The Chisholms (25 page)

They came puffing up behind the gelding, and he heard the yapping dogs an instant too late. Will was coming around one side of the horse, Gideon around the other. He tried to whip the horse forward, but Will grabbed him from the saddle and pulled him to the ground. The horse reared, wheeled in fright toward the wall of the fort. Crouched in the dust, Lester pulled a dagger from a legging sheath. He was coming out of his crouch to thrust it at Will when Gideon kicked him in the head from behind.

He sprawled flat in to the dirt.

Gideon stepped on his hand, grinding his heel into the back of it. Lester screamed and let go of the knife. Will was coming at him. He scrambled to his feet and ran for the horse. He almost had the rifle when Will grabbed him from behind, hand in the collar of the buckskin shirt. He fell over on his back in the dirt, and Gideon kicked him again, in the rib cage this time. He felt another kick; son of a bitch knew nothing but to fight with his feet. Will twisted a hand into the front of the buckskin shirt, pulled him off the ground. They both had him now, one on either side, and were running him toward the wall of the fort. Jesus, they were going to — Jesus — bang his head against the clay bricks like a battering ram. “Hey, listen,” he said, and suddenly they turned him, and stood him against the wall, and began punching him in the face and in the chest.

He was unconscious when they dragged him inside and told Orliac he was a horse thief.

They locked him in a storeroom on the gallery. It was there she went to talk to him the next day. There were kegs and barrels in the room, stacked wooden crates, bulging hempen sacks, buffalo robes. A single window opened onto the courtyard, and a man with a rifle stood outside that window all the while they talked. Bonnie Sue expected he heard every word they said.

Lester said, “Ah, it’s good to see you, Bonnie Sue,” and opened his arms to receive her, but she stood where she was, just inside the door locked from the outside, looking at him and trying to see through the beard to the face she knew and loved. He seemed older than she remembered. She herself had turned sixteen since last she saw him, her birthday having fallen on the twelfth day of July, with Annabel close to dying and no one dreaming of celebration. She thought to tell him she was sixteen now, tell him too the secret that was surely his to share. She told him neither.

“You left of a sudden,” she said.

“I did,” he answered.

“And took Will’s horse with you.”

“Aye,” he said.

“They’ll hang you for that, you know.”

“I didn’t steal that horse, you know,” he said.

“Ah, didn’t you? They seem to think you did.”

“I was off after highwaymen.”

“And did you find them?” she asked.

“I’ve missed you, Bonnie Sue,” he said, and again opened his arms to her. She did not go into them. “I’ve thought of you often these past two months. I knew your brothers were behind me; my mother told me of their visits. And I knew they were thinking I’d stolen the Appaloosa, but there was no way of telling them—”

“You stole it, Lester,” she said flatly.

Their eyes met

“I stole it for sure,” he said.

“Why?”

“Cause I was bound for Carthage and needed a horse to get there.”

“You said you had friends in St Louis who’d—”

“I have friends nowhere,” he said. “Not even here, though I hoped someone here might love me.”

“Not me,” she said.

“I guess not,” he answered.

“They’ll hang you,” she said. “The horse Is branded and earmarked both. You were a fool to come this way.”

“I thought you’d be long since gone. I knew I’d lost your brothers...”

“Where are you bound then?”

“California,” he said, and grinned. “To make my fortune there.”

“Your fortune, aye,” she said. “They’ll hang you here for sure.”

“Then they’ll hang me,” he said, and she almost went to him in that moment, but still she delayed. “Would you care, Bonnie Sue? Would it matter to you?”

“Why’d you run from me?” she asked.

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of loving you,” he said. “I’m twice your age or more.”

“I’m sixteen now,” she told him. And almost told him the other as well. But did not. Could not. Could not bring herself to do it.

“Sixteen,” he said. “Ahh.”

“Lester,” she said, “did you plan to steal Will’s horse all along?”

“It was sounds I heard in the night. I jumped on the horse’s back and rode off to investigate, taking with me a rifle as well, in case the noise I’d heard—”

“You told me a minute ago you’d stole the horse for sure.”

