Untethered (6 page)

Furthermore, the moment Heathro Thibodaux moved to Pike’s Creek—well, Cricket Cranford was more than merely glad that her father had snatched up Ada Hatley and carried her over their threshold. Cricket was forever thankful in fact that her father had married
Ada
before
Heathro Thibodaux had come to town. No doubt
Ada
would’ve been as smitten by Heathro as every other woman was, had she not already been in love with Zeke. Furthermore,
Ada
was beautiful—a real dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty! Cricket figured that of any woman in town,
Ada
would’ve had the best chance of catching Heathro’s eye.
Ada
might just have managed to lasso Heathro for her own if she hadn’t already been married to Cricket’s father.

Cricket frowned. Thoughts of Heathro Thibodaux being snatched up by any woman always made her feel a bit sick to her stomach. Oh, certainly she knew the day would come when he would marry someone. In truth, it was probably a miracle that he hadn’t been roped in by some woman’s feminine wiles already. But until the day came that the handsome ex-Texas Ranger was legally wed to another woman, Cricket was determined to dream of being the one to lasso him and tether him to her porch.

“Heathro Thibodaux,” Cricket whispered aloud. She liked the way Heathro’s name felt on her tongue—smooth and sweet like a delicious secret. As she’d done every night for months before drifting off to sleep, Cricket let her thoughts linger on the handsome newcomer to Pike’s Creek.

He was, without question, the most handsome man Cricket had ever seen—or even imagined, for that matter. In fact, the first time Vilma had seen Heathro, she’d called him a “tall drink of water” and said staring at him was more refreshing than swimming naked on a summer Sunday afternoon. Considering how stiff and perfect Vilma was, her scandalous description of Heathro Thibodaux was even more significant.

As Cricket lay in the soft comfort of her bed, continuing to let her mind nest on thoughts of how truly wonderfully attractive Texas Ranger Thibodaux was, she giggled, thinking that looking at him
was
more refreshing than swimming naked on a summer Sunday afternoon. He
was
a tall drink of water—far taller than most of the other men in town—and his shoulders were as broad as the state of
Texas
itself. Sky-blue eyes, bronze skin, square jaw, and dark hair—and that smile! In truth, Cricket had only seen Heathro Thibodaux smile three or four times, but each incidence was something she’d never forget. His smile was bright and white, and the gold tooth he owned on the upper-right incisor of his smile only embellished the richness of it.

That one tooth. Cricket’s smile faded as she thought of it. Oh, no doubt the flash only added to the splendor of his smile. Yet it also served as a reminder to
anyone who had ever read or heard of what had happened in
Texas
one year before. No doubt it was a powerful remembrance to Heathro Thibodaux himself—a visual indication of true barbarity, pain, and loss.

In that moment, Cricket wondered—when Heathro looked in the mirror each morning and saw that tooth, did he think of eight dead girls buried in the bottom of a bleak and barren canyon? Did he think of the eight dead girls that he, for no fault of his own, had been unable to save? After all, the outlaws who had cracked Ranger Thibodaux’s tooth, beat him nearly to fatality, shot him, and left him for dead were the same outlaws who had murdered the eight girls he’d been trying to save. Cricket was certain the poor man never once saw that tooth in his head without thinking of those girls. It was no wonder he’d quit rangering.

Though Cricket had spent many a night thinking of Heathro Thibodaux, of the horror of what he’d been through, this was the first night she’d ever wondered about his tooth—the tooth she found so perfectly embellished his already stunning smile. This was the first night she’d wondered what he thought about it.

Quickly she crept from her bed and to the chest at the foot of it. Raising the lid, she carefully shuffled through the many treasures she secreted there until she found the one she wanted to study again in that moment.

Sitting down on the floor, Cricket unfolded the newspaper clipping she’d managed to squirrel away from behind the saloon when a cowboy had tossed it in the garbage barrel a year ago.

“
Abducted Young Women Found Murdered
,” she read aloud in a whisper. Cricket had read the story many times. Yet each time she read it over again, a horrific sympathy for all that had happened to Heathro Thibodaux the summer before swelled inside her.

