creaked.
He waited a moment, then slipped inside.
If anyone was in there they weren’t saying any-
thing, they weren’t moving. He waited for his eyes to
adjust, then found a lamp, raised the chimney, struck
a match and put it to the wick. The soft yellow light
filled as much of the room as it could.
“Karen,” he called.
First nobody answered. Then he heard it: soft little
sounds like a kitten mewing coming from the bed-
room. He leaned the shotgun against the wall and
took up the lamp and walked over to the doorway of
the room.
She was there, still tied to the bed.
“Goddamn,” he muttered.
Three of them on two horses. The going was slow.
They’d headed out around noon, having gotten all
they wanted from the woman, having eaten her little
bit of food and gone through her things and found a
few pieces of jewelry, a couple of knives, the Sharps,
and the needlegun she’d tried to shoot them with.
Zack wanted to take a tintype of her. It showed her
and a man together, obviously taken in a photogra-
pher’s studio, but Zeb said, “What the hell you want
that for?”
“So’s I can remember what she looks like.”
“Why the hell you want to remember what she
looks like? Ain’t you seen enough of her already?”
Zane felt ashamed and didn’t say anything. He hadn’t
wanted to be a part of it. Not that way. When it came
his turn, Zeb told him to climb aboard. He’d said no,
that it was okay, he didn’t need no turn with her.
“Why the hell not?”
“ ’Cause I don’t, is all.”
He remembered the look he’d gotten from his eld-
est brother, and the look his other brother gave him.
“It’s just the way it is, is all,” Zack said. “Go on
and have your turn.”
“No, I don’t need no guddamn turn!”
That’s when Zeb drew his revolver and put it to his
forehead and said, “You’ll by gud take a turn or you
won’t be riding no farther than this here. This here is
where you’ll end up for the rest of all time. We’re ei-
ther all in it together, or we ain’t. Those who ain’t
stays here.”
Zack tried to intervene saying, “Ah hell, Zeb, it
ain’t nothing if he don’t want a turn.”
Zeb levered the hammer back with his thumb. So
Zane did what he hadn’t wanted to do and the whole
time the brothers stood there watching silent. He said
it was hard for him to get anything going with them
standing there watching. They laughed and drifted
out into the other room. The woman hadn’t said any-
thing, had long before stopped her cursing them and
begging them and just lay there silent the whole time
and he felt like God himself was watching him even if
his brothers no longer were.
He lay there beside her for a moment, then sat up
on the side of the bed and said without looking at her,
“I’m sorry for what they did. I couldn’t stop them.
And if they come in and ask, you tell them I did what
they wanted me to do or else they might kill you and
me, too. You understand that, lady?”
He looked at her to see if she understood, but she
simply stared at him. He waited a few minutes longer
then went out where the others were sitting around
the table.
Zeb said, “That sure didn’t take no time, boy. You
sure are quick on the trigger.” And he thought Zack
might laugh or something, but he didn’t say a thing.
They left her tied up to the bed like and began rum-
maging through her things, the cupboards and an old
trunk where they found some men’s clothes and
changed out of their still-wet shirts into the dry ones
they found. The shirts were all too big for them.
“She must have a husband,” Zack said trying on a
dry shirt.
“Big son of a bitch,” Zeb said, “by the looks of it.”
Zane kept thinking of her lying in there and said fi-
nally, “I ought to go and put a blanket over her, it’s
terrible cold and wet.”
He went in there and she had her eyes on him like
a wild creature trapped in a corner and he put his fin-
ger to his lips and said softly, “Don’t fear. I just aim
to put a blanket over you, is all.” And he took up one
of the blankets that had fallen or been tossed on the
floor and laid it over her and she never said anything
except he could hear little wet sounds coming from
the back of her throat and from her nose that had still
some blood leaking from it.
He tried not to look at her nakedness when he put
the blanket over her.
“I’m sorry this all happened,” he said.
He started to leave but then he realized she was
trying to say something. He was worried Zeb would
come in and finish her. He shook his head and put his
finger to his lips again warning her to be quiet. But
she was trying to say something and so he came closer
to the bed again and leaned down, his ear near her
mouth and said, “What is it?”
And she said, in a wet raw whisper: “Kill me.”
He pulled back from her as though she’d bit him.
“Please,” he said. “Please be quiet.”
