Early Dawn (2 page)

The room spun around him, the shadows that lurked beyond the sphere of light seeming to dance and sway. He wrapped a hand over the mattress edge to keep from pitching off onto the floor.
What in Sam Hill?
It felt as if every bone in his body had been broken, and the pain in his temple throbbed with each beat of his heart.

“Ma!”

A blurry female figure dressed in blue appeared in the archway. “Matthew! Thank God!” The lilt of her faint Irish brogue was as familiar to Matthew as his own voice. “We were starting to think you might never wake up.”

Matthew lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes as his mother sat beside him and placed a cool, soothing hand on his right cheek. The gesture reminded him of the early days of his childhood, when she’d checked him for fever or fussed over him when he was sick. He let himself enjoy the sensation for a moment before prying his eyes open again to fix his gaze on her face. Even at fifty-six, Hattie Coulter was a lovely woman, with black hair and eyes the deep blue of a summer sky. The years had lined her skin, but on her the traces of age were like the tiny cracks on the surface of an old oil painting, only adding to its beauty.

“Where’s Livvy?” Matthew asked hoarsely.

She withdrew her hand from his cheek and brought it to rest on her lap in a tight fist. Matthew knew then that something really was amiss. The thought that it might involve his wife filled him with panic.

“Ma?” he pressed. “Where’s Olivia?”

Hattie pushed to her feet. “I’ll be back in a moment, dear heart. I need to tell your father that you’re awake.”

Matthew watched her hurry from the room. Something dark hovered at the back of his mind—something so ominous and unthinkable that he didn’t want to acknowledge it. He flung his forearm over his eyes to shield them from the light and immediately regretted it when pain exploded in his left temple. Gingerly he explored with numb fingertips to discover that his head was wrapped in gauze. An injury of some sort? He couldn’t recall having an accident, but after working with horses most of his life, he knew he might not remember if he’d been kicked in the head.

Matthew had almost convinced himself of a horse’s kick when he heard the heavy tattoo of his father’s boots on the kitchen floor. An instant later, Matthew Coulter Senior filled the doorway, his weather-bronzed face creased with worry, his blue eyes shadowed with sadness. He slowly approached the bed, his wife hovering behind him.

In that no-nonsense way of his, he wasted no time hemming and hawing. In a brogue much more pronounced than his wife’s, he said, “Your ma says you don’t remember what happened, son, that you been askin’ where Olivia is.” He cleared his throat. “You need to brace yourself, boy, ’cause I can’t think of no easy way to say this, and I ain’t good with words at the best of times. Your Livvy was kilt by a gang of ruffians. Happened nigh onto three weeks ago now.”

“What?” Matthew couldn’t wrap his mind around the words bouncing inside his head. He pictured Olivia’s precious face, her soft brown eyes and gentle smile. Dead? She was so young. That couldn’t be. His father had to have it wrong. “No,” Matthew grated out. “No!”

His father shook his head and sank heavily onto the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry, son. It pains me more’n you can know to be the one to tell you such a thing. We loved her, too, your ma and me. She was like a daughter to us.”

Though the discomfort was excruciating, Matthew shook his head in denial. “No.”

Even as he whispered the word, Matthew knew by the dark sorrow in his father’s eyes that it was true; Olivia was dead. The ensuing silence drove that home to him. His ma didn’t interrupt to say that his pa had it wrong, nor did she offer Matthew any assurance that everything would come right in the end.

“How?” Matthew forced himself to ask. “Ru-ruffians? We don’t have . . . It’s safe hereabouts.”