Sunday last, Texas Rangers found the bodies of the eight young women abducted from Turner Bend one week previous. All had succumbed to death. The eight promising young women of Turner Bend, having been abducted by a heinous band of outlaws one week previously, met their death on the rocky bed of a canyon, having been pushed over the canyon ridge ledge while tied together at hands and feet. Near the bodies of the dead young women, Texas Rangers found one of their own, Ranger Heathro Thibodaux, clinging to life, but only just.

Shortly after the Texas Ranger posse set out in search of the abductees, Ranger Thibodaux argued that the band of outlaws was traveling with the girls to
New Orleans
, while other members of the posse insisted the miscreants were mapping
Mexico
as their destination. Ranger
Thibodaux
broke from the posse and tracked the outlaws and their young female prisoners in a solitary manner. However, when he came upon the outlaws and their victims, he was but one man against ten and was beaten, shot, and left for dead. Barely conscious and unable to move to assist the eight abducted young women, Ranger Thibodaux watched helplessly through swollen, bloodied eyes as the outlaws discussed the matter of his arrival. It was decided among these evil abductors of innocence that if one Texas Ranger was near, then a full posse would soon follow. Thus, Ranger Thibodaux, wounded and slipping in and out of consciousness, witnessed the most gruesome of acts as the outlaws murdered the eight Turner Bend innocents.

“They tied their hands and feet,” Ranger Thibodaux reported, “tethered them together loosely, and pushed them over the rim of the canyon.”

Ranger
Thibodaux
suffered a broken arm, a broken leg, broken ribs, a broken hand, a cracked tooth, three gunshot wounds, and various bruising and lacerations. He was unable to assist the Texas Ranger posse as they identified and buried the eight young women from Tuner Bend.

While recovering from his injuries in San Antonio, when asked if perhaps it may have been better for the Turner Bend young women had he not come upon the outlaws at all, Ranger Thibodaux answered, “I would rather see those girls dead on the floor of the canyon and know their souls are safe in the arms of the Lord than to live my life knowing those outlaws had reached New Orleans with the girls alive. They’re far safer in death.”

Witnesses report that many who heard Ranger Thibodaux’s response spat on him, calling him a coward and a devil. Yet with rumors of white slavers operating in
Texas
and the
New Mexico
Territory
, there are many who support Ranger Thibodaux’s estimation.

Regardless of whether Ranger Thibodaux was amiss in his actions and opinions, the
township
of
Turner Bend
mourns for those eight bright and beautiful blossoms that were lost. They were and are: Minnie Edwards, aged 16 years; Hattie Campbell, aged 17 years; Dora Murphy, aged 18 years; Ruth Wallace, aged 18 years; Hazel Palmer, aged 16 years; Charlotte Berry, aged 17 years; Pauline Elliott, aged 15 years; and Dorthia Gilbert, aged 15 years.

Cricket exhaled a heavy sigh discouragement and pain. She shook her head, brushing the tears from her cheeks as she folded the clipping and returned it to its place in the old wooden chest at the foot of her bed.

It was all so unbelievably horrific, so painful, so heinous! She thought too that Ranger Thibodaux had been right: all eight of the girls who had died were free from their pain and misery, safe in the glories of heaven. And yet their families were left to mourn them—to drown in a grief that even ever-sympathetic Magnolia Cricket Cranford could not imagine.

And what of Heathro Thibodaux? As always, it was Heathro that Cricket felt most sorry for. What a burden it must’ve been to bear—to know that he was correct in his estimations that the white slavers meant to take the girls to
New Orleans
. But because none of the other Rangers had believed him, every girl had died—and Ranger Thibodaux had helplessly watched as they had.

With another exhaled sigh of near despair, Cricket crawled back into her bed. She closed her eyes and listened as the fragrant evening breeze of summer caressed the leaves of the trees outside her open bedroom window. She could hear the crickets underneath the back porch as they played their soothing song—hear the croaking of the bullfrogs along the banks of the stream and the melodic tinkling of Mrs. Maloney’s wind chimes in the distance. She inhaled deeply the aroma of the breeze, of fresh-from-the-oven bread that someone in town was baking—the sweet scent of the summer grasses, wildflowers, and the mellow bouquet of the small herd of cattle that Mr. Burroughs had driven to town in order to load onto the train the next day.