She mouthed the words again and her eyes went
soft this time and he could see tears leaking from
them down the sides of her face and she said it once
more, her voice a rasp, and he turned and went out of
the room where his siblings now sat around the table
eating beans out of cans they’d opened.
“You in there taking another turn, wasn’t you?”
Zeb said. He had a rough growth of dark beard and
his teeth were crooked in front and yellow as hard
corn and he looked like he had a rodent’s mouth
when he talked.
“I just put a blanket on her, is all,” he said and sat
down at the table and took a spoon and started eating
beans from a can, too.
“I’m thinking we ought to finish her,” Zeb said.
“Thing like this could get us hanged.”
“We shouldn’t have done it all,” Zane said.
Their eyes met, held.
“Who died and left you in charge of things is what
I want to know?”
“Nobody.”
“Then keep your damn mouth shut.”
They ate the rest of the beans and some salt pork
they found, then they took a half jar of clover honey
they found and leaked it onto slices of hardtack and
ate that, too, Zeb taking his time. The others sat ner-
vously awaiting his orders.
“Well, that’s it, then,” he said, finally standing
from the table.
“What’s it?” Zack said.
“Go on in there and do her,” Zeb said.
Zack held up his hands.
“You ain’t got the stomach for it, do you?”
“No sir, I ain�
��t.”
“Well, we know this one here ain’t, either,” Zeb
said pointing at Zane. “I might as well get you girls
some dresses and poke bonnets to wear.”
Neither of the younger brothers spoke.
“I guess the old man’s juice got weak after he had
me,” he said. “I guess what he put into the old
woman later was nothing but weak juice and out
come you two.”
He turned toward the bedroom door.
Zane said, “Don’t do it, Zeb. Don’t go in there.”
And when Zeb turned around to look at him, Zane
had that Smith & Wesson .44 single action with the
hardwood grips pointed at him. He held it steady, too.
Zane hadn’t planned on pulling his piece on his
brother. He hadn’t even thought about it. It was just
there in his hand next thing he knew. And he knew
something more: that if he had to, he’d pull the trigger
because of the way he was feeling about the woman,
what he’d helped do to her. He’d just as soon beat a
puppy to death with a stick as to have to watch any-
thing more done to her. He was about sick to his
stomach over it.
Zeb was smart enough to know it as well. He seen
something in his brother’s eyes he hadn’t ever seen
there before and he said, “Looks like you done got off
the sugar tit, boy, and got you some backbone,” then
turned and walked outside and began to saddle one of
the two horses in the corral. A little bay.
And Zane and Zack walked outside and saddled
the other horse. And as they turned them out, Zeb
said to his kid brother, “Don’t ever pull a gun on me
again or one of us will be dead as guddamn Moses.”
*
*
*
She heard them ride away and then she wept so hard
her entire body shook. And she wept so hard and so
long she exhausted herself and fell into a welcome
sleep and did not awaken again until it was dark
when she heard a noise, and the fear of them return-
ing flooded back into her again and she thought, no,
this can’t happen again.
She heard someone call her name. She wasn’t sure
that she wasn’t dreaming. Then there was a light in
the doorway, and the shape of a man behind the light
and she cried out, only no words came out of her. It
came to her that maybe she was dead and that this
was hell; that hell was a place where every moment
was a repeat of what you feared the most.
But then the light came closer and she saw some-
thing familiar in the shadowy features of the man
whose face came down close to hers and the man said,
“Karen,” in such a soft and gentle way that she
couldn’t be sure it wasn’t God.
He cut loose the ropes that held her wrists and an-
kles and touched her face with his hands and kept
talking to her and stroking her hair. He was so gentle
with her that she wanted to cry but she’d cried all the
tears that were in her already and all she could do was
tremble whenever he touched her until he drew her
close to him and held her there.
They stayed like that the rest of the night. She fell
asleep with him holding her and he was still holding
her when she opened her eyes to the light that fell in
through the windows. It seemed to her like a dream
she was in; the room and everything in it a bit blurry
and Toussaint there with her, like she’d remembered
him when things were at their best between them.
Toussaint had his eyes closed, sitting there on the
bed next to her, holding her, and when she went to
move he awakened and said, “You okay?” He looked
startled, ready to do something.
She tried to speak but her throat was dry, felt like
it was stuck and had a bitter metallic taste in it she
recognized as blood. He touched her face, her hair,
and eased himself free from her and went out and
came back again with a dipper of water and gave it to
her to drink and it tasted like pure heaven that cold
water.
