Dorothy Garlock (27 page)

“I like hearing it even if it’s not all true.”

“It’s true, sweetheart. Every dadgum bit of it. Now can I ask why yo’re botherin’ with an ugly old river rat like me?”

“You’re not ugly! Not old!” She caressed his cheeks with her fingertips. “I never knew that there was a man like you. I knew it that first day when I ran and fell and you didn’t pounce on me like I expected. I was embarrassed for you to see me…and the way Leroy acted—”

“Sweet girl…” Boone could feel her heart pounding against his.

“If I don’t go back now…I can never go back,” she whispered. “Before I go with you, I have to tell you about me. You may not…want me.”

“If ya want to tell me, do it and get it off your chest. Nothin’ ya say will make a difference.”

Chapter
19

T
ESS BEGAN TO TALK, realizing that what she had to tell him would surely mean the death of the sweetest interlude in her life. But she couldn’t take the chance that he would find out later on and hate her.

“According to the Carter family I have to work and pay for being…a slut. That’s what they call me.” Her voice dwindled until Boone could hardly hear it, then it strengthened with her resolve to tell all. “My mother sent me to live with her sister, my aunt Cora, in St. Charles when I was twelve. She was afraid some of the Carters would…ah…violate me. I loved it at Aunt Cora’s. They lived in a nice house and she and Uncle Don got along well together: laughing and talking and sometimes hugging each other. It was different from the way my family treated one another. I lived there until I finished high school.

“Aunt Cora wanted me to learn to be a telephone operator. Uncle Don got me a job in a little town west of St. Charles and a room in a rooming house for ladies. I’d been there a month or two when Cousin Willard came to call. He’s the son of one of Papa’s cousins. His wife had died and he was on the prowl looking for another one. He had a son not much younger than me. To make it short, he raped me.” Tess’s voice quavered. “I was afraid to tell Aunt Cora and…he did it again.”

“Ah…honey, ya don’t have to talk about it.”

“I want to. I have to. When I learned I was in the family way, I had to tell Aunt Cora. By then Cousin Willard had found a widow lady he wanted to marry. Aunt Cora sent me home with a letter telling what Cousin Willard had done, thinkin’ my pa and my brothers would punish him. Mama had died and Papa, after talking to Cousin Willard, believed that I lied when I said it was him. He was convinced that I’d become a whore and had been with many men. He beat me…bad. I lost the baby. Papa said I was to stay on the place and work for the rest of my life to pay for the shame I brought down on him and the boys. After Papa died, Marvin took over. I’ve been there six…almost seven years and today is only the third or fourth time I’ve been to town.”

Boone’s mind was almost blotted by a heavy cloud of rage at how she had been treated by her own kin. The muscles along his jaws rounded into hard knots. He took a long, deep breath to steady himself.

“The filthy, rotten-minded sons-a-bitches!” His big hand cupped her head and held it to him. “Ya’ll not go back there. Hear me? Someday I’ll meet that low-life bastard and nail his balls to a stump!”

“Can’t you see why I can’t go with you? They won’t rest until they get me back.”

“Sweet girl…you have to!” His voice was loud in the car. “If there was a way for me to wed ya right now, we’d do it. Then they’d answer to me.”

“You still…want me after—”

His lips cut off her words. His kiss was hard and quick.

“I want ya more than I’ve ever wanted anythin’. I’m mad as hell at what happened to you, but, good Lord, it makes no difference in how I feel about you. Someday, I promise you, I will find Willard, and when I get through with him, he’ll know he’s paid for what he did to ya.”

“Marvin and the Carters all kowtow to him. They think he’s grand…because he has money.”

“That’ll do him no good. Ya’ll marry me, won’t ya, sweet girl?”

“I can’t believe ya want me, but if ya do, I’d be so proud to marry you.”

“I’m not a ruttin’ moose like Willard, sweetheart. Ya don’t have to be afraid that I’ll force ya to be a wife to me. Ya’ll never have to be with me in any way ya don’t want.”

She kissed his face time and again. Having someone who cared about her was so new, so wonderful that she could scarcely catch her breath for the excitement that beat through her.

“Honey,” Boone said, holding her away so he could look into her face. “If yo’re goin’ to be Mrs. Boone, ya better know yore husband’s first name. Ya won’t laugh, will ya?”

“Cross my heart,” she said solemnly.

“It’s…it’s Amsterdam.”

“Amsterdam? Like the city in Holland?”

