The Chisholms (26 page)

“There
were
no damn men, and you know it,” Will said. “You’re a horse thief, plain and simple.”

“No, he’s tellin the truth,” a voice said, and all in the courtyard turned to locate the source of the voice, and could not find it till Bonnie Sue rose from where she was sitting with Minerva on a buffalo robe against the wall. The Indians watched her as she approached the long table at which sat Orliac and the other judges. Even Sebilleau, the illiterate Orliac had elected to the tribunal, seemed to have come at least half awake upon hearing her declaration. She stood before the table now, and looked directly into Orliac’s face as though challenging him to challenge what she had just said. Instead, he asked for repetition, which was unnecessary since everyone had heard her clearly.

“What did you say?” he said.

“I said Lester Hackett’s tellin the truth. There
were
voices that night.”

“Bonnie Sue...”

“It’s the
truth,
Will!” she said, whirling on him. “It’s the truth,” she said more softly, and turned again to face Orliac and the others. In the same low voice, she said, “I was awake. Lester and me were both awake. We heard the voices together. He said he’d find out what it was, and he climbed on Will’s horse and rode off.”

Will got off the bench, walked to where his sister was standing, looked her straight in the eye, and asked, “Why didn’t you say any of this before?”

“I was afraid you’d ask me what I was doing awake,” Bonnie Sue said.

“What
were
you doing awake?” Orliac asked.

“I was kissin Lester. Me and Lester were sittin by the fire, kissin,” she said.

Schwarzenbacher looked at Hackett where he sat attentively on the puncheon bench, and tried to visualize Bonnie Sue kissing this man who was easily twice her age. He found the thought disturbing, found it even
more
disturbing that she’d admitted it before this assembly. Everywhere around, he could hear murmurs in French,
“Elle faisait l’amour,”
could see Indians making the plains gesture for fornication, the extended middle finger of the right hand plunging into a circle formed by the thumb and curled fingers of the opposite hand. He knew that everyone here, save perhaps the Chisholms themselves, believed as he did — that the “kissing” to which Bonnie Sue had just admitted was a pleasant euphemism for what she and Lester Hackett had actually been doing. Why else hadn’t she revealed this crucial information to her family the next morning?

“These men on horseback,” Orliac said. “How many did you say there were?”

“Are you talking to me, sir?” Lester said.

“Yes, I am looking at you, eh?” Orliac said, and smiled and said, “Thank you,” and dismissed Bonnie Sue with a wave of his hand. It seemed to Schwarzenbacher that the gesture was entirely French and probably decadent, the equivalent of a sophisticated Gallic shrug. Orliac was effectively indicating that they were here not to determine what had transpired between a man and a woman by a fire, but only to decide whether or not a horse had been stolen. Either Lester
hod
stolen the horse or else he had taken it to give chase to men who themselves were intending mischief.

“There were five of them, sir,” Lester said, rising from the bench. There was a puzzled look on his face. He watched Bonnie Sue as she walked back to where her mother was sitting, and then he looked at Orliac again.

“What did these men want?” Orliac asked.

“Sir?”

“What were they doing out there in the dark?”

“Well, sir, I don’t know,” Lester said. “They never took me into their confidence. I assume they were there to steal horses. Or... well, I really don’t know.”

“Were they riding away from the camp when you gave chase?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then why did you give chase?”

“Well, we heard their voices—”

“Yes, yes,” Orliac said. “You were kissing by the fire and you heard voices, so you got on Mr. Chisholm’s horse—”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“And gave chase.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Lester asked.

“That is my question.”

“Well, because... because I wanted to see what they were doing.”

“They were riding away. Isn’t that what you said they were doing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you think they were armed?”

“Possibly.”

“Yet you gave chase. You went after five armed men who were already departing.”

“Well, at first I didn’t know there were five of them.”

“You only discovered that later on.”

“Yes.”

“But even in the beginning, you knew there were at least
two,
isn’t that so?”

