The Last Crossing (37 page)

“You make a dirty accusation against Titus Kelso, that’s what you get – a hard bit in the mouth. Why, your blessed parcel said I raped and killed her sister. Hell, I didn’t even know the little cunny was dead. It’s a shame. I always did want to stick my peeder in her.”

Lucy Stoveall starts to cry. I can see her shoulders shaking and the tears spilling down her face, but she doesn’t let a sound escape her. My hands won’t stop shaking, even the one I’ve got pushed through the hole in my pocket and latched on to the grip of Aloysius’s twelve gauge. I settle down on a box, keep the cutdown tight against my leg. I need medicating bad. “All right then. One thing at a time, Titus. Let us have a drink and be sociable.”

“A drink is a dollar, Straw.”

Titus learned one lesson from his encounter with Abner Stoveall. No free drinks in the liquor traffic. “All right, set up three. It’s on me.” I pause. “Just so you don’t get the wrong idea – I’m going into my trouser pocket for cash, nothing more.” Titus glowers as I pinch a half-eagle out of my pants. “Can you make change?”

“You see a till anywheres about?”

“Well, then we’ll drink five dollars’ worth the first round. See where it gets us. Take it from there.”

Titus gives Joel an abrupt nod and his brother slouches off, brings back three tin mugs of whisky. Looks to me as if he short-poured
mine, but Titus probably practised him on light measures. The first swallow braces me, tamps down the tremors a little. Whisky is a mellowing potation and I hope it effects Titus so. He could use it. He’s still watching me sharp-eyed, particularly my quivery hands.

“How’s business been, boys? Profitable?”

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” The angry expression Titus wears tells me that I’ve touched a tender spot. Apparently, the whisky trade hasn’t lived up to Titus Kelso’s high expectations. He squints at me. “Keep your questions to yourself so’s you can hear mine. Here’s the first. How did that woman and you know where we was at?”

I was hoping he might neglect to put that to me. The Bible says the truth shall set you free, so I wager on the truth. “From Matt Chisholm.”

“Tite?” squeaks Joel. He’s brimful of surprise. Titus shoots him a look.

“Chisholm’s alive,” I say. “Right now, he’s with our party.” I pause. “These are lawless parts, gentlemen. I understand you had a falling out with Abner Stoveall and Black Pompey. It’s no concern of mine what course it took, or how it was settled. I wouldn’t have darkened your door if Mrs. Stoveall hadn’t lost all common sense and come here.”

“Old Straw had to follow his cunny,” Titus sneers.

I aim to keep the talk flowing so anger doesn’t find a space to boil over. “However you put it, Titus. Yes, I came after Lucy Stoveall, but with no intention of making trouble. You know my reputation, Titus. I’ve got no use for guns. I’m a peaceable man. But I want that woman, boys, and I’m willing to pay you to release her. As much as a thousand dollars.”

“Time was a man could buy hisself a nigger for a thousand dollars. You don’t rate Lucy Stoveall higher’n a nigger, Straw?” sneers Titus.

It’s plain how badly Joel wants to get shut of here; it’s all over his face. He just needs somebody to frame the reasons for why they ought to pull foot. “Maybe you haven’t heard, Titus, but there’s smallpox among the Blackfoot. We happened on one of their camps. Everybody in it was dead. My forecast is customers are likely to be scarce. And
if they do show, they’ll be nettled and take what they want rather than pay for it. This is no place to loiter, boys.”

“Take his money, Tite,” says Joel.

“Shut your piehole. I’m thinking.”

“Just to keep everybody mild and reasonable. I’ll season the pot for persuasion. Two thousand.”

Joel and I watch him ponder the offer. “All right,” Titus says at last. “For cash money, delivered here, you can have the woman.”

I’ve cleared one hurdle, but not the most important one. “No, I won’t do that. I have to take Lucy Stoveall with me. I’m sorry to say it, Titus, but you’re not a man to leave a woman with.”

Titus spits, the gob lands between my feet. “You sit down to sup with the devil, you need a long spoon. You ain’t talking to Joel, Straw. How simple you think I am? Once you get her away – what would bring you back with the money?”

“My word.”

“Your word ain’t worth nothing to me. It’s froth on a cup of piss.”