“The sheriff says it was the Sebastian Gang.” Matthew Senior cleared his throat. “You’ve heard tell of ’em. We read about ’em in the
Crystal Falls Courier
a few months back. A couple of days after the attack on you and Livvy, they struck again over near Medford. Shot a boy dead for tryin’ to stop them from stealin’ some horses. Them Sebastians are wanted damned near everywhere west of the divide. A posse out of Sacramento was hot on their heels, and the gang took a detour through here, tryin’ to shake ’em off.” The elder man’s voice had gone almost as hoarse as Matthew’s. “You and Livvy—well, near as we could tell, you was on the way home from a picnic by the crick. The gang must’ve come out of the trees, all of a sudden like, and surrounded your wagon. You wasn’t armed, and there wasn’t much you could do. Livvy . . . she was—” He broke off as if the words had stuck in his throat. Then he passed a gnarled, work-roughened hand over his craggy face. “Well, we can only pray she went quick and didn’t suffer overmuch. Doc believes you was already unconscious by the wagon when it happened. Pistol-whipped, kicked after you went down, and then shot in the chest and left for dead. Doc did all he could, but you was in sorry shape with busted-up ribs, a hole near your heart, and an injury to your head he couldn’t fix. If not for your ma’s prayers and nursin’, we might’ve lost you, too.”

Wringing her hands in her apron, Matthew’s mother moved closer to the cot. “It’s true, dear heart. I’ve barely slept a wink since they brought you in. It’s been touch and go. We were afraid you might never come back around.”

Matthew wished he hadn’t. His sweet Livvy, dead? He didn’t want to believe it. How could something like that have happened and he had no memory of it?

Embarrassed to lose control in front of his father, Matthew rolled onto his stomach and pressed his face into the pillow to stifle his sobs, even though the pressure against his temple hurt like hell.

“Have a care, Matthew,” his mother cried. “You’ll reopen your wounds.”

But Matthew was beyond caring about his wounds. He hoped they’d break open so he could bleed to death.
Livvy.
On their wedding day, he’d vowed to keep her safe from all harm, and he’d failed her in a way no husband ever should, all because he hadn’t taken a weapon with him on a stupid picnic.

He felt his father’s hand come to rest on his shoulder. “We’ll leave you be for a bit. There’s times when a man needs to be alone, and I reckon this is one of them for you.”

Matthew held his breath until his parents left the room. Then he released a sob that shook his whole body.
Livvy
. He’d loved her since boyhood. How would he face the rest of his life without her?

From the hallway, he heard his brother Hoyt murmur something he didn’t quite catch.

Matthew Senior replied, “I don’t think he remembers much, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to fill in the blanks just yet. No point in hittin’ him with too much at once.”

“But, Pa!” Hoyt protested, louder now. “You gotta tell him. If you don’t, somebody else will say somethin’ without thinkin’. Better to break it to him gentle-like.”

“Shh. Hush, you two,” Ma urged.

Matthew rolled onto his back to better hear the conversation taking place in the hallway. What had his father neglected to tell him? Livvy was dead. What the hell could be worse than that?

Lowering his voice again, Hoyt said, “His wife was brutally raped, for God’s sake, and then the sons of bitches carved on her with a knife before they slit her throat! You can’t keep that from him. He’s bound to find out sooner or later, and it’d be easier for him to hear it from you.”

“Maybe,” his father agreed, “but not this minute. That boy needs to heal some first.”

Matthew squeezed his eyes tightly closed.
Oh, God
. The memories of that afternoon were coming back to him now, fast and hard. The unthinkable darkness at the back of his mind had slipped into the light of day. He tried to block the pictures that swirled through his mind, but they just kept coming.
Livvy
. He could see the sunlight slanting down through the tree limbs to dapple her sweet face, hear the sound of her laughter. During the picnic, she’d told him that she was finally in the family way, and they’d been so happy, anxious to get home so they could share their joy with his parents and hers. Then six men on horseback had spilled from the nearby woods and encircled their wagon.
Oh, God.

The thugs had been armed. They had demanded valuables, and neither Matthew nor Olivia had had anything to offer them. Matthew’s gold pocket watch had been at the jeweler’s for repairs, and Livvy’s wedding band hadn’t been worth much. Those bastards had retaliated by dragging Olivia from the wagon. When Matthew jumped in to defend her, two of the no-account polecats had held his arms while a third man beat him senseless with the butt of his revolver.

