The Listening Sky (26 page)

“She knew I was here. I think she would have told me if she was leaving.”

“I’m goin’ to ask Mr. Kilkenny. If she went to the hotel, or the rooming house, he’d know.”

“I’ll come with you. Stay here, Stella. I’ll be right back.”

Herb looked up as Polly appeared in the doorway of the surgery. The worried look on her face drew him to his feet.

“What’s the matter, honey-girl?”

“Jane ain’t up there.

“Is she with Sunday?” T.C. asked, rising to his feet.

“Her nightdress and suitcase are here. I’m worried.”

T.C. strode to the doorway. Polly and Maude stepped aside. He looked over Polly’s head and spoke to Maude.

“You said she’d gone to bed.”

“She told me she was goin’ to bed soon. I thought after she went to the… privy. That was an hour or so ago.”

By the time she had finished speaking, T.C. was taking the stairs two at a time. The door to the room Jane shared with Polly
was open. It was as Polly said. Her nightdress lay at the foot of the bed. Her valise was there. Only a shawl hung on the
peg on the wall. T.C.’s heart began to slam against his chest.

“Herb,” he shouted on his way downstairs. “Find Colin.” His voice was unnecessarily loud and harsh.

“I’m here.” Colin opened the door. “What’er you yellin’ for? What’s wrong?”

“Jane—” T.C. couldn’t bring himself to say that she was gone. “Did she go to stay with Sunday?”

“I just come from there.” A frown spread across Colin’s face. “She wasn’t there. Isn’t she here?”

“No. Her things are her, but no one has seen her for an hour or more.” T.C. made no attempt to hide his anxiety. “Somebody
go see if she’s at the henhouse.” He unconsciously used Sunday’s word for the women’s bunkhouse.

“I’ll do that,” Maude said quickly. “If Polly will stay with Stella.” Without waiting for an answer she was out the front
door.

“Get a lantern.” T.C. was strapping on his gun belt.

“You think you’ll need that?” Colin asked.

“I will if somebody’s got her someplace she don’t want to be.” Herb came from the kitchen with a lighted lantern. “Is that
the only one we’ve got?”

“Bill’s got a couple.”

“Something’s not right. I feel it. If we don’t find her soon, I’ll ring the fire bell. We’ll turn out every man in town to
search.”

“Calm down, T.C.” Colin took his own gun belt from the hall peg and strapped it on. “She may have gone to the hotel. They’ve
got some beds ready.”

“She wouldn’t go without telling Maude. She’d not leave her things. She guards that suitcase as if it were full of gold nuggets.
But go look. Herb, go to the livery and see if anyone has left town in the last hour or two. Do you know where that fellow
Fresno stays?” he asked Colin.

“No, but Tennihill does.”

“Go up and stay with Stella.” Herb gently urged Polly toward the stairs.

The men were gone when Maude returned to the house with Sunday. When she didn’t find Jane in the henhouse, she had gone to
the boarding house and roused Sunday. First Colin, then Herb returned to the porch where Maude and Sunday waited. Minutes
later, T.C. arrived with Tennihill.

“Has anyone seen her?” T.C. demanded.

“No,” Colin replied. “I didn’t ask anyone either. Let’s don’t rouse the town yet.”

“Did anyone look in the outhouse?” Sunday asked. “Maude said that’s where she was goin’ when she saw her last.”

“I did,” T.C. said. “The door is shut, the swivel bar down. Let’s spread out one more time, then we’ll ring the bell. If you
find her, whistle two sharp ones.”

Maude had gone into the house to get a shawl. When she returned, Sunday was waiting on the porch with a lantern.

“Could somebody, maybe a Indian, a carried her off her when she went to the outhouse?” Maude asked.

“Colin said they hadn’t had no Indian trouble here for a long while. If anybody carried her off it’d more’n likely be one
a them horny lumberjacks.”

“Ah… no! She’s such a nice woman. I’d bet she’s had a hard life. At times I see sadness in her eyes.”

Maude cringed inwardly. She
knew
about a hard life. But she hoped that now it was behind her and Stella. She walked with Sunday around the house.

“It’s spooky here in the dark.”

“I got my pistol in my pocket,” Sunday replied. “I don’t go out at night without it. Ain’t no tellin’ what kind a varmint
ya might meet up with. Could have four legs. Could have two.”

The moon had come up. It shone brightly, clearly outlining the outhouse. The women went toward it, lifted the lantern and
saw that the board was turned to keep the door closed. They parted; one went on one side, one the other. They looked in the
underbrush behind it and, finding nothing, retraced their steps back to the outhouse.