“Yes,” he said. “But that’s a lovers’ secret, and not for the ears of those who’d hang me.”

“We’re not lovers now,” she said. “We’re man and woman standing here with nothin between us except what happened a long time ago.”

“Are you sure of that, Bonnie Sue?”

“As sure as I am of my own name.”

“Then there’s little to say but goodbye. Will you kiss me farewell, love? Will you let me hold you in my arms just once again before—”

“Stop it,” she said. “I’m no longer the fool I was.”

“I’ll no longer be the
man
I was, come sundown. You’ll find me hanging by the river, swinging in the wind. The Indians’ll wonder at it all. They’ll ask what crime I’ve committed, and when told I stole a horse, they’ll marvel at the ways of the white man. The Indians, you see, believe that capturing horses from the enemy is an honor. Yet hanging from a tree will be a man who—”

“My brother wasn’t your enemy. You needn’t have took his horse. You wanted it so bad, he might even have given it to you.”

“Ah, sure.”

“You don’t know Will.”

“I know his sister, and she’s refusing me now the last chance I have to live beyond this day.”

“I’m refusing you nothing.”

“You’re refusing to tell them what you saw and heard the night I fled — or
seemed
to flee.”

“You fled indeed.”

“I was chasing voices I’d heard.”

“There
were
no voices...”

“Unless you swear there were.”

“No voices but yours and mine.”

“
You
heard that
I
heard, Bonnie Sue. Voices that could’ve been highway robbers. You heard them.”

“I heard only a liar telling me he loved me.”

“That was true.”

“Aye. Loved me so dearly he left by morning. True love indeed.”

“Let me kiss you, Bonnie Sue.”

“I’d sooner kiss a snake.”

“Let me touch you.”

“No,” she said, but she allowed him to take her in his arms. He drew her close and kissed her face, and she remembered that night in June and fell suddenly limp against him. His lips brushed hers lightly, his hands moved immediately to her waist, the fingers spread to frame her belly. She drew her mouth away from his, and whispered, “Lester...” as he lowered her to one of the buffalo robes, and then turned her head sharply toward the window of the room, fearful the sentry outside might be watching. But the buffalo robe was in a quarter of the room beyond his field of vision; he could not have seen them unless he thrust his head full inside the narrow opening. Lester had already raised her skirt above her waist and was unfastening her underdrawers, lowering them familiarly over her rounded belly. She wondered if he would place them on the floor here as delicately as he had on the floor of the forest that night.

“Lie for me,” he whispered.

“No,” she answered, but was hardly sure the word found voice in the raggedness of her own sharp breathing. She tried to close herself against him, squeezing her thighs together so he could not take off her drawers completely. He tore them instead, ripped them raggedly up the middle so that now she wore a part of them around each thigh and across each buttock, but nothing at all between. He said what he’d said that night outside St. Louis, “Open,” and she replied, “
No,
damn it!” for if she opened she was lost. He seized her where the fabric of her underdrawers still encased each thigh, and spread them forcibly apart. She felt his hand upon her nakedness between, his fingers gently spreading her lips below. He said again, “Lie for me,” and she shook her head, and he said, “Lie for me, Bonnie Sue,” and she felt the rounded hugeness of him urging entrance, and spread herself wide to receive him and said “Yes,” and thought she heard the sentry cough, or laugh, but didn’t care by then.

It was Orliac’s idea to hold the trial in the courtyard of the fort, where everyone — Indians included — could see and hear the proceedings. “A court in a courtyard,” he said, and winked at Will, who found nothing at all amusing about the matter. Lester Hackett was an accused horse thief. Seventy years ago perhaps, before independence, a man convicted of such a crime might have been treated as leniently as though he were still living in the mother country. His ears would have been nailed to a board, the letter H branded on one cheek, the letter T on another. There was no such gentle consideration for horse thieves now.