And yet it wasn’t until an image of Heathro Thibodaux settled into her mind that she was able to stop more tears from trickling over her temples. At lease he’d lived. The girls—all eight of the Tuner Bend girls—had died. But at least the world hadn’t lost Heathro Thibodaux too.

Cricket thought of the plans she and her friends had made earlier in the day. She thought of how delighted Mrs. Maloney would be when she opened her door Friday night to see the beautiful teapot Vilma had sold her hair to purchase sitting on her front porch. She thought of Mr. Keel. Even a lonesome man would appreciate a new quilt—especially one so lovingly stitched as the one Ann had made for him was. She thought of Hudson Oliver and how, in one way or the other, his life would never be the same once Marie had confessed her feelings. And she thought of Heathro Thibodaux—thought that if anyone in Pike’s Creek deserved to be welcomed to town, deserved a kiss, then it was the heroic young Texas Ranger who had at least tried to save the abducted girls of Turner Bend.

Cricket pictured him then—the way he’d appeared earlier in the day as he’d stood on the bank of the swimming hole. A body would never know just by looking at him that he owned such a past. Muscular and strong, handsome, and alluring, he looked nothing like a man who had endured the horrors that he had.

The crickets congregated under the back porch abruptly stopped their song. Cricket knew her father must’ve gone out to close the barn doors for the night. Still, it wasn’t long before the musicians for which she was nicknamed began to play once more.

“Play on, my dear ones,” Cricket whispered. She smiled a moment as she thought of the day her father had explained that he and her mother had begun calling her Cricket when, at the age of four, they had begun to wonder if she would ever stop talking. As crickets played incessantly, it seemed Magnolia Cranford prattled and chirped with full the same vigor and consistency.

“Play on,” she whispered again. “Sing me to sleep. Drive away this sad feelin’ my heart is achin’ with.” She brushed one last tear from her temple as she turned on her side, fluffed her pillow, and sighed. “And play a pretty song for Mr. Thibodaux too please. He more than earned the right to be soothed by your gentle melody.”

“You gonna drop in on Mrs. Maloney, Cricket?” Zeke Cranford asked his daughter.

“Beg your pardon, Daddy?” Cricket asked as the heat of guilt rose to her cheeks. Quickly she thought back over the past few days. Had she let something slip concerning the plans she, Marie, Ann, and Vilma had to gift Mrs. Maloney the teapot? The four girls liked to perform their acts of anonymous kindness…well, anonymously. And as far as Cricket knew, her father didn’t even suspect it was she and her friends who periodically scattered joy to others under the cloak of darkness. Yet she must’ve said something that indicated to her father she was involved. How else could he know about their plans where Mrs. Maloney and the teapot were concerned?

Zeke looked up from his plate of bacon and eggs, smiled at Cricket, and answered, “Well, it’s Friday. Don’t you usually drop in on the ol’ gal on Friday?” He looked back down to his plate, stabbed a bit of eggs with his fork, and added, “Fred Elmer says he seen her limping a bit yesterday, and I was just wonderin’ if all was well with her. So I thought since you usually visit with her on Fridays—”

“Oh! Oh yes!” Cricket exclaimed as understanding and reprieve washed over her. “Yes, of course I plan to visit her today.” She giggled a sigh of relief and said, “You about gave me a fit of apoplexy, Daddy. For a minute there I thought…”

Cricket closed her mouth tightly, but it was too late. As always, she’d said too much.

“You thought what?” Zeke asked.

“I thought…I thought you were gonna tell me some terrible sad news about Mrs. Maloney or somethin’,” she fibbed.

“Nope,” her father assured her. “But then again, limpin’ ain’t never a good thing. So you be sure you inquire about it today when you’re visitin’ her, all right?”