“Sir?”

“Because you heard
voices.
You heard more than one voice.”

“Yes, sir. Right,” Lester said.

“So you knew there were at least two men out there.”

“Yes.”

“Or possibly more.”

“Well, I...”

“And possibly armed.”

“Well, I took a rifle with me, sir, just in case.”

“Mm,” Orliac said. “Are you following all this, Henri?” he asked Sebilleau, who seemed to be dozing again now that Bonnie Sue had gone back to sit against the wall.

“I am listening,” Sebilleau said, and nodded gravely.

“You say these men later captured you, eh?” Orliac asked.

“Yes, they were waiting up ahead. They ambushed me.”

“And took you with them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To Illinois?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where later they released you.”

“No, I escaped.”

“Mr. Hackett, why did these men take you with them?”

“I’m not sure. I suppose—”

“Mr. Hackett, why didn’t they simply shoot you?”

“Well, as I said before, I never really learned much about them. I don’t know why they—”

“I think they should have shot you,” Orliac said.

“Sir?”

“It would have saved us the trouble of hanging you. Mr. Hackett,” he said, “I think you stole the horse, eh? I would like to recommend now—”

“Now wait just a minute,” Lester said.

“—that you be hanged by the neck till dead. Mr. Schwarzenbacher—”

“The goddamn girl just
told
you—”

“What is your opinion?”

“I think he’s guilty and should be hanged,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Mr. Sebilleau?”

“Oui,”
Sebilleau said.
“Pendez-lui.”

There was stout timber by the river above the fort, but Sebilleau suggested justice might best be served by hanging Hackett in the courtyard. The other judges agreed this might be a good idea, and together they marched about trying to find a beam suitable to the purpose. They were followed by a dozen or more Indians who murmured among themselves, more curious as to
how
the hanging would take place than
where
. In the end, it was decided that a tree would do better than any of the beams supporting the gallery around the court. Besides, if a man could not be hanged in the
center
of the court for all to see, what purpose would it serve to hang him inside the fort at all? Convinced, Sebilleau and the others withdrew for their noonday meal, ordering Hackett to be bound and locked in the factor’s empty apartment till 2 p. m., at which time he would be taken to the river and hanged. At ten minutes to two, the judges, a half-dozen other company men, and a large contingent of Indians dragged Hackett out of the apartment to lead him to his execution.

Sebilleau, who could neither read nor write, seemed possessed nonetheless of a fine sense of poetic justice, and suggested that Hackett be set astride the horse he’d been convicted of stealing. Will refused them the use of the raindrop gelding. His attitude about the hanging was pretty much akin to what all the family save Bonnie Sue felt. Lester Hacket had stolen a horse, and had to be punished for the crime as prescribed by law. They went down to the river to witness the hanging not because they were curious — they’d seen hangings aplenty in Virginia — and not because they felt vengeful or angry or indeed anything but dutiful; it was a Chisholm horse had been stolen, and a man was now to be hanged for the theft, and they felt it was their responsibility to be there.

A company man named Bertaut knew how to fashion a hangman’s noose, having learned the intricacies of it as a boy, when someone taught him how to do it as a sort of game. The Indians lining the river and surrounding the huge cottonwood that had been selected as the hanging tree watched as Bertaut coiled the heavy rope around itself. He explained that the purpose of the noose was not to choke off the man’s breath and therefore kill him by strangulation. Instead, when the condemned was jerked off the horse upon which he was sitting — a gray stallion belonging to the company cook — the huge knot behind his head would snap upward and break his neck, killing him instantly. Or so Bertaut hoped. He had never made a hangman’s noose for use in a
real
hanging. An Indian who’d been listening to this explanation in French now turned to several other Indians and began explaining it in the Siouan tongue. The others nodded gravely. They understood completely the solemnity of this occasion by the river, and they watched now in awed silence.

