The Mercy Seat (64 page)

It was only then, as if the spell had been suddenly broken, that Dayberry could blink his eyes clear enough to realize that the taller of John Lodi's two daughters, the pretty one with the pale face and the piled-up mass of dark hair and the many petticoats, was twisting around silently in the dim light of the stable, grimacing as she tried to peel her sister's bony hand off where it was clamped over her shoulder.

“Well,” Mitchelltree said, and dipped his high-domed forehead once, running his great blunt fingers around the pale brim of his hat. He had not yet looked up at the two daughters; his eyes were on the barn floor. At last the deputy nodded again, seemed to be thinking. “That sounds reasonable,” he said. (And J. G. Dayberry, thinking, See, now, that's what I been saying, what I been saying, grunted softly and nodded his head, and behind him the row of men and boys, who had crept close enough while the livery owner was distracted to hear this last part, also grunted and nodded, and the boy Thomas in imitation of the onlookers also grunted and nodded, and none of the witnesses present, with the possible exception of the Choctaw sheriff, disbelieved for the moment this implausible, nearly impossible explanation.)

“Mm-huh,” the deputy said, and unfolded himself from where he'd been squatting; he rose to his full six-foot height with a sort of languid uncoiling motion, shook his corduroy pantslegs back down over his boot tops, replaced the Stetson on his head. “Well, you know I have to carry you to the federal jail at McAlester. I guess in a month or two they'll hold the preliminary, see if the judge believe there's enough evidence a crime been committed to bind you over for the grand jury.” The pepperbox still lay on the stable floor in front of his feet. Mitchelltree glanced at it. “Probably they going to find they got enough evidence,” he said. He raised his eyes, glanced at the two daughters, let his gaze slide past them as smoothly as if he did not see the elder's hand clamped upon the younger in gritted silence, past the big blond boy in the felt hat, and on around to Tecumseh Moore, who stood looking at the row of men and boys blackening the stable door.

Mitchelltree followed the sheriff 's gaze. He spoke again, his eyes on the bunch of onlookers, though he did not appear to be speaking to them. It was hard to tell, really, just who he was speaking to when he said, “I got two little problems here. One, I got to be in court at Fort Smith tomorrow, one o'clock. Two, I don't intend to leave here till I find out what become of that gun.” He paused just an instant. “If there was another gun.” He gazed casually at the onlookers, who shuffled and gazed back, and there followed then the long wait-time that was such a part of the deputy's habit, which pause gave opportunity for the elder daughter to slip her hand from the younger girl's shoulder, and the two stood then in the lengthening silence with the older one's arm around the waist of the other, her mouth moving imperceptibly against her sister's ear. The boy stood beside them, waiting as the others waited. Still the deputy did not look at the youngsters but kept his eyes nonchalantly and carefully trained on the men outside the door. He went on after a while, saying, “You got any farewelling to do, you best go on and do it. Need to eat or use the privy or anything, you go on now. We likely to be traveling a long while after dark.”

His eyes were so focused on the men in the doorway that it took even Tecumseh Moore an instant to realize the deputy marshal was speaking to Lodi. Mitchelltree said, “Get your horse saddled, do what you got to do, meet me out front soon as you get ready. We might get as far as Poteau this evening if we start pretty quick,” and he reached down to scoop the pepperbox into his fist. It wasn't until then that everyone, John Lodi and his daughters and the little livery owner included, understood what the deputy meant. He aimed to take John Lodi with him to Fort Smith.

Dayberry said, “He ain't got a horse.”

Mitchelltree said, “Reckon you'll have to give him one, won't you?” and walked directly into and parted the little crowd in the doorway, striding out into the reddening light.

