Longarm on the Overland Trail (16 page)

They dismounted and went inside. The interior smelled clean despite the chinks of daylight showing through the log walls and the stale scent of boiled greens.

There was only one body on the rolled dirt floor. It was moaning. Longarm stepped over the axe on the floor between them and hunkered down to see what needed to be done.

The badly beaten woman was a once-pretty woman of, say, thirty-five. Had she been living more civilized he'd have figured her for fifty. Her cheap calico mother-hubbard was so torn it made it easy to examine her without asking the patient to undress. The multiple lacerations from the bobwire she'd been lashed with had stopped bleeding and were starting to scab over. Lacking a quart or two of iodine, Longarm figured it best to count on the early bleeding having washed any lockjaw bugs out of the shallow wounds, and scabs would do as much or more for her than picking them open and fussing with them.

He gently opened one eyelid and held a lit match near the dilated pupil a moment before he told the boy in the doorway, "The whipping didn't do her as much damage as the jar her skull seems to have taken, whether from a fist or from hitting the floor."

The kid's voice pleaded more than it asked, "Is she gonna be all right, mister?"

Longarm said, "I don't know. It would take a real doc to say. She's suffering shock and concussion. I've seen folk in this condition recover natural and I've seen it go worse. Where's the nearest doctor? I know there's no damn hospital in the village I just rode out of."

The boy said he'd been running for the local midwife, who'd had some training as a hospital nurse one time.

"I reckon she'd know more than me," Longarm said, "so here's what I want you to do. I want you to go out and get my Winchester saddle gun, saddlebags, and possibles roll. After you bring 'em in here I want you to fork that mare and ride for that medicine lady. What are you waiting for, boy? Do it!"

The kid gulped, ran out of sight, and was back by the time Longarm had rummaged about, found some much-mended but clean wool socks, and pulled the injured woman's skirts down neater. As the boy piled Longarm's gear on the dirt beside them he asked, "Did you want this rifle gun because you're afraid Pappy ain't really dead?"

"That thought had crossed my mind. Men killed entire with an axe hardly ever get up and go somewhere else. So it seems safe to assume you hit him with the flat of the blade, however hard you tried to split his skull. Was your old man armed with anything more serious than bobwire when last you noticed?"

The boy looked around and said, "I don't see the shotgun he had over the fireplace, before."

"All right. Get going. Don't you want your mother to make it?" Longarm asked.

The kid vanished from view and a few moments later Longarm could tell from the fading sounds of Ramona's hooves that he was headed somewhere fast.

Longarm unrolled his bedding beside the battered wife. As he was gently sliding her atop the ground cloth she murmured, "What are you doing, Dan?"

He didn't know whether Dan was her kid or her man. He didn't care. He told her, reassuringly, "I'm putting you to bed, ma'am. You're in shock and we got to get your body warmer and your head cooler."

She didn't answer. In her semi-conscious state she couldn't understand his words, but they seemed to have a calming effect on her.

CHAPTER 11

Longarm covered the woman with his blankets and rain tarp. Then he wet the old socks with canteen water and wrapped them around her skull like a clumsy gray bandage. He poured more water over the wool once he had her head still again. As he did so he saw the tip of her tongue moving between her pale lips. He took out his kerchief, wet that cloth, too, and let her suck on it some.

There was nothing else he could really do for her. He rose with his Winchester at port to see what else needed doing in these parts. He levered a round in the chamber and ducked out the door and to one side, fast, as he scanned the surrounding scenery. The only thing moving in his line of sight was a scrawny chicken pecking at a fresh horse apple Ramona had left in the dust of the dooryard. Longarm grimaced and said, "Yeah, a lazy nester can save feeding you birds regular if he lets you rustle your own grub, even if you do wind up sort of stringy. Those of you as ain't eaten by varmints, I mean."

He circled around to the back, ready for anything. He was still surprised at how run-down the layout was, despite how fresh the bark on the unstrapped bark of the mostly lodgepole pine construction looked. The outbuildings and corral on this untidy spread were already turning to punkwood. But he was more worried about punks inside the sheds than the condition of their flimsy walls. So he examined them all with care.

