The Reaper's Song (3 page)

“If you’d quit trying to break my head, I’d let you up.” “Gimme my rifle, you. . . !”

He tried to ignore the remainder of her sentence.

“I will
not
give you the rifle until you calm down. You might accidentally set the thing off, and—”

“I don’t never
accidentally
fire that rifle.” The sneer in the word, in spite of her bound condition, nearly made him laugh. Spitfire didn’t begin to describe the courage of the girl he held. When she
elbowed him below the belt, he left off laughing and roared instead.

“Now you done it.” Ignoring the pain, he shoved the rifle off toward the wall and used both hands to clamp her arms tight against her sides. He used her as a brace to get his feet under him and surged to his feet, pulling her up with him.

She drummed her heels against his shins, her breath now coming in gulps.

A sobbing whimper from the back of the dugout froze them both.

“Who’s there?”

“I said ‘hush.’ ”

They both spoke at the same time.

He set her on the floor, keeping a strong arm about her waist and her arms locked against her sides. “Now, if you can promise to behave yourself, I am going to—”

She stomped on his foot, her heel catching him right across the toes.

Zeb gritted his teeth. He hoisted her under one arm, opened the door, and shoved her outside. “You can come back in when you’ve cooled off enough to talk some sense.” He leaned against the door, taking a deep breath. She hammered the door with her fists, calling him every name he’d ever heard and then some.

“Mother, please forgive me. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.” He wiped one finger under his nose and off on his pant leg. Sure as shooting, she’d given him a nosebleed.

The silence from outside made him uneasy. What was she up to now?

“M-m-manda?” Surely it was the voice of a child.

“Manda will be back in a minute. Soon’s she can learn to be a bit more welcoming to a stranger.”

“M-m-man-d-da.” Sobs floated through the stillness, sobs so weak they near to broke his heart.

“Who are you, child?”

No answer, only sobs and sniffles. The creak of a rope-strung bed told of the child’s movements.

“Where’s your ma?”

Hiccups.

“Your pa?”

Silence. A sniff. Nothing from outside.

What to do? Zeb realized he’d rather stir up a nest of rattlers than open the door to see what Manda had in store for him. He felt
around for a board to bar the door. Locating it off to the side, he slid the bar in place. He was safe on this side at least.

The storm had passed, letting more light in the small window. He made out the outline of the fallen table and righted it. He could now make out the rope-slung bed in a corner of the small dugout. Then the daylight went out. He turned to see Manda at the window, or at least the outline of her that was visible through the greased paper covering the small square.

“Don’t worry, Miss Manda, I’m not ruining the place, just putting it to rights. You can come back in if you can behave.” He kept his voice conversational, hoping the tone, if nothing else, would soothe both her and the whimpering child. It worked with horses anyway.

Manda pounded on the door with something more than her fists. “I’m a’gonna let your horse loose.”

“Be my guest, if that will make you happy.” Zeb knew he could summon Buster with a whistle. He’d taught him to come that way before the animal was weaned.

He stopped at the side of the bed and looked down on a body so slight it didn’t even raise the covers. Peeling back the tattered quilt, he flinched at the sour smell that assaulted his nostrils. “Oh, dear God.” He sank down on his knees and laid a gentle hand on the small head. “You poor baby.” While he couldn’t see the child’s eyes in the dimness, he could feel the body shrink away from his touch.

“Now, I’m not going to hurt you, but I know 1 can help. You think we can get Manda to calm down so I can let her back in the house?” “N-no.”

“I didn’t think so, either. What is your name? I don’t want to keep calling you ‘child.’ You do have a name, don’t you?”

“Uh huh.”

Zeb waited. The smell nearly gagged him. The horse shifted restlessly, jangling the bit. Manda hadn’t even had time to remove that.

“I-I-I’m Deborah.”

He almost missed the name, it came so softly.

“Deborah. That’s a lovely name. Right from the Bible.” His mind sped through all he could remember of the Deborahs in the Scriptures. “Deborah was a strong woman, but once she was a little girl like you. How old might you be?”

No answer.

“How long since you had anything to eat?” The thought of these
children starving out here on the plains made him choke worse than the stench.

“M-Manda shot a rabbit. We ate that.”

She talked too well for a baby, but the size of her body . . . He’d seen skeletons with more flesh on them than she had.

“Look, I’m going outside to see if I can talk sense with Manda. You stay right here, all right?”

“Yes.”

His knees cracked as he stood. At least up here the air was a bit better. While there wasn’t a whole lot in his saddlebags, he’d bet that rifle he had more food than these two did. Or had had for a long time. Where were their folks?

“Miss Manda, I’m coming out. You going to talk to me civil-like?”

No answer.

What was the matter with that girl? Couldn’t she figure out by now that he didn’t plan to hurt them? If anyone had been hurt, it was him. He fingered a swollen lower lip. His nose felt puffy too. At least it had quit bleeding.

“Lord above, you’re going to have to help out here. I sure as fired don’t know what to do.” He waited, hoping for some sign, but knowing that hope was in vain. God didn’t seem to send burning bushes or talking donkeys these days. “You must figure we got enough sense now to figure some things out for ourselves.” Shoot. He reminded himself he didn’t aim to converse with the Almighty anymore. Got to get out of the habit.

But what to do about this mess? He shook his head.
Sure wish I’d rode the other way.