The divided, grumbling men turned and fumbled like newly hatched ducklings into a line behind him as the deputy strode rapidly along the street, back toward where the larger crowd still milled about the corpse, and he scattered that bunch as well as he knelt once again beside the body. He was, to all appearances, oblivious to the covert glares and low, murderous mumbles that followed him. For twenty-five years there'd been only one place on the continent where a black man could arrest a white man—could, in fact, kill a white man if necessary—without causing a riot or a lynching, and that place was Indian Territory. But such conditions were rapidly changing. From his first days on the bench, Judge Parker had recommended Negroes, particularly Indian freedmen, for appointments as deputy U.S. marshals because of their known reliability and bravery, because they often spoke native language, because of the fact that Creeks and Seminoles trusted a black man about a thousand times sooner than a white man and would therefore be less likely to resist, defy, or shoot him outright the minute they saw him trying to arrest one of their people. Even now, as Parker's court was being stripped of all authority, there were still more than a dozen Negro deputy U.S. marshals under appointment in I.T., but Burden Mitchelltree had never achieved the harmony and grudging respect that Grant Foreman, Bass Reeves, Poorboy Fortune, some of the other black deputy marshals held within the swelling white population. And it was precisely because of this abruptness in his actions following those long, calm silences, which the white settlers thought of as highhandedness (or, more commonly among those who'd migrated from the Deep South, as many of the whites in the Choctaw Nation had, uppitiness), combined with that barely detectable tremor of irony or contempt in his voice, that the rumors and glares and little grumbles of resentment followed him almost anywhere he went. Now, as he knelt on the street in the riotous dying light, several of the white townsmen slid sidelong glances at one another, or mumbled beneath their breaths and spat. But Burd Mitchelltree paid them not the least attention as he rolled the stiffening body onto its side to examine it from the back.

He had to lay the pepperbox down in the street in order to use both hands, and as he lifted, the pennies slid off Fayette's eyelids and plunked softly in the dust. Unseen by the deputy, the blue eyes slid partially open, and the townsmen standing nearest stirred uneasily, looked away from that empty gaze. Fayette's head flopped sideways as if it could be wrenched from the trunk by no more than a light twist of the wrist, and Mitchelltree had to hold the skull up by the matted hair to keep the neck wound from gaping further. He grasped the left shoulder from beneath by one hand, hoisted the skull in the other as he scanned the wound; the deputy quickly saw what he looked for, was confirmed in what he'd suspected the minute he'd made that first swift appraisal of the body: the bullet that had made the neck wound was high caliber, high powered, and had come from behind.

Or he thought so.

It seemed so.

But then, the ragged wound was tremendous, blood-covered, the flesh shredded and pulped mulberry where the blood had gushed from the pulverized artery. The shot could nearly as well have come from the front, or even, almost inconceivably, but not impossibly, from below. There was of course the option of hauling the body to Woolerton to be examined by Doc Boot for an opinion on the source's direction, but that would have to wait until day after tomorrow, and by then the decomposition and smell would have set in. And then, too, there was the obvious choice to scout the area for the exploded cartridge, because clearly no .45 or .54 caliber cartridge was lodged in that gaping ragged mass of shredded flesh. But then Mitchelltree's same dilemma of having to be two or three places at once: here, Woolerton, McAlester, Fort Smith—which was the consequence of the damn Congress and its incessant meddling in the jurisdiction and affairs of the Indian Nations—added its reckoning to his calculations. His casual, unruffled demeanor unchanged, Mitchelltree examined the neck wound without touching or probing, for even the hoisting of the body had made new pools of half-congealed blood ooze to the surface. But the old calculating thought process was firmly in place, and the deputy marshal weighed the evidence as he saw it in those few moments, giving credibility to one possibility, then another, trying to make up his mind what he thought.

On the surface, Burden Mitchelltree kept always the calm, deliberate appearance that so infuriated some white men, drew respect from others, but in his mind he'd never changed from the essentially cautious, shrewdly calculating gambler he'd always been. It was only when he'd weighed his possibilities a dozen times and reached an ambivalent but final conclusion that he would burst forth with those abrupt, decisive gestures that some found galling. Just now, though, he was immersed in the weighing process, and he held himself still as a sunning lizard, eyes slitted, pondering, while the townspeople edged closer, trying to see what the deputy marshal was seeing in the exploded throat. The town's secret mind knew that if the deputy was examining from the back, it was because he thought Fate Lodi had been shot from behind. With the same ease with which it had been persuaded by John Lodi's implausible explanation, the town was now convinced that the dead man in the street had been shot in the back—and this without a word from the deputy, not even so much as a musing grunt. Craning, elbowing one another for position, they watched over Mitchelltree's shoulder. None saw the small, neat hole in the back of Fayette's skull, hidden as it was in the waste of blood and matted hair cradled in the deputy's big hand; none, including the deputy, even entertained the possibility that there was a third wound, regardless of how many conflicting stories were already circulating about how many gunshots had been heard. The two apparent ones had been so clearly sufficient for the work.

