing. But I’m not sure of that anymore.”
She studied him for a time. He looked like an everyday cowboy who lived from one day to the next, accepting and dealing with the vagaries of life without giving them much thought. Not so, Thatcher Hutton. Perhaps he thought too much, saw too much. “Who are you?” she asked in a hushed tone that conveyed her mystification. “Who are you, really? Where did you come from?”
He stopped rocking and looked over at her. “What do you mean?” She didn’t say anything, only continued to search his face. Finally, he said, “I’m nobody.”
“Parents?”
He went back to rocking, but rested his head on the cushion again and gazed into near space. “Well, I didn’t hatch, but I don’t remember either of them. I was told my father worked in a smithy, shoeing horses mostly. He was accused of laming a horse on purpose because he held a grudge against the owner. The horse had to be put down. My dad was tried and sentenced. He didn’t survive prison. I never knew what exactly he died of.”
“Is your mother still living?”
“I don’t know. She ran off with my daddy’s accuser days after he was convicted. They were never seen or heard of again.” He glanced over at her and asked dryly, “Do you reckon that story about the lame horse might’ve been made up?”
Laurel was dismayed. “She just left you?”
“Appears so.”
“Who took care of you?”
“I was placed with a family. Decent people. They took in orphans, kids like me. We were expected to do chores on their place, but they saw that we got schooling.
“When I was eleven, thereabouts, I heard that a Mr. Henry Hobson, who had a large spread, was looking for hands to drive his sizable herd to the nearest railhead, which at that time was Fort Worth. Mr. Hobson’s age requirement for trail hands was thirteen, but I passed for that. He signed me on.”
He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Years later, he told me he knew I’d fudged on my age, but he saw how bad I wanted the job. Anyhow, after the drive, he made it permanent. I lived and worked on his ranch for the next fifteen years, till I was drafted into the army.”
“Why haven’t you gone back?”
“Nothing to go back to.” He told her the circumstances, his gaze pensive and sad when he talked about his mentor’s death and the change of fortune it had wrought for him.
“Mr. Hobson was the finest man I’ve ever met. I called his son up in Dallas and left word how to reach me. Haven’t heard from him, though, and I don’t expect to. Don’t see that it makes much difference. Not now.”
“Now?”
He broke his distant stare and turned to her. “Things have changed, Laurel.”
“What things? Since when?”
“Since tonight.”
He left the rocker and made a circuit of the bedroom. Pausing at one of the windows, he drew the curtain aside and looked out, before resuming his restless prowling. Ordinarily she would have resented his prying and this invasion of her personal space and would have told him so. However, being unsure of his reason for coming here, and made timid by his broodiness, she held her tongue.
