A Congregation of Jackals (13 page)

“They do not appear to be very happy.”

“They’re probably tired. They came across the whole country to get here.” Jim’s quick response made Beatrice uncomfortable. He was answering a question to which he did not know the answer, which was contrary to his normal way of simply waiting to learn the truth. He was agitated, for certain.

“Why are they each wearing two guns?”

Jim’s eyes did not leave the approaching trio when he responded, “They don’t know what to expect out here in the West.”

“One gun per person is usually enough for a wedding.”

Jim did not laugh. He stood up from the table and glanced at her, though she could tell that he did not at all see her, so distant were his thoughts.

“Let me introduce you to the fellas.”

She stood up, put her arm through his, walked alongside him up the hall, traversed the porch, descended the steps and walked on the grass toward the visitors, using three strides to match his two. To Beatrice, Jim’s past was a remote and diaphanous thing, something in which he ostensibly had no current interest. She knew that his father and brothers were mean (not one had accepted or even replied to the wedding invitations she sent out, which said plenty), and that he had been a pugilist and a cowboy and afterward had spent a lot of years alone with dogs before he finally came to Trailspur. That was almost all of the history he had shared; it seemed largely unpleasant and she had not attempted to prise more from his lips (despite her natural curiosity). These three men were the only people from his former life that she had ever even seen.

Jim raised his right hand in salutation. The strong one waved back. The heavy one nodded. The handsome one looked at her in a way that was not entirely appropriate.

“Welcome to Trailspur,” Jim said.

“Thank you,” the handsome one said. The others nodded.

“I’d like to introduce you to my fiancée. This is Beatrice. Beatrice, that’s Oswell, his brother Godfrey, and that one is Dicky,” he said, pointing as he spoke. “These are the fellows I rode beeves with.”

Oswell shook her hand; Godfrey shook her hand; Dicky, holding two suitcases, bowed his head.

“Let’s get it inside,” Oswell said to Jim. There was something behind those words she did not like.

“That’s a good idea,” her titan replied.

“Pardon me ma’am,” Dicky said. Beatrice looked at him. “How many people are waiting for us inside that house?”

Beatrice was confused by the question.

“Nobody is inside,” she said.

“You are positive?” Dicky asked, a pleasant grin on his face. She nodded that she was.

“Ain’t nobody in there,” Jim said brusquely.

Dicky eyed the house momentarily, looked back to Jim and said, “Lingham. Would you please carry this bag? My right hand would appreciate some freedom.”

Jim took a suitcase from Dicky; the Easterner stretched his finely manicured fingers and then rested the meat of his palm upon the revolver handle jutting from his right hip; the gesture alarmed Beatrice.

“Do not worry, my dear. My hand just likes sitting there.”

“You must be exhausted from your journey. Please, follow me inside,” Beatrice said, and turned toward the house. She led the four men up the three steps, across the porch and through the slatted door into the front hallway. Dicky continued past her and examined the main living area; he turned back and exchanged a look with the brothers that was too fast to interpret.

“Where should we set our stuff down?” Oswell asked Beatrice.

Did they intend to stay here through the wedding? she wondered with some apprehension. Had Jim not told them that guests in from far-off places were recommended to Halcyon Hotel? She considered herself a hospitable woman, but she would not abide these men
in her home on her wedding night—that time belonged to her and Jim alone.

“You should place your luggage over there,” she said, pointing beside the sofa and puzzling at the situation.

Before she could ask for the visitors’ itinerary, Jim turned to her and said, “I’m gonna show ’em the property. Could you fix up something to eat?”

“Would you gentlemen like steaks with onions, biscuits and some sugar parsnips?”

“I certainly would,” Godfrey said.

“Don’t trouble yourself overly, ma’am. I know from experience how hectic it gets before a wedding—especially for the bride,” Oswell said deferentially.

It was not at all surprising to Beatrice that the most polite one was married, though he did not wear a ring for some reason.

She said, “Why did your wife not accompany you?”

There was a momentary hesitation before he said, “She doesn’t sit trains very well. And we got kids too.”

Beatrice nodded, accepting—if not fully believing—his excuse.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” Jim said; he leaned over and kissed her.

