Dorothy Garlock (7 page)

Then, one morning, while walking down the town boardwalk, after a long night working at the saloon, she was bumped into by an older man. Before he could even offer a word of apology, she’d shouted, “Goddamn stupid bastard! Why don’t you watch where in hell you’re goin’!” A moment later, she realized that she’d insulted the eighty-year-old pastor of the only church in town.

Soon after, Pearl Parsons had found herself the talk of the town. Wives told their husbands not to frequent the bar in which she worked in order to avoid any further scandal. She knew that it was only a matter of time before the bar’s owner asked her to leave.

Like Hallie, she had become a pariah, although of a different type.

Hallie stole another quick glance at her friend and couldn’t help but smile. In all the time they had known each other, she had seen nothing in Pearl that resembled what caused the whispers and stares back in Whiskey Bend. To Hallie, she was a warm, passionate woman who put her friendships before all else. She was outgoing, vivacious, colorful, and loyal to a fault—although, Hallie had to admit, she could swear as colorfully as any man.

Now whatever we face, we will face it together.

“How’s Mary doing?” Pearl asked.

Hallie looked into the back of the rocking wagon. There, nestled among the meager belongings they managed to throw together, Mary Sinclair slept fitfully. In the two days since they’d left the decrepit cabin she shared with Chester, Mary had done little
but
sleep and sob. Whenever they stopped, mostly to rest the horses and to get whatever respite they could manage, Hallie nearly had to force Mary to drink. Even now, her pale cheeks were stained with tears. Hallie and Pearl began to fear that she would waste away before their very eyes.

“I don’t know if she’s ever going to get better,” Hallie said and sighed.

“She will once she’s spent some time away from Chester,” Pearl assured her.

In Hallie’s mind, the image of Pearl shooting the man, the bullet exploding into his leg and his yelps of pain and threats following them until they were out of earshot, suddenly flashed. She’d known a few mean men in her life, but Chester Remnick might very well be the worst.

“Do you reckon that he intended Mary to be his wife?”

“Men like Chester are a dime a dozen,” Pearl spat. “They don’t give a good goddamn where they put their pecker! It wouldn’t have made any difference to him if she was his stepsister or his half sister. It wouldn’t have mattered if she were willing or not, because
she
didn’t matter.”

“I just can’t believe it.”

“What you don’t want to believe is what that bastard did to that poor girl,” Pearl snarled. “Damn! The more I think about it, I shoulda just gone ahead and killed him.”

While Hallie couldn’t bring herself to agree with Pearl’s wish that she’d killed Chester, she knew her friend was right about one thing; it was hard for her to imagine what Mary had been through. Each of them had her own cross to bear; maybe Mary’s was the heaviest of all.

“Where will we go now?” Hallie asked, her voice weak with worry.

“We’ll go wherever this road will take us.”

“But how will we know? How will we ever be able to—”

“We’ll manage,” Pearl insisted, taking the younger woman’s hand in her own. “All that matters is that we’ve left Whiskey Bend. When we get somewhere else, when we find a place to settle, we’ll just
know
that it’s the right place for us. Then we’ll do our best to carry on and start over. Besides, not a one of us will be alone.”

“You’re right.” Hallie nodded and she knew it to be true in her heart.

“Damn right, I am.”

As they moved further down the road, a slight breeze rustled the thick green leaves on the trees and parted the high grass like waves roiling the ocean. Hallie sighed. Even though she felt comforted by having Pearl beside her, she knew that she wasn’t as strong as the older woman. She couldn’t do what Pearl had done many times before; she couldn’t just let it go.

Turning slowly, she looked over her shoulder, giving one last look back.

Hallie woke from a fitful dream, her hand clutching her chest. In her nightmare, there was Chester, spittle forming on his lip as he cursed them, a smoking rifle barrel, and then dark crimson blood. Even as she fought to catch her breath, she swore that she could still smell the copper tang of Chester’s wound.

Will I ever get a good night’s sleep again?

Looking to the sky, she took in the blanket of stars that covered her. Nestled among them was a quarter-full moon. To the east, there was a dab of light on the horizon; it would soon be daylight. Hallie was tired and uncomfortable. Even in the midst of a hot summer, nights like this were cold. She shivered, rubbing her hands along her arms, trying to stimulate some warmth.

