A Congregation of Jackals (12 page)

The thing with a plot like this is that once the word spreads about it, it gets spoiled, so we needed to do it a few times fast to take full advantage of it. We rode the Appanuqis hard the very next day and got to a town where they did their war dance for the setup. Quinlan and I rode in the next morning and spoke to the mayor using the same lines as before and the fellow went for it, though he was a tougher man and the town was poorer so he could only give us half as much
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We pushed to another town the next day called Rope’s End and the Indians were exhausted beyond telling and starting to act up and behave ornery. One came at me while I was eating and I shot him down. The twins shot holes into a couple of others who’d been making trouble and then kicked around the bodies for a bit. But the big thing was that the chief killed himself in some way we never figured out, his eyes wide open and a grin frozen on his face
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After the chief died, the tribe was different. They had that look in their eyes, that empty look like when a man has decided he’s better off feeding the worms than doing
any more living. D and I pointed this out to Quinlan, but the Irishman had no interest in deviating from his plan
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That night, when the Appanuqis did the war dance for the setup of our plot, it gave me chills. They beat the drums harder and louder than before and then they began to scrape their own faces with their fingernails until they were bleeding and had shreds of skin hanging down. I swear I heard a deep voice come out of that ceremony that didn’t come from any man or woman, though I couldn’t tell you where it did come from
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Then the Appanuqi started slapping and punching each other, getting angrier and angrier and more wild, all the while shrieking and moaning and dancing to the drums. They picked up rocks and caved in the heads of the dozen grotesques and then began to howl in unison. And then they turned to the town of Rope’s End and ran directly for it, shrieking, their faces ripped up and their tomahawks out. I knew that they were going to slaughter the whole town for real
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“We’ve gotta stop them,” I said to my men, who were beside me. We exchanged a look that said everything about how bad it was and what we had to do. We drew our guns on Quinlan and his crew, who had not seen it coming
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The Irishman did not loose his temper but stared at me calmly. “You’re gonna help stop them,” I said to him, but he shook his head. “Then give me those grenades,” I said, waving my gun at his nose. He did and so did the twins. J and the other fellow tied them up so they wouldn’t shoot us in the backs. We left them there and rode into town to do what we could
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The first thing I see when I get to the edge of Rope’s End is a brave pulling the scalp from a fourteen-year-old
girl. I shoot him in the head and he drops next to her. She is crying and still alive, part of her scalp still attached to her head like a tent flap. I vomit so violently tears filled my eyes, but I keep riding in, shooting Appanuqis and throwing grenades when I see a bunch of them, but since they are so scattered, a grenade isn’t much better than a bullet and I am no expert with them like Quinlan and the twins. J, D and the other fellow do the same, taking down Indians, but those devils are everywhere and it is hell
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After ten minutes I can no longer tell the screams of the savages from my own. At some point, J gets knocked out and takes an arrow, so he sees less than the rest of us do. I almost shoot the other fellow by accident and I can see the madness in his eyes that’s begging me to do it and end it all for him right then. D is sobbing hysterically the whole time we are defending Rope’s End and I’d never once seen him cry before, no matter what
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I am sorry about the drops on the paper, I hope you can still read through the smudges
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Houses are burning and screams are coming from all directions and the smell of burning corpses is the only smell. I run into a saloon where four Appanuqis are biting pieces off of a screaming woman’s leg whose head they have covered with a spittoon. I shoot them down, but not before she bleeds out. I go out and see a teenage boy shoot a brave and then have his face split down the middle by a tomahawk so that his brain shows
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We tried to put them down, but the Appanuqis won. The townsfolk of Rope’s End were massacred. Sixty or seventy Indians survived and ran back up to where we’d left Quinlan and his crew tied up. D, the other fellow and I found J, put him on a horse, and rode out the other way
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We disbanded right after that. We just wanted to get far, far way from the evil we’d been involved in. For the next two years I did a lot of drinking and thought of killing myself plenty, but I didn’t for some reason and when I met you I felt you were the reason, which I still think when I ponder you and the kids
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We had thought Quinlan and the twins and the toddler were killed by the Appanuqi, but the telegram I got from J said otherwise. Quinlan never knew anything but our first names, but as I’ve said before, he’s smart and could’ve figured things out somehow. You can see why I think there’s a fair chance I might be killed in the Montana Territory and also why I had to go out and meet the danger, rather than let it follow me home
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I have just reread the whole thing. I know Catholics like to go and confess their sins and it makes them feel better to get it all out, but not so with me, I don’t feel any better having written all of this down. I suppose the real reason I went and wrote this is that I want you to move on with your life now that I’m dead and I figured it might be easier for you to take a new husband if you knew about what I’d done. I hope you and the kids have happy lives
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Oswell