“That’s fine.”

The men turned away from her and filed out of the house, oddly silent and joyless, for reunited friends. Their eight boots made the wood creak like old trees in a heavy wind.

Jim closed the slatted door and from outside said, “Throw the bolt, Bea.”

Lingham had done very well for himself by catching that sharp, pretty woman, Dicky thought as the Tall Boxer Gang descended three steps from the porch onto the grass. She was at least fifteen years his junior (her hair and face still retained the gloss of youth), and she was obviously a lot smarter than Jim, but likely his quiet ways and life experience evened out that discrepancy to some extent.

Oswell said, “She’s pretty. And nice.”

“I got lucky,” the tall man said and then pointed to the side of the house; the quartet moved in that direction in silence. Two brindled dogs came running out of the woods, their snouts and paws so dirty they looked covered in fudge.

“Jesus! Joseph! What filth you been diggin’ in?”

“Did you actually name them Jesus and Joseph?” Dicky asked.

“I did.”

“How does the Lord feel about that honor?”

“I say those names with love in my heart every single day. I think He appreciates it.”

“Any of the neighbors have a Judas? Watch out for that one.”

“Shut up,” Oswell barked.

They continued around the house and deeper into the property; the dogs trotted obediently beside Lingham.

Godfrey remarked, “They look like coyotes.”

“They’re coydogs. Half coyote and half dog. Their mothers are coyotes. If it’s the other way around, where the dog is the mother, they call ’em dogotes.”

“You are making this up,” Dicky said.

Godfrey scratched Jesus on the top of its head and the coydog rolled out its long pink tongue. Lingham looked at his house, which was now more than fifty yards away, and reached into the back left pocket of his denims. He withdrew a folded note and handed it to Oswell.

The rancher unfolded the paper as he walked, read its contents and handed it to Dicky. The New Yorker read the handwritten script.

I’m coming to your wedding. I will be settling accounts with you and those you rode with, and will take innocent lives if they are not present or if you cancel the ceremony. I will see you all in church on 12 August
.

Quinlan

Dicky felt a chill prickle his nape; he handed the paper to Godfrey.

Oswell asked, “When did you get that note?”

“Three weeks ago. I reached into my pocket one night and it was there. I can’t figure how he tracked me down—he never knew our full names or anything.”

“He probably figured out that we were the Tall Boxer Gang, even though we never told him,” Godfrey theorized. “So he knew that your name was James and that at one time you were a pugilist. Some towns keep records on matches—he might’ve gotten it from those.”

“But how did he find me up here?”

“How many wedding invitations and announcements did you send out?” Dicky asked.

“Near two hundred.”

The New Yorker bit back the insult that came to his lips.

Godfrey nodded and said, “People like to talk about weddings, so figure each person who was invited told another ten or twenty folks. In a short while, two or three thousand people all across the country knew your name and where you lived. Quinlan probably had a reward out for information on you and eventually someone who heard about the wedding collected that reward.”

Lingham did not say anything for several strides; he just looked at his feet and his coydogs.

Quietly, he admitted, “I thought he was dead. I wasn’t thinkin’ about him and . . . and back then no more. I got a woman who—” Lingham’s voice cracked and he stopped. His big hands and his lower lip trembled; his wan eyes coruscated in the late day sun.

Oswell walked over to Lingham, put his left hand on the big man’s back and patted him a couple of times as if he were a huge child with something caught in his throat. Dicky and Godfrey paused, surveying the landscape.

“I thought he was dead,” Lingham repeated.

“We all did,” Oswell replied.

“We all hoped,” Dicky corrected.

“Doesn’t really matter much how it happened,” Oswell said. “He’s comin’ and we know why.” They resumed walking away from the house, toward the woods. “Any other things happen since then we should know about?”

“One of my coydogs—Mary—was taken and . . . she was carved up. Three of her legs were amputated, done
like in surgery so she’d survive, and then she got dumped on my property with just the one leg kicking out, howling in agony. Had to put her down.”

Dicky felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders tighten; the violence was no longer a distant thing.

“Beatrice’s father ran some small Frenchman out of town the next mornin’—the fella was drawing nasty things and treated his horse badly. Her father thinks the little guy cut up Mary for certain.”