“Yeah. My mother was from there and homesick to go home when I was born. When I was a kid they called me Am. Now I’m just Boone. Or when I have to be, A. Boone.”

“It’s a grand name! Not everyone gets named after a city. Amsterdam Boone.”

“You won’t tell anyone?”

“Not if you don’t want me to. I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do, Amsterdam.” She giggled happily when he bit her gently on the neck.

“I’d like nothin’ better than to sit here with ya all night, darlin’, but we got to be gettin’ back. The doc told me a way to go around Henderson and come out north of town so that we can get to Donovans’ without passin’ the Carter place. The bastard might have another roadblock set up.”

As Boone was headed south out of town, Calvin Carter, in a topless, stripped-down Model T, drove into town from the north. Marvin was with him, as were Judd and Arney Carter.

“If they ain’t a light in the jail, old Stoney’ll be at his place yonder behind the ice house.” Marvin’s voice was slurred. On their return from the Donovans’, he had downed a glass or two of liquor before Calvin put a stop to it.

“Don’t look like no light in the jail.”

“You fellers stay in the car,” Calvin said when he stopped in front of a small house surrounded by a sagging picket fence. “Me’n Marvin’ll talk to him.”

After several loud thumps on the door, it was flung open.

“Whatta ya want?” Stoney demanded.

“Want to tell ya somebody’s got my brother and sister and won’t let ’em go.”

“Kidnapped ’em?”

“It’s what I said.”

“Who’s got ’em.”

“The folks livin’ north of us. The shit-eatin’ Donovans has got ’em.”

“How do you know that? Have you seen them over there?”

“No, but gawdammit! Who else’d have ’em?”

Calvin nudged Marvin aside. “Sheriff, Leroy, our young brother, met with an accident last night and was hurt bad. We want to make sure he’s all right.”

“Was he the Carter on the mule that was hit by a car?”

“Yeah. He was out pulling dead limbs off the road.”

“Horseshit!” Stoney snorted. “Whatta ya think I am? A pickled fart? Ya was fixin’ to bushwhack that feller that’s been stayin’ at the hotel. He was here this mornin’ tellin’ me about it.”

“He run down the mule Leroy was on and hit him with his car,” Marvin shouted.

“I ain’t deaf. Whatta you want me to do about it?”

“Find ’em, gawdammit! We been good to ya, old man. Ya’ve had plenty of jugs from our still.”

“You threatenin’ to cut me off? Your’n ain’t the only place around here to get booze.”

“I’m tellin’ ya I wanna know where my kin is at.”

“A man was brought to doc this afternoon. Go over and see if it’s who you’re looking for.”

“Get yore hat. Yo’re goin’ with us.”

“No, I’m not. There’s not been a crime that I know of. I’m stayin’ and listenin’ to my radio show. ’Sides, the feller they brought in may be a rowdy off the river, for all I know.”

“Old man—” Marvin reached to jerk open the screen door, but Calvin caught his arm.

“Folks’ll not take it kindly if you get rough with the sheriff,” Stoney said and shut the door.

“Come on, Marvin. We found out what we want to know.”

They drove the two city blocks to the doctor’s house, and when they knocked on the door, it was opened by his wife.

“We come to see the doctor,” Marvin said. “Come in. I’ll get him.”

Inside the reception room, Calvin removed his cap and nudged Marvin to remove his. Arney and Judd dragged their caps from their shaggy heads.

“I’ll do the talkin’,” Calvin said. “Leroy’s my brother too.”

Marvin frowned but said nothing. He was the eldest and didn’t like Calvin taking over. They had waited for what seemed a long time, and Marvin was getting more irritated by the minute, when a tall man came through the door. He wore a shirt open at the neck with the sleeves rolled up beyond his elbows. He looked more like a barroom brawler than a doctor.

“What can I do for you?”

“We come to see the doctor.”

“You’re looking at him.”

“Ya ain’t him,” Marvin sputtered. “Doctors is…are—”

“Little old men with spectacles? Sorry to disappoint you.” Dr. Perkins looked at each of the four men crowded into his reception room.
So these were the notorious Carters, the bullies who refused to get help for a boy suffering unimaginable pain.
“Which one of you is in need of my services?”

“We are lookin’ for our brother. Stoney said a man was brought here.”

“Men who are hurt come here all the time. What were the nature of your brother’s injuries?”
I’ll make you tell me, you hard-ass bully.