Afterward Matthew had lain by the wagon with his face in the dirt while they kicked his torso, burying the toes of their boots as deeply as they could into his flesh to do as much damage as possible. When they’d grown weary of that sport and turned their vile intentions on Olivia, Matthew had tried desperately to move, but his body refused to cooperate. He hadn’t been able to lift his head. As if from a great distance, he’d heard Livvy screaming his name, over and over, until finally there was an awful silence. Seconds later, one of the ruffians had returned to Matthew, rolled him over onto his back with the toe of one boot, and shot him in the chest.

It was all Matthew could remember. After that was only blackness.

Matthew stared through a blur of tears at the ceiling rafters, wishing with every fiber of his being that he had died, too. He’d lain there in the dirt while his wife was raped and murdered. What kind of man was he?

No kind of man, he decided. No kind of man at all.

It took Matthew three more weeks to recover enough to get out of bed, and even then, he wasn’t anywhere close to being healed. His broken ribs hadn’t mended quite right, so it still hurt to breathe deeply. The bullet wound, which had done more damage to his shoulder than his chest, had left him barely able to use his left arm. He also had a hitch in his gait caused by an injury to his right hip.

When Matthew first gained his feet, he staggered around like a drunk, his head spinning, his stomach lurching with nausea. At the mirror by the wardrobe, he saw why. The gash at his temple had been deep and nearly six inches long. Though his hair was growing back to cover the scar, it was still a vivid red and visible through the half-inch stubble. Yet another scar slashed from above his left eyebrow to the upper part of his eyelid, the line puckered from Doc’s lack of finesse with a needle and thread. Another jagged, crimson line angled along his cheekbone.

With trembling fingers, Matthew traced the marks. His ma had shaved him yesterday, but she may as well not have bothered. His face had never been pretty-boy perfect, and now it bordered on the grotesque. The man who’d worked him over with the pistol butt must have been right-handed, Matthew decided, a fact that he filed away for later. Little wonder he felt dizzy on his feet. Head injuries like these could have killed him. The temple wound had been severe enough to affect some of his gray matter. It might take a while for his brain to right itself completely, and until then, he would probably feel dizzy and sick to his stomach more times than not.

Even so, Matthew was determined to be up and about. While lying helpless in bed, he’d had a lot of time to think, and he’d kept coming full circle to the undeniable fact that no man worth his salt allowed a bunch of low-life bastards to cruelly rape and murder his wife. It was too late now for Matthew to undo the events of that terrible afternoon, but as God was his witness, it wasn’t too late to avenge Livvy’s death.

Matthew managed to saddle his horse, Smoky, that first day and ride into Crystal Falls to stock up on ammunition for his .44-caliber Winchester rifle and his Colt revolvers. Before heading back home, he stopped at the jeweler’s, where he’d left his gold pocket watch for repairs a couple of weeks before the attack.

The proprietor, a balding, middle-aged man of considerable girth who wore a black bib apron over a white shirt, the bosom and collar of which were polished to a high sheen, looked startled when he first saw the marks on Matthew’s face. Then he nodded solemnly and placed his plump hands palms down on the wooden counter.

“Matthew,” he said by way of greeting. “Glad to see you on your feet. You look like you tangled with a grizzly bear and lost the battle.”

“Wasn’t a grizzly, and there wasn’t a battle. I wish to hell there had been.”

The jeweler nodded again. “The wife and I attended the services. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry we are about Livvy. Known her since she was no bigger than a grasshopper. Such a pretty little thing, always ready with a smile to cheer people up. She’ll be sorely missed.”

Matthew touched the brim of his Stetson, his only response. He couldn’t speak of Olivia without his voice shaking.

“I reckon you’re here for your watch.” The jeweler opened a small wooden drawer behind him and plucked out a manila packet. “Just needed a good cleaning. There’ll be no charge.”