“Probably works for Quinlan,” Godfrey said.

Dicky asked, “Who is Beatrice’s father?”

“He’s the sheriff.”

Dicky and Godfrey exchanged another look of concern; the New Yorker said, “And I thought naming the dog Jesus was a foolhardy move.”

“I’ve been a good Christian for a long time now.”

“A long time is not the same as always.”

The four men reached the coppice and entered it, walking upon a trail that wound between cottonwoods and maples.

Dicky watched medallions of golden sunlight flit across hats and shoulders and asked, “Where are you taking us?”

“A place I like to go when I want to be alone and think.”

“I got one of those at my ranch, in a dell nearby,” Oswell remarked.

Surrounded by thick trees that obfuscated the open plains of Montana, Dicky felt safer as well . . . as if the branches and leaves would contain their words from the listening winds and the watching sky.

“I don’t at all know what to do,” Lingham said as shadows slid across his face.

Godfrey asked, “How much does your woman know?”

“She doesn’t.”

“What kind of sheriff is her pa?”

“He’s solid. Keeps things orderly and knows when to draw. He’s put down a few in his life.”

“Have you considered bringing him and his men in on this?” Dicky and Oswell looked back at Godfrey as if he had just announced that he were, in fact, a woman.

The plump man raised his hands defensively and explained, “I’m not suggesting that Lingham tell the sheriff anything he doesn’t need to know. He tells him he got a threatening letter from some fellow from his past who’s got a black grudge against him. Dicky could scribble something good and convincing, I’m sure. Then we’d have the law on our side.”

“I think that’s a very likely way to get this sheriff and some deputies killed,” Oswell said. “We’re not involving any innocent people in this—it’s our fight. It’s what we wrought. We take care of it ourselves.”

Lingham said, “We can’t go to T.W. If he figured out who we were, he wouldn’t hesitate to throw us in jail—maybe even hang us. He ain’t the kind to make exceptions.” In a quieter, embarrassed voice he added, “And he knows I used to box. I didn’t think to hide that from him before.”

“We’re not involving the law,” Dicky said, knowing that would forever close the topic of going to the law or involving others.

Lingham asked, “You think he’ll make a play for us before the wedding? Quinlan?”

Oswell answered, “We should be ready for it, but no, I don’t think so. He wants to do this publicly, a showdown at the ceremony. And Quinlan don’t like to deviate from his plans.”

“So we’re gonna have a gunfight at my wedding? With innocent folks in the middle?”

“We’ve got to get prepared so it doesn’t happen like that,” Oswell said.

Lingham asked, “How can we do that?”

“Let’s visit your church and size it up.”

The four men reached a small creek, the water of which was as clear as glass; two iridescent fish glided by, seemingly suspended in midair. Beside the creek were flat stones covered with lichens; Lingham sat upon one, interlaced his fingers behind his head and leaned back until he was horizontal. Oswell stretched out on the rock beside him. Godfrey knelt beside the water, cupped his hands and drew some to his mouth to drink. Dicky leaned against a tree.

“You think he’s gonna get us?” Lingham asked. Nobody responded to the question; the few bugs in the area departed on buzzing wings. Two birds cawed in the distance.

“You have crows out here,” Godfrey remarked.

“They’re usually quiet.”

“We’ve got to find you a new wife. Or at least, someone else’s daughter you can borrow,” Deputy Goodstead said to T.W. as he coaxed him up the moonlit avenue toward Judge Higgins’s Mighty Fine Saloon, or simply—The Gavel.

“She’s not even married off yet.”

“Two days. That’s not a lot of time to find a lady who can make two-color eggs.”

“Beatrice spent a lot of time away studying, and I was perfectly capable of cooking for myself. Scrambled eggs are fine by me.”

“You got a deputy to think about.”

The two men strode up the street toward the raised edifice that was the Gavel, from which emanated yipping, whistling and a chipper piano melody detuned into something more somber by the intervening wind. Goodstead straightened the yellow kerchief around his neck and clapped his hands to T.W.’s shoulders to scare off the dust that had settled upon the older man’s beige jacket.