The stallion would not stand still, foiling their efforts to loop the noose over Lester’s head. Each time another horse came alongside, the stallion tried to rear away from the man holding its bridle. They finally put Lester on a more docile horse, and got the noose around his neck. Somebody asked him would he like to say a prayer, and he said, “Go to hell, man,” not knowing to whom he was addressing the words because they’d blindfolded him as an act of mercy. Sebilleau somewhat gleefully brought the whip down on the horse’s left buttock, shouting
“Allez!”
at the moment of contact. The horse leaped forward and Lester was jerked from the saddle — only to begin choking.

The Indians, who’d understood Lester would be killed instantly, now thought they’d heard incorrectly and turned for explanation to the one among them who spoke French. Schwarzenbacher recognized the trouble at once; Bertaut’s damn knot hadn’t worked and Hackett was choking to death. “The man’s choking!” he shouted, more to himself in realization than to anyone else present. Leaping upon the back of the gray stallion that had earlier balked, he drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt and rode to where Lester was kicking and coughing and twisting at the end of the rope. Standing in the stirrups, he hacked at the thick hemp, virtually fiber by fiber, till at last it began to unravel and finally tore asunder, dropping Lester to the ground.

Orliac asked Schwarzenbacher why he had interrupted the hanging, and Schwarzenbacher replied somewhat testily, “The man stole a horse, he didn’t murder a sleeping babe!” Orliac then ordered Bertaut to fashion another noose, a better one this time, a noose that would break the condemned man’s neck as it was supposed to. Bertaut suggested that he was not equal to such an awesome responsibility, but then changed his mind at once, perhaps sensing the impatience and the mounting anger of his superior. He ran up to the fort to fetch a new hanging rope, and soon they were ready to try it another time.

Will didn’t know what she was saying at first.

Sounded like she was babbling. Came rushing out of the woods to where he was sitting apart from the others on the knoll above the river. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her nose was red and running, she said something about hiding, watching, couldn’t bear to see it, prayers answered, God answered her prayers. “You’ve got to save him for good now, Will, please.” She was on her knees, squeezing both his hands between her own. He shook one gently loose, and brushed wet hair back from her cheeks.

“It’s your horse, Will,” she said. “You could stop em if you wanted. They’ve put the rope on him again, Will. You got to go down there and stop em.”

“Bonnie Sue...”

“Will, I love him. Please do what I ask. I beg you.”

“I can’t,” he said, and shook his head. “The man stole—”

“I’m carryin his child,” Bonnie Sue said.

“No,” Will said.

“Will, I’m pregnant by him. I’m two months—”

“No,” he said. “You ain’t, Bonnie Sue.”

“Will...”

“You
aint,
goddamn it!”

They stared at each other in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She knelt before him and he looked down at her, and then turned his face away, refusing to meet her eyes lest he find there the eyes of a woman. “No,” he said again, and in the next instant was sorry. He heard the shouted
“Ailez!”
from below, and turned to look, and realized he was too late, he could no longer stop it if he tried.

The horse was running off along the riverbank.

Lester’s body hung in the air, his boots some four feet above the ground, his head twisted at a peculiar angle, his tongue protruding grotesquely from his mouth. His hat had fallen from his head when the knot struck him violently from behind, and it lay now in the dirt below his swinging boots. Bertaut looked up at him and nodded in brief satisfaction. Wiping perspiration from his forehead, he went to stand with his Indian wife, who asked him something in French. Bertaut nodded. Beside Will, Bonnie Sue screamed. She got to her feet and, still screaming, ran to where Lester’s body slowly twisted on the end of the rope. And clutched for his knees, and hugged his legs close, wailing, wailing as the Indians watched in wonder.

He went down to the tipi again that night. He was sober this time. Lifted the flap, went right on in. He had food with him, which he gave to Catherine and the squaw. The air had turned chilly outside; they still had the fire going. He asked them whether they’d already had supper, and Catherine nodded that they had and then talked to the squaw with her hands. The squaw sighed and made ready to go, draping the army blanket over her shoulders.