Effigy (54 page)

He’s seen it done a hundred times. Still, meeting the black mare’s gaze as she dips her head into the bridle, braving her long teeth as she accepts the bit, the Tracker knows wave upon wave of fear. The whirlwind wife helps him, lending torsion and lift as he hefts the dark saddle into place.

Cinching the girth brings him close to the mare’s barrel—the depth of her breathing, the bulk of her heart. He works two fingers under the strap, the way he’s seen the new man do, and the horse blows a trusting sigh.

He hasn’t much time. He was closing in on the yard when he heard the belated human answer to the Father’s call—the true shot folding the false one into its report. The briefest of detours past the child wife’s window showed him his first glimpse of love in years—that and the space where the Father’s mate had been.

The Tracker slings the carved saddlebags into place, steps back and unbuttons his trousers. The picture book comes free with a
peeling sound, its cover damp with the sweat of the flesh to which it has belonged. His leg feels stripped without it. Resisting the urge to take a last look inside, he slips the book into the near saddlebag and lowers the flap. Still the leather thong dangles from his hand, the same cord that bound the drawings to their maker—that blue-white, lifeless thigh. After a moment’s hesitation he shoves its thin length in after the book. The whirlwind wife is quieter now, a gentle churning, barely a hum. Threading tongue through buckle, the Tracker makes fast the flap.

Dorrie and Bendy hear nothing but the beating of their own two hearts. Not a distant, doubled gunshot. Not even a loaded pack horse shuffling to a stop. Nothing until the grey door screeches and they are no longer alone.

As they scramble to their feet, Lal twists to see what it is that’s opened his father’s eyes so wide. Together, the men let their burden fall. It hits the planks with a flesh-heavy thud.

Dorrie takes in the new trophy—a huge, silver-maned male with a raccoon’s robber mask—and knows its features in an instant. It’s the same instant Lal whirls on them, his eyes alight. Three skittering steps and he swings, an arcing roundhouse that catches Bendy at his temple, knocking him clean off his feet. Knuckles graze Dorrie’s cheek, the blow’s aftermath enough to send her reeling. She lands on her tailbone and slides, legs splayed, shoulders colliding with a bank of bales. Moorhens fly in all directions. Marmots leap.

The dark core of her brain expands. In the seconds it takes her to blink it back, a terrible scene evolves. Lal’s rifle lies where he’s thrown it. He’s curled in a squat, his left arm pure violence,
levering down on Bendy’s neck. Hammer stands at a little distance. His gun is nowhere in evidence—small comfort as he draws a blade from the sheath at his hip.

“Hold him, son.”

Dorrie crawls hard for the shelves, coming face to face with the naphtha. Nothing better for cleaning blood from feathers. Also the tallest, heaviest jar. She grabs it, already rising. A single leaping stride and it shatters beautifully, sending a shower of clear, stinking liquid and splintering glass down the sweep of Lal’s hair. He rears and topples, his skull meeting plank with a resounding crack.

Bendy scrambles back, Dorrie yanking him up beside her. The two of them have their feet now, but Hammer’s still the one with the knife. He jabs the blade their way.

“You little bitch.”

Behind him, the frame of the door stands empty. Then, sudden as a ghost at a gateway, the Tracker fills its breach. The repeater swings up from his side. He draws a silent bead—not on either of the two young lovers, but on the back of Hammer’s head. Reading disbelief on the faces before him, Hammer glances over his shoulder. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. A last wave of his knife, and he turns a slow, controlled about-face.

Shaking his head clear, Bendy balls his two fists into one and brings them down hard on the older man’s wrist. Hammer’s grip springs open. Dorrie swoops, plucking up the knife and sending it hilt over blade into the shadows.

The Tracker advances, lifting his boots high over the father wolf’s body, grazing not a single hair. He doesn’t stop until the muzzle of his rifle meets Hammer’s brow. “Horses.” He gestures with his head to the door, then looks Dorrie straight in the eye. “Black one yours.”

She takes a last, blurred account of the wolves—four sitting vigil, one missing, one lying dead on its side. There’s no time to gather her tools, no time to reach beneath her cot and rescue Cruikshank Crow. Time only, as Bendy drags her by the hand toward the door, to snatch the still-unopened
Doctrine and Covenants
from the corner of her workbench, the final offering from a mother’s hand.

Ursula cannot say whether she’s been sleeping, only that she is now awake. Hoofbeats in the night don’t signify trouble the way they used to, but she’s not so incurious as to keep to her bed.

From her window she can make out the ghost of the track and, down its length, two figures riding hard away. Both mounts are dark, the larger of the two in the lead. Hammer dragging the hired man out on some fool’s errand. A more suitable companion for him than the Indian, in any case.