“All right then, here is what I’ll do. I’ll write you a bearer’s note to take to I. G. Baker in Fort Benton. He’ll cash it, no questions asked. Joel can stay here and keep watch over us until you get back with the money.”

“I ain’t staying here!” squeals Joel. “Not with smallpox on the rampage through the Blackfoot and them blaming white folks for it!”

“For two thousand dollars you’ll sit here until hell freezes over,” says Titus. He bobs his head at me, “Write it.”

I take the Good Book from my pocket, rip out an endpaper, commence composing the document with a stub of pencil. I doubt either of the Kelsos are handy readers so I print the words, sign, pass it over for approval. Titus lights a tallow candle and stands it on a box, pores over the contents, lips mumbling every word.

A draft in the dugout causes the candle to gutter, bobble its flame. When I look away, tiny coloured dots start to swim in the murk of the cave. There’s a familiar tightening at the base of my skull, a dull, dead ache swelling behind my eyeballs.

Then I hear Titus. “You ain’t half so smart as you think, Straw.”

I look up. Titus is on his feet, the daylight creeping into the mouth of the dugout flaring fuzz above his head and shoulders. The shape of his body is dark, uncertain. He waves the paper, a blurry streak in the air. “I got your note in my hand. I got you in my hand.” He moves towards Lucy crouched in the dirt, takes hold of the stick in her mouth, waggles her head back and forth, sends her red hair flying. “I got your woman in my hand.”

The megrim is spreading a smudgy haze over my eyes, warping Titus in a carnival mirror. I peer so hard trying to see him that at first it doesn’t sink in, what he’s said. Then I behold it plain.

“So you mean to kill us, Titus.”

I see him through a smeared window, hear a smirking voice. “Custis, what you take me for? I ain’t about to kill no woman. You’re as bad as her, accusing me of woman-killing. I got to train her out of such evil supposing. Show her what a sweet, considerate rider Titus Kelso is. I got my good reputation with the ladies to consider.”

My hand is tight on the twelve gauge. I have to shift him away from Lucy Stoveall. “Titus Kelso, the best part of you dripped down your mother’s leg.”

“What did you say?” Fury is hot and thick in his throat.

“You are a coward, Titus,” I say, as even and cool as I am able. “It runs in the Kelsos, cowardice and low behaviour. Your father was the same. But you go him one better, boy. You are a devious, puke-eating dog. You’re some desperado, Titus. So far you’ve murdered a pig, a little girl, an old man, and a Negro you couldn’t face up to, but shot in the back.”

Slippery, bloated, Titus floats towards me in a pond of wavy light. “We’ll see what I can do,” he says, and slaps my face so hard he near twists me off my seat. I hear him right over me, panting.

“Why you got your eyes closed, Straw? You praying? Is that it? Asking Jesus to spare you?”

I’ve shut my eyes against the shifting shapes, the hard pokes of light. I open them and there Titus is, swaying before me. From a far
place, I hear my voice. “I thought I was finished with this,” it says, taking me by surprise even as I cock the twelve gauge.

“Finished with this? Not by a long shot, Straw. We just got started.”

I lift the barrel of the sawed-off under my duster and touch the muzzle to his thigh. Titus jerks with the explosion; fingers rake my neck, tearing at me, trying to break his sudden plunge to the dirt floor. I stagger up, kicking at the arms clutching at my legs, ripping open the duster, directing the barrel to the shadow bobbling in the back of the dugout. “Throw down! Throw down, Joel! Goddamn it, throw down or I’ll give you the other barrel!” Something breaks off his silhouette, hits the dirt floor with a thump. He’s dropped the carbine. I wave him towards Lucy. “Unbind her! Now! Do it, Joel!”

I feel heat on my leg, glance down to see little flames licking the shredded cloth of my duster that the muzzle flash of my shotgun has set alight. I shrug off the coat, let it drop.

Behind me, Titus starts to shriek. I’ve heard that sound many times before. The noise a man makes when he clutches bone splinters, mangled flesh. A man doing his best to stem the tide of life running out of him, trying to hold back the loss of two pints of blood a minute, push it back into himself with red, soaked hands. The sight of his wrecked flesh making him scream as much as the pain.

A bleary shape springs at me. “Custis?” Lucy Stoveall says. “Custis, you all right?”