He found the goat milking stand the kid had mentioned in one shed. Where the goat or goats had run off to was anybody's guess. He saw more chickens grubbing in the grass all about. They didn't seem to have any other livestock. But he found some badly smoked beef in their smokehouse and muttered, "I sure hope you had the sense to bury the branded hide far and deep, you wife-beating, stock-stealing ass."

He went back into the cabin. The woman on the floor looked dead. But when he put his fingers to her waxen throat he felt a moth-wing flutter and told her, "You can make it if you really try, ma'am. I know there's times when life don't feel worth all the bother. But you got your boy to think of."

To his surprise, she'd heard him. She didn't open her eyes, but her voice, while soft, was steady as she murmured, "Waiting for Little Dan to grow tall enough to make it on his own is all that's kept me going. Now that he's almost as tall as Big Dan I feels I've done my duty. So if it's all the same to you I'd sure like to be on my way to join the heavenly choir now."

He had to keep her fighting. He leaned his Winchester against the free-stone fireplace and hauled out one of her limp hands to hold. "If you go before your son gets back he'll never forgive you for leaving without saying your proper goodbyes. I'll be mad at you, too."

She sighed. "You're always mad at me, Dan. Lord knows I've tried, and we loved each other, once. At least, you told me you loved me, and I really did love you. What happened to us, Dan? What happened that made you start hitting me instead of kissing me like you used to?"

There were times to talk sense and there were times a lady was in no condition to make sense. So he kissed her limp wrist and told her, "I'm sorry, honey. I was wrong to hit you and I'll never do it again, hear?"

There was a little more grit in her delirious voice, as she told him, "You've told me that time and time again, Dan. Lord knows I want to believe you, but this time you even hit the boy. I thought you loved our only child, even when you'd been at the jug. But this time you hit Little Dan, too, and I don't reckon I mean to forgive you this time. So let go my fool hand and let me fly on over Jordan, hear?"

He insisted, "Hang on. The boy is on his way with a trained nurse, and he needs you. We all need you. You got to hang on."

She sighed. "Well, maybe just until Little Dan gets back, then. I would like to kiss my baby one more time afore I heads for heaven. Lord knows, I've served my time in hell."

The next time he spoke to her she didn't answer, but he could tell from her more relaxed breathing that she was more asleep than delirious, now. He wet the wool on her brow again and rose, still facing her with his back to the open door. He was sorry he'd done a fool thing like that when a male voice behind him demanded, "What are you doing in here with my woman, stranger?" in a tone midway between a growl and a whimper.

Longarm kept his hands polite as he slowly turned to face a disgusting mess with a twelve-gauge trained on him. The wife-beater was a tall, skinny drink of water dressed in ragged denim, gum-boots, and a blood-caked mop of greasy black hair. He could have used either a shave or a regular beard as well. Longarm ignored the shotgun trained on him, and said, "Howdy. My name is Custis Long. I was passing through when your son informed me the lady of the house was feeling poorly. As anyone can see, he told me true. So I've done what I could to make her comfortable until the boy gets back with some medical attention."

The man scowled. "You had no right laying your hands on my woman, and if you've trifled with her honor, well, we both know what a man has to do about a thing like that."

Longarm snorted in disgust. "You sure worry a lot about your woman's honor, for a man who just beat her half to death, and we'll see if it was only half, when that nurse gets here."

The nester couldn't meet Longarm's knowing eyes. "That was a family argument I don't have to explain to no damn saddle tramp," he muttered. "You can leave, now. I'll take over in here."

Longarm said, "Not hardly. I ain't about to leave an alley cat in your tender care, after seeing how you'd treat a wife and mother. As to whether I get to ride on, or have to take you back to town before I do, that will depend on whether she lives or not. Do you want me to take a look at that split scalp of your own whilst we wait? You ain't bleeding fresh, but he surely gave you a good smack with the flat of that old axe, didn't he?"