Lost in his unhurried deliberation, his narrowed eyes drawn by a flicker of movement, Mitchelltree glanced up to see the three young people emerge from the stable, the taller girl and hulking boy now on either side of the wiry figure in boy's britches, their arms wrapped around each other as if to form a shield. They did not approach further but stood just outside the doorway. Watching them, watching in particular the small wiry one in the middle, whose yellow eyes glared at him now as they had in the sun's dying flare on the ridge nine years before, Mitchelltree understood in a moment's revelation why the younger girl had twisted around beneath the bone clamps of the elder's fingers: if not for the dominance of her sister, the younger one would tell what she knew. The deputy recognized immediately the one he would have to cut out from the herd. But not here, not in the presence of the father, or the sister.

Abruptly Mitchelltree made his decision, though he'd have to keep the man in custody until he could find an opportunity to speak to the girl. The deputy would have risen immediately and followed through with his habitual, unapologetic haste, if he'd not been holding the dead man's head in his hands. With great gentleness, he eased the corpse back down, rubbed his bloodied palms against the dust of the street, clapped away the dirt. In one smooth decisive sweep then, Mitchelltree stood, scooped up the pepperbox, strode the few steps to his sorrel, untied the leather thong from the saddlebag, and placed the gun inside. He turned toward the stable just as the livery owner came out leading a pitiful-looking broken-down old white mare, saddled and bridled, with John Lodi following behind. Behind them came the Choctaw sheriff, smiling a wry smile that hardly touched his lips but made his obsidian eyes glint brightly in the ruddy light. They came on along the street, Dayberry scowling as he led the old mare, Lodi with his hat and a cotton jacket on, his face expressionless, and the half-grinning sheriff, followed at a slow distance by the three young people still linked arm in arm. Before they'd covered the fifty rods or so, the grin broke through on the sheriff 's face, and then as quickly disappeared.

“What time you say you got to be at Fort Smith tomorrow?” Moore asked when they'd drawn near enough that he did not have to shout. His tone was gravely serious, but the wryness still crinkled about the eyes. “Looks like you going to be riding about all night.”

“What is this?” Mitchelltree said, and for one of the few times in his life, his smooth, decisive action petered away into an indecisive, flailing halt. He eyed the white mare.

“This,” the livery owner answered, “is Vergie.”

“And what, you don't mind if I ask, you got a saddle on that piece of pitifulness for?”

“You told me to give him a horse. All right, I give him one.”

“That ain't a horse, that's a piece of dog meat or something. Give the man something he can ride or—” Mitchelltree suddenly turned to the crowd. “Anybody got a horse they care to rent and can get saddled quick? I ain't got time to mess with this fool.”

“He can ride that horse,” Dayberry said. “She's done saved his life once this day, I reckon she can take him to meet his Maker.”

Mitchelltree, unwilling to waste time and breath explaining he was taking John Lodi to Fort Smith not to stand trial but simply to keep him in custody till he could get him to McAlester, ignored the livery owner. He glanced at the blue roan in front of the mercantile, saw instantly that the animal was too ill-used to set out on a fifty-mile journey, and turned back to Moore, ready to make a deal with him. But the bright crinkling about the Choctaw man's eyes, coupled with that too-serious expression, made him unwilling to ask the sheriff anything, and the frustrated deputy turned to face the crowd again. But the livery owner went on in his reedy voice, unstoppable:

“You ast anybody in this town what happened ten o'clock this morning! Ast anybody. That durn Fate Lodi come in here on that blue pony armed to the teeth and soused to the gills. He stood right in the street yonder and gobbled like a turkey. What do you think he had his mind on, a nice little play party? He come down here to shoot his brother, and everybody in this town knows it—I don't know why they got their durn tongues gummed to the roof of their mouth.” His eyes raked the little crowd of townsmen, turned, glaring, to the deputy again. “I had to come out here and use this poor old mare for a shield to see if I couldn't talk some sense into him, which you can bet I could not. She served that purpose good enough, I reckon she can take a man to his hanging, if you so all-fired sure you got to take him—because I never seen a man yet go to Hanging Judge Parker's court and come home to talk about it—so if you ain't going to listen to me when I tell you and tell you Fate Lodi was aiming to kill him, been looking to kill him the whole durn day, which I might's well be talking to a pinestump, then you just go on and take him to Fort Smith then, but you needn't get in such a damn hurry to get him there. Vergie'll get him there plenty quick enough to suit me.” And the livery owner reached up and stroked the scraggly yellowed mane while he glared at the deputy, his chin lifted, blue eyes blazing, their brief moment of shared integrity, for Jim Dayberry's part, now entirely a thing of the past.