Suddenly, a stick cracked behind her.

Hallie turned to the sound, frantically searching the darkness for some sign of what had caused her heart to hammer like a rabbit’s. In the predawn light, she could make out only some of her surroundings; Pearl lay on the ground next to her, both of their backs to the wagon in which Mary lay. Her first thought was that the noise was caused by the horses, but they were tied to a copse of trees in front of her; the sound had come from the opposite direction.

Has Chester caught up to us?

Everything they did since leaving Whiskey Bend was calculated to keep them safe. Even now, they had stopped only because she and Pearl were exhausted, unable to keep their eyes open for a minute longer. Fearful that they were being followed, they’d even forgone a fire, choosing instead to settle and eat cold food by the natural light of the night.

“Stay calm, Hallie,” she whispered to herself.

Even though her hands were shaking, she found that she couldn’t sit still and simply wait for whatever was out there to find her. She thought of waking Pearl, of facing this unseen menace together, but found she could not; whatever was out there she would deal with if she could
.
Her breath caught in her throat, but she rose to her feet on quaking legs.

Another stick snapped, followed by shuffling sounds.

With utter certainty, Hallie knew that they were not alone. In the sliver of light that the moon gave, she scanned the ground for something, anything that she could use as a weapon. Finally, her eyes lit upon a thick stick that she snatched up greedily, its bark rough against her hand.

It’s up to you now, Hallie. You have to be brave! You have to be strong!
Gasping raggedly through clenched teeth, she took her first step toward the sound.

Rounding the wagon, she peered into the gloom. They’d stopped for the night in a small clearing; little bushes dotted the ground, their tiny leaves ghostly in the moonlight. Hallie stopped as she heard the rustling of branches and another footstep. She wanted to cry out, to ask who was out in the darkness, but fear had trapped her voice in her throat.

Then, suddenly, all was revealed.

Standing between two bushes not ten feet away, a young coyote regarded Hallie warily. It remained stock-still as it stared, its small ears straight up and alert. In what little light there was, the animal’s eyes glowed mischievously. Somewhere over the coyote’s shoulder, she saw even more movement and knew that this hunter was not alone.

“Go on! Get out of here!” she called, but the coyote stood its ground.

It wasn’t until she took a menacing step forward, brandishing the stick as if she intended to use it, that the animal skittered away. Still, it only moved a bit farther out of range before stopping and staring again. It was far less afraid of her than she was of it.

Hallie knew that these coyotes weren’t a real danger, but what they represented filled her with dread. They were the unknown, the unseen that lurked just beyond her vision. They were much like Chester himself; they were predators in search of prey and they would follow that prey until they seized it with their sharp teeth. She and Pearl and Mary would never be able to stop watching, would never be able to stop worrying about the next creature to fall upon them out of the darkness.

As the sun began to color the horizon, Hallie allowed herself to cry.

Chapter Six

“G
ODDAMNIT
, D
OC
! T
HAT
bullet hurts like hell!”

The words tumbled from his mouth, and Chester Remnick winced as a thunderclap of pain rumbled its way across his head. Lights danced before his eyes and he felt dizzy; if he hadn’t already been sitting, he might have fallen. To ease his discomfort, he did the only thing that felt right and brought the half-empty bottle of whiskey back to his lips and drew hungrily from its neck.

As the booze burned its way down his throat, Chester looked around the tiny space. The doctor’s office in Whiskey Bend was nothing more than an attic room above the mercantile. The small cot upon which he lay was stuffed into one corner, vying for space with the room’s other bits of furniture: a cracked bureau, a wobbly nightstand, and a rickety chair. A cabinet with bandages and medical equipment stood against the opposite wall. It wasn’t much of a doctor’s office, but it would have to do; too much depended on his surviving for him to die in such a filthy place.

“The bitches!” Chester hissed under his breath.

A little more than a day had passed since his very life had been torn asunder, and Chester still struggled to contain the fury that roiled through his body and mind. Still, there was a part of him that
didn’t
struggle, that embraced the anger; after all, it was the anger that had kept him alive.