The man in the doorway raised the muzzle of his twelve-gauge as Longarm took a step toward him. "Don't try nothing. I'll kill you. I mean it," he warned.

Longarm growled, "Aw, shit," grabbed the muzzle in his left hand, and made the man let go the other end with a right cross that sent him flying out the door to land on his rump in the dusty dooryard.

As Longarm tossed the twelve-gauge one way and stepped the other to stomp some sense into the silly son of a bitch, he saw the man he'd downed had rolled up into a ball on one side to whimper and bawl, "Don't hit me again! Please don't hit me again! I'm hurt bad. My own son just slew me with an axe and I ain't in no shape to fight right now."

Longarm kicked him in the ribs to shut him up. "Get up and show some grit, you yellow-bellied nothing-much. Look, I'm taking my gun rig off. I'm tossing it aside, so's you can show me what a ferocious he-man you are. Get up and fight a man, instead of women and children, for a change. Don't you want the world to admire how ferocious you are? Ain't that the whole point of all your man-of-the-house heroics?"

Big Dan, as he'd made them call him, stayed right where he was, at Longarm's feet, as he blubbered, "I can't fight you, I'm hurt, and you're too big."

Longarm sunk another boot tip into him, spat on him, and said, "You got that backwards. A grown man would be too big for you if you was feeling fine and he was five feet tall. Me or any other grown man could piss on you right now, if I felt like pissing right now, and you'd just enjoy the shower like the shit-eating dog you are. Ain't that right? Ain't you nothing but a whimper-faced woman-striking shit-eating dog?"

The man groveling at his feet didn't answer until Longarm toed him again and made him say it aloud, every word. Then Longarm strode over to recover his gun rig from the grass, strap it back on, and say, "You can get up now. I won't hit you no more, now that we've both agreed on what you are. We'd best have a look at that scalp, and your upper lip's getting a mite fat, too."

He led the man back inside and sat him in a corner on a nail keg. Then he stood over him with the canteen and a dish cloth, saying, "hold still. I only mean to wash the yard dirt off and let you scab clean. Chicken-dust in a cut can infect nasty as hell."

The slightly injured man whimpered as Longarm tried to clean him up a little. Longarm said, "Mat scalp could do with a few stitches, but it ain't so bad."

Big Dan said, "My own boy done that to me. Hit his own dear daddy with an axe, he did!"

Longarm said, "Good for him. Had he buried the blade in your thick skull, there ain't a jury in this country as would have found him guilty of anything more than doing right by his own mother. I want you to ponder them words, you dumb bastard. I fear your days as the ferocious ruler of this pathetic roost are numbered. Your boy's growed big enough to fight you back like a man, and we both know woman-beaters ain't up to fighting men, don't we?"

The man of the house sobbed, "I never meant to hurt the boy. I never meant to really hurt Blanche, yonder. But she kept nagging me and nagging me, and you've no idea how sharp that little gal's tongue can cut a man when she really gets to work on him about every bitty little mistake he's ever made."

Longarm said, "You're wrong. Show me a man who ain't been fussed at by a woman and I'll show you a deaf monk. That's just the way the Good Lord created the unfair sex. It ain't their fault. It ain't our fault. It's just the way men and women was created. Women get to fuss at us because they ain't big and strong enough to beat us up. We got to take it from 'em because that's just their nature and it just ain't right to beat up anybody smaller, softer, and prettier than you are. Even if they ain't pretty no more."

"But she kept going on and on about how shiftless I am and how poor we've ever been," Big Dan protested.

"I ain't finished. But since you brought it up, I can see as good as any woman that you are shiftless and poor. I don't know why you picked such a poor place to homestead any more than she did. But you did, and you're either mighty lazy when you're sober or drunk most of the time. For this spread is a disgrace and you know it. It wouldn't cost you a cent to chink these walls with free mud and straw. A man with the ambition of a robin-bird would have sodded the roof by now, and at least drilled in some turnips and spuds. But let that go. I suspect she'd already told you that much, and more, before you beat her half to death. Let's talk about why men beat women in the first damn place."