“He got knocked off a mule,” Marvin blurted. “A son-of-a-bitch run him down.”

“You must be looking for the boy whose face was smashed in, his nose and hand broken, ribs cracked and cuts and bruises all over his body, the boy whose brother wouldn’t bring him in for help. What do you want to know about him?”

“We come to take him home.”

“Why do you want to do that? Are you trying to kill him?”

“Carters take care of their own, mister,” Calvin said.

“Miss Tess Carter signed him in. I’ll release him only to her.”

“What’s that whore got to do with men’s business? We come to take Leroy home and we’re takin’ him.”

Marvin took the necessary steps to reach the inner door. The doctor was there ahead of him and threw it open. Two big, brawny men stood there with stout clubs in their hands.

“Which one you want, Doc?”

“I’ll take the stupid one with hair that looks like a haystack. On second thought, I’ll take two of them. That’ll leave one for each of you.”

“Wait just a minute. We ain’t wantin’ to fight nobody,” Calvin said. “We come to see about our brother is all.”

“You said you came to take him. You’ll not move him out of here. It’s as simple as that,” Dr. Perkins said. “The boy was badly hurt. I can’t be sure he’ll live.”

“He’d better,” Marvin yelled. “He warn’t hurt so bad when I left home this mornin’.”

“Jesus, my God! I’ve run into ignorant jackasses in my time, but these lunkheads go beyond stupid.”

“Ya better be careful what ya call us, Doc,” Calvin said. “There’s more Carters in these hills than you could shake a stick at.”

“You’d better not threaten me. I’m the only doctor within ten miles in either direction. The boys here”—he nodded toward his friends—“and a hundred others want to keep me in working order because they might need me sometime. Now I suggest you go home and cool off. If your brother lives through the night, it means he has a chance. Move him and he’d not live to get out of town.”

“We ain’t payin’ ya nothin’ for keepin’ him.”

“I’ve not asked you to pay anything. As a matter of fact, my fee has been paid.”

“Who paid it? The whore that brung him ain’t got no money. We ain’t takin’ no handouts from nobody.” Marvin slapped his cap back on his head.

“Come on, Marvin.” Calvin urged his brother toward the door. “We’ll come back in a day or two.”

The two men with clubs followed the Carters out the door.

“We didn’t get to have no fun a-tall,” one of them complained. “Can’t we bash just one or two heads, Doc?”

“If they give you any lip, let ’em have it.”

Corbin and Annabel sat in the swing on the porch of the darkened house. Jack, having returned from a tour around the house, sat down on the steps and placed the rifle beside him. The night sky was peppered with a million stars. From a distance came the faint hoot of an owl, the only sound to disturb the quiet.

“I feel like a prisoner in my own house,” Annabel said from the shelter of Corbin’s arm.

“You should be in town. When Boone gets back with my car, I’m taking you there.”

“I have to stay here until Papa gets back. Surely he’ll be here tomorrow. I’m afraid that when he finds out the Carters have stolen our horses, he’ll go storming over there. I have to stop him, if I can. Papa can talk a dog off a meat wagon when he wants to; but when his temper is up, he’s ready to fight.”

“Car comin’,” Jack said quietly.

“Maybe it’s Papa.”

Corbin stood and went to the edge of the porch. “It sounds like my car.” He watched the car come slowly up the hill. “Stay out of the headlights, Jack, until we’re sure who it is.”

But that wasn’t to be. The driver stopped the car a good hundred feet from the porch, backed up and turned the wheels so that the headlights shone on the front of the house. He then came on ahead and stopped at the porch, cut the motor and turned off the lights.

“No lights in the house made me leery,” Boone said, as he stepped out and reached his hand in for Tess.

“We had visitors.”

“Did they give you any trouble?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

Boone urged Tess up the steps to the porch. “I ain’t lettin’ her go back over there,” he said to Annabel. “She’ll have to stay here. We’ll hide her somewhere until Murphy gets back. After yo’re packed up and ready to go, me and Tess are leavin’ this part of the country.”

“I’ll be trouble to you.” Tess was clinging to Boone’s hand. “Marvin and Calvin won’t rest until I’m back over there doin’ for them.”

“They’ve been here, Tess. If they come back, they won’t take you. Corbin and Boone will see to it. I’m glad you’re here with me,” Annabel assured her. “Tell me what happened, but first, have you had anything to eat?”

“I forgot all about eating.”