As Sunday passed the privy, she paused. Maude went on a few steps, then stopped.

“What—?”

“Shhh…”

A low, soft, keening sound came from inside the privy.

“Did ya hear that?” Maude stood close to Sunday.

Sunday nodded. She handed Maude the lantern and took the pistol from her pocket. They moved to the privy door. Sunday placed
her ear against it. The sound that she heard was like that of a wounded animal suffering intense pain.

“Somethin’s in there. Stand back! It could be a mad coon or polecat.”

Maude held the lantern high as Sunday opened the door a crack. She kept her shoulder against it should something try to spring
out. When nothing happened, she opened it wider, then wider. Both women gasped in shock, then relief, when the light from
the lantern shone down on a figure huddled in a corner, her face and head covered with the skirt of her dress and her petticoat.
They knew it was Jane. Her knee-length drawers were all that covered her thighs. She was hugging herself with her arms, shaking,
and rocking back and forth.

“Oh, my Gawd!” Maude exclaimed. “What’s the matter with her?”

“Lord a’mercy!” The hand holding the gun fell to Sunday’s side. She shoved the gun in her pocket and knelt down. “Jane—” She
said the name several times. Jane didn’t respond until Sunday tried to pull the dress away from her head. Then she lashed
out with hands covered with filth. One glimpse at her face and the two women rocked back.

“Oh, Lord! Christ in heaven!” Bile rose up in Maude’s throat and she gagged.

Sunday recovered first.

“Now ain’t the time to get squishy!” she said sharply. “Go let ‘em know we found her afore T.C. rings the bell.”

Maude set the lantern on the ground and ran up the path toward the house. A swinging light came around from the side and she
called out.

“We found her.”

Two sharp blasts of a whistle sounded, and the man hurried down the path.

Sunday stood as Colin approached. “She’s in here. I ain’t never seen anything so… awful.”

“Is she hurt bad?”

“There’s blood on the side of her head, but it’s more’n that. She’s covered with—Hell!” Sunday shouted in anguish. “She’s
covered with shit from the privy and she might of lost her mind!”

Sunday’s anguished words reached T.C. as he rounded the house. An instant later he was there, pushing her aside so he could
see. What he saw stunned him. Jane lay curled up on the floor of the privy, her head covered with the tail of her dress. The
keening sounds that came from her were of deep, horrendous grief.

“What’s the matter with her?” he demanded, and bent to kneel down. Sunday grabbed his arm.

“It’s plain to me,” she retorted angrily and moved to shield Jane from the eyes of the two men. “Get away, both of ya. Can’t
ya see she dyin’ a shame?”

“Who did this?” The emotional croaking question came from T.C.

“That ain’t what’s important now. We got to get this stuff off her. Somebody get that bathin’ tub from the henhouse and get
the cookstove fired up for water. And… don’t ya let her catch ya lookin’ at her.” Sunday issued the orders, then waited for
the men to move. “Well? Are yore feet stuck in mud?”

“There’s blood on her… dress—”

“I’m thinkin’ it’s from the whack on the head, but I ain’t sure. What I am sure of is… it’ll kill her for ya to see her with
shit smeared all over her face. Now go!”

T.C. masked his anguish with anger. “I’ll kill the bastard who did this. I’ll strip ever inch of hide off his back first,
then, by Gawd, he’ll wish he was dead a hundred times before he is!”

“I’ll take Polly to see if anybody’s in the tub.” Herb spoke calmly, his voice battling T.C.’s angry tirade. “If there ain’t,
I’ll get it out the back door without them knowin’ about it.”

Colin took T.C.’s arm. “Come on. Let the women handle it for now.”

“Why would anybody do… such a thing to her?” T.C. allowed Colin to pull him away.

“Maybe we can find out after the women clean her up a bit. Come on to the house, Tennihill,” Colin said as they passed the
man standing a distance away. “We got to get to the bottom of this.”

The first thing Sunday did when she got Jane into the house was clean her face. Maude dipped towel after towel in warm water
and handed them to Sunday. Jane stood as docilely as a whipped dog. Both Sunday and Maude realized that she was in deep shock.
Her arms hung to her sides; her eyes were blank. When her face was clean, they found marks on her cheeks and forehead where
the stick that had been dipped into the cesspit had scraped the skin.

Maude placed a cold, wet cloth on the side of her head where blood still oozed.