It rises up in me now, rage at her recklessness, and what it brought me to do. Joel is croaking away at his brother from the back of the dugout. “Hold on, Titus. You’ll be fine. Just hold on.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve put Titus beyond earthly help. So I take it out on Joel, holler I don’t want to hear another goddamn word from his mouth. He tries to oblige, resorts to little moans and whimpers.

“Collect Joel’s gun,” I tell Lucy. “Collect the horses. Dooley’s waiting down below. Tell him everything’s fine. Tell him I’ll be out directly.”

“I don’t take a step until I see Titus Kelso gone from this earth,” she says fiercely.

“He’s one breath short of dead. Listen.”

Lucy Stoveall turns to look at the wounded man, but I refuse to, keep my back to him. Kelso’s stopped screaming. A soft muttering crawls over the floor behind me. “This ain’t right. This can’t be right. What is this? What’s all this? How’d this happen? This can’t be right.”

“It’s right,” Lucy tells him.

I feel her leave my side, go to collect Joel’s carbine. Titus breaks off muttering and there’s nothing but the sound of his laboured breathing, short gasps sawing away at the threads of his life. I don’t have to look to know that that buckshot blast took the most of his leg away.

Lucy Stoveall’s blurred face swings into view, hovers white and wan. “The other one too,” she says. “Both of them dead.”

I don’t respond. My thoughts are scattering on me. I want silence. I want time to remember if I ever saw that belt on Titus Kelso.

“Straw, they killed my sister,” she whispers.

Titus Kelso’s last breath leaves his lungs, a harsh sigh.

“It’s over,” I tell her. “Take yourself out of here, woman. You don’t need to see what’s left to do.”

For a moment, Lucy Stoveall hesitates, but then I hear footsteps moving to the entrance of the dugout and the horses nickering a welcome.

I beckon Joel forward. He scrapes his boots across the dirt floor towards me. “Did you have any hand in what happened to Madge Dray?”

He shakes his head violently, it flashes back and forth in my troubled vision.

“Madge Dray was strangled with a belt. Titus ever own a black belt, three brass studs on its tongue?”

“No, sir.”

“That came out too quick, Joel. That’s how a goddamn liar answers. I’m going to ask you again. Think hard. If you lie, I’ll send you after Titus. Did your brother ever own a black belt with brass studs?”

There comes a long pause, then a frightened voice. “Yes,” he says.

“All right, son. Get on your belly.” He’s blubbering now, wheezy, flabby sobs. I realize he must be lying face to face with his brother’s corpse on the floor. “Joel? Joel? I’m going to back out of here now. When I get to the door, I’m going to let off a barrel. Lucy Stoveall hears a shot, she’ll believe I did what she asked. Killed you. But if you show yourself before we’re gone – I can’t answer for your life. You understand?” He doesn’t reply. “Don’t think of returning to Fort Benton. You keep clear of us. Understand?”

I start stepping backward, one heel following another. My boot skids in a puddle of Titus’s blood and I almost go down. I keep edging away. The light changes, grows bigger and more hurtful in my head, telling me I’m near the entrance.

All at once, Joel starts to shout. “I lied! I lied! Tite never had no such belt! You wanted me to lie, so I lied, Straw! You murdering bastard!”

I lift the sawed-off, point it into the blackness, pull the trigger, because Lucy Stoveall is waiting for that sound down in the trees, at the bottom of the hill.

LUCY
Sometimes I feel trouble hangs to my skirts. That I’m a Jonah. By the time we got back to our camp, Straw was all in a sweat, reeling about, hardly able to hold his seat in the saddle. Dooley laid no accusation at my door, but I could see it in his face that somehow he believed what had happened to his friend was my doing. When Dooley and Chisholm took Straw off on that travois, so parlous sick, to get him aid in Fort Benton, it was a sorrow to me to think how I never gave Custis Straw his due, or showed him gratefulness, and now he’s broken and laid so low.

Charles said it was outside a woman’s character to do as I did. I believe it scared him, thinking I was one thing when I was another. He read me a sermon. I took it without answering back because I saw how afraid for me he had been. I held my tongue when he said, “Even grief has its bounds, Lucy.” But my grief delivered the Kelsos into righteous hands. Custis Straw broke them apart like mealy, weeviled biscuits. They’re dust and crumbs now. I ought to kiss Straw’s hands for it.