As he had watched Mary stagger off in the company of those two whores, the fury that raged in his gut made the gunshot wound in his leg little more than an annoyance. He kept his tear- and sweat-streaked gaze locked on the three women for as long as he could, certain that Mary, who was
rightfully
his, would come to her senses and return to him, where she belonged. He diligently watched for hours, but she didn’t return.

Through grunts and curses, he managed to crawl his way back to the dark interior of the cabin and set about cleaning the wound. Where the bullet had penetrated the skin, the hole was small but tender to the touch. Blood had steadily seeped out, coloring his trouser leg a deep and ugly crimson. Even though he feared losing consciousness, he somehow managed to make a tourniquet out of one of Mary’s blouses that he gleefully shredded.

Even then, as darkness fell and the pain in his leg throbbed with the intensity of the absent sun, Chester did not think of going for help. On the contrary, he resigned himself to wallowing in his anger, his only solace the bottle of whiskey he somehow managed to retrieve from the table. As the moon rose and then fell, he refused the embrace of sleep, choosing instead to drink steadily, his mind racing and contemplating with relish all the things he would do to those two bitches when he finally laid hands on them. Even Mary did not escape his wrath; the last beating he gave her would seem mild compared to what she’d get for leaving him.

“Mary,” he mumbled and cursed her loud and long.

When the morning sun cracked the horizon, Chester knew he needed to act if he wanted to live. With every beat of his heart, his wound throbbed in agony, and he knew that getting to a doctor soon was the only way to keep his leg from being cut off. He’d somehow found the strength to crawl from the cabin to the small barn at the edge of the property, hoist himself atop his mangy horse, and amble on it to Whiskey Bend. Every jostle and jolt of the ride hurt nearly as badly as being shot. He passed out in front of the saloon and was dragged inside.

“I ain’t kiddin’ here, Doc,” he said through clenched teeth as another wave of pain washed over him. “Ya gonna get to this or are ya just gonna let the damn thing kill me?”

Munroe Jenkins had been Whiskey Bend’s doctor for the past ten years. The job was his not out of respect for his educational background or bedside manner but by default; there simply wasn’t anyone else for miles around who had any medical experience. Dr. Jenkins had been a field surgeon during the Civil War, a time when a patient was more apt to die at his surgeon’s hands than because of the injury that had brought him there in the first place.

The doctor’s unkempt snow-white hair, bloodshot eyes that danced behind pince-nez, sagging jowls, and nervous tics and twitches did little to inspire a patient’s confidence. Chester swallowed hard. He felt as if he had brought himself to the undertaker by mistake.

“Quit yer goddamn bellyachin’,” Doc Jenkins cackled, releasing breath that stank sourly of whiskey. “You keep on like that, and I’m a-gonna stitch yer mouth up fer my own peace a mind!”

“Just get on with it,” Chester snarled.

“Medicine ain’t nothin’ to be rushed, boy.”

The old man busied himself, gathering a mixture of knives, strange-colored liquids in jars, and other curiosities. Once, when turning his squat body for yet another sharp instrument, he bumped against Chester’s leg, causing him to yelp in pain.

“Stop yer complainin’,” the doctor admonished him, intent on his work. The last item he brought to the table was a long saw, its serrated teeth gleaming in the scant light coming in the room’s lone window.

“What in the hell is that for?” Chester barked, recoiling from the tool.

“Hold yer wad, son.” The doctor smiled, revealing brownish-yellow teeth that would not have looked out of place in a dog’s mouth. “If there’s one thing I done learned in all my years a doin’ this, it’s that a doctor ain’t worth his salt if he ain’t prepared for any and all problems that may arise.”

“There better not be no—”

“Shut your mouth.” The command was loud and harsh and louder when he said again, “If’n you hold yer tongue, it’ll be over before you know it.”

The older man firmly pushed Chester until he lay flat on his back on the small cot. Snatching the whiskey bottle from the wounded man’s grasp, the doctor took a long draw, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“For courage.” He winked before offering the bottle back. “I reckon takin’ a slug or two more off a that bottle might do ya a bit of good, son. If nothin’ else, it’ll keep yer mouth from flappin’.”