“Prayin’ don’t work.” The weak voice spoke from the bed.

He knelt back down to be able to see at least the outline of the child’s face. “Why do you say that?” Even though he now agreed with her, he wasn’t about to tell the child that.

“Manda prayed and our ma died anyway.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Deborah was surely older than the three or four he’d figured. “What about your pa?”

She shook her head. “Manda said not to tell anyone.”

“Oh.” If he were a betting man, he’d win this one hands down. Their pa had gone on to his reward too. “How long since you saw your pa?”

No answer.

“I have some cornmeal in my saddlebags, beans too. You think
you and Manda might know what to do with it if I made us up some vittles?”

“What’s that . . . v-vittles?”

“Supper.”

He could feel the little one quiver. “How long since you ate?”

No answer.

He stood again. How was it that a kid like Manda could flimflam him to the point he couldn’t do what he knew was best—for him anyway. Pride, that’s all it was.

“Well, the Book says pride goeth before a fall, and Miss Manda, you are about to fall.” He muttered but kept it quiet and quick enough so that Deborah wouldn’t catch his drift. Between the two of them they had enough pride to start a war. Or sheer guts and backbone. He thought of his sisters back home. What would Mary Martha do in a fix like this? He shook his head again.
She
wouldn’t be in this fix because
she
would have sweet-talked that wild one out there into scrubbing her face, sitting down at the table, and saying “please” and “thank you,” nice as pie.

Manda
had
said thank you when she rode off after he gave her the news about the cow.

What to do?

He heard a rustling behind him, and then the horse nudged him in the back. Without further thought, he took the hint and led the animal toward the door. Careful as he could, he lifted the bar and set it aside. Then, with a jerk he pulled the door open and slapped the horse on the rump. Out the door it leaped. Manda shrieked, dropped whatever she’d had in her hands—to clobber him with no doubt—and leaped for the animal.

Zeb followed right behind the critter in time to see Manda swing aboard, in spite of her skirts, by only grasping a hank of mane. She stopped the horse by some unseen means and turned back to the soddy.

Zeb stood in the doorway, the rifle held across his chest. “Now let’s get one thing straight here. I am not going to do you or your sister any harm. My ma would skin me alive for not helping out when I can.”

“We don’t need no help.”

“Yes, you do. We all need help at some point or another. Now I got some beans and cornmeal in my saddlebags, and I’m willing to bet either you or I could bag another rabbit or some such without
too much trouble. Prairie chicken would taste mighty good, don’t you think?”

She stared at him, no sign of her thoughts crossing her face.

“So . . . you want to start the fire? You want to go hunting, or should I? The beans need to cook awhile anyways. A’course, we could eat the dog.”

That got a rise out of her. “I ain’t eatin’ the dog.”

“Or your horse.”

“That neither.” She swung down and marched up to stand in front of him, her fists planted on her hips. “If’n you’re such a hot shot, you go hunt. And you can take your own rifle and gimme mine back.”

“Not until I know you’re not going to shoot me and throw me in the stewpot.”

The look she gave him would have fried a rabbit had he already bagged one.

When he returned some time later with a brace of prairie chickens tied to his belt, he could see the smoke rising from a chimney that blended into the hillside so well he’d missed it before. The dog set up a ruckus again, but this time its tail wagged and the whine low in the throat welcomed Zeb back.

“If that young lady in there was as smart as you, we coulda eaten long time ago.” He lopped the heads off the birds and threw them to the skinny cur. They were gone before he could blink. He skinned and gutted the birds, tossing the entrails to the dog, who waited with chops quivering. “At least one of us has a full belly.”

He knocked at the door, glancing to the side to see that more of the corral had been chopped away. At least they’d had something to burn to keep them warm. “Don’t go get all fired up, I brought some supper.” He pushed the door open with the toe of his boot, waited, then entered.

A fire crackled in the cast-iron stove, and a pot bubbled, sending the welcome fragrance of cooking beans that helped cover the stench of the dugout. The two chairs had been righted and a candle found. Manda sat on the edge of the bed, spooning gruel into Deborah’s mouth.

“She couldn’t wait.”

“No, I don’t s’pose she could. You got a skillet? We can fry two
of these and boil the other with the beans. Fryin’s faster.”

“Don’t got no grease.”

“Then we’ll use a bit of water till their own fat melts.”

Manda left off with feeding her sister and dug an iron skillet off a shelf that had once held stores. Several empty cans and a couple of flat sacks attested to that. She pushed the bean pot to the back of the stovetop and set the frying pan on the hottest part.

“Did you find the salt?”

“Yes.”

Talkative, she wasn’t.

Zeb cut the birds in smaller pieces and laid them in the skillet, dipping them in the bean water first. The sizzling meat added a fragrance of its own, making the putrid place seem almost homelike. Heat and cooking food had a tendency to do that.

Zeb thought of his mother’s house—the braided rugs, curtains at the windows, tables and chairs, a pantry full of preserved food, and both a root cellar and a smokehouse that held more of their larder. She always put up more than they could use, but she often said it hadn’t been like that during the war. She never wanted to see her children go hungry again. Nor anyone else. If only he could send these two packing back to his mother. Between her and Mary Martha, they’d drive that hunted look out of Miss Manda’s eyes right fast.

But they weren’t here. He was.

God help him, he was. And he didn’t dare stay.