Beatrice looked at herself in the mirror, admiring her sky blue wedding gown and the way its whorls of lace and white silk filigree conformed to her buxom figure. The sixty-six-year-old tailor took a step away from her and nodded his head in approbation.

“You look beautiful, dear. Just beautiful.”

“Thank you. You have matched it to my shape perfectly.”

“To be truthful, there weren’t that many alterations that had to be made on it. You have the same figure as your mother—almost exactly. I just needed to open up a couple of areas to better receive your . . . ripe bounty.”

“If you weren’t older than my father, I might interpret that comment as a lustful one.”

“Don’t underestimate oldsters—we’re bursting with young lust our spouses don’t appreciate. Why do you think I got into tailoring in the first place? It definitely wasn’t to hem men’s pants.”

Beatrice swatted the old man’s right shoulder, eliciting a look of pure delight upon his face.

The brass bell hanging beside the door rang, and she and the tailor looked over to see who had entered. Viola, a twenty-two-year-old brunette from Louisiana who worked in the town’s lone brothel, shut the door and looked at Beatrice.

“That’s a real pretty dress. You gettin’ married in it?”

“I am. On Sunday.”

“If I got married they wouldn’t allow me to say them vows in no blue dress.”

Beatrice pitied the girl—who she doubted could even read—and replied equitably, “Purity may be a state of mind as well as stricture for the body. If you want to wear blue on your day, you should.”

Viola scratched the tip of her button nose and nodded; she looked over at the tailor and asked, “Did you fix up my garters yet?”

“I believe so. But you’d better try them on in front of me so that we may both be sure.”

Beatrice left the tailor, carrying her paper-wrapped wedding dress in both arms as if it were a boneless child. She placed the ceremonial gown in her room, upon the bed, looked at it for a moment and then walked downstairs, where her father and Deputy Goodstead were finishing their coffees.

“Goodstead wanted you to know that if James runs out on you, he’ll be right there to take his place.”

Beatrice looked at the blank-faced Texan and said, “Thank you.”

Goodstead nodded politely, his face inscrutable.

Her father nudged him and said in a loud whisper, “Go on fella, it’s your last chance to win her love. Show her that Texans don’t at all know when to quit.”

Goodstead dunked a corner of toast into his coffee, put it into the horizontal aperture that was his mouth, chewed, swallowed and said, “I know the vows. Just in case.”

Her father laughed, clapped a hand on his back and said, “That’s the way to smear mud on yourself.”

Beatrice remembered the many times that Goodstead had tried to court her. He was fairly nice looking, and despite his perpetually blank visage, not
unintelligent, but he was so dull that he stayed on duty even on his days off because he had so little else of interest in his life. (Unlike Jim, who was always building things, studying the Bible or fussing over his pets.)

She asked, “Have you learned anything more about that Frenchman who cut up Jim’s coydog?”

Her father said, “Nope. He hasn’t been back since we ran him out of town.”

“We’re not positive it was him that did that,” Goodstead added.

“He did it,” her father said.

Goodstead remarked, “You make swift convictions, T.W. Maybe you should move on up to judge. I’ll be sheriff.”

“What would Judge Higgins do?”

“Become my deputy.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I’d be a pretty compelling sheriff.”