The judges in the courtyard trial were three — Orliac himself, Schwarzenbacher the clerk, and a trapper named Sebilleau, who could neither read nor write. A long table had been brought out from one of the lower apartments, and the three presiding officials sat behind it now, the prisoner and his accuser sitting side by side on a puncheon bench before them. The courtyard and the balcony running around the upper level of the fort were thronged with company men, eager for whatever mild diversion the trial might provide, and Indians curious to witness the white man’s method of dispensing justice.

The trial started with Orliac explaining to everyone present that the man Hackett was accused of stealing a horse, and these judges were assembled to determine his guilt or innocence. The punishment for stealing a horse, he further explained, was to be hanged by the neck till dead. The Indians wondered about this. Suicides by hanging were common in their tribes, but they did not know of hanging as a punishment for theft. Or was this to be a ceremony of sorts? In the Sun Watching Dance, warriors fulfilling vows suspended themselves voluntarily from a sacred pole, by means of cords fastened to painted sticks and passed through the flesh on their chests. But the white man’s hanging was a hanging to the death. The Indians had never seen a ceremony of this sort. Would the white man first pierce the neck through with a blue stick and then attach a cord to it?

“Mr. Chisholm,” Orliac said, “would you tell this court why you believe the Appaloosa now in the company corral was stolen by the accused?”

Embarrassed, Will got to his feet, cleared his throat, and looked out at the Indians and white men standing in the courtyard and on the gallery above.

“Well,” he said, “Hackett here was guiding us to St. Louis, been with us since we met in Louisville. Just outside St. Louis he disappeared, and so did the gelding. So I rightly believe he was the one went off with it, since there was only the horse’s tracks leading north, and the land was all so flat there you could see for miles if a man was out there on foot, which Hackett wasn’t. Anyway, he’s the one came riding up on the horse yesterday, so he’s the one had to have rode off with it in the first place.”

“How do you know the horse is yours?” Orliac asked.

“The animal’s earmarked and branded,” Will said.

“How?”

“There’s a pothook brand on the left thigh, about eight inches above the stifle joint. And the right ear is marked with two cuts downward on either side of the point. The earmark, and the brand both, are registered with the county clerk back home,” Will said.

“Emile,” Orliac said to a man standing just alongside the table, “would you bring the horse for us to see, please?”

The horse was led from the corral. Nervous and skittish, it kept trying to pull away as the judges made their examination. There was a pothook brand on the left thigh, just as Will had claimed. The right ear was marked with a pair of downward slits, one on each side of the point.

“It would seem to be your horse,” Orliac said, and went back to sit behind the long table again.

“It’s my horse, all right,” Will said.

“Mr. Hackett?” Orliac said, and Lester rose. “Mr. Hackett, is this the horse you were riding yesterday morning when you approached the fort?”

“It is,” Hackett said. “But let me tell you this minute I
know
the horse is Will Chisholm’s, and yes, I
did
ride off with it just outside St. Louis, as Will claims I did. But I didn’t steal that horse.”

“You rode off with the horse,” Orliac said.

“That’s right, sir.”

“But you didn’t steal it.”

“No, sir.”

“What then do you call riding off with another man’s horse, eh?”

“I was guiding the Chisholms to St. Louis, as I’d promised, and I think I took the job seriously and did it well; I don’t think anyone in the family’ll dispute that. The night I rode off with Will’s horse, I heard voices and I didn’t know who was out there in the darkness, so I rode off to investigate, as was my duty. I didn’t have a horse of my own. I had to mount whatever was available, and it was Will’s Appaloosa that was closest to hand. There were five men out there, it turned out, and they ambushed me and forced me to go along with them. I finally got away from them in Illinois, and’ve been searching for the Chisholms since. That’s the truth of the matter.”

“Mr. Orliac,” Will said, “me and my brother went to Illinois looking for this man; we talked to his mother—”

“She told me about that,” Lester said. “That’s why I kept going back to Carthage, trying to locate you. But each time I got there, you’d be gone a day or so, and I’d traveled in a circle for no reason. You’ve got your horse back, Will. Would you hang me besides for riding off after men I thought were threatening the family?”