She wanted to tell him what had happened, but
when she tried he said, “Shh . . . not yet. There’s
plenty of time,” and went and heated water and
hauled out the copper tub from the summer kitchen
and filled it full, then carried her to it and set her
down in it an inch at a time letting her adjust to its
heat.
And when she was fully set down in it, he took a
bar of soap and gently began to wash her using his
hands in small soft circles over her until he’d washed
every inch of her, then he washed her hair and rinsed
it. Then he said, “Just sit there for a time,” and went
and brewed peppermint tea from a tin she had setting
on a shelf—wild peppermint she’d picked in the
spring and dried. He poured her a cup and brought it
to her. He left again as she sipped the tea and came
back and sat beside her, sitting on the floor, his hand
dangling in the water, rising to touch her shoulder,
her still-wet hair.
In a little while, he took a towel and dried her hair,
then lifted her from the water and wrapped her in a
blanket and carried her to the bed. He’d gone in and
changed the old bedding and put on fresh and straight-
ened the room so that it was like it was before the men
had come. He kissed her forehead and left for a time
and came back again with a glass jar full of the last
wildflowers that could be found before winter fully set
in and placed them on the nightstand next to her bed.
They smelled like the prairie.
“You’ll be okay,” he said, looking directly into her
eyes.
“They came in the night . . .” she whispered.
He touched his fingers to her lips.
“Plenty of time to talk about it later on,” he said.
“Right now you should just rest.”
He started to take his hand away but she held
onto it.
She knew he was anxious to go and she knew why
he was.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t leave me.”
“No,” he said. “I won’t leave you.”
He sat with her until she fell asleep, then he went
into the other room and made himself a pot of coffee
and wished he had a little whiskey to go in it, for his
nerves were about as frayed as they ever had been. He
couldn’t get the sight of the bruises he’d seen on her
out of his mind or what they must have done to her
for her to suffer bruises like that.
He didn’t know how he was going to get her be-
yond this thing that happened to her. He knew she
was tough, but what woman was so tough she could
get over a thing like this? He didn’t know how he was
going to get himself beyond this thing.
Ultimately he told himself, he’d find the ones who
did this to her and kill them. But it wasn’t anger that
filled him at this very moment as much as it was
&n
bsp; grieving for her.
He went and stood at the window and watched the
gray light come over the land. Winter had already be-
gun its slow steady march on the land. There would
be occasional warm days, but soon enough the snow
would lay like a thick white blanket over everything
and the creeks would look black running through it,
and silence would be everywhere. Time would come
to a long halt.
It might be a good time for her to get over what
happened to her: when things were slow and quiet.
He saw the gravestone of his son and knew now
why Karen had him dig the grave where it was—so
she could see it from her kitchen window. He sipped
the coffee and watched the light grow and spread over
everything. He wasn’t worried about finding the men
who hurt Karen. He’d find them sooner or later and
they’d be lucky to be laid down in graves marked by a
stone, or that anyone would care to visit and remem-
ber them by.
Such men did not garner favor.
“She said town was this way, right?” Zack said after
they’d been riding two hours.
They came to a creek that ran deep and green and
looked like a place that had fish in it. Zeb rode the lit-
tle horse and Zack and Zane doubled on the larger one.
“That’s what she said,” Zeb replied as they reined
in and allowed the horses to drink.
They stood around, each with his own thoughts,
Zane wishing it had never happened. He had a sense
of himself that didn’t fit with the others. Zeb was fox
smart and Zack was just Zack, dumb as a box of old
Mexican pesos and would go along with anything
Zeb told him to. And he mostly did as well, except
for this last thing. It was like it wasn’t happening so
much to her, what they were doing to her, as it was to
him. The way she fought them at first was one thing,
but when she suddenly just gave up and quit fighting,
that took all the heart out of him to see her like that
and to see his brothers set upon her anyway. It was
the worse thing he’d ever been part of.
He stood there looking down in the creek water
and saw his reflection in it staring back up at him
only the reflection was darker and he couldn’t see his
eyes and it troubled him he couldn’t see his eyes.
He heard his brothers talking about the woman.
He walked off far enough so he couldn’t hear what
they were saying. And when Zeb called to him asking
where he was going, he said, “I need to squat off in