“Good-bye,” Beatrice said, kissing her father on the cheek and nodding at Goodstead. She knew they could keep nonsensical talk like that turning for hours, and she had things to do.

“I don’t even get a handshake?”

Beatrice extended her right hand and the Texan took it and shook it.

He said, “Give my regards to that old man you are about to marry. Say it loud, so he can hear.”

When the bride-to-be was two hundred yards from James Lingham’s property line, she heard the sound of his hammer pounding nails and knew exactly where he would be. She adjusted the basket on her arm, circumnavigated his house and crept upon the laboring carpenter. Jesus and Joseph saw her approach, but did
not bother to remark upon it to their owner, which she wondered if she should find comforting or insulting.

“Mary’s mausoleum is coming along nicely,” she said.

“Thanks Bea,” Jim replied. He set his hammer down beside the little building he had toiled over for the last three days, in which he would soon deposit Mary’s body. At night, while they had discussed details of the wedding, he had whittled sticks into miniature pillars and carved wood to resemble blocks of stone.

The giant man stood from his work stool, walked over to her, blotted out the sky and kissed her on the mouth; she was not sure if the salt she tasted on his lips was from sweat or tears.

“It looks just like a Grecian temple,” she said, though was still unsure why he had chosen a Greek motif as the basis of his coydog’s mausoleum.

“It’s pretty close.”

“Let’s go over the vows again.”

“I got it perfect last time.”

“You got the words out, but you faltered a bit in a few places.”

“You went and changed the vows, is why. I know the regular stuff everyone says, but you went and got fancy.”

“Once more.” She paused and looked deeply into his eyes. “Please.”

“I can’t never say no to you when you ask it like that.” He clapped his hands together, arched his back and let out a terrific sigh. Her giant leaned over, curled his left arm across her shoulders and his right arm around the backs of her knees and scooped her up from the ground; her boots lifted into the air as her head dropped down. She was suspended in his arms
as if in a hammock. He leaned down and kissed her on the lips.

“Let’s go an’ get pretend married again.”

She felt like a dizzy child as the huge man carried her across the grass toward the house they would soon share.

Beatrice and Jim, holding hands, sat across from each other at the kitchen table; the titan was stiff and anxious.

“You do not need to be nervous,” she said.

Jim cleared his throat and remarked, “I feel like maybe He’s listening. To see if we’re good enough to give His blessing to. Or maybe He’s getting sick of us saying His name for practice and won’t bother with the actual weddin’.”

“James Lingham!” She only said his name like that when he was on a bad path.

He shut his mouth.

“Shall we?”

He nodded.

Beatrice closed her eyes, tilted her head forward in obeisance and said, “I, Beatrice Roberta Jeffries, daughter of Theodore William Jeffries and Lucinda Millington Jeffries, stand before the Lord, my family and friends on this, the twelfth day of August, eighteen eighty-eight, to join the man opposite me, James Jacob Lingham, in holy matrimony. To this one man, I pledge myself fully and unswervingly: my heart, my soul and my body are his. I ask that the Lord sanctify this pledge and accept us into His bosom for all eternity so that we may shine together in His glory in heaven.”

Beatrice opened her eyes and saw that Jim was no longer looking at her; he was staring through the
window. If he was watching those damn coydogs, she was not going to be very happy.

She turned her head from him and looked through the glass. Three men walked up the hill, directly toward the house. They were far off, but she could see that all of them had luggage—two carried a quite sizable trunk between them. She looked back at Jim and for a second saw a face she did not at all recognize. There was a little anger there, which she almost never saw, and more than a hint of dread.

“Who are they?”

“It’s those fellows I invited. The ones I used to ride beeves with.”

“You do not seem pleased to see them.”

“I hated being a cowpuncher.”

She glanced back through the window and watched the men draw nearer. The two bearing the trunk looked similar, though one was heavy and had a red beard while the other was very strong and sun weathered and wore a mustache. The third man walked beside the heavy one and was extraordinarily good-looking, though too feminine and swarthy for her particular tastes. Perhaps he was an Italian or a Greek or a Jew.