Withdrawing from the casement, Ursula returns to the shadowy bulk of her bed. Should she lie flat and hold her eyes closed, hoping against hope to drift off, or light the lamp and stretch a fresh square of linen on her hoop? The answer isn’t long in coming.

Hammer’s eyes run bright streams. His breath is the breath of a labouring woman, his mouth the mouth of an expiring child.

On his knees astride the white man, the Tracker lays his left forearm across Hammer’s windpipe and feels the resulting panic between his thighs. In his right hand, the Henry languishes. He meets the white man’s bulging eyes briefly before tilting his gaze to take in the greater scene. The son stirs like a child dreaming, rolls groaning to push up onto all fours. The Tracker considers taking aim. Then sees he needn’t bother.

The son sags, snakelike. Cranes his neck to look about him, his eyes fathomless, empty of sense. His golden head has gone dark with the loss of his own blood. He struggles past on his belly, reaching with his elbows, writhing. He makes the door, worries it open, slithers through. Leaving Indian and white man alone.

On the lip of the long workbench a lamp burns. Raising up his rifle, the Tracker finds its barrel to be just the right length. He swings a slow arc, upsetting the child wife’s light, smashing it like a bright egg on the floor. A yolk of oily flame stains the planks. The Tracker watches its progress keenly. Beneath him, Hammer begins to quieten, what little air his body still harbours turning bad.

Crossing the yard to the horse barn, Lal evolves—now a crawling, a lurching, a loping thing. His father and the Tracker are friends again, practically lovers, the Indian straddling Hammer the way Thankful straddles Lal. There’s only one path now, only one route clear to his father’s heart. Catch the sinners—adulterers, betrayers
both—and bathe them in the purest of streams. He gives no thought to his lack of weapon. He has hands and boots, a mouthful of teeth. Catch them, bleed them, bring them back. Father’s wife, father’s worker. The pair of them made quiet, obedient, clean.

He finds his horse by sound—a panicked wheezing that grows quicker the closer he gets. In the dark he hurts Bull worse than ever, wrenching the cinch, jamming and yanking the bit. He mounts in a bruising assault, clears the stable door and pulls the palomino up short. His dripping head is an owl’s now, rotating on its stalk. His eyes dilate to take in the yard, the long grey tail of the track. Messy with mud and hoofprints. They’ve got a good lead on him, but sooner or later they’ll stop and rest. Bull jigs beneath him. Lal kicks him up hard.

He makes it a scant half mile before the palomino imagines danger and digs in his heels. A headlong gallop ground to stillness. Lal flies from his saddle like an axe head forsaking its handle, turning bright-edged circles through the dark.

A thing of air now, the blaze rises, taking hold in feathers and fur. Beast after beast catches. Glass eyes fill to brimming with light.

Curling down, the Tracker brings his lips gently to Hammer’s ear. The tale is an old one, the taste of his own language strange. Smoke rushes his open mouth as he forms the words, knowing his friend cannot hear them, would find them meaningless if he could.

FIRST AND FOREMOST
, I would like to acknowledge the descendants of all those present at the Mountain Meadows Massacre. While
Effigy
is a work of the imagination, it does cross paths with history. It is a painful story, no denying. I have done my best to tell it with love.

Of the many books and websites I consulted during the course of my research, the following deserve special mention:
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
by Juanita Brooks;
Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
by Will Bagley;
The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail
by Wallace Stegner;
History of Utah, 1540–1886
by Hubert Howe Bancroft;
Wife No. 19
by Ann Eliza Young;
Brigham’s Destroying Angel: Being the Life, Confession and Startling Disclosures of the Notorious Bill Hickman, the Danite Chief of Utah
by William Adams Hickman;
Beneath These Red Cliffs: An Ethnohistory of the Utah Paiutes
by Ronald L. Holt;
Handbook of North American Indians: Great Basin
, edited by Warren L. D’Azevedo;
Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign
by Paul Rezendes;
Guide to Taxidermy
by Charles K. Reed;
Mirror of the Dream: An Illustrated History of San
Francisco
by T.H. Watkins and R.R. Olmsted;
Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga
by Raymond W. Settle and Mary Lund Settle;
The Man Who Listens to Horses
by Monty Roberts;
Bird Flight
by Robert Burton;
Wolf Songs: The Classic Collection of Writing About Wolves
, edited by Robert Busch;
The Story of Silk
by Dr. John Feltwell; The Official Internet Site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at
www.lds.org
; The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco at
www.sfmuseum.net
; Pony Express Historic Resource Study at
www.nps.gov/poex/hrs/hrs.htm
; Utah Division of Wildlife Resources at
http://www.wildlife.utah.gov
.