“They knocked her senseless before they did this.” Maude clicked her tongue sorrowfully. “Why in the world?”

“They could’a killed her if’n they wanted to. I’m just bumfuzzled about it.” Sunday unbuttoned the waist of Jane’s dress and
pulled it down to let it fall to the floor.

It wasn’t until all her filthy clothes had been removed and Maude and Sunday were lowering her into the warm tub of water
that she came out of her mindless state. She looked wildly about, screamed, struck out at Sunday, and tried to climb out of
the tub.

Sunday’s superior strength held her firmly.

“Jane! Jane! Yo’re all right. It’s me, Sunday. Ain’t nobody goin’ to hurt ya. Yo’re here with me and Maude.”

The door was flung open. T.C. came storming into the room.

“What’er you doing to her?” he demanded.

“Christ on a horse!” Sunday yelled. “Get out of here.”

“Go, Mr. Kilkenny. It’d be awful for her if she saw ya lookin’ at her.” Maude pushed T.C. firmly out the door and shut it.

“Some men ain’t got no more sense than a pissant,” Sunday sputtered.

“He’s worried.” Maude handed her the castile soap from the surgery that T.C. had brought in when Herb had returned with the
tub. She placed it on a chair, along with a stack of clean towels.

On her knees beside the tub, Sunday lathered Jane with soap, then worked it into her hair. Jane was now perfectly still. Great
racking sobs tore from her throat. She cried openly, her hands in the water at her sides, her face turned up. Her bald-faced
misery was one of the saddest sights Sunday had ever seen.

“I’m washin’ it off ya, Jane. Ain’t nobody goin’ to see ya like this but me and Maude. Ya got a good bashin’ up beside yore
head. I got to wash yore hair, but I’ll be careful.”

T.C. paced up and down the hall. The Indian side of him tried to be calm; the Irish side wouldn’t permit it. He uttered cuss
words he hadn’t used in years.

“I’ve heard of meanness, but nothing like this.” Pacing like a caged cat, T.C. stopped in front of Colin, who sat on the stairs.
“Have you ever heard of anybody doin’ this?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Was it meant to shame her, like Sunday said? Why?
What has she done to be shamed for?”

“No Indian did it.” Tennihill, sitting on the floor, offered his opinion while he pared at his fingernails with his pocketknife.

“When I find out who did it, I’ll roast his ass over a slow fire, Indian fashion.”

“Don’t figure he hit her with the stick he used to smear her. That stick was poked down in the hole.”

T.C. glanced at Colin. “Could it have been the butt of a pistol?”

“More’n like a stick of stove wood to knock her out. She’d a put up a fight. I didn’t see no sign a one.”

“The dirty, low-down, cowardly sonofabitch!”

Maude came out of the kitchen and closed the door behind her.

“Is she all right?” T.C. asked quickly.

“She’s got a awful bash on the head. We tried to be careful of it when we washed that… stuff out of her hair. Sunday’s dryin’
it now. I’m goin’ to get her nightdress. I thought you ought to see these.” She held out small pieces of folded paper. “I
found them in the pocket of her dress. I emptied out the pocket when I went to soak the dress in a bucket of water.”

T.C. took the papers from Maude and went into the surgery where a lamp was burning on the desk. Colin and Tennihill followed.
He unfolded the notes and read them one after the other. He gave a low whistle of amazement and stepped back, leaving the
notes on the desk for Colin and Tennihill to read.

“That explains why she didn’t want to stay here. She probably got the first one the day she arrived. It was the next day that
she was so determined to leave, and it wasn’t because she thought I had brought the women here to marry them off. She used
that as an excuse.”

T.C. began to pace again. Tennihill arranged the notes in the order he figured they might have been received, the last one
being the one that threatened to kill her.

“I heard talk today that Miss Love was not stayin’ on. Guess ever’body knowed about it.”

“Why ya reckon he wanted her to stay?”

“Beats me.”

T.C. looked at Tennihill. “You don’t think it’s Bob Fresno?”

“I’m thinkin’ not. He’s got a hard-on fer her. Be tickled to get her off to hisself. Like I told ya today.”

“Maybe he met her outside. When she wouldn’t go with him, he did this?”

“Doubt it. Ain’t his style.”

“You said he was sly as a fox.”

“He is that.”

“Dangerous, when he don’t get his way?”

“As a cornered rattler.”

“She’s not getting out of my sight until we find out who sent her these threats and who waylaid her.” T.C. marched out of
the surgery and went to the door of the kitchen.